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Mobile Marketing Leader, Blyk, Puts Identified Customers at the Heart of its Business Model

Blyk, the new mobile network for 16- to 24-year-olds funded by advertising, has announced that it has signed over 100,000 UK members since it launched in September 2007 - six months ahead of schedule.

Blyk has been working with GB Group to put a robust identity verification process at the heart of their business model. This enables Blyk to confirm the exact age and identity of each registered member and, consequently, offer advertisers a much higher degree of confidence in the quality of the underlying member database.

Blyk has grown a member database that reflects the diverse interests of its membership and by being able to segment this to a fine level of detail, the operator is seeing average response rates of 29 per cent - which it describes as "industry leading."

Leif Fagelstedt, Chief Operating Officer at Blyk confirms:

"Working with GB, we are able to offer advertisers full confidence that potential customers are who they say they are and, more importantly, are the age they say they are. The quality of our member database is our number one priority and we are delighted that our advertisers are enjoying higher response rates than available through any other media. With virtual and digital networking now commonplace it is all too easy for advertisers to end up targeting non-existent people. With our model, every member's identity is fully verified to give us the added confidence that advertisers are targeting genuine prospects."

At its launch in September 2007, Timo Ahopelto, Blyk’s Head of Strategy, praised GB Group as a proven leader in its field, adding: "GB's expertise in age and identity related management issues, particularly in the telecommunications market, means we have total confidence in this critical starting point of our customer life cycle process."

And following the new announcement of Blyk’s initial success (25 April 2008) Richard Law, CEO of GB Group, added: "We’re hugely excited at the news that Blyk is 6 months ahead of schedule in its member acquisition programme. This is the fastest growing area of GB’s business and it demonstrates how powerful really knowing your customer can be