MultiChoice Africa (MCA) has increased its e-mail penetration by means of a successful SMS campaign. The campaign, designed to update MCA's e-mail database, resulted in 8 000 new e-mail addresses being added to the system.
Striata (formerly known as The E-mail Corporation), a leading provider of software solutions in electronic bill presentment and payment and multi-channel messaging, facilitated the campaign.
Says Thabo Moabi, Operations General Manager at MultiChoice: "We constantly need to communicate with subscribers. As communication is invariably costly, we have been investigating cost-effective mechanisms and have found sending letters via e-mail to be significantly cheaper and more immediate than the printed letter."
However, when 6% of MCA's e-mails to subscribers proved undeliverable as a result of dated e-mail addresses, Striata suggested running a campaign whereby subscribers were sent SMSs, asking them to reply with their correct e-mail address.
Says Heath Turner, Business Development Manager of Striata: "The process was simple - we sent an SMS to subscribers informing them that MultiChoice had attempted to contact them via e-mail but that the mail had bounced. We asked them to reply to the SMS with their correct e-mail address."
Turner maintains that of the 38 000 SMSs sent, over 10 000 responses were received. The new e-mail addresses then went through a manual cleaning process whereby common spelling and spacing errors were corrected.
Says Turner: "The campaign was an enormous success. Not only is SMS an exceptionally fast communication tool, but also contacting subscribers via SMS is far more cost-effective than contacting them via phone.
"We are happy with the results of this campaign," concludes Moabi. "MultiChoice has added 8 000 e-mail addresses to our database and will continue to build on the success we have had."
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