O2 offers 6m customers to brands

O2 claims it can offer brand owners personalised marketing on a mass-market scale at the touch of a button, after revealing its O2 More loyalty scheme base has tripled to 6 million customers in the past six months alone.
And although many customers have been signed up by changing the terms and conditions, the company claims customers have not been hoodwinked into joining the scheme, stressing “no-one’s dragged in the house kicking and screaming”. It says 10 million customers will have joined by next year.
“The T&Cs regularly change with O2 like they do with every operator. A customer will always be prompted on whether they want a relationship with O2 in whatever guise. We always signpost it to customers,” said O2 Media managing director Shaun Gregory.
He claims that O2 More now reaches a larger audience than “traditional” advertising channels, such as the first airing of Big Brother on Channel 5 or two issues of The Sun newspaper.
The service matches preferences supplied by users who sign up with data held by O2, such as phone usage and location and O2 claims 93 per cent of users signed up to O2 More opened the messages they received within five minutes.
Gregory added: “Marketers are getting smarter at understanding the capabilities that mobile offers and O2 More is becoming the pivotal channel in the UK for talking to customers on a personal level. The biggest challenge for brands is to create a direct conversation with consumers, and drive engagement through relevancy.
“It’s on this premise that O2 More was created, and the fact we’ve broken through 6 million within two years is further validation that consumer attitudes are changing and there is a willingness to interact and engage. It is now a ‘must buy’ for anyone that’s serious about mobile advertising.” He claims that 10 million customers will have signed up by next year.
Earlier this summer, O2 Media launched its location-based marketing service called O2 Priority Moments, which offers O2 customers location-based discount offers at a range of partner outlets, including Odeon, WHSmith and Zizzi.