In the fiercely competitive telecom market, operators are struggling to maintain a growth in revenue through voice services alone. It has become imperative to look for other revenue sources to keep the business on a growth trajectory and explore better ways to keep the subscribers from churning. In an interview with TelecomTiger Arvind Dwivedi, Senior Vice President, Strategic Account Management, Flytxt, talks about the importance of agility in marketing operations in boosting operator’s business.

Q :     What role does mobile campaign management play in the mobile operator’s business?

A:    Operators possess extremely valuable assets in terms of subscriber data that provides high level of insights and the mobile medium which offer the widest reach compared to any other medium.  It is these unique attribute that makes operator’s campaign management ideal for direct marketing efforts not just for their own products and services but also for brands and advertisers.  If chosen correctly, mobile campaign management can provide superior experience for the subscriber while providing incremental revenue to the operators and advertisers alike. Operators can up-sell/cross-sell services effectively while managing churn, loyalty and retention proactively. Campaign management also can reduce the messaging spam while strictly respecting subscriber privacy which will enhance subscriber relationship with the operator. When it comes to mobile advertising value chain, operators have played a very nominal role and have mostly acted as a pipe provider. Time has arrived for them to play a much larger role in by monetizing their most valuable asset – the consumer data and unlock a new revenue stream for their business by enabling advertising models with their subscriber reach.

Q :     What are the key elements of a successful mobile campaign?

A:    The essential element for a successful mobile campaign is to understand the subscribers better to keep the communication relevant.  The key aspects include relevance, ability to micro segment, track and fulfill in real time and, agility in campaign configuration for different objectives.

Relevance could be defined as extending offers to the subscriber according his/her taste and preferences. Scheduling the delivery of offers to the subscriber according to the time of the day, week or month improves the relevance of the marketing communication. Choosing the right channel of delivery and the preferred language of the subscriber makes the communication far more impactful as well.

Identifying the right consumer for a marketing communication is crucial to the success of a campaign. It is important to realize that no two consumers are the same. Customer segmentation not only helps reaching out to the ideal target audience, it also provides deep insights into customer’s behavior. It makes the communication far more effective. Moreover, tracking the customer responses enables the marketing operations to understand which of their efforts are working so that they can do more of that and increase the efficiency. The timely fulfillment of the customer responses not only keeps the customer satisfied it also increases loyalty for operators.

Agility in campaign is a vital element for a successful campaign. With every campaign, operator gets incremental intelligence about the customer and can adapt the offers according to the response received. This ensures maximization of the campaign conversion and consequently greater ROI.

Q :     With regulation becoming stricter even in emerging markets, do you see scope for growth of mobile campaign management?

A:    Stricter regulations, in fact, help the cause of mobile campaigns management through sifting out the bulk SMS campaigns that impeded the growth of mobile advertising in the initial years. The blind targeting of subscribers through spam like messaging has been detrimental to the image of mobile campaign management and acted as obstruction to its wide scale adoption by advertisers and operators. With the right regulations in place, it will allow the mobile campaign management solution providers to design campaigns with more precision and relevance while strictly honoring the privacy of the subscriber. This in turn will allow subscribers to see value in the brand communication they receive and become more receptive to it. Ultimately, it will result in greater ROI for the operators for the campaigns launched for their subscribers.

Q :     What are the changes required in operator marketing practices to cater to changing subscriber behavior? How does Flytxt help mobile operators in this regard?

A:    Operators need to realize the importance of a real time integrated marketing solution that is both time efficient and highly effective as compared to the traditional practices. Conventionally, operators marketing practices involved different functions with extended turn-around reporting times. By the time the reports are obtained the opportunity to target the subscriber with real time context of the subscriber is lost. Diverse preferences of the subscriber in terms of language, channel, content requires technology to keep track of the subscriber behavior in real-time.

Flytxt offers highly sophisticated technology that helps identify the right kind of subscribers for a campaign. The powerful analytics and rich knowledge of Flytxt’s highly experienced consultants provide the operators the requisite support that helps them drive their marketing efforts effectively and efficiently.