With Salesforce, Lyca Mobile achieves the holy grail of marketing: 1-to-1 personalisation

Every two seconds, a new customer joins Lyca Mobile. That’s a testament not just to the quality of Lyca Mobile’s telecom services, but also the power of its marketing and customer engagement strategies. 

The UK-based company is among the world’s largest mobile virtual network operators (MVNOs), with over 16 million customers in 23 countries, including Australia, France, Germany, Ireland, the UK, and the US. Best known for its strong value offering of low-cost plans and high-speed connectivity, Lyca Mobile was named the Most Successful MVNO of 2020.

Today, the company is transforming into a digital-first service provider.  

“Using Salesforce, we are taking customer engagement to the next level, and delivering impeccable experiences that customers love,” says Navanit Narayan, CEO, Lyca Mobile.

Previously, Lyca Mobile’s different channels of customer engagement were fairly siloed. 

Without a shared view of customer journeys, teams couldn’t track which customers were receiving which messages on which channel. Nor could they measure purchase affinity. So, even if a prospect hadn’t responded to marketing SMSes, they were repeatedly targeted with emails. This was neither a good experience for the prospect, nor an efficient use of Lyca Mobile’s resources. 

Only SMS-based marketing teams could view and use audience segments for targeted communication. Email marketing teams were forced to rely on ‘spray and pray’ marketing tactics which dragged down the revenue per customer. Website-based marketing was also limited. Teams couldn’t deliver pop-ups or segmented messages to attract customer attention. 

“We needed an integrated marketing automation tool, fast,” says Ankit Rai, Head of Retention / CRM / CVM, Lyca Mobile. “Salesforce was the clear choice because it was quick to implement, easy to learn, and backed by excellent customer support. 

Led by Rai, Lyca Mobile implemented Salesforce Marketing Cloud and Marketing Cloud Personalisation.

“Thanks to Salesforce, we can now automate customer journeys, personalise every interaction, and build relationships that last,” says Rai.

Using Salesforce Marketing Cloud, Lyca Mobile has consolidated all customer data in a single source of truth. Marketing teams across India and the UK now have a unified view of customer journeys across email, SMS, the website, and other touchpoints. This helps them deliver seamless omnichannel experiences.

“Customer journeys are clearly mapped out – so, we know exactly when and on which channels to engage with customers for optimal impact,” says Rai. “These journeys are visually represented through Salesforce Marketing Cloud Engagement, and easy to understand and modify.”

Lyca Mobile also uses Marketing Cloud to segment its audiences into MECE (mutually exclusive, collectively exhaustive) categories based on shared attributes. This makes customer communication more contextual and relevant.  

“By sending the right messages to the right customers at the right time, we’ve seen a 15-20% decrease in opt-out ratios,” says Rai.

Meanwhile, insights on customer purchase affinity help teams avoid spamming customers who haven’t responded to previous marketing messages. 

“With customer engagement becoming more targeted, conversions have increased by over 30%,” says Rai. 

Marketing efficiency has also improved. 

“Earlier, if we wanted to alter the text of an email or SMS, we had to raise a ticket with our tech partners and wait seven days for it to be resolved,” says Rai. “But with Salesforce, we can change text on the fly to make our communications more compelling.”

Lyca Mobile also uses Marketing Cloud Personalisation to personalise customer interactions. 

Let’s say a prospect visits Lyca Mobile’s France website looking for a SIM card. If they’re about to exit the page without purchasing one, a pop-up offers them an attractive deal on SIM cards. This keeps the customer engaged and incentivised.

Similarly, if a customer in the US has ordered a SIM card but hasn’t activated it yet, they receive an email with the activation steps, or offering them a gift voucher for quick activation.

Complete visibility into customer data enables teams to also cross-sell and upsell better.  

“Based on a customer’s calling activity, we can proactively recommend a lower-cost plan,” says Rai. “If the customer is interested, order fulfilment doesn’t take four hours like it used to – it’s almost immediate now.” 

Even customer care teams can access this shared source of customer truth to enhance service and sales.

Rich reports and dashboards keep management updated on campaign performance metrics, including how many SMSs have been sent and how many emails have been read.

“With daily reports, we can proactively course-correct marketing campaigns to enhance their reach and relevance,” says Rai. 

Teams can also conduct A/B testing to optimise campaign success and conversions. 

“Based on the management team’s suggestions, we can try out and compare various marketing tactics,” says Rai. “Previously, it would take us 15 days to report the results back to management. But with Salesforce, it takes just 24-48 hours.”

He adds, “What we’ve achieved through Salesforce can best be summed up as ‘CISS’ – contextual customer communication, immediate order fulfilment, clear audience segmentation, and rapid scaling up of campaigns.”

“Both Emark and Mirum did a fantastic job simplifying our complex requirements, and accommodating last-minute changes without compromising on timelines or quality,” notes Rai.

“We also worked with the Salesforce Customer Success team whose round-the-clock support accelerated our CRM transformation and adoption.” 

Lyca Mobile next plans to implement Salesforce Datorama for enhanced marketing intelligence, along with Salesforce Sales Cloud for faster sales growth.