How to deliver faster ROI on your fiber investment with AI and Automation

When it comes to lightning fast speed on the web, fiber delivers . But, even as broadband usage has sustained demand and growth – anticipated to grow to $49.3 billion by 2030 aided by government backing to the tune of $77 billion in the U.S. alone to connect those who currently don’t have access – the upside for providers is tremendous.

Nevertheless, the expense and complexity of installing fiber means providers typically take a staged, strategic approach to market expansion. That starts with identifying greenfields where prospective subscribers use heavy bandwidth, often on dozens of devices . But once they’ve done that, providers need to attract the attention of individual subscribers and businesses, get them onboarded, and keep them engaged throughout their lifecycle.

So, how can you build a fiber growth engine that keeps subscribers engaged? Here, we explore how marketing AI and automation efficiently engage the right customers and why seamless service will keep them loyal.

With so many potential build locations, it’s essential to determine if the people who live and work there are likely to become customers. The challenge is that you may not have enough, or any, current subscriber data to accurately measure broader community sentiment. Premarketing helps you gather that information while also learning more about the preferences of potential customers. You can also use it to capture zero- and first-party data, a mission-critical advantage — but more on that later.

Premarketing for fiber looks like:

• Reaching out proactively with personalized messages. The most straightforward way to gauge interest is to ask directly. Prompt your existing customers with embedded forms or surveys to determine whether they would like to be notified when fiber service is available. Use AI to leverage a unified subscriber profile and deliver personalized and journey-based messaging, with the best call-to-action and send times.
• Optimizing your advertising spend with geo-targeting. Geo-targeting is a great way to find potential customers in greenfields. Focus on websites that require heavy bandwidth, like Hulu or Twitch, and place advertising based on prospective subscribers’ specific locations. As you activate advertising campaigns, ensure you have effective, marketer-friendly tools, like Marketing Cloud Intelligence, to forecast media budgets, validate conversions and sales, and test campaign effectiveness, all optimized by AI. You can also use AI to find the best ad placement and generative AI to draft better ad messaging to drive potential subscribers to sign up for fiber updates in their area and probe for additional information.
• Engaging prospects with dynamic web content. Engaging prospects with dynamic web content. Use real-time and historical browsing data to treat every potential customer as a unique individual. With AI-driven technology in Marketing Cloud Personalization, you can automate and deliver intelligent, always-on experiences that are relevant in the moment, like personalized content from generative AI and ads that appear as they navigate to different areas of your website.

By combining current and prospective subscriber data, you can paint a fuller picture of the potential build opportunity. Then, using purpose-built tools and analytics, like Tableau , you can compare and prioritize the neighborhoods where fiber expansion offers the best return on investment, later targeting those prospects with messaging that promotes your fiber offer.

You can go deeper into your data with tools like Tableau to learn more about locations that appear ripe for investment. For example, you can build an interactive map that layers geographic data, customer insights, and population demographics alongside the fiber survey responses your company collects during premarketing. Visual analytics also enable your employees to evaluate these results against other greenfields and metrics necessary to justify investment. You can share findings in one comprehensive report in just a few clicks.

Now that you’ve gathered the data, you can use it to build excitement and sign up new fiber customers. Segmenting your audience’s data by their specific needs and interests enables intelligent messaging that captures customers’ attention.

For the most effective segmentation, a customer data platform can help unify the sales and customer service information with marketing, advertising, and commerce data from the web. Start by categorizing and organizing prospective subscriber data based on shared attributes, like a love for gaming or a number of devices per home. Layering other information, such as neighborhood demographics, gives you an even more complete view of your target audience. Applying advanced analytics to these new data sets helps you design offers that make sense for each segment’s lifestyle — like a video streaming subscription for movie buffs or a VPN service subscription for small businesses.

Using AI-driven advertising tools and automation, you can stay present in the minds of new customers while you build out service. Automatically sending an email or text message when passing a key milestone that keeps them informed on installation progress, for example, helps you build a strong relationship with your newest subscribers.

Decades of building siloed systems and IT architectures have resulted in disconnected systems that require manual processes. This makes activating a new service and onboarding a new subscriber or service location labor-intensive and error prone. The good news is that with zero-touch provisioning, you can automate certain steps or the entire process.

A catalog-driven architecture, like Communications Cloud, ties Configure, Price, Quote (CPQ) to Contract Lifecycle Management, Order Management, and Field Service work orders. Configuring and automating workflow processes on this flexible platform simplifies customer onboarding. It also reduces revenue leakage and the number of delays, missed appointments, and cancellations.

While implementing this type of architecture may seem daunting, industry-standard Open Digital Architecture and Open APIs ensure faster time-to-market and increased agility. Less customization means less cost and better scalability, too. This new (or upgraded) system streamlines subscriber experiences and is crucial to grow their long-term satisfaction.

A well-run loyalty program can differentiate your business from more nimble competitors who offer a lower price. Here’s why: Loyalty programs nurture customer engagement by using zero- and first-party customer data and insights to deliver more personalized offers with AI predictive capabilities built directly into your CRM with loyalty management software.

Engage new subscribers early by allowing them to earn rewards for completing surveys about relevant personal preferences, like which streaming services they use the most or whether they work remotely. As they become accustomed to interacting with your brand, you can quickly build their member profile, allowing generative AI in Marketing Cloud’s content builder to generate personalized messaging.

Data and AI are the keys that unlock personalization. By applying advanced analytics to your loyalty data, you can keep up with evolving preferences in real time and identify subscribers who are disengaged and at risk of switching providers. You can also learn more about the ways subscribers interact with your brand across demographics and regions — essential inputs when analyzing a potential fiber investment.

The race to capture fiber market share starts with understanding the bandwidth needs of prospective subscribers. For providers, the revenue potential is huge, despite costly (and lengthy) installation. But in today’s competitive landscape, attracting and retaining customers is about more than offering fast internet. Keeping subscribers sticky means providers need to lean into their data to deliver the personalized experiences their customers want.