Spoon Radio: 80% reduction in subscriber sign-up churn with an optimized 2FA authentication solution from Infobip

Challenge

Spoon is a live-audio streaming service which has enjoyed substantial growth since launching in 2016. It enables anyone to create their own radio station and broadcast to over 1 million registered users in 20 countries around the world. With a subscriber-base consisting primarily of millennials and Gen-Zers, it is becoming a significant new communication platform.

A key part of Spoon’s business model is that subscribers can reward their favorite station with financial tokens called ‘Spoons’. This makes it even more important for the subscriber sign-up process to include secure authentication to protect the integrity of the entire Spoon ecosystem.

Spoon’s problem was that their existing 2FA authentication process was slow, unreliable, and disjointed – leading to a high drop-off rate when people were trying to sign up. This had a direct impact on the user experience and hindered Spoon’s subscriber growth – especially as there was a limit of 100K SMS messages a month imposed by the previous supplier.

Spoon needed a streamlined, reliable, and cost-effective authentication process that could support its growth in all regions, provide the highest levels of security, and ensure a positive user experience. Crucially, with subscribers spread across over twenty different countries, the process had to be effective and consistent across all territories.

Solution

The most efficient way of authenticating large numbers of new subscribers is with an automated process that sends an OTP by SMS as part of a 2FA verification process. However, it is only effective if the SMS arrives quickly and the process of inputting and authenticating the OTP is both seamless and reliable.

For a fast-growing business like Spoon, the solution had to be easily scalable, with no bottlenecks or hard limits on the number of SMS messages sent. Infobip was ideally placed to help – due to our enterprise CPaaS expertise and our ability to integrate authentication seamlessly into Spoon’s sign-up process.

Where the previous registration method was a four-stage process that required the user to navigate to a separate website for the authentication step, Infobip’s 2FA solution could be completed via our SMS API so the user remained on Spoon’s sign-up page, providing a superior and brand-consistent user experience.

Before switching their authentication service, Spoon wanted to be confident that the Infobip solution met the key requirements of speed and reliability. They were able to confirm this in advance through multiple tests.

Due to the global nature of Spoon’s business, a key part of the project would be Infobip’s ability to provide help and support 24/7 during all phases of the project. This was made possible with the expertise of professional services staff from Infobip’s Korean office, supported by regional specialists from some of our 60+ global offices.

Results

With a benchmark of 500 milliseconds for the transmission speed of the OTP by SMS, Infobip’s 2FA solution was able to improve on this in all twenty countries where Spoon provides a service. Despite each country having unique communication environments, Infobip’s unmatched global infrastructure and local expertise ensured that authentication messages were delivered close to real-time in all regions.

Results were immediate and impressive with an 80% reduction in subscribers dropping out of the sign-up process.

Costs were also below expected levels, especially in the key markets of South Korea and Japan, with Infobip’s SMS solution costing up to 70% less than the previous vendor in some regions.

Infobip’s certification in personal data protection means that Spoon remains compliant in all the countries it operates in, meeting demanding information protection standards like GDPR in Europe, and ensuring that future expansion of the subscriber base can take place with no issues.