The WowBox App works as a distribution channel both for Grameenphone and local partners. A potentially key tool to reach Telenor´s “Internet For All” – target, both by engaging with existing, and acquiring new, Internet users.

Written: 27 October 2015

“We are very happy with the results. The new WowBox App, launched in May 2015 in Bangladesh, reached 1.5 million authenticated users in September, with still ongoing strong user growth,”

says Holger Hussmann, Head of WowBox in Telenor Group.

He is enthusiastically joined by CMO at Grameenhone, Yasir Azman who comments,

”We spearheaded WowBox together with Telenor Digital and launched the App in May 2015. Since then, it has been a full success. User up-take and App engagement is strong, and we look forward to use this new exciting channel to communicate with our customers in a unique way in Telenor.

WowBox becomes a lifestyle

WowBox is a lifestyle App providing users with engaging content, both in terms of up-selling internal product offers, as well as local content from established partners like daily trending news, sport results, in-built games, free music, lifestyle articles, and much more. This draws user attention and therefore allows Telenor to communicate with its customer base directly through the device.

“Through WowBox, Grameenphone can offer a controlled real estate on the device interface, which provides a unique opportunity to manage the customer relationship directly. WowBox has also implemented a loyalty reward scheme for Grameenphone product purchases made within the App,” adds Hussmann.

The Future of WowBox

“WowBox has established a unicast channel between Telenor and the individual customer. As the current backend implementation is being extended with stronger analytics features, the content will become even more personalized and the offers more targeted. We expect to optimize customer satisfaction by further improving such features. As an additional effect, it will also allow targeted advertisement within the App, which will result in improved revenue,” Hussmann finishes off.

Today WowBox is successful in Bangladesh and the team is together with business units, evaluating similar markets of Telenor in Asia, like Telenor Pakistan and Telenor Myanmar, for future launches in 2016.

A relevant distribution channel

“WowBox has now become an important channel for Grameenphone, reaching out to a relevant base of their prepaid customers on Android Smartphones. Today, WowBox accounts for about 85.000 daily sales of Grameenphone products with, 50MB data and 1-day Facebook pack, as the most popular. The App draws the attention of more than 600.000 unique weekly users and has seen more than 1m unique users in September,” adds Hussmann.

Direct comparisons of the engagement (ARPU) of a WowBox user vs. a non-WowBox user has shown a strong positive impact, which underlines the value of the upsell opportunity within a controlled real estate on our customers device.

“More than 20% of daily active users purchase a data pack within WowBox the same day. WowBox allows us to present new offers directly to our customers, which also makes it a very valuable marketing tool for us,” comments Azman.