Why industry jargon is out and loyalty is in when it comes to talking telco

It’s not you. It’s me.
We’ve grown apart, lost the spark, and I think it’s best we move on.

Apart from creating an obvious barrier to understanding, acronyms like MVNO do a terrible job of selling the many benefits connectivity experiences bring to a product suite.

That’s why I’ve ditched the term and broken up with an acronym loved by so many.

I’ve parked the jargon because more often than not, it’s a turn-off for the telco curious.

The average person on the street couldn’t tell you what a mobile virtual network operator is, let alone how many gigabytes of mobile data they use each month.

They will tell you how much they pay, that they’d like to pay less, and that if they were offered a discount on their mobile service from their insurer, bank, or even their favourite pharmacy, they’d take it.

Now this is language chief marketing officers and loyalty executives understand.

Where you get your phone plan is changing

Embedded connectivity experiences offer immense potential for brands to engage more frequently and intimately with their customers. However, even getting to that point has been time-consuming and costly for too many businesses.

I’m not saying it’s time to completely reinvent the telco wheel but I’d like to think by giving it some slick new racing tyres, shiny new rims, and a fast new vehicle you can drive the same result.

Are the models we refer to still fit for purpose? Or am I just the one who is thick?

In a former life, I was a consumer affairs reporter and producer whose brief was to deliver ‘news you could use,’ keep viewers engaged, and most importantly, loyal to the network’s news bulletins.

It’s an approach we’re applying to telco.

We’re all in on loyalty and are doubling down on branded mobile’s place in a customer retention strategy.

When it comes to business, we know it’s much more cost-effective to keep a customer than to acquire a new one, and offering them a great-value branded mobile plan goes a long way in keeping them within your ecosystem for longer.

It’s been said that telco is having a moment in Australia, and more specifically, branded mobile is leading the charge.

Would you like data with that? How telco is helping increase products per customer.

 A recent Venture Insights report touched on this very point when it stated that, in Australia, price competition is now ‘too tough to cover the fixed costs of a standalone mass-market operation.

The report highlighted two alternatives:

1. Niche operations that command a price premium in a small segment.
2. Adjacent market operators that can amortize fixed costs, like marketing and distribution, across an existing brand and retail network.

It proposed the market is seeing growth amongst smaller MVNO and fixed broadband providers, and that shares of incumbent sub-brands are growing too.

The report also suggested there is still scope for market disruption by new entrants in the Australian and New Zealand markets and it is most likely to come from established brands with an existing distribution network.

It’s in the latter where we are seeing a surge in interest.

Creating deeper customer connections

Insurance brands, health providers, banks, motoring groups, and credit unions have ambitions to increase loyalty – this can be achieved by offering their customers’ a better-value mobile plan.

The lane is wide open for a fast-tracked pathway to launching branded mobile experiences that deliver loyalty benefits from day one, with a revenue-sharing model that ensures financial returns for brand partners and genuine savings for customers.

The renewed interest in telco from Australia’s biggest brands comes at a time when almost all (95%) Australian consumers are members of one or more loyalty programs.

A recent report by Pureprofile Limited said close to half (45%) reported that a loyalty program would make them visit a retailer more often, and 27% said a program would encourage them to spend more.

Savings on an everyday essential that keeps them coming back

Mobile plan integration into loyalty programs is the new sweet spot for brands looking to add telco to their suite of products.

Throw eSim into the mix and customer journey through a rewards platform will become even more seamless, think data rewards, points for plans, handset upgrades all linked to spend.

As we continue to see an everyday utility morph into a key pillar of brand’s loyalty strategy we can also expect a shift away from the staid vernacular we’ve become accustomed too when introducing telco to the uninitiated.

So with that, long may the blossoming relationship between telco and loyalty platforms flourish but let’s all agree those outdated industry acronyms can RIP.