Priority Pass - Churn Predictor

The Challenge

Priority Pass is a membership program offering its members paid access to exclusive airport lounges, and is another successful Collinson Group company.

Priority Pass has always had high renewal rates, but wanted to see if it was possible to create a data model that could predict with a significant degree of accuracy which members were likely to renew and which looked set to lapse, giving the Priority Pass Marketing Team crucial insight with which to impact customer behaviour.

Exploratory Analysis

Using 5 years of historical data, Cogent Analytics undertook an exploratory analysis to identify any characteristics or behaviour patterns exhibited by lapsers that mark them out from renewers.

A number of interesting facts presented themselves, most notably the pattern of lounge visit behaviour in the last three months of a membership year compared with the first nine months.

Churn Risk Scoring

This and other significant factors were translated into a Churn Risk scoring model, using SAS software. The model was then tested for accuracy against historical data.

The test demonstrated that 90% of churning customers are correctly predicted into the top two most-at-risk segments (of 10).

The model is now run every month and drives a segmented multi-stage renewal marketing program that has seen monthly renewal rates increase by 2%.