IM Newsletter Article

You have been credited with turning around the financial and share performance of the Consumer Division at Vodafone UK. What do you consider to be your biggest achievement as Director of this division?

Perhaps the achievement I am most proud of is transforming the focus of the consumer division from customer acquisition led growth to the proactive management of the lifetime value of the subscriber base.

We transformed every subscriber touch point to an interaction where we could add value to the relationship, moving away from a purely transactional focus. We also successfully generated new revenue streams based on data and Value Added Services that enriched the subscriber’s experience of our services and therefore our brand.

For example, the call centre became a place where subscribers could have an insight led interaction about their tariff plan based on their usage or about Vodafone’s services. Agents were encouraged and empowered to look at cross-selling and up-selling based on individual subscriber needs.

Do you have any insights into the prepaid market?
operators who together have 3 billion prepaid subscribers generating in the region of 250 billion dollars. The prepaid market is growing much faster than post-pay and operators should be building their insights and managing the subscriber lifetime value of these bases to drive their future revenues.

The prepaid base is in many ways a goldmine; these subscribers are used to managing their service usage via the handset, which means they can be serviced at a far lower cost than the post-paid base. And of course prepaid subscribers purchase their own handsets, cutting out the costly handset upgrade offered to contract subscribers.

Traditionally operators have focused on building their CRM capability around post-pay customers. However this capability is sub-optimal for driving the subscriber lifetime value of a much larger, often un-registered prepaid base.
High cost communication channels, such as direct mail and outbound calls which can cost as much as £3 per contact, are simply not cost-effective when dealing with large prepaid bases. Operators are beginning to understand that in order to drive revenue growth they need to apply the same disciplines and rigour to the management of their prepaid subscribers as they traditionally have with post-pay.

Why do so many operators struggle to understand and communicate with their prepaid subscriber base?
There are two key inter-related factors here: firstly prepaid subscribers are not obliged to share any personal information, so marketers struggle to gain insights into these subscribers, making targeted communication difficult. Secondly the legacy infrastructure of the post-pay environment has left marketing departments frustrated and with very limited options for cost-effective mass communication across the entire base.

How can marketers address these challenges?
subscriber base is effective customer communication. But traditional marketing channels are prohibitively expensive for large volumes of low value subscribers. And without effective targeting, there is a high risk of draining value out of the base with blanket offers.

However, there is a readily available, low-cost alternative to traditional marketing channels - in the form of SMS.

Prepaid subscribers are already predisposed to making greater use of this channel. Targeted and personalised SMS campaigns can create a two-way dialogue with this elusive subscriber segment, increasing their emotional response to the brand and driving up service usage through relevant and timely offers and communication.

How can Business Logic Systems help mobile operators manage the prepaid base?
Imagine the value to an operator of stimulating the base to get one extra minute, one extra text or one extra download per subscriber - with millions of prepaid subscribers this can quickly add up to a sizeable chunk of incremental revenue. Quite simply, InTelestage is the best solution I know for empowering operators to drive incremental subscriber lifetime value from their large and growing prepaid bases.

In essence, InTelestage’s unique Real-Time Prepaid Marketing Engine allows marketers to gain valuable insights into their prepaid base and to build an automated, targeted subscriber dialogue via the handset. And it is easily integrated with the existing infrastructure, so it can be up and running very quickly, to deliver a fast ROI.

InTelestage is the only solution available today that empowers prepaid marketing teams to proactively manage their prepaid base in real-time and on an automated basis. A capability that is essential to influencing the subscriber behaviours that underpin revenue growth; top-up frequency and value, stimulating usage, rewarding loyalty and extending active tenure.

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