When trying to acquire new customers, satellite internet providers face no shortage of challenges. To be effective, marketing campaigns must carefully identify and target geographic sweet spots within rural areas. This is because of extraordinary competition from traditional cable and DSL providers, which are typically less expensive, faster and sometimes more reliable. Put simply, unless satellite providers accurately target only those geographical regions outside the cable and DSL service areas, their marketing dollars will be wasted.
To make matters worse, cable and DSL service areas are expanding. This creates additional urgency for satellite providers to increase their level of marketing sophistication in terms of targeting and the ability to respond quickly to a changing marketplace.
Realizing the seriousness of these challenges, a leading national satellite internet provider turned to AccuData to implement a highly targeted direct marketing solution that would enable them to move away from over-saturation by continually mailing campaigns to the same small geographies. They also wanted to expand their marketable reach while increasing campaign cost efficiencies.
Solution
The client knew there was value in predictive modeling but was unsure how to apply it to their resident/occupant mail strategy - an approach which requires mailing to nearly all households in a USPS carrier route.
The AccuData team worked with the satellite provider to implement a predictive modeling solution that identified new regions outside of their traditional areas. These geographies were both unserved by cable and DSL and targetable by resident/occupant prospect data. This was done by first developing a predictive model that identifies households most likely to respond and buy, then mapping the data to the carrier route.
Result
Based on this approach, the client was able to expand its marketable geographic area by 100%. The highly targeted, yet cost-effective solution enabled the satellite provider to identify over 10 million 'likely-to-buy' prospects in regions outside of their historical areas.
The AccuData team also worked diligently to ensure that prospects were both unserved by cable and DSL, as well as targetable by resident/occupant prospect data. This allowed the client to capitalize on the value of predictive modeling to identify highest propensity prospects while still maintaining their low-postage rate mail strategy.
As a result, the client found a way to maintain a full customer acquisition pipeline - a major success that allows them to effectively combat the industry-wide problem of high churn rates. But perhaps more importantly, they now know that they have the tools to expand their marketshare despite rising competition.
