ROI on Utility Bills – The WHOLE Picture
We often get into discussions around measuring RoI here’s our take on the subject.
Below it, are some case studies and data, albeit of diverse industries, but good enough to help see the whole picture.
The RoI Canvass:
- Utility Bills are an relatively unknown and unexplored media
- Until some time back, the coverage and availability was scarce and minimalistic, being done by most service providers as an “ad-hoc” business line
- Having small volumes and generally being an inexpensive medium, transaction ticket size did not excite media agencies, the lack of attention thereof, resulted in media plans being made sans utility bills
- There is still some time before the business becomes organised and hence regulated (read monitored)
- In the backdrop of all the above, a scientific method of measurement has not been arrived at for the medium, unlike the TAM, IRS etc. for the electronic and print media respectively
I can be SMART in an un-SMART Environment:
- Since RoI is an essential business metric, it clearly needs to be measured. We therefore need to have a CLEAR CALL TO ACTION
- The nature of bills, allows you to put text or images which can be seen at leisure/repeatedly and for reference. The CTA can therefore be either online or offline
- Put a website/landing page or a phone number specific to a Geo, its gives simple and easy measurability
- The utility company (usually a state government/PSU entity) can issue a certificate of its circulation numbers
- The number of bills in circulation is usually a figure available in the public domain as all utilities are under some form of regulatory regime which requires them to declare these numbers
- The response to your CTA v/s the Investment gives an empirical RoI
Leap of Faith??
- Utility bills is in the same stage of evolution as TV in the West in 1950s and the 2000s in India. It can also be compared to where Digital was in 2010.
- The medium does need its fair share of “trial” typically 3 months and a mix of geographies.
- While the standalone numbers will look big, but put in context of a brand’s overall ad budget, they will make sense. The imperative is “TRY”. After all if someone in the world hadn’t “TRIED” and taken the leap of faith, we wouldn’t have been exchanging this note!!
Examples:
- Back in 2016, as the credit off take slowed down, a large public sector bank decided to give it a push with some advertising
- The focus was Car Loans and Home Loans. A 3 Month campaign was planned
- The first artwork was rolled out with little understanding and planning. The existing call centre which was running ( 5 Seats) for the purpose of lead generation, collapsed with the average inbound call volume multiplying in the weeks following bill circulation in Delhi
- The second month campaign was rolled out with more care and the total day time seats going up to 18!! 3.6 TIMES the original number of seats.
- The AHT continued to be 2/3 minutes in the second month
- The third month, had fine-tuned the system and AHT remained constant @ 2 minutes. By the end of the Quarter the Auto Loans Segment had seen 27% Growth Quarter on Quarter
- A digital payments player wanted to acquire customers and increase ticket size. It decided to start with Delhi and went Pan India in this initiative. Needless to say success was obvious. What was even more encouraging was competition jumping on the bandwagon for this medium. A comparative of the two competing players is given below: This data was collated to give an apple to apple comparison keeping the Geo and time periods in mind.
Clearly Client A (Pioneer) got better return on their investment in the two states of MP & Telangana. Client B had a lackluster performance in the same geography. The difference was, a continuous 3 month campaign as compared to a broken down campaign and “ify” campaign.
We hope the above will help you get a perspective on the RoI canvass for Utility bills. Feel free to write in to us for any further details.