Vanguard of PayPay Marketing Vol. 6 Marketing Planning Department

Having reached the benchmark of 47 million registered users and 3.66 million locations available for use nationwide, PayPay is a breath of fresh-and-cashless air in Japan, offering a comfortable and fun payment experience to its users and merchants who use the service throughout their day. Critical to this achievement is PayPay’s team of diligent marketers, driving campaigns and marketing strategies in the hope of climbing to further heights. Even now, they continue to push forward at greater speed and vigor as we speak.
This issue features Taito Kimura of the Marketing Planning Department.

Tell us about the Marketing Planning Department!

Having been assigned the mission to increase paying users and strengthen the user base in general, the Marketing Planning Department is responsible for planning & executing initiatives in line with the overall marketing strategy. The department consists of four teams: Campaign Planning, Campaign Execution, User Growth, and KYC Promotion.

With the goal of increasing paying users, the Campaign Planning team plans & designs campaigns co-hosted with merchants such as Seven-Eleven or with local governments across the country, and other campaigns hosted by PayPay like the Cho PayPay Jumbo (Super PayPay Jumbo).

The Campaign Execution team operates & manages the in-house campaign system, ensuring that the vast number of campaigns are run efficiently and without error. Introducing RPA has been a recent focus for even better efficiency.

The User Growth team oversees different initiatives for effective customer grooming, which involves grouping users into segments and reaching out to them accordingly. For example, for users who have not used PayPay in a while after making a single transaction, the team runs several scenario-based campaigns to increase the engagement frequency of users in this segment, such as by offering points in return for using PayPay a certain number of times within the month.
Given the sheer number of users, the team has started to use a machine learning-based prediction model to identify different user segments.

The KYC Promotion team’s goal is to thwart criminal activities attempting to abuse PayPay’s financial services, by facilitating measures to get users to verify who they are. This includes running campaigns like the “Billion Yen New Year’s Lottery” and “1 Billion Points Lottery,” or taking other measures like enabling the use of the IC chip in driver’s licenses for identity verification, which PayPay was the first to support in the cashless industry.

Tell us about the most challenging and most rewarding part of your job in the Marketing Planning Department!

Since the performance of campaigns that we plan have a direct impact on significant company-wide KPIs, the feeling you get from that – that you’re making a difference in the business – is very rewarding.

Another rewarding moment I take pride in is seeing PayPay’s TV commercials on air or promotional goods put on display at stores. Hearing the “PayPay♪” sound as someone pays at the cash register is another moment that never ceases to delight. On the other hand, it isn’t seldom that there are multiple campaigns happening at once, or specifications of a mass-scale campaign aren’t fixed until the very last minute… on days like that my workload can be quite heavy and exhausting.

Tell us about the work culture in the Marketing Planning Department!

Although each team has their own ‘color’ since they pursue rather distinct goals, I think what’s common is the basic mentality to help each other out whenever there’s something in the way of getting the job done. I think we also make an effort to get to know each other across teams, like visiting someone using WFA and working in Kyoto, watching a baseball game together at the Koshien Stadium after planning a campaign there, or hanging out in an online gaming space.

I heard that you are actively hiring. Tell us your thoughts and what you value when hiring!

Having the mindset of helping each other out is what I find particularly important. More specifically, if something comes up that’s not exactly anyone’s “role,” someone who can actively discuss it and pick it up as their own issue is the sort of person I’d like to work with.

Characteristic of high-performers at PayPay, the qualities I value in a person are – they persevere until the end, they go out of their way despite a busy schedule to learn things about the industry deep and wide, and they’re not afraid of failing along the way to push a project forward.

Message to future colleagues

I don’t think there are many companies out there that provide this many opportunities to plan measures to groom customers or campaigns with an audience of 47 million people.
If you join us, you’ll have no other option but to take the wheel and drive, which said differently, is nothing short of a great opportunity to grow. My message is – let’s take on that challenge together as a team, here at PayPay.

*The recruitment status is current at the time of the interview.

Special Thanks: Taito Kimura / Planning: Sura Kim / Edited by: PayPay Inside-Out Editorial Team / Translator: Kye / Translation Editor: Jeanette
*Employees’ affiliations are as of the time of the interview.