MTN South Africa, which has lost market share in prepaid telecommunications to rivals in the past year, is attempting to claw back those losses. It is offering prepaid users with dormant Sims with airtime to induce them to use the network again.
Chief marketing officer Brian Gouldie says the operator will automatically load R10 onto all dormant Sims that haven’t been used in the past 31 days or more.
Strategy Worx MD Steven Ambrose says it’s a “clever campaign” to try and attract people who have multiple Sim cards but who are using other networks.
“A fair amount of people in South Africa have multiple Sim cards, especially in the prepaid market, and they tend to use some form of arbitrage between them so they use the best deal on the best Sim at any point in time.”
Ambrose says it’s more of an awareness campaign and he doubts it will have any real impact on churn. “I think churn in the prepaid market is all about price,” he says.
“After the bad publicity MTN has had with the termination rates debacle, the company is trying to be innovative and interesting,” he adds.
“I’d say they have up to 20% to 25% of Sim cards that have not been active on a monthly basis.”
Customers who want to take advantage of this offer need to put their old Sims back into a mobile phone to make use of the R10 airtime.
It is also promising to give these customers more over time so they should keep using the Sims to receive these benefits. — (c) 2014 NewsCentral Media
