Vonage Shifts From Landing Customers to Keeping Them

A new promotional piece from Vonage Holdings Corp. (VG) that’s not all about sale prices on the companies VoIP services, stood out in the direct mail deluge that’s fast become part of life in the consumer services market.

Called “More than Just Talk,” the piece touts more than 25 features already included in the service designed to “simplify the way you communicate.”

Included in a torrent of direct mail is now a piece from Vonage that focuses exclusively on the extra features available to its current customers. In fact, the glossy, multi-page mail piece doesn’t mention a single price, anywhere.

Instead, the Vonage foldout is focused on getting customers to create an online account and harness the features and functionality it affords be it Voicemail Plus, Simul-Ring, Vonage Visual Voicemail or Vonage General Help.

The direct mail effort marks a departure for the VoIP provider as it focuses on customer retention as opposed to customer acquisition, with the later being the big focus on the consumer VoIP services market for some time.

The piece urges customers to create an online account to view granular billing detail and related data, though the company does not provide a monthly paper bill to those that have the monthly amount billed to a credit card.

And, to be fair, there is a suggestion buried in the color and text that customers add a single line.

Previous numerous direct mail pieces delivered via mail or via envelopes of coupons focused on a promotion where the service costs $9.99 per month as opposed to nearly triple that amount, perhaps reflecting the fierce competition in the consumer voice market.

More recently, Vonage e-mailed customers with a customer referral offer not far removed from the corporate H.R. department that gave bonuses and more to those who signed up friends, family and others.