Doing the business

Openreach believes strongly in the value and importance of our copper infrastructure in the fixed line market and we closely monitor the impact of market forces and new technologies on copper lines within the MPF, WLR and ISDN2 portfolios for ourselves and our customers.

The ongoing recession of course has had an impact.  As households scrutinise their outgoings, some decide that second lines may no longer be necessary and for those who find themselves in the unfortunate position of losing their job, some telephony expenses may become difficult to justify completely.

But of course economic challenges are not the sole preserve of domestic households and during the recession we have seen businesses cut back on fixed lines as they seek to reduce costs and lay off staff. This is particularly true in the SME sector which typically lacks the flexibility of a small business or the resources of a large enterprise.

While we would all like to see an end to the current economic situation, we in Openreach have been working hard over the past few months to look at ways to help our customers retain their business customers and even gain new ones.

In the business market we noticed a trend to cut back on premium lines or use basic lines only to save costs. However, it could be that business customers are not fully understanding the benefits of premium lines or the fact they only cost £2.33 a quarter more than a basic line but deliver much more than that in added value.

Using this insight, we developed a WLR Premium Line marketing campaign which was launched on 8th September 2009. The campaign consisted of a series of four emails each featuring a different benefit; 

All the above emails have a click through to the campaign microsite which you can view here http://www.openreach-communications.co.uk/wlrpremium/ 

This microsite contains resources and information for example Premium Line Features and Benefits, Case Studies, Target Markets, WLR3 Customer Adoption, Market Insight, Marketing Campaign Email Copy and a Competition where you could win £1000 to spend on the high street.