Mobile operator 3 has announced a plan to pay its subscribers for promoting the network to friends. Customers who become “3 Free Agents” will receive cash every time they get a friend to start using a free Pay-As-You-Go SIM from 3.
How does this work?
First of all, you have to be a 3 customer who is happy to push the operator on all of your friends. Then you go to http://freeagent.three.co.uk/ and create a Free Agent webpage for yourself. After that, it’s up to you to get people to go to your Free Agent website and sign up for a free 3 SIM there. 3 is specifically targeting people who are heavy social networking users with this scheme. The operator wants the Free Agent program to spread virally across networks like Facebook and Twitter.
What does the Free Agent get?
Free Agents need a PayPal account for this to work. Every time someone you’ve signed up tops up by £10 for the first time, you get £5. So if five of your mates sign up for a 3 PAYG SIM and top up by a tenner, you get 25 quid. Your friends will also get a free £2 in addition to this first top up.
Importantly, this is only available for the Pay-As-You-Go SIM from 3:
The “free” stuff up there works for 90 days after you’ve topped up. This SIM-only contract requires you to already have an unlocked 3G phone in your possession. The aim of the deal seems to be to make it as attractive as possible for 3G users to switch networks without switching handsets. 3’s Head of Online, Ash Roots said “there is nothing new in giving away free SIMs as SIM-only is a growing section of the PAYG market. But 3 Free Agents is the first UK initiative available now that rewards customers with cold hard cash for promoting and distributing SIMs using the internet.”
What we think?
I think the first time I saw a scheme like this was for Sky digital TV… if you signed a friend up, you got £50. And that was several years ago. So ok, this isn’t exactly a new or fresh concept. However its heavy reliance on social networking is a new and interesting direction. Theoretically, if you have a massive Facebook and Twitter following, you could make quite a chunk of money out of this. However, as with most deals of this kind, only the first few people who get on board will see any good out of it. The number of people who will be attracted to a deal like this will be quickly depleted. It’s probably a fairly cheap way of gaining paying customers, and it’s the kind of tactic you expect to see in a country where there are no “new” subscribers – only subscribers you can convince to jump ship to your network. I’d be interested to see the exact number of people who join 3 on the Free Agent scheme. Because of it’s very nature, it would be very easy and quick to tot up the metrics on this afterwards. Though I don’t suppose the chances that 3 will release that info is very high.
