The Revenue EDGE Beacon
Turn the subscriber edge into your Revenue EDGE
Looking for more content? Check out the May 2020 Edition of the Beacon here.
Executive Vice President
Field Operations, Calix
Over the last four years our goal has been to become the ULTIMATE partner for CSP marketers. In this edition of the Revenue Edge Beacon we share the latest example of how we are helping all of our customers surpass their subscribers’ expectations and win in their markets. Our newest innovation is the Mobile Notifications capability available through the Command IQ Mobile App. What is the Mobile Notifications tool? It’s like having your own private channel to your customers! This edition of the Beacon explores topics such as:
Finally, YK Communications is this month’s featured customer success story. YK decided to use data to drive their business and that decision led to a 51 percent take rate on their recent upgrade campaign. It is not a debate. The company with the best data wins and YK is that company! Learn how they did this in the “Game Changing” story below.
We have featured valuable webinars, Best Practices and more throughout the Beacon. At every step, we are here to help you succeed. Please let us know what we can do better! LinkedIn with me or send me an email at michael.weening@calix.com.
Wishing you and your team continued success!
Michael
YK is a family owned company that has served communities in south Texas for more than 70 years. The local CSP has played a critical role in building strong connections throughout the area, ensuring they deliver a subscriber experience that is second to none.
Thanks to insights from Calix Marketing Cloud, YK noticed that many of its gamers and work from home subscribers were likely having a sub-par experience. YK decided to run a two-week upgrade campaign to ensure that it was delivering the intended experience for these subscribers.
They worked with our go to market partner, Cornerstone, to create a postcard for each segment, supplemented it with an email a week later, and followed with a phone call. The campaign resulted in a 51 percent take rate on upgrades—31 percent of which moved up more than one tier. Check out this sample of creative for the work from home segment and read more about this fantastic success story in our latest blog.
Other resources to help your marketing plan
Host of CBC Radio's Under the Influence.
Co-Founder, The Apostrophe Podcast Company.
Speaker. Author.
Back in 2005, the head of Audi's engineering department posed an incredibly challenging question to his staff.
He said: How do we win the Le Mans endurance race without building a faster engine?
It was a fascinating question.
Winning the prestigious 24-hour race is a crown jewel in the automotive world. Racing teams must balance the demands of speed with the car’s ability to run flat-out for 24 hours without mechanical failure. Historically the only way to win was to squeeze out more horsepower.
So, his Audi team had to figure out a smarter way to win. They came back with a brilliant solution: They built an engine that required fewer pit stops.
The engine didn't have to go faster, it just needed 30 percent fewer pit stops.
As a result, Audi jumped years ahead of the competition—winning the Le Mans for the next three years in a row.
CSPs are experiencing their own Le Mans endurance race right now. With COVID-19, the demand for installations has jumped two years ahead of schedule. Many CSPs are doing 100 installs a week instead of a month, and the upgrades subscribers are demanding will most likely stay once we reach the other side of the pandemic. Just as Audi changed the established ‘rules’ of the Le Mans by focusing on endurance rather than raw speed, marketers can do the same by focusing on subscriber data rather than raw bit-pipe capacity.
With every crisis comes a vital opportunity to help your subscribers. More people working and learning from home means uninterrupted Wi-Fi access is critical. Store owners must transition to online in bigger and better ways. Entertainment quenches the boredom of quarantine days.
To help you meet this demand, smart new marketing tools are now available. For example, the CommandIQ app lets you onboard subscribers remotely with zero touch. And the enhanced dashboard gives you rich data while allowing you to send push notifications directly. It’s that holy grail of marketing—a dedicated channel between you and your subscribers. No clutter from competitors and no noise to cut through. Each continuous improvement is designed for the new normal.
While marketing is a race with no finish line, the tech lesson from Audi is an astute one.
The genius is knowing what to improve.
Are you as overwhelmed as I am every time you open your inbox and look at your social media feeds? Last week a former colleague posted a ‘contest’ to see who had the most email in their inbox (work or personal were both fair game). While I didn’t win—I’m pretty sure an ‘honorable mention’ trophy is headed my way. Companies in every industry are struggling as users are overwhelmed by ads. How do you get through?
