Virgin Mobile (now Virgin Media O2): Increased engagement and customer lifetime value with a conversational marketing campaign on RCS

93%

delivery rate

60%

seen rate

Challenge

Increase customer lifetime value with an engaging upsell marketing campaign

Virgin Mobile (now Virgin Media O2) is a customer-centric telco offering a wide range of connectivity services to help enhance their customerā€™s experiences.

To provide a good customer experience, it was important for Virgin Mobile to give their customers exclusive offers on upgrades at the right time, in the most engaging manner. Thereby, successfully increasing their customer lifetime value.

To do this they needed to execute a campaign to inform their existing customer base who could get a handset upgrade, about the latest offer on Samsung phones. Traditionally, the operator used Email and SMS, but they were looking for a richer, more engaging campaign that would initiate conversations and successfully upsell to their existing customers.

They needed a channel that had the reliability of SMS but the impact and interactivity of a chat app to capture their customersā€™ attention and encourage conversions. This was especially important as the activity launched around Valentineā€™s Day, a time when consumers are typically flooded with offers across mobile and email channels.

Solution

A conversational marketing campaign over RCS Business Messaging powered by Infobip

Enter RCS Business Messaging powered by Infobipā€™s conversational experience platform. Together, with Virgin Mobileā€™s marketing team, Infobipā€™s Professional Services brought the offer to life in a conversational manner over RCS.

Customers who were identified for a handset upgrade were sent rich marketing messages over RCS with images of the new device.  The approach for the campaign, which customers weā€™d target, and their journey was done via our customer engagement solution Moments.

RCS is solidifying its role as an important brand channel. Being able to add a logo, brand name, videos, images, and carousels to offers means every interaction via a personā€™s default messaging inboxĀ is more engaging. We worked closely with the innovative team at Virgin Media to build and run their campaigns and we have seen the power of RCS in increasing campaign open rates and performance

James Stokes

Enterprise Team Leader, Infobip

RCS signifies the next generation of SMS, offering rich media, branded, and verified messages within the native messaging inbox on Android devices (RCS will also be available on iOS devices later in 2024). RCS, powered by Infobip, enabled Virgin Media to deliver a special-pre-order offer for the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip3 phoneĀ followed by a second Valentineā€™s Day campaign to promote the Samsung S22 handset.

Alongside videos and graphics showcasing the new handsets, the launches gave customers the option to click through to ā€˜shop nowā€™ or ā€˜visit our websiteā€™, diverting them to the Virgin Media website, or to ā€˜call usā€™, where they could contact the operator for further information.

Result

93% delivery rate achieved across two campaigns

The campaign was commercially tied into extending their existing customers lifetime value with richer message content. Thereby driving better upgrade rates.

The first campaign resulted in a 92% delivery rate and a 57% ā€˜seenā€™ rate. The subsequent Valentineā€™s Day campaign performed even better, achieving a delivery rate of 94% and a ā€˜seenā€™ rate of 64%.

Experience underpins everything we do ā€“ we want our customers to have engaging, personalized, and elevated digital interactions with us through their mobile phone. Leaning on Infobipā€™s RCS expertise has enabled us to deliver campaigns that donā€™t just result in strong delivery rates but give our customers more choice and more opportunities to engage.

Graham Anderson

Product Lead, Virgin Media O2

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