The relationship a telecom service provider shares with a mobile subscriber is unique. Perhaps there are very few other entities that connect and communicate with its customer directly, regularly and also share a monetary relationship with them. In a prepaid majority telecom market this relationship is not to be taken for granted as the consumer is free to choose any service provider with a better service, plan or incentive at any point of time. So, how does a mobile operator ensure that its customer is still its customer? How would the mobile subscriber know what new services are available, what offers he/she is eligible for? Answer to these questions is campaign management.
Mobile operators connect to their subscribers via campaign management across multiple channels to achieve various strategic and tactical business objectives. Since they own the mobile media, they connect and communicate with the subscriber more frequently on mobile. However, with a medium as important as mobile, there are some misconceptions held by marketers in mobile operators about campaign management approach, process and technology. Therefore, it is essential to understand and clear these misconceptions for an impactful and effective campaign management.
1. Key focus of campaign management technology is to send messages: Marketers across the world, irrespective of industry tend to perceive campaign management with just communication of messages, which is why we see many vendors with ad-hoc technologies with a capability to communicate a message on a channel, however simplistic they may be, calls themselves a campaign management provider. But campaign management is not just about sending messages, it involves many other important steps such as 360 degree subscriber profiling, pre-campaign subscriber analytics, segmentation, scheduling communication, tracking responses to communications – both direct multi channel inbound responses and indirect responses to call to action, reward gratification, post campaign result evaluation, detailed reporting, among many other aspects. All these important steps together form campaign management and sending messages in itself should not be mistaken for campaign management. Having a technology which does not have end to end capability will not fulfill the end marketing objectives.

2. Strong analytics always translate to best campaign results: There is little disagreement on the fact that strong subscriber analytics are the key to campaign success, however analytics powered campaigns do not always produce best campaign results. There are two key reasons why this is happening. First, marketers suffer from analysis paralysis and do not give proper attention to timing of the campaign. When lifecycle of the product is too short or when subscriber preferences are dynamically changing, it would not be totally inaccurate to call marketers ‘shortsighted’ to be spending too much time on analytics than on addressing the opportunity at hand. Second, marketers tend to be not so particular about the other aspects of campaign management such as offer design, messaging, measurement, channel preferences etc. While there is nothing wrong in using analytics per se, marketers often tend to ignore other equally important aspects in a campaign design therefore, strong analytics do not always translate to best results.

3. Having DND is enough to ensure subscriber privacy: Some mobile operators tend to use ad-hoc technologies that do not have capabilities to help them keep track of how much they communicate with every subscriber every day. There are cases where some subscribers receive double digit communications every day as there is neither a way to keep track of them, nor a way to control the number of messages a subscriber is communicated per day. In some cases, subscribers are communicated messages at odd times such as middle of the night as there is no means to enforce blackout periods. Therefore, it is necessary to view subscriber privacy not just from DND angle but frequency caps and blackout periods as well that ensure customer experience of marketing communication is top notch. The technology and processes should adequately address these requirements, only then subscriber relationship is nurtured and campaign management is fruitful.

4. Real-time is necessary only for offer communication: The products and services of a mobile operator have an extremely short lifecycle. Therefore, the product has to be marketed to the right subscriber at the right time when the context is still relevant. “Real-time” is a characteristic that is not just limited to offer communication, but campaign management as a whole. Telecom campaign management usually would have a “Call to action” and a “reward/incentive”. Therefore, real-time should apply to offer communication, subscriber response tracking, and also for crediting the reward/incentive before it turns into customer dissatisfaction. Therefore, ‘real-time’ is a characteristic that is applicable to all steps of campaign management and should not be limited to offer communication alone. Having a right perspective about real-time capability is important to understand the impact it can have on customer experience and marketing visibility.

5. Reward management is an offline activity: Many marketers tend to see reward management as an offline activity. If a subscriber is communicated of a campaign with a reward promised, subscriber expects the reward to be credited soon after the call to action is performed, especially if it is a transactional activity. Therefore, if the reward is not credited within a short span of subscriber’s activity, the value of the reward diminishes and it may lead to substantial subscriber dissatisfaction. Managing rewards offline as a file based process may also lead to many errors and revenue leakage. Therefore, reward management should be an integrated campaign management activity, not an offline activity.

