Vodafone + VOXI + SaleCycle

[00:00:00]Sam: Hi Rob.

[00:00:07]Rob: Hey Sam.

[00:00:08]Sam: So today we're talking about abandonment. Is that right?

[00:00:11]Rob: Yeah, that's right. But specifically I'm talking about basket abandonment. [00:00:15] Um, I don't want you or anyone listening to think that You I'm going to be talking about anything personally traumatic from my own childhood.

[00:00:20]Sam: I mean we can, if you want to do that too.

[00:00:22] Yeah,

[00:00:23]Rob: I don't know, I'm not sure a podcast is the right place for that, but you know, if we are sharing, I did once abandon my sister in a [00:00:30] busy shopping center when she was like five and I was meant to be looking after her and we genuinely very nearly lost her. She's fine. I, you know, don't worry. There's no jeopardy here.

[00:00:38] She actually abandoned the rest of us and now lives happily in Barcelona.

[00:00:41]Sam: Happy ending after all.

[00:00:42] Hi, and welcome back [00:00:45] to the third episode of Awin-Win Marketing Podcast. So Rob, talk to me a bit more about our guests, sales cycle, Vodafone and VOXI. I know who sales cycle is. It's an affiliate tech partner that closely monitors user behavior to personalize customer [00:01:00] experience. and ultimately drive more brand conversions being an American myself and not sure if my accent gave that away I don't know VOXI or Vodafone, who are they?

[00:01:08]Rob: So for our American listeners like Sam, or for anyone that's not familiar with these brands, Vodafone, they're a [00:01:15] leading multinational telecoms company. And they've got presence across like Europe, Asia, Africa, a whole host of different countries around the world. They're home to a range of consumer and B2B products and services, including mobile, broadband, and Wi Fi, smart tech, [00:01:30] and TV.

[00:01:30] Now today, we're not actually talking to Vodafone about affiliate marketing for all of those products, but specifically around its mobile contracts.

[00:01:37]Sam: And where does VOXI come into play here? As we now have a brand, Vodafone, and an affiliate partner, SaleCycle.

[00:01:44]Rob: Yeah, it's a good question. [00:01:45] This is a bit, of an, uh, unconventional episode today.

[00:01:48] So, VOXI are actually a distinct mobile network that was started by Vodafone to cater for a kind of, a generally younger audience. Younger than both you and I, Sam, unfortunately. So [00:02:00] VOXI's product is one that's largely, um, centered on the fact that it offers contracts with unlimited social media use.

[00:02:06] And that's been hugely popular since launching back in 2017. Although the two brands do run their separate affiliate programs, they've worked closely [00:02:15] with one another to share their learnings and include, like, uh, things like where specific partners have worked well for each other. Now in this case, Vodafone's success with SaleCycle in running their affiliate program basket abandonment campaigns actually led VOXI to then also working with them.

[00:02:27]Sam: Very cool. Despite the dig at my age, I [00:02:30] can't wait to hear more.

[00:02:36]Rob: You've been working at SaleCycle for about five or so years now, but SaleCycle have been working with Vodafone for a bit longer than that, I think was it, so [00:02:45] could you tell us a bit about how you managed to kind of spark that relationship and how it started off and what you were working on with them initially?

[00:02:51]Will: So we used to have Vodafone eShop when they were an entity, so there used to be kind of small hotspot devices and different travel arrangements that they sold.

[00:02:59]Rob: [00:03:00] With me is Will Hill, Senior Account Manager at SaleCycle.

[00:03:03]Will: And then we launched Vodafone Home Broadband in 2020. So kind of mid to late 2020 was initial trial starting with personal home broadband abatement that then evolved from a successful campaign.[00:03:15]

[00:03:15] Moving forwards into retargeting more customers starting around 2022 and then launching Foxy in June last year as well as Top Mobile in January last year.

[00:03:26]Rob: So the story of the partnership with SaleCycle has been one that's constantly [00:03:30] evolving and expanding its usage for Vodafone.

