FreeCharge goes aggressive on promotions

FreeCharge, a platform for online recharging and making payments for our various day-to-day needs ranging from mobile services to gas connections, has taken 6 Mumbai metro for a complete internal branding – Internal panels, handles, below the seat and 12 metro stations (Versova, D N Nagar, Azad Nagar, Andheri, WEH, Chakala, Airport road, Marol, Saki Naka, Asalpha, Jagruti Nagar, Ghatkopar) for outdoor branding. The month long campaign went live on 1st November and all the commuters traveling during the month were eligible to avail an inaugural offer of Rs 100 cashback on Rs 100 Metro recharge as part of this campaign. The Objective was to reduce time and money inefficiencies at metro station ticket counter by motivating commuters to recharge online through FreeCharge. 

Ashish Virmani, Marketing Head, FreeCharge says, “The motivation behind launching this campaign is to drive penetration for metro consumers to recharge on our platform. Earlier you had to do top-up on your card by going to station which is little inefficient and tedious task. 60% of metro recharges happen through top-ups. Out of this 60%, only 1-2% is happening online. Majority of transactions are happening at platform counter and we want to change that. With this campaign, we are expecting a jump of 500-100% in metro recharges. We are looking at other cities like Delhi, Bangalore and Chennai in coming few months. So if you basically ask the whole idea of having an outdoor campaign, we were very clear of our target audience, which are all commuters travelling through metro”.

He further adds, “The campaign is an introductory 4 weeks incentive to motivate customers to shift from platform counter to our app. So once the customer uses our app, the experience will be so good which will automatically drive repeat sales for us. Depending on response, we are open to expanding this offer beyond 4 weeks. FreeCharge is about two things. One is making boring day to day transactions interesting, easier and rewarding. Secondly, we want to convert cash transactions to online payments which is already widespread in western countries. That is our aim for the next 3 years. We have planned marketing budget of 1000 crore and are going to be  focus a lot on promotions for next 12-15 months. One can find all information related to incentives on twitter”.

Also, FreeCharge recently announced the launch of revamped app on Android with added and improved features like ‘Refer and Earn’ & ‘Spin and Win’ which will soon be available on Windows and iOS as well. The new modified version is user friendly and faster to provide better user experience and with this, one can now pay all the bills including electricity, landline and broadband bill at their fingertips.