Plan an airtime rewards campaign from budget to reporting
Before you buy airtime, decide who qualifies, what they will receive and how you’ll know they got it. A direct recharge needs a verified number and the right network. A voucher needs a secure way to get the PIN to the recipient, plus instructions they can follow.
| Brief item | Decision |
|---|---|
| Objective and audience | |
| Eligibility rule | |
| Reward and value | |
| Delivery and support owner |
By Freepaid · Published
Write the campaign brief before ordering
Set out the qualifying action, who can claim, the closing date and how you’ll measure participation. Decide how many rewards one person can claim and who resolves a duplicate or a phone number that doesn’t match. Get the budget owner to sign off on the reward value, fees and any reserve for exceptions.
Make the handover clear before the first order
Give the person checking eligibility the rule and cut-off date. Give the team issuing rewards the approved list, quantity and value. Support needs to be able to look up the original recharge or voucher without asking anyone to post a full PIN in a shared channel. If recipients use different channels, test a delivery and ask someone unfamiliar with the process to follow the instructions.
Use one campaign approval record
Keep the decision and the evidence in the same place. That makes a late request to expand the audience or change the reward something the budget owner can approve explicitly.
| Field | What to record |
|---|---|
| Purpose | What action you want the audience to take and how you will measure it |
| Eligibility | Who qualifies, how the team checks qualification and how many rewards one person can claim |
| Reward | Product, approved face value, delivery choice and support route |
| Release | Approval owner, issue schedule, maximum spend and what stops a run |
| Evidence | Confirmation from the order or PIN issue records and the status needed at close |
| Review | Open cases, remaining budget, participation results and decision on the next round |
Suppose you approve 500 rewards of R20. At full uptake that’s R10,000 in face value. An R11,000 budget leaves R1,000 for confirmed fees and approved exceptions. At the first review, 340 approved claims account for R6,800 in face value, with another R400 tied to 20 claims still under review. Check the supplier records to see what was actually charged.
Decide how to help an eligible person who can’t receive the reward through the planned channel. Have support look up the original issue before offering another route, so a replacement doesn’t become a second reward. Check the product terms before ordering. AllNetAirtime business rewards · SIMcloud
On the day rewards go out
Check the available balance and the version of the approved recipient file. Run duplicate and format checks, then have a second person compare the file totals with the approval. Pause if the totals differ or you reach the spend cap. Keep the original order references and tell support where to escalate unresolved results. Leave any unused budget unspent until the budget owner decides what to do with it.
Close the campaign with a documented decision
Report people invited, eligible claims, rewards issued, failed deliveries and unclaimed rewards separately. If you have redemption data, say how much of the campaign it covers. Compare participation with the baseline in the brief and reconcile confirmed charges before closing.
If participation rose but complaints did too, look at what generated the complaints. A confusing PIN message may be fixable before a second run. If participation barely changed, review the audience or incentive before paying for a bigger campaign. Record the decision and who owns it.
More in this series
- Choose a reward value recipients can actually use
- Airtime, data or a store voucher for customer rewards?
- Budget airtime incentives for a sales team
- How to verify airtime reward claims in a survey
- Run an airtime reward pilot across mixed mobile networks
- Estimate participation before buying rewards in bulk
- Reconcile unclaimed incentives at the end of a campaign
- Compare reward delivery by email, SMS and in-person handover
- Measure whether an airtime incentive improved participation
- Direct airtime or universal vouchers? A buying guide for South African businesses
- Manage a prepaid campaign with a fulfilment partner