[00:03:33]Tanita: Yeah, I think Will and the team at SaleCycle are the experts in this field, so they bring their expertise in.

[00:03:39]Rob: Also with us is Tanita Dickson, Ecommerce Specialist at Vodafone.

[00:03:43]Tanita: We share our requirements [00:03:45] with them, they offer us advice. It's a two way relationship, it's not just us two. And this is what we want and this is what we want you to do.

[00:03:51]Rob: What's the nature of the relationship between yourself Tanita and you Margaux?

[00:03:56] Do you collaborate on best practice around affiliate [00:04:00] marketing?

[00:04:00]Margaux: As VOXI we've benefited a lot from the established relationship that Vodafone had with SaleCycle.

[00:04:07]Rob: And finally, that's Margaux Montchamp, Ecommerce Specialist at VOXI.

[00:04:11]Margaux: So it's been a really smooth setup for us, very smooth [00:04:15] implementation. And so that's where we can collaborate quite a lot on that because we benefit from learning on all of the strategies and tests that Vodafone have already gone through.

[00:04:26] We can also go through the same tests to see if that's working for [00:04:30] VOXI too and for our core target as well. So it's making it much easier for VOXI, I think, to benefit from that.

[00:04:37]Rob: So Margaux, we were talking previously just prior to coming on to the recording about basket abandonment being quite a big issue for [00:04:45] telecoms brands and we know it's an issue for e commerce brands more generally.

[00:04:48] And I just wondered what you see from VOXI's side of things in terms of the rate of abandonment amongst the customers that you're interacting with on your website.

[00:04:57]Margaux: Yes, so VOXI's targeting more of a youthful [00:05:00] audience and what we tend to see on our website is about 80 percent of customers who actually add something to the basket.

[00:05:07] are going to drop off right after that. So it's a huge pool of customers that we need to engage back into VOXI again after they've [00:05:15] left the website, after adding whatever it is they added to basket. So that's where this solution was perfect for us because that was helping us re engage this audience that knew about the website, knew about VOXI, but decided not to buy it.[00:05:30]

[00:05:30] continue to purchase after that.

[00:05:31]Rob: And from Vodafone, because VOXI have got a very kind of narrow focus on a particular demographic, Vodafone more general, how does it kind of tally with what you see, Tanita, on your side?

[00:05:41]Tanita: Yeah, so it's very much in line with what we see for our new customers. Yeah. The rate's [00:05:45] a bit lower for our upgrading customers, who were focusing on retention, within the customers who were Asking to add an additional line or add an additional product to their plan.

[00:05:54] Yeah, it's a highly competitive space. There's so many sharks in the [00:06:00] sea. And yeah, and us as consumers too, we're looking for the best deal, right? So it's not just about staying loyal to one brand anymore. Everything's changed. It's not about, I'm just going to stick with the same network that I've had since I was a teenager.

[00:06:14] People are [00:06:15] changing. So to understand that our customers are coming onto our site. They might be building a whole package of what phone they want, the airtime plan they want, but they might just be able to park that and say, right, let me go and see what somebody else is going to offer me for the exact same thing.

[00:06:29] It's about us [00:06:30] trying to re-engage those customers. We're trying to get them to choose us over others. You know, everyone's very price sensitive at the moment. So basket abandonment is needed to put us back at the top of their inbox and remind them of Why they came to our site in the first place.

[00:06:44]Will: [00:06:45] We tend to see that with conversion rate as well.

[00:06:46] Don't we? So within acquisition customers, you know, it's a slightly harder sell. They're not part of Vodafone already, whereas existing customers get their existing customer discount. So it tends to be a slightly stronger conversion rate because that opposition looks more. [00:07:00] And I

[00:07:01]Rob: guess they've got the affinity with the brand already.

[00:07:03] They've established a bit of a relationship with them. They might have enjoyed that kind of product or service that they've already got. And so you're halfway down the path to conversion hopefully already by establishing that rapport with them.

[00:07:14]Tanita: [00:07:15] Exactly that, yeah. We've already got the relationship.

