South African mobile users are running out of mobile data every day, with a significant portion of their digital marketing landing on deaf ears due to a lack of data. This has been highlighted by Nicholas Bednall, chief commercial officer at MoyaApp, a popular mobile start-up company in South Africa.
Statistically significant research has shown that 8% of South African mobile users run out of mobile data every day, and 36% only recharge their data once a month. This lack of data has been likened to electricity load shedding, which brings everything to a stop, including engagement with digital media that requires paid data to access it.
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For brands targeting mass market consumers, this can be particularly problematic. While traditional media, such as TV, radio and print, have been relied upon, digital platforms such as Google and Facebook have also become important. However, the assumption that people have data all the time is not always accurate.
MoyaApp, however, has found a solution to this problem by keeping the lights on all the time. The data-free super app enables discovery and engagement for 6.5 million monthly and 4 million daily active users – even when they have no airtime or data balance.
Using reverse billing, MoyaApp gives users access to chat, calling, content, services, and MoyaPay accounts at no data cost to them, explains Bednall. For marketers, this means uninterrupted digital reach and engagement with the South African mass market.
Key enterprises that are growing strongly in the mass market space have already embraced MoyaApp as an important component of their digital marketing mix.
Shoprite, Unilever, and Capitec are among the companies on MoyaApp.
A new partnership with South African Loyalty Whitepaper (Truth and BrandMapp) is set to reveal the motives of where consumers shop, bank and buy products, which should be of great interest to SA marketing and business leadership.
According to Bednall, MoyaApp’s approach differs from other platforms in that it allows users to gravitate to topics they are interested in via Discovery. It then offers them the option of clicking on ads they may be interested in. If they click, direct interaction can then take place between the advertiser and the potential customer.
From here, the engagement might progress to a request for further information via Moya Chat, a direct conversation, or even a purchase via MoyaPay – all within the same app. With over 300 web services and apps available, users can explore virtual “aisles” of products and services and select those they’d like to know more about.
In only four years, MoyaApp has passed the milestone of 10 million downloads, with the relatively new MoyaPay at 350 000 registered users and gaining 6 000 new users a day. Much of this growth has been through word of mouth, and there’s no sign of it slowing down. With reach like this, MoyaApp is expected to become a critical part of every brand’s digital marketing mix over the next few years.
MoyaApp is a mobile app that began as a data-free messaging service and has expanded to become a super-app that offers a host of functionality and access to over 300 content services, including news, entertainment, live sport results, education, weather, jobs, health info, product and services – all free of data charges to the customer.
A key service within Moya is MoyaPay, a mobile money account, allowing users to receive money, send money, purchase a range of value-added services, and use a prepaid Mastercard linked to their MoyaPay account, with minimal transaction fees – and all data-free.
