Boomplay: Data gifting and customer loyalty made easy with Centili

We have longingly waited to share an inspiring success story about a music streaming service client of ours, who has recently reached the new heights with Centili’s data gifting services’ help. And now we can.

Last year has marked incredible shifts in the markets worldwide, with some products and services plummeting, and others thriving. In the post-Covid19 time, services such as music streaming have proven vital for people’s well-being, providing comfort and entertainment to millions around the globe.

Boomplay had a chance to show allyship to its users. And it stepped up to do just that. As the biggest and fastest-growing music streaming service in Africa, it enriches nearly 70 million users’ lives. Owned by Transsnet Music Limited, it was first launched in Nigeria in 2015.

Boomplay is the number one global distribution platform of African music and media. It operates a freemium and subscription-based service; basic features are free with advertisements or limitations, while premium features, such as download for offline play and ad-free listening are available via paid subscriptions. 

In 2016 Boomplay Music established an office in Kenya, and shortly after it opened offices and operations in Ghana, Tanzania and several other African countries.

Rewarding users with points and data

Boomplay rewards users for being active in their mobile application. A gamification system allows registered users to collect points by streaming music, sharing it with friends, posting comments or adding music albums to their favourites. Points can be used for in-app purchases or exchanged for rewards such as data packs and airtime. 

Boomplay also has campaigns where they give their users data, tackling many African users’ immense pain point. For an average user, cost implications of streaming music without a good data plan can be quite high. 

During lockdown in 2020, market as a time of social distancing and isolation, Boomplay gave their users in Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya and Tanzania 25 million MB of free data for entertainment and relaxation. And it wasn’t a one-off thing. Giving data to loyal users has proven to be a great strategy to boost app usage and loyalty. Besides that, services like Boomplay are playing a significant role in migrating users away from pirated content. They do it by making music streaming services more available and removing barriers associated with data availability. 

Setting up data gifting via Centili Fusion

Boomplay uses the services of Infobip, the sister company of Centili and an established global player in cloud communications, to deliver verification codes via WhatsApp. They use Centili’s services to implement and maintain the system that the end-users use to exchange the points for data and claim and obtain free data. 

The solution enables the data packages distribution towards the appropriate phone numbers. I.e., it needs to identify Boomplay users in any of the mobile networks and provision the right data quantity. That should be done quickly and smoothly. Reporting and analytics are important considerations, too.

Centili Fusion is an in-house engineered solution for easy bundling of digital and telco services. It is used when applications and digital services are added to telco tariffs, and when apps and free trials are bundled with a telco product (i.e. data pack) to be offered to mobile subscribers. Centili Fusion also enables apps and digital services such as Boomplay implement data packages into their offering in many different ways and forms. It is as smooth as it gets for both telecoms and app makes, as Centili handles legal and commercial agreements, integration, reporting and analytics.

As Boomplay team says, communication with Centili was fast and efficient, with the integration finished quickly. Centili implemented a solution with the necessary capability to create, manage and distribute packages to users via their phone numbers as primary identifiers. Data is available from all the major MNOs, with seamless provisioning. Based on MSISDNs, i.e., phone numbers, the system automatically recognises the mobile operator and assigns the appropriate data package to the Boomplay user redeeming it.

Centili enabled the process to be intuitive for users, while complexity was handled and resolved in the backend. Besides that, a professional approach from the Shenzhen-based account manager made things much faster. Reliability of service was paramount. 

Since they’ve used Centili Fusion for recharging, Boomplay saw interesting spikes in app usage. From April to October 2020 there was 2-digit growth in the percentage of users redeeming data, and a 2-digit increase in the active users’ percentage.

“We hope that data recharge can extend from Nigeria to other three markets in which we operate and that we can include more virtual and utility services,” User Operation Director at Transsnet Music Jake Chen explained.

“Lots of people worry about scams, and sometimes they’ll assume there must be a catch if you are offered something for free. To avoid that, we make sure we have a strong privacy policy in place and a trustworthy process and reliable partners we do business with,” said Phil Choi, Copyright Director at Transsnet Music.

With data gifting, there are three key success factors. 

Firstly, your product must be what users want, and Boomplay’s catalogue of 43 million songs has undoubtedly gone a long way towards delighting their users. 

Secondly, data redemption should be easy to use. It can’t be too complicated; users should be able to redeem data in one or two taps, as quickly as possible. 

And the final success factor is credibility. “It is a matter of strong privacy policy and lots of genuine user reviews,” Jake Chen explained. 

With Boomplay, that is certainly the case, given their rapid growth and popularity across Africa, which it owes to constant improvements on the app, both in technical performance and user engagement.

If you are interested in finding out how Centili can help your company with user acquisition, reach out to our sales specialist to schedule a demo.

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