[00:07:17] They're already loyal to Vodafone in the sense that they've maybe come to an end of 24 months with us. minimum. So yeah, it's just about keeping them.

[00:07:26]Rob: So Will, how did SaleCycle address this abandonment issue?

[00:07:29]Will: [00:07:30] Well, one of the most successful campaigns for us is the Basket Abandonment email and SMS channel.

[00:07:34] So that's kind of our, our bread and butter and we know it works well and we've got best practices on what works across all of our clients. So when anyone's got clients leaving the website, that's our first kind [00:07:45] of port of call. So for us, it was, we had a successful campaign with Vodafone. How can we then replicate that?

[00:07:51] Launch that on VOXI and Talkmobile through capturing customers email addresses, capturing their baskets and then sending them a series of emails that we feel was [00:08:00] lucrative enough, but also balancing the content and the incentives to push sales.

[00:08:05]Rob: Are there ways in which you tweak and you have to cater for that very different and distinct audience for VOXI and the kind of abandonment techniques that you use?[00:08:15]

[00:08:15] Versus maybe for a more wider general purpose brand like Vodafone.

[00:08:20]Will: Yeah, yeah, definitely. All of our campaigns are totally personalized for each client. But I think when we've got a group like Vodafone and there's different brands within that, even between Talk Mobile and [00:08:30] VOXI, we try to differentiate that content.

[00:08:33] Our design team are really great at interpreting brand guidelines given from the clients, but also what we know works well. VOXI's a much more youthful brand, so how do we change that content from Vodafone? Vodafone. And also some [00:08:45] of the purchases that were retargeting with Foxy, the average order value that might be left might be between 10 and 15 pounds because it's a sim only deal.

[00:08:51] Whereas with Vodafone we're sometimes looking at tablet deals, smartwatches, expensive handsets, so it's how we can really try to make that [00:09:00] content as engaging as possible to deliver that sale.

[00:09:03]Rob: Yeah, yeah, I think it's probably revealing about my age that I've only ever been targeted with ads by Vodafone, so.

[00:09:10] Maybe you could tell us a bit about how you actually tweak the actual comms that [00:09:15] go out and the emails that go out to those two different sets of customers.

[00:09:18]Will: Yeah, so with Vodafone we take a much more conservative approach. Things like subject lines and even within the email body it's very simple, kind of stripped back approach. There's not a lot of copy within that. And the kind of [00:09:30] colors are very on brand and they're very much matched with that journey that you'd see on the Vodafone website. And similarly with VOXI, you know, the website has a lot more going on. The colors are much darker, much more vibrant, and we use different content within those emails to [00:09:45] reflect that as well.

[00:09:46] So if we had an image of both emails, they look completely different. Within the subject lines of VOXI, um, they're much more playful and much more kind of youthful. We try to make them trend related and stay up to date with things that are ongoing. Like

[00:09:59]Rob: current events [00:10:00] and affairs. Yeah.

[00:10:01]Will: Yeah.

[00:10:02]Margaux: For example, it's very often you will be able to find an emoji in a VOXI subject line of one of those Baskerville emails.

[00:10:10] I'm not sure you would see that on a VOXI. Never. Yeah, we [00:10:15] use that kind of thing as obviously we're targeting more of a youthful audience, then that's. That's making us more relatable as well and more engaging for them.

[00:10:23]Will: Yeah, exactly. So we always try to differentiate that content and make it unique and make it personal for that brand and for that [00:10:30] customer.

[00:10:30] Yeah. And as Margaux mentioned, customer demographics change quite a lot between Vodafone and VOXI, so it's just how we can. appeal to the different types of customer.

[00:10:39]Rob: And there is a series of like cycle emails that you send. How many would that consist of in terms of the [00:10:45] campaign?

[00:10:45]Will: Yes. So standard, we normally go ahead with a two cycle campaign.

[00:10:48] So that would be your first reminder somewhere between 30 minutes to an hour after you leave the site. And then with a second follow up around 20 to 24 hours after that. More recently, we've found a lot of success in adding a third [00:11:00] reminder in, maybe two, three days after they've left the site. So can we remind them of their basket?