Mobile Notifications from Calix Marketing Cloud (CMC) to CommandIQ is the Answer
The timing is perfect. Your subscribers are also overwhelmed by ads and social media noise, so we’ve enabled you with the ability to send a notification or offer with visually pleasing creative right to your subscriber’s phone from CMC. To illustrate the power of this capability, consider these scenarios:
The beautiful thing? No cost per click and a direct line of communication between you and your subscriber!
There is one catch—you need to get your GigaCenter and GigaSpire subscribers using CommandIQ™. Many CSPs are doing this effectively already. Some CSPs are considering refusing or limiting service when subscribers call in, until they install the app so they can help themselves in the future. Others, such as SC Telcom, are promoting the power of this subscriber app with great results both in terms of subscriber experience and reduced pressure on CSRs and call centers.
Once your subscribers have CommandIQ, you can leverage the filters and behavioral data within Calix Marketing Cloud to segment and deliver contextually relevant messages to targeted subscribers. Ensure the offer and image catch their attention and cut through the clutter. You can set up mobile notifications to be delivered immediately, scheduled, or triggered by an event.
Check out the Mobile Notifications video to appreciate the power of this new, high impact (and low cost) channel direct to your subscribers’ mobile phones. No more noise and no more cost per click.
Our resources to help your marketing plan
If my service provider called me to explain that my family was having a poor experience because we were regularly hitting our service limit, I would find that helpful. If my service provider also offered a simple solution to my problem, I would be ecstatic. That is the essence of great marketing. A service provider leverages insights regarding my experience to solve my problems—before I ask for help.
A communication like this one is great marketing because it feels like a service not marketing noise. That is the power of mobile notifications in CommandIQ and the Calix Marketing Cloud. It is now easier than ever to engage your customers with a relevant offer that will not just increase ARPU but solve the subscriber’s problems—turning marketing into a service.
Our team is very proud of the recognition that we have received over the last 3 years for our customer focused marketing programs. Awards are always nice. But we are more excited when we see customers such as YK Communications use our platforms to strengthen their relationship with their subscribers through precise, relevant messages. That is the potential of Mobile Notifications. As Pam highlights in her article, there is more noise in the market than ever today, so the timing is perfect for this new, direct channel.
In the next article, Joe outlines our commitment to help you deploy your communications as fast as possible. We are providing preformatted content that you can use immediately to drive your mobile campaigns. We will also consult with you and your teams to help you incorporate mobile notifications into your strategy. Our Go-To-Market Partners are also working with hundreds of service providers to help them customize and incorporate the content into their campaigns.
We look forward to engaging with you and hearing your ideas for new content that can help you serve your subscribers. I can’t wait for the success stories.
Service provider marketers will tell you the two biggest challenges they face are a lack of time and lack of budget. The market activation program helps you go big while preserving your budget. We have expanded the entire suite of product support, branding, and ultimate Wi-Fi marketing campaign programs to ensure you have everything you need to engage subscribers—starting with mobile notifications.
As Pam discussed in her article, this automated, cost-effective, direct to subscriber channel for marketers is the latest addition to a comprehensive go to market solution. To accelerate your time to market with this great new capability, a wide range of creative concepts are already available in the appropriate mobile notification format. You can access them here. Personalize these assets as much (or as little) as you like, and you can get these high-quality assets into the palms of your subscribers instantly.
Also included in the EDGE Enablement update are numerous other BLAST Ultimate Wi-Fi branded assets that make it easier for you to launch your managed Wi-Fi offering. Included in these creative assets are branding plates, box sleeves, product guides and more—all designed to get you to market and driving value as quickly as possible.
With more than 350 ad sets, you can act on your Calix Marketing Cloud insights and create the ultimate omni-channel marketing strategy.
Finally, we have heard your feedback and are now including license-free photography for many campaigns, maximizing the return on your resource investment. We are constantly adding new EDGE Enablement assets and look forward to supporting your continued go-to-market success.
