How do you define the competitiveness of the Telecom market
which has one of the lowest ARPU (Average Revenue Per User): less than $ 2.5 /
year
-
Intense
What do you term the sub market – Value Added Services
(VAS): which constitute 10% of this ARPU – but has 250 players fighting in this
space.
-
Unparalleled
And how do you further define the companies which battle out
in this intensely competitive market where regulation mandates
-
Lowest exit barrier from the products : As
simple as sending a SMS
-
Strict monitoring on marketing bandwidth usage :
Out of those 250, approximately 10 marketing promotions of vendors can be made within
the week
-
Retention is as real as sighting a unicorn (again just sending a SMS, IVR option): a mobile VAS services loses almost all of his
customers in less than 2 months (monthly
churn is 70%)
-
Such is the lopsided affair with customer that
if the marketing channel reaches a DND customer thrice , while she doesn’t want
the service, government might revoke the telecom license (some amendments are
under way)
-
you don’t waste time
in looking for how to define this market, but you set forth looking for these people who
have steered and championed in this market
Lets briefly dissect this market into how VAS Companies
attract and acquire new customers, retain their customers, increase their
revenue – just to survive in this market.
Telecom VAS is low value – multiple purchases- high volume
market. Therefore the key to survival is “Engagement” – another word for same
is “Customer Centricity” or “consumerism”.
The LTV of a customer is as low as $ 0.22
The channel partner revenue is highest: around 30%
The means to churn is endless!!
Also just to let know the VAS market’s value chain is as
follows
[Content or service] -> [Telecom operator] à customer
OR
[content or service] -> [ Devices] -> [Telecom operator] -> Customer
So basically the operator is the
only channel through which content might get consumed, and billed, also to most
extent discovered
Being with 2 major Telecom operators handling the emerging
services and later establishing a French – British firm on Social – Mobile VAS
Services in the market, I had the opportunity to experience and work on this
market both the sides of table (with the operator pruning the products and VAS
companies which I need to market and with VAS companies in forging alliances
with operators/ devices muscling enough strategy to get into those 10 companies
out of 250 week on week!!
To be in the game, one needs to exactly know who their
customers are, where would customers hear about these products, how do you
convert those marketing messages to onboarding, how do you convert onboarding
to revenue over some time, how do you prevent the churn or bring back churned
customers back to your service, and finally how do you engage with customers so
that they turn as your marketing channel. This way of life maps to
Dave Mcclure’s famous AARRR.
Detailed the AARRR and
corresponding activities across these as follows
1. Acquisition:
We explored the various acquisition channels
that are available and made scrupulous use of same. Right from offline space
such as Bill inserts, Retail leaflets, target ATL (example organizing a contest
for teenies – and sponsoring their marathon – and talking about the same using
our service) TO effective online. Online marketing channels are bi-directional,
can be tracked, and one could initiate an action with the discovery medium.
Example a DSTK message (when your phone is inactive, and you are around a
particular BTS, operator could transmit messages to your phone which wont jam
your inbox) can be clicked to land onto your product page. Or
using the space in Missed Call Alerts to talk about our service.
2. Activation:
My experience has been we lose 50% of customers with each additional
clicks or steps to onboard. Sometimes more. What is the minimum information
you need from customer to enroll her? How transparent are your products? How do
you create confidence with products? Do you have support channels to reach
customers if you detect the enrollment is left incomplete?
3. Retention:
Engage the customers. I used to monitor the
minutes spent by customer on my product across demographics, spot some trends.
Which product features are cool and used more? Are most customers of yours
suffering from high usage to waning ones- it might indicate trouble. I noticed
people were using Facebook and other social media through my product during
Wednesdays out of all days in a week instead of weekends – and that
4. Revenue:
The LTV was $0.20 for the service – we choose
low acquisition cost channels example SMS and USSD at $0.01. But to ensure that
we get to extract the fullest LTV we needed to engage and offer various pricing
options which could suit the customer, right from sachet based pricing to free
trials to freemium models. How to ensure we have positive cash flows – refine
agreements with operators- have revenue share kind of model with the partner
channels
5. Referral:
Introduce hooks in product to make the
service viral with consent of customer. Example integrate with address book of
the device, or reward the customer for bringing friends, incentivize further
for building communities. Introduce features in product that makes viral
simpler – example any post to Facebook through our service would have
signatures which reflect our service and clicking on same can bring more
customers. So we have essentially marketed our service through customer posts
with their consent!!
The ethos is still the same – the HC market is waking up to
the similar “way of life” in Telecom VAS (except that Referral part of AARRR isn’t
there yet)
1.
Acquisition
i.
Public and Private HIX, Direct to Consumer, off
line medium, mobile advertising, wearable
ii.
Make use of analytics to find out efficacies and
ROI channel wise
iii.
Who are your untapped markets: Hispanics? Would
you have pages in Spanish then? If Baby Boomers, would you have the web portals
tailored for them?
iv.
What are your products?
v.
Smoother and Effective Touch points – Re-engineer
the existing Contact Center, introduce automation, go for SaaS model than huge
upfront CAPEX investments
2.
Activation
i.
Smoother
enrollment
ii.
digitalized fulfillment
3.
Registration
i.
Enrollment
Transformation
4.
Revenue
i.
Billing
automation
ii.
Payment portal modernization
iii.
value based care
5.
Retention
i.
Customer
Life time Value Management
ii.
Loyalty programs
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