This case study is on performance display advertising company YD and mobile network T-Mobile:

The Challenge:

In 2013, the telecommunications industry’s biggest challenge when it came to customer loyalty was the high churn rate throughout the industry.

YD has been working with T-Mobile to extract the best and most useful data from its customer relationship management (CRM) system, drawing on the strength of T-Mobile’s first party data to target existing customers with hyper-relevant ads –  aimed at getting users to activate their ‘My T-Mobile’ accounts, personalising their website experience with T-Mobile once logged in, by offering services that they would appreciate, and in turn increase loyalty and overall customer value.

Timely and targeted advertising has played a pivotal role in facilitating the easy-switch culture of the telecommunications market by enabling rival providers to compete on price, top-of-the-range phone availability, data allowance, network quality and many other decision-influencing factors.

The Solution:

YD used T-Mobile’s own customer database to find out what users were most likely to respond to, based on their previous preferences.

Firstly, T-Mobile needed an overhaul of its CRM data, and to get better at sharing data within the company itself.

T-Mobile’s online marketing manager, Amanda Bouwmeester said: “YD’s impending software integration gave us a reason to bring our data analysis in line so that we could make sense of our customer types, in order to target them more effectively with relevant advertising.

“This mentality shift – to view data analysis as a vital e-commerce function and not just a customer management aid, has been integral to our shift in renewal rates and value.”

The target was to achieve a 75% increase in contract renewals in 2013 compared to 2012 by becoming more relevant to each user, at the right time with the right offer. The aim of the project was to increase ROI for T-Mobile and the overall value of each customer.

The more customers who activate their My T-Mobile service, the more data T-Mobile is able to use to target them with relevant advertising based on their preferences – for example, showing them offers for Apple vs. Samsung products. The activation of customer data also enables the telecom provider to target accurately based on the customer’s lifetime value.

In order to identify customers it was imperative that they activated their account within the ‘My T-Mobile’ area, to enable T-Mobile to accurately collect their customer profile data. In order to incentivise customers to visit this area of the site, customers were retargeted with ads containing relevant offers and reminders that it is possible to access their bill within the T-Mobile online store.

To make sure that T-Mobile remained relevant to each individual customer, T-Mobile segmented the activated customer base into various groups based on customer value.

CRM data was employed to split customers into groups A, B, C, D and E, which were retargeted with promotional propositions based on their average value per segment. Once logged into ‘My T-Mobile’, T-Mobile was able to segment which customers were eligible for various offers and could target them accordingly.

By offering up different propositions to various groups, T-Mobile was able to stay relevant to its customers’ usage habits rather than eroding the customer relationship by offering irrelevant propositions – such as targeting iPhone users with Samsung upgrade offers.

The value of employing first party data in these instances is in the fact that the e-commerce team can pull heavily on users’ behavioural trends from CRM data. These kinds of insights are tangible, actionable and strongly based on genuine – rather than theoretical – interactions with the T-Mobile site.

YD also helped T-Mobile to better drive visitors to its online shop by recognising a customer as soon as they hit the website, where T-Mobile could segment them into groups of new and existing customers, showing them different versions of the website depending on their customer status.

The Results:

  • 200% revenue increase from the existing customer base
  • 38% ROI increase using CRM data by focussing on existing customers

As a result of working with YD, T-Mobile was able to activate its CRM data to better understand its customers’ needs, values, eligibility and loyalty and enabled the company to deliver more relevant offers to its customers at the right time to drive registrations on ‘My T-Mobile’.

In 2013 T-Mobile doubled its investment in its data-driven marketing programme.

YD’s industry director of telecoms, Madelon Privé, said: “The work we’ve done with T-Mobile over the past 18 months has really shown what big data can do when applied to the right task.

“Data optimisation is only relevant when assessed in the right context. End users are naturally quite demanding when it comes to their mobile phones and telecoms services.

“They want to be kept up to date with the best and most relevant deals. As we have demonstrated through our work with T-Mobile, by using customer data to create a more personal and up-to-date experience, we can offer end users the flexibility they expect from their telecoms provider.”