EXL Acumen 2016

Indian Institute of Management

Case Challenge 2016

2016 ExlService Holdings, Inc

www.exlservice.com
 Optimal Marketing Spend for SAMCARD.COM
INDEX credit card Co. has co-partnered with SAM Airlines to launch a new credit card
named SAMCARD in USA on March 11,2015.
Below are the special features of the Credit Card:
1) Earn 4X Points on SAM Airline purchase
2) Earn 1.5X Points on Restaurant and Grocery stores
3) Earn 1X Points on Other Purchases
4) $0 Annual Fee
Majority of the Sam Airline customers are from these three regions namely Texas, Florida
and Washington.
Index Credit card Co. launched TV Ads along with Digital Video Campaigns in order to
create Brand Awareness of the product. They have spent ~ $20 MM in the first three
months for the marketing campaigns in order to improve the Quality of Applications for
the Credit Card.
Any Individual can apply for the credit card only through the website: SAMCARD.COM
SAMCARD Marketing Team has access to the Visit and Impression level data for major
marketing Channels through Site Catalyst and some other third party agency.
Mr. M who is the Vice-President of Marketing is very happy with the Applications
received with a short span of 3 months period but he has certain apprehensions with
the amount of Spend on Offline channels like TV and DM (Direct Mail).
Mr. D who is the head of Digital Analytics is pushing for more spend on the Digital
Marketing activities vis--vis Offline activities as the applications received from the
Digital channel is tremendously high.
Mr. M has roped in EXL (Inductis) Pvt. Ltd to identify insights and help them in deciding
the marketing activities and Spend for the next 3 months.
Marketing Strategy needs to be data driven which will help him in deciding:
1) Whether SAMCARD Co. should follow a Digital Only marketing activities or
follow the same mix of Offline and Online spend done in the past 3 months.
2) Quantify the impact of major marketing channels on Applications.
3) Comparison of Cost per Application (CPA) of major marketing channels from
your Model vis--vis Last Click Model. Which Model makes much more Business
sense?
4) Quantify the impact of Offline activities on Online Activities(if it exist)

EXL Case Contest-2016 2016 ExlService Holdings, Inc

 Mr. M also provides EXL with access to SAMCARD Digital Acquisition data for 3 months
after launch. The available information includes
1) Daily Application and Accounts created for 3 Months at Daily level
2) Weekly Normalized TRP and Spend data for the three Geographies
3) Visit and Impression level data for major marketing channel
4) Spend Information for 3 Months after launch
5) Last Click Attribution Model 1data for Digital Channels
6) Information on Marketing Channel definition
Based on this information, EXL (Inductis) Pvt. Ltd has to come up with a strategy that will
enable SAMCARD to achieve the best possible marketing strategy for the next 3
months.
Apart from this, Mr. M is very detail oriented. He wants you to share a Presentation along
with your working file + the outputs of your model in a desired format (Please check
EXL_Acumen_2016_Output_Template.xlsx)

1
Assigns 100% of the credit to final touch point

EXL Case Contest-2016 2016 ExlService Holdings, Inc