6. Conversion is a good enough measure of campaign impact on subscriber behavior: Campaign conversion is seen by majority marketers as a good enough measure of success/impact of the campaign. But how would the marketer ever know if the subscriber has purchased because of the campaign effectiveness or out of regular habit? To identify this, marketer has to employ control groups to see the incremental impact. Good campaign management tools provide integrated control group functionality to measure campaigns. In addition, there will be other means to measure campaign such as pre & post campaign analysis that will add to the accuracy measurement in addition to control group based impact measurement.

7. A technology designed for e-mail can be extended to mobile media: Today we see a deluge of campaign management technology providers who unsuccessfully extend their limited capability of campaign management to cross channel and destroy the value of mobile campaign management. A technology designed for slow architecture such as e-mail cannot be used for mobile as mobile is a real-time channel and therefore, using e-mail campaign technology for mobile is like using cold pill for fever. Slow architecture technologies often tend to involve manual work which leads to revenue leakage because of the inability to contain the campaign benefits to intended subscribers. An extension of such a technology will lead to lot of manual work, increased costs and reduced impact, therefore mobile campaign needs a specialist who is focused on mobile technology alone.

There is a need for marketers to understand the right approach to campaign management and clear these misconceptions to effectively use it as a tool to enhance revenue and manage subscriber challenge today’s competitive telecom markets.

With rapid advancement and ubiquity of mobile technology, the applications of mobile devices have become pervasive across all avenues of our daily lives from healthcare, financial services, travel and leisure, media and entertainment to government services, social networking and news dissemination and so on. It presents unprecedented opportunity for all businesses, big or small to tap into this medium and engage consumers in the most personalized manner. Among all markets for mobile, Africa presents a unique opportunity for mobile advertising with a vast majority of its 649 million subscribers having mobile as their only source of information, only source of entertainment, only source of banking, only means to connect and only means to socialize. They have completely skipped the phase of advertising evolution via traditional media which makes them much more receptive to content on mobile. Roughly 11.5% of African population has some form of access to internet of which less than 1% has broadband access . The only means to reach majority of African consumers therefore is with mobile phone which has a penetration of 41% and is fast growing.

For majority of African consumers, life revolves around a mobile device. Innovative services are built around mobile phone across Africa for information dissemination, local yellow page services, mobile banking & payment services, media & entertainment services, social networking services, healthcare services, tourism related services etc. The ways in which mobile is transforming everyday lives of Africans is astounding and is well on its way to have its own impact in alleviating poverty and improving the quality of life. For example, operators such as NetOne in Zimbabwe are distributing pension funds on mobile phone for customers thereby cutting down their travel expenses, Duetsche Welle – A German news Distribution Company is disseminating news via SMS for subscribers who do not have access to a radio or a news paper. Innovative m-payment services by operators are bringing accessibility of mobile banking services to a large section of Africans who do not have access to basic banking service. Mobile users not having data enabled handsets are accessing social network services such as Google Chat via SMS, Twitter via SMS etc. are becoming increasingly popular. The affordability of a mobile phone for an average African consumer is changing their lives more ways than one can imagine.

Mobile Operator’s Role

Mobile operator plays a key role in not just building innovative services around mobile phones, but also in understanding subscriber diversity and catering to their specific needs. Operator needs to quickly build capability to understand subscriber needs and preferences and market relevant services to them in an efficient and timely manner. For marketing services such as music services, social networking via SMS, news content via SMS, data packages for data enabled handsets, m-payment services etc., and advertising 3rd party services such as directory services with click to call or financial services advertising etc., mobile operator needs to understand subscriber’s dynamically changing preferences. Operator also needs to create an efficient marketing and advertising ecosystem to enable reaching right subscriber at right time with right content.

