First Pontis was mentioned in “Context Aware Computing: Improving the Customer Experience research under the “Promoting Product and Brand” section:

“By 2013, half of all CSP marketing offers will be based on some type of context-aware data. Information about user context is of interest to companies wanting to interact with their customers. These companies include CSPs themselves and other parties that could use some of the contextual knowledge that CSPs have at their disposal. Unlike some of the other uses for contextual information, activities in the area of marketing offers do not require the consumer to be prepared to pay. Those companies already trying activities in this area seem enthusiastic, and we expect this to be one of the more popular areas of context-aware services with CSPs.

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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.

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The hugely competitive and ever evolving battle to win the hearts and minds of the mobile user is bringing marketers within this sector new and escalating challenges, but also huge opportunities. In addition to rapid churn rates and high customer acquisition costs, marketers are now also faced with an economic downturn, during which it is likely they will see, if they have not already, a reduction in consumption levels. Therefore it is essential now, more than ever, that marketers use all the tools at their disposal to maintain customer loyalty and retention, as well as ensure arpu is maximised.

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Today, the French mobile marketplace is as competitive as ever and the challenge to maintain customer loyalty and satisfaction from mobile content is significant. At the 2005 GSM World Congress in Barcelona, a chance meeting with Pontis, which offers a personalised approach to the marketing of mobile services, set SFR on the path towards a new level of personalization of mobile content offers via its WAP portal.

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The battle to win the hearts and minds of the mobile user is bringing new challenges, but also huge opportunities for operators. In addition to rapid churn rates and high customer acquisition costs, marketers are faced with an economic downturn, therefore it is essential that marketers use the tools available to maintain customer loyalty and retention, whilst maximising ARPU.

The key to building relationships is to present consumers with services and offers, which meet their requirements, at the right time. Essentially the key is thinking ‘What’s next?’ Instead of predicting users’ wants, operators must adopt a system which acknowledges a response, or lack of, and keeps the dialogue open, whilst executing offers in real-time. Gartner forecasts that within three to five years, up-sell, where you offer a higher priced version of the product; and cross-sell, where you offer a related product, will soar. So how can marketers implement these to ensure return on investment?

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Service providers talk of targeting, personalisation, context, relevance. The world’s big brands want volume, reach, scale, mass market. Are the two approaches exclusive to telecoms and media respectively? If so, why do such different rules apply? And what about the whole notion of convergence; the meeting and interaction of telecoms and media? Can telcos possibly know more about promoting their services than the big brands who’ve been running ad campaigns for decades?

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The following are the main behavior indicators we take into account when building a synchronized set of offers to different segments. To see how we impacted each please see the before and after graphs in How Do We Impact Prepaid Behavior?

> The time period that goes by between top ups – the shorter the period is means the subscriber is more active.

> The time that goes by from reaching a zero balance until the next top up is even more important, because each day that goes by without talking, means the subscriber could be churning. This resonating silence is referred to as a ‘dormant subscriber’.

> The third factor is the date of the last call, or days from the last call. This is extremely important because since there is no contract, there is no proactive activity involved in case the subscriber wants to churn like calling the operator to terminate service. That is the main reason why so many prepaid subscribers become dormant, and why this phenomenon is often referred to as ‘passive churn’.

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As we can see in the below graph showing last call date distribution (Phenomenon 1) a subscriber that didn’t talk for 30 days is considered dormant. As a result of our targeted marketing program we managed to reduce the time frame from the last call made (a shift from the right to the left on the graph), where subscribers actually remained active over time. This is based on a three month period that began in January 2008, and three months later we checked how many were still active. So for example, subscribers from day 30 to day 60 in the graph made their last call in March, and subscribers from 61 to 90 made their last call in February. What we managed to do is bring about a shift where more subscribers remained active over time or to put it another way – kept talking!

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This post is about the best way to overcome these obstacles and go about impacting subscriber behavior in one of the most lucrative revenue sectors for mobile operators - the prepaid sector that is comprised of over 1 bln subscribers worldwide. The following insight is based on our activity with one of the largest prepaid operators in the world.

Our first challenge with this operator was to increase usage within a “mid–ARPU” prepaid segment. Experience has taught us that the best way to impact behavior in this segment is to integrate real time and immediate response tactics into all marketing activities. Here is a real life sample of how we went about increasing top up recharges and voice usage for subscribers with an average top up amount of lower than €10.

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The key challenge for all marketers in this sector, if they are to thrive in this environment, is to employ a multi-step approach that maximizes relevance for each customer through the dynamic adaptation of personalized marketing offers.

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