Benita Verghese

Benita Verghese--, Dubai, UAE linkedin.com/in/benita-verghese-b27b295/ EXECUTIVE SUMMARY in Strategic planning and analytics professional with 20+ years experience in strategic planning, customer insights, revenue optimization, and route performance analysis. Strong track record in cross-functional collaboration, expert in developing measurement frameworks, KPIs, and predictive marketing programs that elevated campaign engagement by 6% . Proven success in enhancing customer journey strategies and optimizing marketing impact across diverse markets. Adept at adapting marketing and revenue expertise to optimize route profitability, collaborating with commercial teams, and developing KPIs to drive mid-to-short-term growth. Recognized for bridge-building leadership, mentoring, and crossfunctional collaboration to achieve business objectives. PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE Emirates Airline - Marketing and Brand Strategic Planning Manager Jan 2022 - Present Established a collaborative foundation for the Planning team with internal stakeholders (Customer Insights, UX Research, Market Research, Marketing Analytics) to craft measurement frameworks, KPIs, and metrics for assessing campaigns and their ROI. Spearheaded the development and implementation of a strategic planning framework, providing actionable recommendations based on business briefs and leveraging first-party, second-party, and thirdparty data sources in alignment with market-level business objectives. Designed the annual marketing calendar by leveraging share of voice, wallet, search, and brand health insights to optimize budget allocations and campaign efficacy across markets. Managed annual planning calendar for Africa region portfolio by extracting insights and recommendations from business, customer, and research data to inform activation and marketing strategies. Formulated an annual planning playbook and instituted an annual planning methodology to manage fullfunnel marketing activities across all Emirates markets effectively. Conducted a comprehensive study on the EK customer journey in Nigeria, analysing booking behavior, destination preferences, preferred sales channels, and seasonality, with insights influencing the annual marketing strategy. Utilized RFM (Recency, Frequency, and Monetary) customer segmentation and look-alike modeling to enhance customer acquisition and retention strategies, increasing campaign engagement by 6%. Collaborated with Customer Activation, Digital, and Analytics teams to develop predictive marketing programs (Customer Abandonment Program, Customer Churn Program) to drive ancillary revenue, average order value, identifying attributes for machine learning models in Palantir Foundry, ideating use cases, assessing feasibility, developing Lean Canvases, prioritising initiatives, and measuring success. Devised a methodology to derive customer targets from annual passenger revenue targets, specifying targets at market and channel levels, fostering discussions around acquisition, retention, and reactivation targets, and omnichannel marketing tactics, resulting in 3% increase in customer retention year on year. Co-created a robust EK Retail Customer strategy playbook with the Email Customer Strategy team to bolster non-airline business sectors (Emirates Official Store, EK Rugby 7s), addressing data flow mapping, system integration, privacy regulations, consent management, demand analysis, situational assessments, customer experience mapping, and strategic activations. Partnered with the internal research team and Nielsen IQ to develop the brand health questionnaire, periodically evaluating EK's brand KPIs against competitors, key drivers, and barriers to consideration. Led a workflow automation initiative with internal and external stakeholders, creating a marketing workbench on Palantir Foundry to enhance SLAs, decision-making, and speed to market. The workbench features alert workflows for prioritising and displaying relevant data alerts for user review. Led a team of four Planning Managers, nurturing collaboration and mentoring to ensure the fulfilment of marketing and personal growth objectives. Emirates Airline - Marketing and Brand Customer Insights Manager Mar 2020 - Dec 2021 Executed customer segment modelling to create detailed profiles, integrating travel seasonality data to identify potential markets and specific customer groups. The analysis highlighted the 'Student Segment' as a promising demographic during the pandemic, spurring discussions that led to the launch of the 'Student Offer,' generating AED 68M in revenue (YTD Dec 22). Conducted high-value customer profiling, examining the travel and search behaviours of premium customers to gauge their travel intentions. This involved analysing search activities, conversion rates, recent flight dates, preferred routes, cabin selections, distribution channels, customer feedback, and TripAdvisor reviews. Insights from this analysis influenced the reinstatement of full premium service in First and Business class. Provided strategic customer and business insights to senior management, enabling tactical and long-term marketing strategies to facilitate customer growth. Leveraged new data sources during COVID to deliver vital insights on government regulations, consumer behaviour, and demand forecasting for marketing initiatives. Prepared