[00:11:04] Okay. Show them any other products or suggestions or even let them know about new product launches or incentives that we can use for us. It's trying to get those initial two cycles, right. And [00:11:15] then look to add to it. Once we know that's working well.

[00:11:17]Rob: Yeah.

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[00:12:12]Rob: From Vodafone's perspective, Tanita, you're obviously using an [00:12:15] affiliate partner to execute on this abandonment. technique. And I just wondered, how does that square with maybe some of the more internal marketing comms that you send out? Do you do any sort of abandonment stuff internally outside of the affiliate channel or do you rely on [00:12:30] SaleCycle to do that stuff for you a lot of the time?

[00:12:31]Tanita: We rely on SaleCycle wholly. Our like, base marketing teams will send out like our promotional comms to our existing customers. But I think it's great that way, because then we have all of their attention. We don't have [00:12:45] a team who are working on sending out promotions and then they're also focusing on basket abandonment.

[00:12:49] This way we've got Will to hand and we can use him to just solely focus on this. Particularly for new customers, I think that a lot of email marketing is directed at existing [00:13:00] customers most of the time, and basket abandonment is amazing in that it captures that. That information is able to engage with people who you maybe don't have on the database already.

[00:13:08]Rob: Yeah. So, Will, is it your team that creates the content for those emails, and then it's a case of getting [00:13:15] client approval before you can send something out? Is that how it tends to work?

[00:13:18]Will: Yeah, it tends to work one of two ways, actually. It just depends on what the campaign is. If it's more promotional, it tends to be more client led because they know the brand better, they know what works out for their consumers.

[00:13:28] Other ways, and especially within the [00:13:30] Vodafone partnership, it's very much a two way street, like Tanita mentioned. Some things can be actually created and designed by the Vodafone design team, shared with us, and then we build it into a working template.

[00:13:39]Rob: Okay.

[00:13:39]Will: So it's just about working together with that partnership to deliver the best result.

[00:13:44]Rob: Yeah. Yeah. [00:13:45] Having that alignment, having that real intimate knowledge of what the brand requirements are and. what the expectations are about how they speak to their customers generally is really pivotal to what you can then obviously work on and create yourselves.

[00:13:57]Will: Yeah, definitely. And we, we try to do that within our client [00:14:00] relationships anyways.

[00:14:00] Yeah. Really try to build those relationships with the Build4One team, get to know them, get to know their structure and how they target their customers, what works for them, sharing that knowledge, even of things that have been tested on the client side. So then we can use that and vice versa. So Tanita, [00:14:15]

[00:14:15]Rob: over the course of the partnership, what would you say you've most enjoyed about the partnership?

[00:14:19] working together with SaleCycle.

[00:14:21]Tanita: Something I really enjoy is testing, seeing test results, playing around with things, trying to optimize journeys, optimize the emails we're sending [00:14:30] out to the customers, and Will's all for it. Yeah, he does love a test. That's the part I've enjoyed, you know, getting those results in and saying, right, we sent them this version to this group of customers, and we sent another version to another group, which one performed better, [00:14:45] and what can we learn from that?

[00:14:45] Yeah, I think. That's what keeps it exciting. That's what keeps us evolving. And yeah, I think it's been key and something Will's always championed from the beginning. He's always said, we don't have to stick with this way of working. We can try different things.

[00:14:58]Rob: [00:15:00] Have you ever been surprised by the testing?

[00:15:02] Like, have there been things that you've sent out that you weren't maybe expecting to work that have or vice versa, things that you thought this is an absolute winner and It's come back and they've just got nothing from the audience.

[00:15:12]Tanita: Can I be honest, when Will said to us, we should [00:15:15] really focus on SMS, I was like, really?

[00:15:19] I was like, are we going backwards here? We've been focusing so much on email and Will was championing SMS and was saying to us, guys, we've got to get this plugged in, it's going to do really well for you. And it's done [00:15:30] amazingly. He was right, he's the expert. But yeah, it's something that we were not prepared for.

