Turning Precision Into Profit: Inside One Prepaid Wireless Provider’s Audience Transformation

A field-level view from Keith Darby, Account Executive, Allant

When you’ve partnered with a client for more than a decade, as I have with a leading prepaid wireless service provider within a post‑paid national telecom’s portfolio, you witness the full sweep of market shifts, data disruptions, and internal politics. You also learn that real progress happens when you can answer one deceptively simple question every quarter:

“If this were your money, how would you spend it to hit the growth target?”

This is the story of how that question – and Allant’s Precision Audiences by AMP+ – helped our client rewrite its acquisition playbook, crush seasonal headwinds, and set a new standard for what’s possible in prepaid wireless.

The Challenge: More Competition, Less Visibility

• Seasonal slumps: Q3 response rates historically fell 30–40% versus Q2.
• Escalating acquisition costs: list fatigue drove Cost per Incremental Activation (CPIA) ever higher.
• Siloed channels: email teams optimized one way while media buyers chased impressions elsewhere, with no shared audience spine.

Like most brands, this client didn’t need more impressions; it needed sharper aim and proof that every dollar moved the needle.

The Solution: Composable Data + Predictive Intelligence

We began by replacing “one‑size‑fits‑all” segments with a custom predictive model inside AMP+. Three moves changed everything:

**Expanded, multi-source data foundation**
We utilized AMP+ to combined our client’s first‑party activation history with digital intent signals, instantly doubling the addressable universe by +209%. Competitive‑brand interest data revealed which prospects were genuinely “switch‑ready”.

**Behavior-driven scoring**
Our data science team trained a conversion model that ranked every prospect, even those absent from traditional compilers, by likelihood to activate, dropping CPIA more than 80% versus legacy lists.

**Always‑on test‑and‑learn cycle**
Each weekly send fed performance back into AMP+, fine‑tuning scores in near real-time. When corporate procurement swapped a primary data license, we rebuilt the model in weeks. Proof that composable architecture beats single‑source dependency.

The Impact: From Cost Center to Growth Engine

Those numbers convinced the prepaid wireless provider’s leadership to boost acquisition budget 18% and sign a two‑year renewal (with price increases) the same quarter. Not bad for a program that started as a “pilot” to test out predictive modeling.

Why It Worked—and What’s Next

• Multi-source > single-source. Each data file has blind spots. AMP+ harmonizes them so marketers don’t have to guess.
• Outcome-based metrics matter. Internally, CPIA and incremental revenue trump vanity stats like opens or impressions. That made it easy for our client’s brand team to win political support.
• Composable means future-proof. When data licenses change, or when we add new signals like geo-level device churn, the model adjusts without rebuilding the entire stack.

The next frontier is omnichannel activation. We’re already mapping high‑score deciles into direct‑mail and paid‑social workflows, giving our client a single audience spine across every touchpoint. Success here will break down the last silos between brand and media teams and create an even bigger moat against prepaid competitors.

Lessons for Other Marketers

• Start with the “money question.” Framing recommendations as if the budget were yours forces ruthless focus on ROI.
• Demand composability. Your data sources will change; make sure your platform – and partner – can pivot fast.
• Prove it early, then scale. We launched our model in email first, showed a double‑digit CPIA drop in 30 days, and only then pushed for broader adoption.

Final Thought

Fourteen years in, this prepaid wireless provider’s program reminds me why I love this work: when you combine the right data with the right questions, you don’t just hit KPIs; you make your client the hero inside their own organization.

If you’re ready for a new approach to your acquisition strategy – moving from impressions to impact – Let’s talk.