Prepaid Customer: What you do is who you are
Anonymity is probably one of the most frustrating factors for marketers servicing the prepaid market. A Prepaid customer purchases a SIM card in a kiosk, leaving behind no trace of identity – unknowingly preventing any segmentation of core services. You cannot maintain an ongoing relationship with the customer – an essential component for building loyalty and for identifying opportunities to increase share of wallet.
| Leave a Comment September 27th, 2010
Ovum Recognizes Pontis as Leader in Loyalty Solutions Preventing Churn
In a research conducted by Ovum; “Post-recession strategies: loyalty grows in importance”, Pontis is recognized as one of the main solutions enabling service providers to increase loyalty and significantly reduce churn.
According to the report, most services providers initiate loyalty plans through consumer promotions such as free cinema tickets, which can be perceived by customers as meaningless promotions and intrusive. Ovum suggest that instead, operators should provide valuable, targeted and personalized offers , while at the same time giving customers the sense of personal dialogue. In a crowded and mature mobile market, in which loyalty programs are essential, Ovum recommends that operators differentiate themselves with contextual marketing in order to provide the right offer at the right time.
According to Ovum, Pontis addresses these issues and can assist operators to overcome these challenges. The Pontis solution enables operators to design personalized and contextual marketing programs and automatically deliver offers in real time to customers. The Pontis solution helps operators stand out from the competition, while significantly increasing their ARPU.
| Leave a Comment September 5th, 2010
The Pain in Spain: Fake SIM Activation
Spain has one of the largest mobile markets in Europe, with effective competition from four mobile network operators and a growing number of resellers. The economic crisis, combined with new EU regulations and the fierce competition has driven down the cost of mobile calls by 35% since 2005. As if that’s not enough, the Spanish prepaid mobile market has encountered another challenge which seriously affected ARPU. Fake SIM activations, also known as “revolving doors”, have recently hit Spain, significantly impacting operators’ revenue. Some users activate a new card due to the loss of an old SIM, but others take advantage of an attractive acquisition offer (e.g. free airtime, subsidized handset…). In such a case, the old SIM remains dormant and in due time is considered a churned customer.How can operators handle such a phenomenon? How can they identify and differentiate between the different kinds of SIM activations, and more importantly – how can they be prevented? Read more
| Leave a Comment July 20th, 2010
Case Study: Enriching Marketing Campaigns With Context Pays Off for a Tier 1 European Mobile Operator
Gartner has published a case study* in which they document how the use of real-time, contextual information, targeted highly relevant offers to individual customers, have helped a Tier 1 European provider boost their service revenue from prepaid phones, enhance customer loyalty and reduce churn.
The main findings illustrate how the operator has succeeded to follow and better understand the individual needs of their entire customer base and based on this data offered specific targeted prices and products which were highly relevant to individual subscribers. Due to the real-time execution and automatic fulfillment of these offers allowing quick follow-up, and guaranteeing higher response rates, the operator had succeeded to increase overall revenue per subscriber: “offerings that are personalized to the customer segment and presented when the customer is most receptive generate tangible new revenue.”
In this example, the case study highlights how the operator’s “acceptance of promotional offers rose from 2% – 10%.” It further explores how the operator has managed to create an ongoing dialogue with their customers.
Furthermore, the case study recommends that “vendors should target the marketing team, rather than the IT or business intelligence (BI) teams with their products. Highlight that this type of approach allows marketers to radically change the way in which they create and manage promotions”
In addition it is recommended that: “Communications service providers (CSPs) should select a vendor with a proven track record of successful implementations and comprehensive consulting services — they will need to rely on the vendor’s advice to avoid the most common mistakes when creating this new type of campaign”.*
Gartner, Inc.:. Publication ID Number: G00175497
Gartner research is available at www.gartner.com
| Leave a Comment July 20th, 2010
Russia the Freedom of Choice: Multi SIM Ownership Drives Churn and Decreases ARPU
Russia has the largest mobile market in Central and Eastern Europe and is continuously growing. At the end of May 2009 the total number of subscribers reached 194.7 millions, with customers being wooed by three major service providers (MTS, VimpelCom and MegaFon). Competition has further intensified with the growing penetration of multiple SIM ownership. As the majority of handsets are not purchased through the operators but rather from independent stores, Russian mobile operators could not lock handsets to their networks, and consequently customers can benefit from different operators’ SIMs on a daily basis. Read more
| Leave a Comment July 20th, 2010
Pontis recognised as “Cool Vendor” for Context-Aware Computing 2010
Gartner has recognised Pontis as a “Cool Vendor” in their 2010 report, highlighting that, “…context will be a technology that redefines customer experiences and relationships, and, as these Cool Vendors demonstrate, it can deliver value in 2010.”
The report is based on evaluation of vendors that are innovative, impactful and intriguing. The Marketing Delivery Platform™ allows mobile, TV and fixed line operators to target customers with contextual marketing offers.
Real-time contextual marketing andselling, based on a customer’s lifecycle and real-time events, enables operators to push price and product offers at the right time, increasing the response rate by as much as 10%. In today’s fierce competitive markets where power is shifting to the customer, Pontis’ solution helps operators to develop personal relationships with their customers.
Furthermore, the Pontis’ solution allows operators to run hundreds of highly targeted promotional offers simultaneously on a monthly basis, which can be implemented within days, rather than weeks.
Gartner, Inc. Publication ID Number: G00175299
Gartner research is available at www.gartner.com
| Leave a Comment July 20th, 2010
Segmentation vs. Behavioral Life Cycle Management:Getting the most of Your Marketing Efforts
The saturation levels of mobile markets and the low exit barriers for customers have caused many operators to shift the weight of their marketing efforts from new customer acquisition to customer retention. As part of this trend, operators are investing lots of funds on sophisticated customer segmentation solutions. Yet, are these segmentation efforts really delivering the desired results? Are common proactive marketing practices, based on traditional segmentation succeeding to increase customer loyalty and profitability?
| Leave a Comment June 16th, 2010
Protecting your Prepaid Base in a Competitive Market
Wikipedia defines churn as “a possible indicator of customer dissatisfaction, cheaper and/or better offers from the competition, more successful sales and/or marketing by the competition, or reasons having to do with the customer life cycle.” How can you avoid churn and nurture long-term relationships with your prepaid customer base in a competitive market consisting of customers that have no contractual commitment?
In the context of mobile subscribers, “churn prevention” is almost synonymous to “loyalty” and “retention.” While “loyalty” points to the required activities to keep customer faithful, “retention” makes sure customers do not leave, with superior offers and other customer-centric activities, compared to the alternatives provided by the competition. To ensure these two vital factors are fulfilled and have a real impact on your customer base you must establish real-time contextual marketing and selling capabilities.
| Leave a Comment January 9th, 2008
The Impact of Real Time Promotions in Digital Service Offerings
Notice how everything today is happening at an accelerated pace? That’s how your customers want to get what they need from you – ASAP. That means tighter delivery cycles and the ability to provide a multitude of different deliverables through numerous channels. Which in plain English means being able to deliver digital service offerings in real time. So the real question is, are your systems up to the task? Read on to find out.
Digital content and data services are the expected business growth drivers of Telecom operators. But this type of content is very different from the traditional communication services. These products are much more diversified, highly related to customers’ lifestyle, can have multiple cross-media relationships (e.g. song, ring-tone, real-tone, performer picture, latest gossip, latest video clip, other songs from the same album, link to concerts schedule, etc.), have a relatively easily identified target audience, and most have a relatively short lifetime (e.g. related to a specific event, hit parade, location, etc.).
| Leave a Comment
Subscribe
