Best Practices of Campaign Management for a Telcom Operator

Bandyopadhyay P*

Abstract

Challenging times for Chief Marketing Officers (CMOs) in Telecommunication space: The telecom industry is a fast moving, emerging, evolving and converging space with rapidly changing business scenarios and technology variations. This poses a formidable challenge and also an opportunity to the CMOs. Churn rates reaching up to 8-10% or further are experienced by most telecom operators across the globe. Although large investments are made to bridge the gap, but CMOs have been forced to admit that there is no unanimous solution. ARPU on a steady decline: With greater maturity in the marketplace, operators attract more marginal customers leading to inevitable squeezing of ARPU and margins. Also, new technology alternatives such as VoIP are further eroding traditional profit centres for most of the operators. Multiple channels to the customer: Telecom operators have a distinct advantage - telecommunication companies control the media as well as the message. Mobile operators in particular have access to the new billboard i.e. the mobile phone. On the downside, as increase in the choice of channels to the customer also means more sophistication in execution is required to choose the most appropriate channel to each customer.