Case Studies

Dialing for Dollars – an AdMap case study

Client Situation

The Telecommunications industry is more competitive than ever before. Service providers continue to introduce new technologies in hopes of beating out their competitors. Marketers are developing creative product bundles to build additional customer loyalty. Customers are more price sensitive, squeezing product margins even further.

To remain competitive, telecommunication companies are forced to lower rates and focus on investments that improve the quality of their products. With a lower average revenue per user, service providers are pressured to find more efficient ways of allocating expenses.

The Challenge

A major US telecommunication company approached Five x Five for help in planning and optimizing media spend across channels, programs and regions. Like many marketing organizations, the client relied upon multiple spreadsheets to analyze campaign performance, forecast revenue and develop strategic marketing plans. Due to the amount of data that needed to be incorporated into the analysis and planning process, the client quickly realized the limitations of using spreadsheets for such a task.

The Solution

Five x Five implemented its AdMap optimization tool to address these limitations:

Customized models were developed for six key products. These models incorporated regional economics, pricing, product bundling and competitive activity. From these models, the client was able to observe and evaluate the cross-effects of certain media vehicles. For one particular product, AdMap demonstrated that the combination of specific direct marketing efforts generated the largest contribution to product sales.
The client was able to eliminate the use of spreadsheets and immediately begin building marketing scenarios using our solution. Scenarios and corresponding business assumptions are shared with key stakeholders as well as partner agencies, thus improving the efficiency and timeliness of the planning and decision-making processes.
Because client-specific parameters and constraints could now be easily incorporated into the planning process, media allocation plans created through the AdMap tool are more actionable since they reflect true business conditions.
AdMap’s analytic engine also highlighted media vehicles that were over-saturated and losing their effectiveness. Media response curves showed that the client’s direct marketing efforts were becoming saturated, thus presenting an opportunity to shift these resources to a more effective media type.
AdMap was able to accurately predict sales generated from media stimulation and demonstrate that media impacts differed significantly from region to region. The client used this information to adjust media spend in specific markets.

By improving the efficiency, effectiveness and accuracy of our client’s planning process, we identified over $180 million in incremental value from their marketing programs.