Offer fatigue: why promotions stopped working and you cannot fix it with creative

TL;DR

The effectiveness of mass campaigns in telecom has dropped by an order of magnitude over the last 5-7 years. By open data the typical path is from 30-40% open rate on SMS to 8-15%, and net conversion to action down by several times. This is not the result of “bad creative” or “wrong sending hours”. It is structural offer fatigue: the customer received so many irrelevant offers from every channel that they learned not to read them. The common fix — replace SMS with push, viber, email, add personalisation in the copy — gives a temporary lift for a quarter or two before fatigue returns. The real fix is not in channels and copy but in the operating model of marketing: radically lower volume, switch to trigger-based, explicit permission-based engagement. A process rebuild, not a cosmetic tweak.

What happened over the years

Look at the typical path of mass communication in telecom over the last 5-7 years. In the mid-2010s a mass SMS campaign delivered an open rate around a third of recipients, with a noticeable share of click-throughs and actions — campaigns had a clear ROI and were the main monetisation tool for the base.

Today, the same logic on the same volume yields an open rate that is several times lower, click rate lower, net conversion down by an order of magnitude. Campaign ROI has collapsed and continues to degrade.

What happened is several structural factors stacking up.

The customer’s incoming message volume grew several times over. Beyond the operator: banks, government services, e-commerce, marketplaces, taxi apps, delivery, insurance. The SMS channel is saturated.

Internal volume at the operator also grew. When conversion started falling, the instinctive reaction was to send another campaign to compensate by volume. That accelerated fatigue.

Relevance did not grow with volume. Most campaigns still target broad segments — “the whole active base”, “postpaid above N ARPU”, “ages 25-45”. The customer gets offers that do not fit their actual situation.

Channels multiplied, the problem did not dilute. Push, viber, telegram, email, in-app — each new channel gave a short-term lift, then the same fatigue. A redistribution of the problem, not a fix.

The social norm shifted. The customer now generally assumes a mass-distributed message is not for them. Explicit proof of relevance is required just to open it.

What is usually tried and why little of it helps

Improve the creative. Better copy will not bring back the open rate of a few years ago. Attention is not won at the level of a 160-character line.

Switch the channel. SMS does not work — let’s go to push. Push degrades the same way in 6-12 months. Same logic for viber, in-app, email. The channel is not the source of the problem.

Increase the frequency. A very common instinctive reaction, and one of the most damaging — it accelerates fatigue, lowers brand trust, raises opt-out.

Personalise harder while keeping the volume. Marginal lift. If the customer gets 5-10 messages a week, individual copy in each does not save it — they ignore the very act of receiving.

Renaming campaigns to “exclusive for you” / “only today”. These words inflate fast and lose meaning within months.

What starts to work

Radical volume reduction. Not ten campaigns a month, two. Not “all eligible customers”, but a carefully selected top 5-15% of the audience by eligibility and by signals that the offer is relevant right now. Discipline: drop calendar-driven cycles in favour of trigger-driven.

Trigger-based instead of calendar-based. The customer gets the offer at the moment an event makes it meaningful. Data package is running out — package offer. Roaming session detected — roaming pack. Device is ageing — financing on a new one. Communication is tied to the customer’s moment, not the marketer’s moment.

Permission-based engagement. The customer explicitly opts in to topics: tariff offers, content partners, device news, none of the above. Subscription rates are small, but those who subscribed open and convert highly.

Educational over promotional. If 3 of 4 monthly messages are useful information (balance, data usage, security alert) and only 1 is promo, the customer’s tolerance for that one is higher. The brand reads as helpful, not as pushy.

Diversification by content type. Critical info — SMS. Educational — email or in-app. Offers — push with opt-out, only to a pre-qualified audience.

This is not tactics — it is a change in marketing’s operating model. Without that change, point fixes lift things briefly and then fatigue returns.

A realistic rebuild scenario

Months 1-2 — diagnostic. Who sends what when. How many campaigns hit the active base in a month. Which 5 perform best, which 5 perform worst. What does the response distribution look like by segment.

Months 3-4 — drop the unnecessary. Sunset campaigns with conversion below the minimum threshold. Stop programmes that accumulated historically and do not pass ROI. Painful — every campaign has an owner who defends it, and often the owner is more invested in the campaign existing than in it being effective.

Months 5-6 — foundation of trigger-based. Define 5-10 key customer events that should trigger communication. Build the data pipeline and rules engine that handles it in near-real-time.

Months 7-9 — permission redesign. A customer preference centre in the app and on the portal. Default — minimum (only critical), everything else opt-in. Active communication that the customer sets it themselves.

Months 10-12 — the new baseline. Volume cut 3-5x. Trigger-based is the main mode. Permission-based — secondary. Calendar-based campaigns — exception, not rule.

By the end of the year the operator has a stable engagement model. Open rate in targeted communications typically rises to 30-40% (because each message is relevant). Conversion — in the 8-15% range (because timing and audience are right).

Discussion points for the committee

What is the volume of communications going to the active base each month today? If hard to answer — diagnostic starts here.

Which 3 changes are easiest to implement and fastest to verify? Do not try to do everything at once.

Who owns customer engagement as a strategy, not as a set of channels? Without an owner the rebuild does not start.

What 12-month commitment to volume reduction is the organisation ready to take? Without it, the “send another campaign” instinct returns within half a year.

How do marketing, customer care and retention align so that they work on the same base with the same suppression rule? Without a shared rule, the rebuild gets stuck in cross-functional friction.

FAQ

If volume drops several times, will revenue not drop too? In the short term — possibly, in the part of revenue that was generated by push marketing, with low retention on those transactions. Sustainable revenue requires sustainable engagement, and that is a different number set after 12-18 months.

This works in B2C, B2B is different? B2C primarily. B2B has lower fatigue because of lower volume, but the logic is similar — relevance matters more than frequency.

How long until the market organically reduces fatigue? It will not. Volumes do not shrink on their own — they grow. Only an individual operator can step out of the race. The first to step out gets the advantage.

If a competitor sends a lot of SMS and customers are used to it, can we send less? We can. Less does not mean “vanish”. Less means “appear when there is something to say”. Loud noise in a noisy room does not make you better heard — you become part of the noise.

How SamaraliSoft can help

Engagement Reset Programme — diagnostic of the current campaign portfolio and customer fatigue (open rate, conversion, opt-out trends), design of permission and trigger frameworks for the operator, build of the operating model around trigger-based communication, a pilot on one segment with measurable results, and a 12-month scaling plan. Including coaching the marketing team through the move from a calendar mindset to a trigger mindset.

Related reading

• /en/insights/telecom-nba/ — NBA as the alternative to mass campaigns
• /en/insights/telecom-subscriber-intelligence-operating-model/ — operating model
• /en/insights/telecom-app-monetization/ — frequency as foundation
• /en/use-cases/telecom-churn-war-room-mnp/ — retention

Sources

• Digital Government Portal — digital infrastructure UZ
• UzDaily — Central Asia telecom market
• Ministry of Digital Technologies — telecom in UZ
• MNP.UZ — number portability