The challenge

As the mobile phone industry matures, customers are increasingly switching to prepaid services. This presents operators with some tough challenges - prepaid customers are traditionally viewed as less profitable and having little brand loyalty. They typically buy from third parties and switch between brands to take advantage of lower rates and discounts.

However, as mobile phone ownership increases and markets reach saturation point, mobile operators will need to focus on increasing the lifetime value of prepaid customers to sustain revenue growth.

Despite the relatively low average revenue per user of prepaid customers, it is worth paying attention to their needs. Not only is their sheer number vast but margins are as high as 65% in some markets.

However, the lack of data about prepaid subscribers makes it extremely difficult to execute targeted marketing campaigns to these users. As a result, revenues are lost as a result of scattergun offers and blanket discounts that do not necessarily change customer behaviour.

Marketing departments need a solution that allows them to segment prepaid customers based on usage patterns concealed within billing systems. This will allow mobile operators to focus on making relevant offers where they will have most impact upon customer usage and retention.


The solution

InTelestage™ Revenue Optimiser from Business Logic Systems is a managed service designed to boost mobile operators' revenues by stimulating consumption in the prepaid customer base. A key feature of Revenue Optimiser service is the ability to offer incentives for profitable user behaviour and to automatically reward this behaviour by applying offers directly to customer accounts.

All customer communication is managed via SMS, providing a highly cost-effective communication channel. The entire campaign management process is automated, allowing multiple campaigns to run simultaneously to micro segments of the prepaid customer base.

This approach allows marketing departments to avoid offering unnecessary discounts and scattergun offers and to concentrate on rewarding those customers who display profitable behaviour, maximising ROI for marketing campaigns.

These unique capabilities which support highly-targeted and interactive text marketing campaigns, allow Revenue Optimiser to provide a rapid ROI, often within months. There is normally negligible upfront IT investment and minimal demands on internal marketing resources.

Typical incentives could include:

• Periodic bonus based on a percentage of recharges in weeks or months
• Threshold bonus based on recharges reaching a set level, such as €100 gives €5 bonus
• Bonus for using online or alternative recharge methods such as ATMs
• Reactivation bonus, given on customers recharging dormant phones within a certain time

Key features

Revenue Optimiser is designed to maintain a two-way interactive dialogue with customers while increasing recharge levels and extending lifetime value:

• Revenue Optimiser (RO) starts by establishing a communication channel, inviting subscribers to opt into the campaign via SMS messages
• The SMS messages inform subscribers of offers that will be applied to reward certain types of behaviour; offers can be based on the value, timing or method of their recharge
• Revenue Optimiser subsequently monitors the recharge patterns of these customers and automatically rewards them when they meet the reward triggers, sending an SMS notification that the reward has been applied to their account
• Revenue Optimiser will also send reminder notifications to customers that need, for example, 10% or 20% more recharges to meet a reward trigger that is due to expire in five or 10 days.
• A marketing dashboard displays current status of all activity
  Communication is managed end-to-end and subscriber feedback is monitored to ensure proper response to customers who opt into a campaign.
• The entire process is fully-automated making it extremely cost-effective.
• Data obtained during campaigns can be used to inform future marketing campaigns.
• And, once subscribers are engaged in interactive text marketing, they become more willing to buy extra services, allowing you to significantly increase their lifetime value.

Revenue Optimiser is available as a hosted solution, so that it requires no capital expenditure.

Set-up is simple. A data collection server is installed on the customer premises and is connected via VPN to equipment located in one of our secure data centres. Once the system is up and running, a monthly consultation session can be provided for maintenance purposes. User rights on different levels can be established for increased security.


The Business Logic advantage

Mobile operators choose Business Logic Systems to increase revenues from their pre-paid customer base because:

• Our clients are up and running in just a few months, not years
• Of our interoperability with existing applications
• We manage the interface between multiple communication gateways (MMS, SMS, email, call centre etc), in recognition that subscribers have different preferred communication channels
• We can connect the operator's communication channels to their billing platform to create an automated reward and bonus fulfilment mechanism (i.e. creating a new sales channel)
• We are experts at handling huge volumes of data - essential when handling real-time behavioural data
• We provide all of the underlying technology, products or solutions
• We are experts specifically in the telecoms market