The Israeli tech sector is as healthy as ever. One of its members who has a clean bill is Udi Ziv, CEO of Pontis, a Ra’anana-headquartered company providing contextual marketing solutions for service providers.
Launched as a startup with VC funding, Pontis is now active in dozens of countries, engaging over 400 million customers with offices in Israel, Italy, Spain, France, and Turkey. Recently it has made partnerships with providers in even further-flung corners of the world, such as Chile’s Entel and the Central Asian-focused Vimplecom. “To maintain competitiveness in today’s environment, operators must adopt new marketing paradigms to be able to become more relevant to their customers,” says Ziv.
“The idea for the company came from the understanding that mobile communication will completely change the way communications service providers (CSPs) will engage with their customers,” adds Ziv. “At the time, marketing organizations were lacking automated analytical marketing tools that could help them understand their customers. We had the vision that customer engagement will be the primary differentiator for CSPs. In fact, this has always been, and still is the main driver for the Pontis’ successful business.”
Pontis claims to be able to provide individual customer data, so that providers can develop a pinpoint strategy. Its Individual Customer Lifecycle Management (ICLM) addresses the needs of individuals by collecting big data across a wide range of genres. “You can educate and engage a subscriber during the Welcome period; build a long-term relationship and increase usage during Development stage; detect a dissatisfied user and immediately respond with an attractive offer,” says the company.
Pontis’ data collection also allows service providers to optimize their data offerings, both to maximize satisfaction and to increase customer loyalty. A customer may, for example, spend a lot of data playing mobile games, and run close to the maximum data their plan allows. Pontis makes it possible to offer a contextualized offer tailored to that user’s need, and thus create more trust and mutual benefit between provider and customer.
This May the company launched a new contextual data service solution for communications service providers, which it claims can increase data revenues by 15%. And, Ziv feels that it is providing something that no-one in the field can offer: “Pontis is the only vendor today that offers end-to-end real-time continuous contextual marketing engagement solution for CSPs, while combining strong analytical and execution capabilities. Another differentiator is we’re the only solution that helps CSPs monetize their data services.”
Ziv points to a number of business plans to back his point, including Pontis’ holistic marketing approach, cross-channel continuous engagement, and an adaptive marketing solution. He personally sees Pontis’ market at a crossroads, with a huge twelve months ahead: “2014 is set to be a watershed year for contextual marketing. We will see service providers continuously engaging with customers, and creating long-term goals of customer satisfaction, and improving customer loyalty over a number of years.”
With the big data market soaring, and telcos reaping ever-greater rewards for more advanced offerings and huge mobile penetration, Ziv will hope that he and Pontis can entice an even greater number of providers with its solution.