The race to win the hearts and minds of pre-paid customers

By Alon Werber - VP Marketing & Business Development

In these cash conscious times, with the race between mobile operators to retain customers and drive-up levels of usage, mobile operators need to focus their efforts on more effectively marketing to, and impacting the behaviour of, their pre-paid customers.

With around 1 billion prepaid subscribers worldwide, impacting this group of subscribers’ top-up frequency and amounts, as well as their consumption habits, represents a hugely lucrative, yet under-utilised opportunity to drive ARPU and reduce churn. If carried out in a targeted and timely manner, addressing pre paid customers has proven to increase overall revenues, (versus control group) by as much as 6-8%. Operators should therefore focus on enticing customers to top-up when their balance is low and reviving ‘silent’ customers with contextual offers.