Away from the straightforward stories about IPTV and mobile TV wins, losses and technology breakthroughs, the international broadcasting conference in Amsterdam this week had an interesting Israeli marketing company, showing what it calls marketing automation for Telcos.
The 75 man Pontis, built 8 cellular SMS marketing systems, around core Java written, server side applications, which manage marketing campaigns, before it realized that IPTV has a very similar problem to cellular, marketing new services to its existing client base.
The Pontis system was effective in cellular, gaining customer wins at SFR in France and China Unicom and 6 others smaller cellcos, built around marketing messages that use WAP push, email and SMS, but by controlling the same campaigns at an IPTV operator, the system can drive usage on a VoD service, and there is the glimmer of some really breakthrough advertising types with very little extension.
Guy Talmi, Senior Marketing Director managed to take us through a system demonstration, without us losing the will to live, something that after 5 days of a conference is usually the outcome of demonstrations.
Taking the example of a simple two for one offer on a VoD service Talmi demonstrated how mind numbingly simple it was to offer the deal on an eye catching ticker tape, how to track it and remind the user of his free offer through all the TV portal screens, and how the system plugs into the billing and other OSS services to okay the offers when they are used. The back end interface was simple enough to create all the marketing messages, and Talmi reckons that each of his trials and customers usually end up with a single individual champion taking over control of the system after a short period.
Operators can, for instance, target only customers that have never bought a VoD film. They can then make offers and compare the total number of eligible customers with the resulting take up, using the systems Key Performance Indicator module, which lists those who participate, those who have free trials granted, and what the eventual financial benefit of the promotion is. The system is charged at a rate per subscriber, plus handholding fees, and the total cost of ownership of the service can be measured as the operator develops expertise, against increased revenues. It has the feel of something that not only pays for itself but which has to tools to demonstrate that it is paying for itself, as it goes.
Can it work with channel bundling? ‘Yes,’ says Talmi, ‘it works just the same with channel bundles,’ and he switches the system to a ‘2 months free on this channel’ promotion.
Once again all the neat ‘gift’ icons find their way into the EPG, constantly reminding customers that they are ‘owed’ a free film, a new channel, or telling them how many days left before their offer expires.
Given the size of the cellcos that Pontis is already working with it came as no surprise that advanced prospects include PCCW in Hong Kong, and Telefonica in Spain and that the system can be adapted to work just as easily with cable operators and that Hot, the Israeli cable operator is already a customer, as is Chello Media on demand.
The nice thing here is that promotional messages can soon mutate from ‘have two films for the price of one’ to ‘Our sponsor would like to buy you a free film,’ etc.. and the film showing with a video sponsorship message either side of the asset. Eventually, in our view, the TV portal becomes one of the most powerful places within the TV experience in which to push major brands and drive extra revenues for the IPTV, cable and mobile TV operator (on the EPG, the search page, the recommendations page, all of which are coming).