Marc Lee

A Product Portfolio

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Case Study 04  

Priority Moments Longtail Offers

Expanding Content, Improving Customer Experience, and Building Community

Client: O2 Telefónica

Project Name: Priority Moments Self Service Platform

Brief Summary

It is important to add as much value to the Priority Moments experience as possible for users. How can we scale the number of different offers and retailers available in the Priority Moments app?

Deliverables

Whilst the core Priority Moments app was being launched by an internal O2 Telefónica team, the content/offers would be managed by O2 Media.

The first deliverable was a need for a system that could easily add, remove and modify offers to the app and platform - this needed fully envisioning and specifying.

The second deliverable, and the more important aspect was the ability to allow smaller retailers and companies to add their own offers through a self service interface.

Intro

The telco industry is intensively competitive, and with little to differentiate the main players, most of the competition revolves around offering a differentiator outside of data/sms/minutes - some choose to go for price, whilst others rely on the strength of their brand.

With the roaring success of Orange Wednesdays, prompting customers to switch to a rival network, O2 felt they need a loyalty offering that could rival and even supersede that of its competitors.

Priority Moments was envisioned to be that product - an app that could offer exclusive, and very generous local deals, discounts and freebies.

O2 Media were drafted in to help find the partner companies to provide the content for the app. My role however was envisioning a way of very rapidly and quickly scaling the number of offers from outside the standard chains.

Problem

Since a lot of the partner companies were chains, there was a concern that from a user experience perspective the Priority Moments app would simply be full of duplicate deals, discouraging usage of the app.

Imagine opening the app in central London, and seeing only Pret-a-manger deals because those locations were the closest to you.

A solution was required that could dramatically expand the volume of offers available to users, therefore providing variety to the app and enhancing the value to the user.

Research

I wasn’t involved in the Priority Moments project until a late stage - originally drafted in to help create a system that could manage the offers, I quickly noticed the potential for a disappointing user experience.

A lot of the research was focused on competitors, and other similar apps and how a lot used crowdsourcing as a way of gathering content.

Once a general idea of opening up the app to the longtail emerged, research was required to see if retailers and companies would want to upload their own deals direct to the app and platform.

From here, it was soon established that having the weight of such a big brand behind the app would encourage a lot of the smaller companies to utilise the potential.

Solution

A system was needed as a way of O2 Media to manage offers that had been agreed directly with the larger retailers. The vision I had for this was very similar to an advertising server - just like you would upload and optimise adverts, you could do the same with the offers.

Because this system was already required, opening it up to a longtail of companies who could easily use the system to add their own offers seemed like the logical next step. So similar to how Google Adwords works, the Priority Moments self service system allowed any company to verify themselves, and start adding offers that were then approved by the O2 Media Ad Ops team before being set live.

I worked closely with a Business Analyst for a number of months to ensure the offers management platform fulfilled the business needs, and also served further companies. As well as ultimately solving the core problem that had been identified.

Headline Numbers

  • App Usage: 1 billion 'offers' viewed by users within 12 months of launch
  • Revenue: Priority Moments generated £10m incremental revenue for partner companies in 6 months caused by a 40% uplift in average spend
  • B2B Reach: Priority Moments 'self-service' interface product launched for 150,000 SMBs

Conclusion

Priority Moments was one of the most ambitious and expensive initiatives that Telefónica had undertaken outside of its core business - and this was reflected in the budget. However, the core focus was not necessarily on the end user or O2 customer, but on the business and its competition.

Without a sharp sudden change in direction towards the user, it could have gone down as a very expensive lesson - instead, it is still going strong a number of years later.

Press

O2 Plans to Bolster Priority Offering

“Priority Moments generated £10million in incremental revenue for partners in first 6 months caused by 40% uplift in average spend.”

“Priority Moments - 1 billion 'offers' viewed by users” - Econsultancy

O2 Priority Moments to go Local

“Priority Moments 'self service' interface launches for 150,000 SMBs” - Econsultancy

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