Campaign governance: who has the right to send an offer to the customer

A simple question

Who in your organisation has the right to send a customer an SMS? If the answer requires more than 30 seconds of thought or includes phrases like “several teams”, “depends on the type”, “usually marketing, but…” — that is the first sign that governance is missing or only exists on paper.

At most regional telecoms 5-10 different teams use the SMS channel. Marketing sends promo. Retention sends save offers. Product informs about new features. Contact centre sends incident follow-ups. Partner channel — cross-promo. B2B team — business communication. Finance — payment reminders. Legal — official notices. Network ops — incident alerts.

Each of these teams treats their messages as priority. Each works with its own audience. Without a shared rules layer the customer receives 5-15 SMS a week from the same operator, and no team understands that the total load is that high.

Where this creates a problem

The problem becomes visible through several symptoms.

Conflicting communications. The customer just filed a complaint at the contact centre and the same day receives a promo inviting them to try a new service. This creates the impression of a company that does not see the customer as a whole.

Overload of key segments. Active high-value customers get communications from every team in parallel because each team targets “the active base”. The customer sees 10-15 SMS a week from one operator, opt-out grows across the channel.

Loss of visibility. When something goes wrong — a customer complaint about spam, opt-out spikes, a regulatory question — the operator cannot quickly answer who sent what and why.

Inability to measure effect. If the customer received 5 communications in one week and opened one, which team “owns” that conversion? Without attribution rules teams argue over credit.

What real governance covers

Real campaign governance is not “marketing in charge of all”. It is a system of rules and suppression that operates on top of every team.

A catalogue of sending rights. Each team has an explicitly defined scope of what it has the right to send — content type, audience, segments. The catalogue is signed off from the top, not negotiated on the fly.

Centralised suppression. Before any communication is sent, the master suppression list is checked. Active complaints, recent communications, opt-outs, blacklisted customers in dispute, fraud flags. If the customer is in any of these states the communication is automatically blocked, regardless of which team initiated it.

Frequency caps by segment. No more than N communications per customer per week in total. No more than M per day. These caps are higher for critical communications (security alerts, billing) and lower for promotional.

Priority tiering on collision. If two teams need to reach the same customer at the same time — operations and customer care take precedence over marketing.

Audit log of everything sent. Each send is recorded with team, content type, target audience, timestamp. This makes it possible to reconstruct what the customer received and why.

What it takes to deliver in practice

Not a single technology project — a system of operational rules plus the tooling that enforces them.

Technically — a decision layer in front of the channel. All communication flows pass through it. The layer checks rules, suppression, applies caps, logs.

Organisationally — a campaign governance committee. Not weekly — every two weeks or once a month. Members: marketing, retention, customer care, product, B2B, finance, legal. Chair — a neutral function, often COO or Chief Customer Officer.

Process-wise — an intake process for new types of communications. A team wants a new campaign or a new notification — submits a request describing audience, content, frequency, expected effect. The committee approves or asks for changes.

Without all three — technology, organisation, process — governance stays a declaration.

What separates working governance from formal

Active blocking of campaigns. If one team wants to launch a campaign that breaks the rules — the campaign does not go, no compromise. Politically painful, but without it rules get watered down compromise after compromise.

Visible metrics for every team. Each team sees how many SMS they sent, how many other teams sent, what the total load on key segments is, what the opt-out trend looks like. Without this visibility teams do not understand their part in the overall picture.

A customer view from the customer’s side. The committee can take any random customer and see the full list of communications received in the last month. Often a shocking picture, and one that focuses discussion.

Quarterly review. Once a quarter — overall effectiveness review and rule updates. What works, what does not, which teams are breaking rules, which coefficients change.

When governance is premature

If communication volume is low and there are only 2-3 teams sending SMS, governance overhead is not justified. First grow to the point where hand-coordination breaks, then systematise.

If the organisation is in an acute phase of digital transformation and base data systems are not consolidated, governance will be without a reliable customer master view. Suppression rules will not work correctly.

If the regulator is not active in the communications area (no strict spam, opt-out, consent rules), governance is built mostly as self-discipline. Harder without external pressure.

If the CMO is not ready to give up some control over communications, governance is politically blocked at C-suite level.

If IT does not have capacity to build the decision layer (3-6 months of work), governance stays manual and degrades fast.

Discussion points for the committee

How many communications does the average active customer receive in a week from all teams of the operator? If hard to answer — diagnostic.

What 5 types of conflicting communications do we observe (promo after complaint, retention during active dispute, etc.)? That is the first list to block.

Who owns governance as a function? Without an owner it stays on paper.

Are teams ready to give up sovereignty in exchange for total improvement in communications? If not — governance will not start.

What is the country regulatory situation on spam and opt-out? It affects urgency.

How SamaraliSoft can help

Campaign Governance Architecture — audit of the current communications landscape (who sends what when), design of a rules, suppression and frequency-caps system tailored to the operator, blueprint of the decision layer as a technology component, organisational design of the committee and intake process, and a 90-120 day pilot of governance with measured improvement in customer experience.

Related reading

• /en/insights/telecom-offer-fatigue/ — communication fatigue
• /en/insights/telecom-nba/ — NBA as context
• /en/insights/telecom-subscriber-intelligence-operating-model/ — operating model
• /en/architecture/telecom-around-core-architecture/ — layer around the core

Sources

• Digital Government Portal — digital infrastructure UZ
• UzDaily — Central Asia telecom market
• Ministry of Digital Technologies — telecom in UZ
• Central Bank of Uzbekistan — biometric verification for digital banking