According to Google, about 5.2 billion Ad impressions were served to African consumers in 2010. These impressions were from the internet Ad networks who could reach the data enabled handset users which is very small share of the mobile population of 649 million. Only entity which could reach all of them is the mobile operator and all that is needed is to create a successful mobile advertising ecosystem supported and enabled by operator. Below are the key steps operator needs to do to enable mobile advertising ecosystem with unmatched reach

Step1:

Create a centralized data repository of all the customer interaction on their network. make data available to be able to create insights

Step 2:

Have the right set of tools and technology to derive actionable insights required by the marketers, without compromising on subscriber privacy

Step3:

Create a self service Ad campaign management ecosystem where any advertisers can come and run multi channel campaigns on highly targeted segments and have visibility on the performance of campaigns in terms of responses/conversions etc.

It is essential for operators not just to build innovative products and services around mobile devices but also to create an advertising ecosystem that enables not just promoting their own services, but also connects brand advertisers directly with the largest consumer segment that could be reached via any medium. Operator has a critical role to play in providing consumer access to every service, including advertising that that has been made impossible to provide for lack of traditional infrastructure.

Enabling African Mobile Advertising Growth

Flytxt has extensive expertise in providing technology solutions, services and campaign innovation in mobile advertising space across Europe and APAC region. Flytxt is now closely working with some of the largest operators in highly competitive African markets such as Kenya, Nigeria, Uganda and Congo. With an expertise of managing over 50,000 campaigns for 150 million subscribers across the world, Flytxt is well placed to well-positioned to work with mobile operators in creating a successful mobile advertising ecosystem.

By Hetarth Patel, Vice President, Sales, Flytxt
Originally appeared in Telecom Tiger
Intent marketing in a mobile operator scenario is about reviving the purchase intent of a mobile subscriber who has earlier attempted to purchase a product or a service without enough prepaid balance. Presenting his views Hetarth Patel, VP Sales, Flytxt says that Its objective is to Identify lost opportunity due to temporary (timely) lack of balance or qualifications, and resurrect such opportunity by sending timely offers to subscriber once the balance is available and/or qualification criteria is met. It is estimated that on an average about 60% of those subscription transactions from mobile users online fail due to lack of enough pre-paid balance. The volume of failed transactions is so high that it makes a certain case for mobile operator’s to invest in Intent Marketing.

Mobile operator provides 100’s of products and services to their subscribers such as VAS products, Voice Calling Packs, Internet/GPRS packs, 3G service packs, SMS packs etc., which can be purchased either from retailers or via mobile enabled subscriptions where product is enabled and the charges are deducted from pre-paid balance. In mobile operator’s scenario, especially in developing countries like India where majority of subscribers are pre-paid, the easiest means for purchasing products and services is via subscription from mobile handset via SMS or IVR. Because of its ease, majority of subscribers attempt to subscribe for various services from their mobile handset itself.

The interest or the intent to purchase/subscribe to a service may be need based, driven by an advertisement or may be because of a recommended by a friend or a family member to the mobile user. The subscriber intent to purchase is instantaneous and once transaction fails it will remain dormant till it is revived by the operator. Unfortunately, there is neither a process, nor an efficient technology with the mobile operator to revive the intent. Therefore, mobile operators need to invest in Intent Marketing – the process to track subscriber’s product purchase intent from a failed purchase transaction and market the same service when the subscriber has enough prepaid balance. Every failed transaction expresses intent on part of the subscriber to purchase a product or use a service. The value of these 60% failed product purchase transactions are so large that it makes it imperative on part of the operators to address.

Mobile Operators can address this lost revenue in two ways – either with negative balance or Intent Marketing. In case of negative balance, the transaction will not fail, but the subscriber balance will be reduced by the value of the product. Next time when subscriber recharges the value of recharge will be adjusted. However this poses a high revenue risk for operator as this would still be a unrealized revenue. It may also lead to subscriber dissatisfaction when recharge amount is deducted for previously subscribed services.

Next option for operator is Intent Marketing in which every failed transaction from subscriber is captured as purchase intent. Operator revives the purchase intent by sending a communication to the subscriber when the context is right i.e when subscriber has enough pre-paid balance. This communication may even be embedded with the recharge notification sent to subscriber’s mobile .