O2 plans to 'thermally target' customers

O2 has told TechRadar that it plans to evolve its Priority Moments deal offers to consumers to include more relevant options.

Currently the newly-launched service has 30 partners on board, and users can get anything from cheaper books to free booze at shops and restaurants, but customers need to activate the application or browse to the website to see the list of available offers.

Ed Pellew, head of Priority Moments, told TechRadar that the network has big plans to improve the service in the future:

"We're going to keep evolving the service, making it more intelligent - this could potentially mean 'hot zones' [where users can specify locations they want to receive deals] - so we'll see how people use the service and evolve it in the direction they want.

Hot zones

Simon Dean, head of loyalty for O2 Media, went further, suggesting that alerts could be set up for when a customer's favourite restaurant chain is nearby and has an offer, or when conditions change:

"We could do something like thermal targeting, where we increase offers for something like ice cream when the weather gets warmer - these are the type of things we can do at the back end either manually or automatically."

'Thermal targeting' has been a long-standing goal for a lot of offer-based services, but the user base and delivery mechanism to combine a heat wave with instant and local offers has proved to be near impossible in the past.

Beep and save

NFC could also become part of the Priority Moments service in the future too, as Pellew said it was something O2 was 'absolutely' looking at for the service, which makes sense given the network has put a lot of focus in creating a platform for the contactless payments to flourish.

He pointed out that if retailers have the mechanism, then having an eWallet with money savings built in would provide an attractive and seamless experience for users, so if Priority Moments and NFC take off, it seems it will be when, rather than if, we'll be able to beep phones and save cash.