[00:15:35] Probably as excited as Will was about it. But when the results came in, we joined him.

[00:15:41]Rob: How does the SMS stuff work from a practical side of things?

[00:15:44]Will: Same as [00:15:45] basketball and emails is just unlocking a new channel. So those proportion of customers who leave their phone number, their consent during the journey, maybe they're not comfortable receiving emails, it opens gaps up there.

[00:15:54] But also for those customers who are open to receiving both, if they haven't purchased. [00:16:00] SMS falls within that first touch point. So SMS is a much quicker channel. It's much more accessible, especially for today's society. So it's something that's much stronger in terms of conversion rates and click rates.

[00:16:12] And it's a nice kind of way to reintroduce the [00:16:15] brand to the customer once they've left. I think for us, it's really great to. To make it more personal to our customer and get that kind of cross channel approach. We've definitely seen that within the initial results term. Not every test we run is as successful as we think.

[00:16:28] So we definitely get, like you said, [00:16:30] sometimes tests that we don't expect. But I think it's also important to show the current setup is optimum for Vodafone or VOXI. And then move on to learn more.

[00:16:39]Rob: Yeah. Margaux, are you going to chip in there about the testing element of, um. Yeah.

[00:16:43]Margaux: For VOXI, we, we do love [00:16:45] a test as well.

[00:16:46] I was thinking, um, what kind of tests have I been surprised by? And probably I would say personalization of the subject lines

[00:16:55] where

[00:16:56]Margaux: I was expecting customers to like for us to [00:17:00] be more, more personal with them and call them by their name. But no, it wasn't really the case. It didn't really make. as much of a difference.

[00:17:07] And it was actually, we were better off not doing it. So that was interesting. I would not have expected that. What's your

[00:17:13]Rob: instinct or take [00:17:15] on that? Like, is it people just a bit freaked out by it or?

[00:17:19]Will: We've seen quite recently that personalization works better within those kind of second and third touch points.

[00:17:25] So, It seems to be that that first touch point is so close and being on the site, they understand [00:17:30] the email. They know very much what it's about, and they probably don't focus on the subject line that much. It's more about getting back to the site if, if they're open to. And whereas the second and third emails are much more of a personal communication as a follow up to, to try and say, you know, are you still interested?

[00:17:43] Would you like to come back? And I [00:17:45] think we've seen a lot of success. We did the same for Vodafone. And. That second cycle test performed really well, whereas it didn't work in the first, but you'd expect them to both work, but maybe they're not comfortable too soon.

[00:17:56]Margaux: They need the time. Yeah. No, [00:18:00] but in terms of the partnership, I would like to add to all of those tests that what's been really enjoyable is Will's flexibility and how approachable he's been throughout the partnership.

[00:18:13] And that's where it's been. [00:18:15] Really helpful to have will on board because not only is he very knowledgeable but also very keen to support very much on it just jump in on if there's an issue to solve going to be done very shortly so it's giving us that flexibility as well as a brand which [00:18:30] we might not have in house a lot of the time.

[00:18:33] Very helpful. Well, it sounds

[00:18:34]Rob: like the partnership is in a really healthy place. So what's, what's next? What's on the horizon for the future? Anything planned? Can you tell us anything at all?

[00:18:43]Will: Yeah. As, as Marco mentioned, we [00:18:45] always. See ourselves as part of our clients teams, you know, we invest a lot of time and resources to, to get to know people and to build those relationships.

[00:18:52] And one thing that we're always really open to do is understand client challenges and see how we can best help to resolve them, even if they [00:19:00] don't directly link with our current product. So more recently, we've had conversations with Vodafone to look at different journeys on the site that. There might be some technical work needed and we can assist with that.

[00:19:09] But I think more generally speaking, it's more of what we've done so far. It's, you know, continuing to test and learn, [00:19:15] meeting new teams within Vodafone and VOXI to see if there's any new goals, um, and how we can help achieve those and, and help to.

[00:19:23]Margaux: We've actually just started implementing some onsite overlay campaigns on top of the basket abandonment [00:19:30] solution that we've discussed so far.

