2012 Gold Best use of data in a digital campaign

Client T-Mobile

Other contributors Partners Andrews Aldridge - Creative, Fantastic Thinking – Web development

How did the campaign make a difference? T-Mobile’s data-driven loyalty programme was designed to reward customer loyalty, reduce churn and increase value across the two very different customer bases. SMS, MMS, email and web comms were all fully tailored to each individual. Churn rates have already reduced, delivering an incremental revenue of £1,043,000 and an ROI of 1:4 from churn alone.

What details of the strategy make this a winning entry? The Treat Van programme was designed to reduce churn and increase customer for both pay monthly and pay-as-you-go customers. It was piloted on a limited budget to test the value of a loyalty programme over a nine-month period. A decision-making engine was built to determine rewards for customers at different lifecycle stages to initiate changes in churn and value behaviour. Data on web behaviour, social trends, online surveys and email/SMS/MMS response analysis supplemented traditional customer and transactional data. This provided truly 360° customer insight not possible from customer and transactional data alone. Every one of T-Mobile’s three million customers were treated individually and rewarded according to their unique behaviours at specific points in their lifecycle.

How did creativity bring the strategy to life? Bringing a wide range of usually disparate digital data sources together with more traditional data sources provides a unique, powerful, creative fusion of insight. Every stage of the programme was tracked, allowing understanding of response, conversion and drop off across the entire customer journey. The decision-making engine determined which rewards to assign each customer from a total pot of about 150 - anything from additional text bundles to third party discount vouchers. Effectiveness was dependent on the strength of the rewards and their relevance to each customer. This was measured using web tracking and digital tags on the Treat Van website. This allowed measurement of the conversion between someone viewing a reward, engaging with it (clicking for further info and dwell time) and progressing onto redemption. This allowed speedy decisions in shaping the rewards pot, swapping out the less effective ones. It also identified which reward to hero in SMS communications. Rewards were presented on the website in a unique order for each individual based on their predicted effectiveness. Twitter trends highlighted the hot topic of the day for email copy. Facebook and Twitter trends determined the best time to communicate.

Results The programme demonstrated payback within four months of launch. In only five months, churn rates have reduced by 1.1% for pay-as-you-go customers and by 0.7% for pay monthly customers. This equates to substantial incremental revenue and an ROI of 1:4 from churn alone.