In the clash of titans, the customer is always a winner. With telecom giants clashing with each other and trying to attract and retain subscribers, the customer is spoilt for choices. Offers are flooding from everywhere and the customer reaps benefits from such brand clashes. With Jio, bringing down the rates of plans and offering freebies and data, other telecom brands are also pacing up to please their customers.
Airtel has recently tied up with Flipkart, Make My Trip and Netflix in order to give customized offers to its customers, retain them for a longer time and generate higher revenues.

The Campaign

Under the umbrella of campaign #AirtelThanks, the offers are open to subscribers who contribute an average of Rs 100 as a monthly revenue and the higher the contribution, the higher the value of offers.

Vani Venkatesh, chief marketing officer at Bharti Airtel, said the idea is to make sure a subscriber stays with the firm. “We studied telcos across the globe including T Mobile and Telstra for this,” she said.

Venkatesh said, “Previously also, we had partnerships but it was left for the customer to discover, now we are presenting things/offers to customers in a particular curated manner, give what is valuable.”

Brand Building in Today’s Time

Today’s cut-throat competition has brought voice and data prices to all-time low and every telecom player is looking at ways to differentiate themselves from the others by offering discounts, bundled offers, freebies, services and products that can help them retain customers and in the long run generate more revenues.

Jio Vs Airtel

Jio gets an edge here also because it has own retail platform, both online and offline and content to and hence it is able to leverage the same to its customers easily.
Airtel doesn’t have its own content or any other product line and hence tie up with brands like Netflix, MMT and Flipkart has been planned.

“Reliance Jio’s offerings are compelling telcos to up their game,” said Jaideep Ghosh, a partner at consultancy firm KPMG. “In the current competitive landscape, traditional sources of plain vanilla telecom services and data services are facing intense pressure and telcos need to branch out into other services,” he said.

While Airtel is offering subscription-based offers with Netflix, Flipkart and MMT are being leveraged against cash back coupons and discounts

“The more you are invested in the brand, the higher differentiated products, and more options are thrown to you,” said Sameer Batra, CEO – content and apps, at Bharti Airtel.

“We have done fewer things in the past, but we have done impactful things,” Batra said. He claimed that it was all coming together for the telco now, in terms of tactical partnerships.