A look back at last week’s mobile billing and messaging event
Last Wednesday we came together with Vodafone to co-host our first mobile billing and messaging event. A great afternoon began at Oxford street’s new rooftop bar, Notch. On arrival Negronis, Old Fashioneds and Adonis were served in colourful tins resembling vintage tuna cans, setting the scene for what was to be a fantastic event.
There were insightful presentations from Vodafone, Badoo, Comic Relief and from Rob Weisz, our CEO at Fonix.
Dave Stephens, Head of B2B enablers at Vodafone UK talked about turning visitors into customers via Carrier Billing and how it’s becoming such as integral payment method for merchants. Dave also talked about how Vodafone is fully supporting initiatives in getting Carrier Billing into new markets such as ticketing.
Patrick Bonham, Senior Payments Manager and Dejan Rikic, Director, Billing and Payments at Badoo told us all of the importance of Carrier Billing as part of Badoo’s payments mix. Whilst there’s some inevitable challenges in certain markets in the world, the accessibility of Carrier Billing to consumers and incredible conversion rates compared to other payment methods (in some regions it’s so dominant that other payment mechanics are negligible) makes Carrier Billing the primary payment method in Badoo’s commercial strategy.
Kat Heath, Product Manager at Comic Relief shared how mobile donations have increased year on year and played a vital role in helping to raise money for good causes under the Comic Relief umbrella. Kat discussed how successful bulk SMS has been and how this messaging will continue to be in the initiatives to encourage Gift Aid declarations. Kat also enlightened us to where Comic Relief sees the future of mobile donations with the key focus being around increasing donation price points.
Rob Weisz, CEO at Fonix summarised the presentations and mentioned some key stats that are driving a positive impact in the industry:
- 30% conversion increase: Fonix see a minimum of 30% increase in payments taken when Carrier Billing is introduced alongside other payment methods.
- 0% churn: whether it’s in charity donations, online paywalls, media interactions or gaming credits Fonix has not seen any churn with existing payment methods for merchants when they introduce Carrier Billing.
- 47% reduction in basket abandonment: Fonix has seen merchants use Carrier Billing as a means to reduce basket abandonment when consumers choose not to purchase at check out with some incredible results.
- 56% SMS engagement rates: Fonix gave statistics of user engagement to outbound SMS marketing campaigns for some of its merchants where the merchants have worked to optimise and segment their user data bases. These results provide a higher ROI than any other channel that the merchants have used.
After the presentations, the networking was in full swing, quite literally too — yes there were actual swings!
It was great to catch up and provide strategic insight to clients and partners who have all contributed to the continued success of both Fonix and Vodafone.