[00:19:32] Uh, we've just started experimenting with that about a month and a half ago. So I think that's also going to be part of the future for our partnership. And that's actually quite interesting for us that SaleCycle is able to [00:19:45] provide both those services because. We were mentioning basket abandonments, but the overlay campaign is, it looks like a pop up online.

[00:19:54] This is actually to retain them before they think that they need to leave, because this is [00:20:00] only displayed for customers who are idle for 20 seconds or showing intent to leave. And so that's making sure that we're actually retaining those customers before they leave is interesting.

[00:20:10]Will: And that's a great example of how we've helped to grow the partnership.

[00:20:13] So The onsite [00:20:15] overlays was something that we originally tested with Vodafone. Vodafone need to plug a gap where customers who were earlier in the journey, they hadn't quite added to the basket, but we're still dropping off. What could we do to really help push that? So we've run a range of different onsite overlays to promote different [00:20:30] incentives, different offers.

[00:20:31] And we've seen a lot of success, especially with existing customers to try and push second line sales. Things like adding a new SIM or family members and things, if you're feeling generous. So, um, yeah, we've, it's, it's nice to see how we've taken some of that work to [00:20:45] cross one brand within the group and help to roll it out to others as well.

[00:20:48]Rob: Yeah. Yeah. So finally, what would be your advice do you think for a business about how to get the most out of the affiliate channel?

[00:20:55]Will: It would be to invest that time resource to get to know clients. You know, we [00:21:00] do a lot of quarterly reviews, a lot of face to face meetings, putting time and resources into building those relationships definitely pays off.

[00:21:07] It helps us to understand exactly what the challenges are and how we can help and also form. I guess you guys know exactly what's going on and we can [00:21:15] continue to test and learn. Another thing that we would advise is always just be open to those testing, to those learnings, you know, the Vodafone team know me, I'm hopping on about testing, but we've seen a lot of success through it and I think it's nice.

[00:21:26] We've got that kind of. Open element for collaboration. [00:21:30]

[00:21:30]Rob: Tanita, what would you say from the brand side?

[00:21:31]Tanita: You know, we've touched on it a couple of times in terms of the experts. And, yeah, we do have an in house affiliate marketing team. They cover a range of different parts of our journeys and speaking to our customers.

[00:21:43] So, we're always the expert [00:21:45] in, you know, Speaking to our customers when they've abandoned their basket. So, you know, he's going to have that area covered. And I think for us, it's important that we focus on that area, because as we said, there are high rates of customers who are leaving the website. So it's worth actually drilling down on [00:22:00] speaking to them directly.

[00:22:01] And Will and his team are set up already to do that fantastically. They've already got case studies of how well it's working. So we are trusting that they will provide the best outcome for us.

[00:22:11]Rob: Yeah, yeah. And what about you, Margaux?

[00:22:13]Margaux: Just like Tanita [00:22:15] said, the affiliate marketing partner that you're going to be working with is the expert in their field.

[00:22:20] So my advice would be trusting and working hand in hand with this partner because at the end of the day, you have to trust them to work for you. Do what's best because [00:22:30] they know what's best from their side. They'll be able to advise and yeah, the collaboration aspect is really important. I think trusting them to do the right things for your brand.

[00:22:43]Rob: Thank you for tuning into this [00:22:45] episode of the Awin-Win Marketing Podcast. On our next episode in two weeks, Sam sits down with McGee & Co and CreatorIW chat about a topic taking the performance marketing world by storm blended influencer affiliate campaigns.

[00:22:59]Sam: [00:23:00] Until then, if you've enjoyed this episode, we'd really appreciate if you give us a review.

[00:23:03] If you have any feedback or suggestions for future episodes and content, then please get in touch because we'd love to hear from you. You can reach out to me and Rob on LinkedIn or by emailing us at podcast at awin.com.

[00:23:14]Rob: As [00:23:15] always, thanks for listening to Awin-Win Marketing Podcasr, where we show you how affiliate partnerships always offer a win-win.

[00:23:22] Bye.