[March 23, 2006]

BeVocal Enables Carriers to Provide Tailored Marketing Campaigns for Individual Subscribers

By Susan J. Campbell

TMCnet Contributing Editor

Raise your hand if you have had to dig through fifteen different ads to actually find the bill that needs to be paid – the real reason you received the information in the first place. Now, keep your hand up if you actually read all of those inserts.

BeVocal, a provider of hosted customer self-service solutions, has announced the availability of Intelligent Offer Management (IOM), a marketing system that is designed to help wireless carriers drive adoption of new add-on products and services.

The abundance of 3G content and applications as of late has created a need for carriers to develop and/or deploy a mechanism to effectively market and distribute new offerings to their subscribers. In order to generate the greatest demand for products and services, this mechanism needs to go beyond broad-based marketing vehicles such as bill inserts or retail store placards.

The IOM from BeVocal instead delivers tailored marketing messages and product offers within customer self-service interactions that generate awareness and demand for products and services. By tapping into existing information on customer demographics, as well as on individual usage and purchase patterns within carrier billing and CRM systems, IOM can deliver custom offers.

Marketing managers, as a result, are empowered to leverage the customer self-service experience as a marketing channel to increase the Average Revenue per User (ARPU) and reduce churn.

Mikael Berner, CEO of BeVocal noted that BeVocal’s IOM and self-service applications enable carriers to cost effectively create an ongoing marketing relationship with each individual subscriber. Applying the intelligence to incoming calls allows the carrier to initiate targeted up-selling and cross-selling campaigns.

Berner added that this is a 180-degree change from carriers’ traditional broad-based marketing techniques that relied upon bill inserts, print advertisements and store placards to announce new services to subscribers. The Intelligent Offer Management enables US-based wireless carriers to deploy 200 million personalized marketing campaigns every month.

The Yankee Group reported that Americans bought $4 billion in wireless data services last year. Carriers continue to face the ever-increasing challenge of how to promote and monetize these new services. BeVocal’s IOM is positioned to empower marketing managers to micro-segment its subscriber base, test market customized product/service offers and modify marketing campaigns on-the-fly based on real-time data such as response and attachment rates.

Subscribers can receive tailored IOM offers based on demographic profiles, type of user inquiries, user account profiles and purchase correlation.

Marketing managers will be able to gauge the success of their campaigns in real-time via the Client Command Center. This web-based reporting and analytics tools enables each product manager to monitor key performance metrics, such as response rates, attachment rates and incremental revenue generated from a campaign.

According to Ken Landoline of the Yankee Group, BeVocal puts the intelligence back into carrier marketing. By giving carriers the control and flexibility to launch narrowly-focused marketing campaigns and to fine-tune those campaigns, conversion rates can be maximized as well as the overall customer experience.

For carriers facing painfully small marketing budgets, the IOM may be the right fit to maximize campaigns. Even for companies whose budgets are not as tight, the ability to custom design marketing messages for individual subscribers can be extremely effective for ensuring that the message is actually received.

The importance of customer loyalty in the strategy of the carrier has gained great significance over the past few years. Marketing dollars can be more effectively spent when the message gets directly to the customer for whom it was intended. This can also provide carriers with the differentiation needed in this heavily competitive landscape. And, let’s face it; wouldn’t we all appreciate an envelope with only the bill inside?

Susan J. Campbell is a contributing editor for TMC and has also written for eastbiz.com. To see more of her articles, please visit Susan J. Campbell’s columnist page.

[ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]

Discussions: