From Customer Intelligence to Competitive Advantage: How Saga Is Activating Data for Measurable Marketing Growth
AUDIENCES, SNOWFLAKE & SAGA - Delivering Measurable Business Outcomes
Enterprise organisations have invested heavily in cloud platforms and customer data. Yet for many, one challenge remains: turning that investment into measurable business outcomes. Customer intelligence has never been richer, but too often it remains trapped in dashboards, disconnected from the marketing decisions that drive growth.
The next competitive advantage won't come from collecting more data. It will come from activating the intelligence organisations already have.
This was one of the defining themes at this year's MAD//Fest, where Saga, Snowflake and AUDIENCES took to the stage together to discuss how businesses can unlock greater value from customer intelligence.
Saga's journey shows what that looks like in practice.
At a Glance
Customer: Saga
Industry: Financial Services & Travel
Cloud Platform: Snowflake AI Data Cloud
Solution: AUDIENCES – cloud-native audience activation platform
Business Outcome: 65% lower cost per lead, 10.9x incremental ROAS, Campaign Tech Awards shortlisted
From Insight to Activation
By managing customer intelligence within Snowflake, Saga benefits from a secure, governed and scalable data foundation. Rather than exporting customer data into multiple marketing platforms, teams can activate audiences directly from trusted first-party data while maintaining governance and control.
For many organisations, there is still a gap between where customer intelligence is created and where marketing decisions are made. While data sits securely within the cloud, marketers still need a way to transform those insights into addressable audiences across channels such as Google, Meta, TikTok; Connected TV channels such as Sky AdSmart; and programmatic advertising channels such as The Trade Desk.
This is where AUDIENCES bridges the gap between customer intelligence and marketing activation.
AUDIENCES is a cloud-native audience activation platform that operates directly within a customer's cloud environment. It enables marketing teams to build, activate and measure first-party audiences without moving or duplicating customer data, turning customer intelligence into addressable audiences that can be activated across the media ecosystem while maintaining governance, privacy and control.
Because AUDIENCES operates directly within Snowflake, customer data remains within the customer's cloud environment throughout audience creation and activation. This allows organisations to unlock greater value from their first-party data without compromising governance or creating unnecessary data copies.
Rather than replacing a customer's existing data investment, AUDIENCES extends the value of Snowflake by creating a seamless connection between customer intelligence and marketing execution.
Delivering Measurable Results
Saga has used first-party customer intelligence to support a range of marketing objectives, from customer acquisition and suppression to re-engagement, cross-sell and audience expansion. By building audiences from trusted customer data held within Snowflake, marketing teams can activate more relevant campaigns across multiple channels.
For Saga Cruises, combining high-value lookalike audiences with intelligent suppression strategies for paid social campaigns delivered:
- 63% higher click-through rate
- 65% lower cost per lead
- 80% of landing page views generated by lookalike audiences
- 62% of campaign leads delivered by those audiences
The same customer intelligence strategy was extended into Connected TV, where first-party audiences were used to support customer acquisition, re-engagement and cross-sell initiatives. The campaign achieved:
- 513,000 households reached
- £4.4 million in booking value
- £1.1 million in incremental value
- 33% uplift compared with unexposed audiences
- 10.9x incremental return on advertising spend
These results demonstrate how trusted customer intelligence can move beyond analytics to become a measurable driver of commercial growth across the customer lifecycle.
Industry Recognition
The approach has also been recognised by the industry. Using first-party customer intelligence to power audience strategies including propensity modelling, lookalike audiences, suppression and cross-sell, Saga demonstrated how trusted cloud data can be transformed into measurable commercial outcomes. The work was shortlisted in the Campaign Tech Awards for Best Use of Data – Financial & Professional Services.
The collaboration also formed part of the conversation at MAD//Fest, where representatives from Saga, Snowflake and AUDIENCES shared the stage to discuss the growing importance of activating customer intelligence. As organisations continue investing in AI, analytics and cloud technologies, the discussion centred on a simple but increasingly important idea: The organisations creating the greatest value aren't those collecting the most data, they're the ones activating it most effectively.
Looking Ahead
As organisations continue investing in AI and cloud technologies, attention is shifting from data management to data activation. Snowflake provides the trusted foundation for customer intelligence. AUDIENCES extends that investment by enabling marketers to activate first-party audiences directly from the cloud, creating a seamless connection between insight and execution. Saga's experience demonstrates what's possible when customer intelligence is no longer confined to reporting and analytics but becomes an active driver of marketing strategy and business growth.
For organisations investing in AI, cloud and first-party data, the next competitive advantage won't come from building a better data platform, it will come from putting customer intelligence to work.
Performance figures are based on Saga campaign results presented at MAD//Fest 2026 and the Campaign Tech Awards submission.