executive briefs utilising customer data trends, comparing EK and competitor product offerings and travel flexibility, alongside waiver policy comparisons, thus providing compelling narratives for PR and insights for senior management decision-making and strategic development. Emirates Airline - Revenue Planning & Analytics Revenue Optimisation Manager Mar 2015 - Feb 2020 Collaborated with the Senior Leadership Team (SLT) to create a Weekly Profitability tracker, overseeing updates to ensure alignment with cost, yield, and demand fluctuations. This tracker supported the SLT in accurately forecasting profitability at a network level. Delivered in-depth route performance analyses incorporating metrics such as seat factor, cabin-wise yield, capacity growth, POS mix, cabin mix, fare family, RBD mix, and forward ticketed projections to aid Senior Management in their strategic decision-making processes. Delivered route performance reports, incorporating key indicators such as flown performance, currency impact, and competitor landscape to ascertain precise reasons for adverse route contribution, and recommended a practical action plan for improving route performance. Identified underperforming routes based on booked and forecasted seat factor deltas during off-peak travel periods, prompting targeted efforts to enhance traffic. Developed a KPI scorecard for the Flight Inventory team that aggregated multiple dimensions, including seat availability across flight lifecycles, overbooking levels, flown seat factors, denied boarding counts, and upgrades. Following the implementation of the dashboard, critical seat factors on high-demand flights reached 97%, maintaining the overall proportion of high-demand flights in the network. Created a paid and involuntary upgrade reporting mechanism, leading to a 6% increase in paid upgrades (YTD Sep 2018). Compiled comprehensive lists of approved tactical exceptions by region, integrating point-of-sale (POS) and origin-destination (OD) data into monitoring reports for tactical exceptions. Developed the RO Calendar, integrated into Salesforce's Global Calendar, serving as an essential resource for identifying network traffic peaks. Provided insights to the Senior Leadership Team regarding peak season trends, facilitating informed discussions and strategic decision-making. Mentored a team of five, including training temporary staff, who subsequently transitioned into permanent positions Revenue Optimisation Analyst Feb 2012 - Jan2015 Formulated and analysed fare benchmark reports across routes, drilling down to Point of Sale (Origin & Destination) level, integrating Emirates and OAL fare comparisons, market shares, BSP industry dimensions, and availability. This analysis yielded insights into opportunity markets and necessitated fare entry realignments. Developed and promoted an Excess Baggage Performance Dashboard, enabling periodic reviews of excess baggage rates, which resulted in a 26% revenue increase. Championed analytics best practices, mandating thorough documentation for all reports and analytics produced by the team Emirates Airline - UAE Sales Sales Analyst Jul 2007 - Jan 2012 Provided analytics support for Senior Management in UAE Sales operations. Collaborated with the Trade team (DXB), offering insights into trade agency performance metrics (BSP, MIDT, Tactical fares, etc.). Devised Agency front-end discount models, projecting impact on Agency Industry Sales and growth in BSP Market share as performance indicators. Monitored overall performance against targets and calculated ROI for agency deals. Acted as a key liaison between the UAE Sales team, Revenue Optimisation, and EK finance, overseeing CAT25 fare approvals, GDS wastage reports, and agency debit memos (ADM) for revenue recovery. DNATA Business Travel Supervisor Sales Analyst Ag 2001- May 2007 Supervised a team of travel consultants. Managed complex travel itineraries for corporate clients including Morgan Stanley, Marriott Hotels, and Wafi Group of Companies. Promoted the adoption and usage of Dnata Front Office (DFO) among the sales team to enhance customer experience and tailor travel solutions according to client needs. Negotiated corporate deals with key airline partners on behalf of corporate clients. Produced monthly performance reports for the Dnata SLT team and corporate travel managers. EDUCATION TRAININGS & CERTIFICATIONS Master of Business Administration - Finance Vellore Institute of Technology (VIT) Chartered Institute of Marketing -Associate Member CIM Post Graduate Certificate - Human Relations Data Leader Certification Carruthers and Jackson Summer School Program Xavier Labour Relations Institute (XLRI) Bachelor of Science Mahatma Gandhi University Professional Certificate in Customer Experience Management Institute of Management, Technology and Finance Six Sigma White Belt certification SKILLS / AREAS OF EXPERTISE Data Analysis Business Thinking Commercial Acumen Storytelling Strategic planning Market Research Brand Health Tracker Social Listening Stakeholder management Problem solving Yield Management Demand Forecasting Mentoring Data visualization in Tableau, MicroStrategy, SAP Business Objects, Power BI, Looker Studio DiioMi MIDT CBI+ Snowflake Salesforce Boxever/Sitecore PL-SQL Google Big Query MS Office Google Analytics Quantum Metric Sprinklr Palantir Contour Marketing Automation