Vodafone is a leading global telecommunications company with over 300 million mobile customers and 27 million fixed broadband customers across 21 markets and 48 partner markets.
In each territory, Vodafone provides various products and services, including smartphones and broadband, as well as fast-growing business offerings such as artificial intelligence and cloud services.
Vodafone and Awin have worked together across multiple markets for several years. A major contributor to their recent success has been the Awin MasterTag: a simple piece of Javascript that enables a quick and seamless roll out of Awin’s premium tech partners.
One of the premium partners that can be instantly deployed via the MasterTag is SaleCycle, which drives thousands of extra sales per month for Vodafone by plugging vital gaps in their digital strategy.
The challenge
Vodafone and Awin saw huge potential in using a technology partner to engage with visitors who placed a broadband plan in their basket but failed to checkout.
Initially, Vodafone challenged SaleCycle to drive new sales for home broadband. If successful, Vodafone would consider rolling out the same technology to other consumer products, including pay monthly handsets, SIM-only plans, and tablets, as well as expanding onto the business site. This would take Vodafone’s online abandonment strategy to a new level and make it a company-wide opportunity to drive new revenues across various product teams.
In addition, Vodafone wanted to see clear evidence that SaleCycle could drive incremental sales from customers showing signs of abandoning their journey and not finalizing their purchase.
The solution
SaleCycle’s data-driven solutions help brands like Vodafone increase conversion rates and drive new revenues by engaging customers with personalized and timely on-site and off-site messages. Vodafone have been using SaleCyle technology via the Awin MasterTag for over three years, drawing on their powerful data collection and activation capabilities.
Through SaleCycle’s bespoke script, Vodafone are able to identify visitors who added home broadband to their basket and left without purchasing. The technology enables them to re-engage these visitors via a series of emails and SMS messages in order to encourage the customer to return to the Vodafone site to complete their order.
Based on their expertise and experience, SaleCycle recommended using a timely ‘Three-Cycle’ email basket abandonment campaign to bring high-intent visitors back onto Vodafone’s website:
- Cycle 1: Targeted at customers who had just left their basket, the message reminded customers of the products left in the basket along with brand USPs on why to choose Vodafone.
- Cycle 2: After a day had passed, for specific baskets, Vodafone dialed up the urgency and the appeal with a time-limited ‘10% off’ unique coupon code for the visitor’s basket to increase click and conversion rates.
- Cycle 3: The third message issued a final reminder to check if the customer would like to come back to the site and complete their order.
Cycle 1: Cycle 2 :
Optimizing campaigns and ensuring compliance
To supplement these efforts, SaleCycle ran advanced optimization strategies for these campaigns via a range of different split tests.
One experiment, which monitored the impact of changing the call to action from ‘Continue Shopping’ to ‘Checkout Now’, resulted in a +3% uplift in click rates and an +18% boost in conversion rates. Other optimizations included reducing the time between Cycle 1 and Cycle 2 from 24 hours down to 20 hours which led to a +17% improvement in click rates and a staggering +100% increase in conversion rates.
SaleCycle were also able to ensure these campaigns were run in accordance with today’s evolving privacy laws and the challenges these often entail for corporations like Vodafone. By working with them to implement the SaleCycle Marketing Permission solution, Vodafone were able to gain the appropriate consent to send these communications to the customer in a fully compliant manner.
On-site exit-intent campaigns
After seeing strong results from the email campaign, Vodafone adopted a complementary on-site solution from SaleCycle that could tackle basket abandonment before it actually took place.
SaleCycle’s native overlays presented relevant offers when a customer showed intent to leave the Vodafone site without completing their purchase. The offers triggered for visitors who were inactive for a certain period - potentially browsing on other tabs - or moving their cursor outside of the boundaries of the window.
Vodafone saw compelling results from the abandonment campaign and swiftly turned to the same technology to answer questions about key products and services. Known internally as ‘The Problem Solver’, this application powered by SaleCycle replicated some of the qualities of Vodafone’s in-store service by presenting a series of common queries and supplying information on each.
Also triggered based on lengthy dwell times and mouse movements away from the main window, an overlay appeared containing a select number of questions:
- I’m looking for a deal
- I’m looking for a handset
- I want a SIMO [sim only] deal
- What is EVO? [Vodafone’s Lifetime Service Promise]
‘The Problem Solver’ includes smart features, such as a ‘back/next’ function so that customers can explore another question after getting their initial answer. SaleCycle and Vodafone also integrated relevant offers within certain questions to encourage conversions after successfully resolving the customer query.
The results
SaleCycle’s email and on-site campaigns have given Vodafone the tools to react to common signs of abandonment and subsequently turn more visitors into customers. Some of the most impressive results include:
- Outperforming Vodafone’s previous email abandonment solution for open rates (+30%), click rates (+44%), and conversion rates (+36%).
- Driving over 2,000 incremental sales to Vodafone every month by converting visitors at risk of leaving the basket page into buyers.
- Becoming a top-tier partner for Vodafone by generating a sizable percentage of the brand’s total online sales.
Considering additional benefits like SaleCycle’s ability to engage with a much wider audience than Vodafone’s previous solution, it’s clear that implementing this technology has been a success. In such a competitive telecoms market, it has enabled Vodafone to engage customers at risk of abandonment and positively impacted on the company’s bottom line.
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