Our resources to help your marketing plan
Here is a great article from McKinsey on “Lessons from through-cycle outperformers”
I consider myself very fortunate to have a job I can do from home—even when the transition has not been smooth. From working in my garage to building a makeshift standing desk out of shelves, the evolution has been a challenge. However, now that I have settled into a new routine, I am not missing the commute, enjoying lunch with my family, and limiting interruptions. In a way, work has conformed to my own routine, and messaging from my CSP should be the same.
I am in the same boat as a lot of your subscribers. We have been monitoring work from home data in Marketing Cloud since the middle of March, and as anticipated, remote work is increasing dramatically. Even as restrictions loosen and offices allow workers to return, many people appear happy to continue working from home.
What is the Data Telling Us?
Working from home has become an option for people who never have considered it previously. My mother-in-law is a perfect example, as she commuted every day for more than 40 years but is now negotiating to work part time from home.
As I speak with marketers across the country, we always agree on two things:
However, work from home is only one area in which we have seen significant change in usage patterns:
In the new abnormal, I have been encouraging marketers to do two things. First, analyze the data to ensure you understand whose behavior has changed. Second, get new offers into your subscribers’ hands NOW to ensure they have the best possible experience while working remotely, streaming, or gaming.
Our resources to help your marketing plan
As a marketer, one of your core missions is to define and protect your brand. You decide how and where your subscribers experience your services, making sure that every time they engage your brand, it reinforces the positive attributes. Your brand is the sum of the goodwill you have developed with your subscribers. Everything you do: every service you provide and every product you offer reflects your brand and builds upon that goodwill.
So, ask yourself, “Am I taking full advantage of every opportunity to put my brand in front of my subscribers at the right time and in the right place?”
Brand your subscriber experience
As Gabe discusses in his article above, the new Mobile Notification capability allows you to put your brand on the subscriber app. Using the data in Marketing Cloud you can ensure that your messages are targeted and relevant vs. SPAM. Now your subscribers see your brand, on the cool app, delivering helpful (and appreciated) information. This is the perfect combination of data driven insights delivered through cutting edge technology that supports your brand.
Now let's take this one step further. Consider every time your subscribers connect to a seamless Wi-Fi experience as another chance to reinforce your brand. This is why we created both the “BLAST” brand for the Ultimate Wi-Fi Experience and the supporting EDGE Enablement campaign materials for you to customize. The BLAST is a communal brand for you to position as your own.
How? It starts with providing cutting-edge, second generation BLAST Wi-Fi 6 systems that carry YOUR brand—not “powered by” someone else. This digital storefront for the home enables you to place CommandIQ, an intuitive experience management app, right in the palm of their hand. This app is designed to be skinned to carry your brand. Finally, as you listen to your subscribers to better understand their needs, you can provide additional value-added services like parental controls (ExperienceIQ) and advanced security (ProtectIQ), all uniformly connected solely to your brand.
Now, every time your subscribers customize their in-home experience, or they are notified that a malware attack has been successfully blocked, YOUR brand gets all the credit, and you become more essential to your subscribers’ lives.
Make sure you position your brand—and ONLY your brand—first.
Our resources to help your marketing plan
More than 700 service providers have pledged to keep their subscribers connected as they address the disruptions and economic challenges resulting from the pandemic. They are implementing more service options, adding flexible payment arrangements, and working to give their subscribers the best possible in-home experience. To support you in these initiatives, Calix has announced new solutions and applications to help you deliver the ultimate Wi-Fi 6 experience to your subscribers.
To learn more about what Calix is doing to help, watch the replay of the May 27 Calix webinar, Our shared commitment: Improving the home broadband experience.
In the webinar we discuss:
Marketing gurus make a case for not cutting down on marketing activity even if a pandemic seems like a perfectly good reason to do just that.
What does great leadership look like during challenging times? Read these insights from eight Chief People Officers and HR leaders.
Your decisions now will determine how strongly you come out of the COVID-19 crisis—and how well you perform in the next normal.
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