Buongiorno has entered into a partnership with Telefónica O2 Germany to launch O2’s new service ‘Prepaid Überraschung – Aufladen und Gewinnen” (‘Prepaid Surprise – Top-up and Win’) for prepaid mobile customers. The service will launch on 9 August.

O2 will use Buongiorno’s experience based on its Recharge and Win (RAW) implementations worldwide and the successful ‘Top-Up surprises’ service offered to O2 prepay mobile-users in the UK. The “Prepaid Überraschung – Aufladen und Gewinnen” campaign will offer any customer recharging €20 (£17) or more a code to be redeemed on a dedicated website.

Depending on the amount topped-up, the customer is eligible for different types of prizes: Silver or Gold, and there is a chance to win the Grand Prize Draw, which for the first campaign is a VIP city trip, taking in three cities in three days.

Buongiorno will also support O2 in the management of the technical infrastructure, running the campaigns, performing data analysis and managing prize purchasing and logistics. The campaign will target O2’s entire prepaid base in Germany.

Buongiorno says that prepaid is the indisputable payment mechanism of choice for the majority of the world’s mobile subscribers, with prepaid subscriptions accounting for 72 per cent of all global subscriptions. As prepaid consumers become more demanding, operators are reassessing their strategies to enhance retention. According to sector analysts, at least $130m (£82m) is poured into prepaid campaigns annually to ensure that churn rates are kept to a minimum and dwindling margins per user are maximised. RAW, like other forms of CRM, is playing an increasingly important role within operators’ offerings.

The partnership with O2 in Germany follows a number of other RAW deployments. The first was in 2007, when Buongiorno launched a focused CRM service called ‘Win every time’ with the network operator Optus in Australia. Buongiorno launched ‘Top-Up Surprises’ for O2 UK in November 2008, and has rolled out similar schemes with other operators, including  Telecom Italia Mobile and Proximus in Belgium. 

“Within the European operator market, we recognised a need for our partners to find new ways to differentiate themselves by motivating and rewarding their customers,” says Jürgen Reutter, managing director of Buongiorno UK & International. “Buongiorno invested in developing a unique CRM platform, and this investment has now enabled us to become the specialist CRM partner as we roll it out for more operators, supporting them in developing bespoke reward programs, increasing ARPU and reducing churn of loyal customers.”