Vodafone’s Facebook Campaigns- A Lesson in Customer Retention, Enhanced Ad Recall, and Reduced Cost

Based in Newbury in the United Kingdom, Vodafone has been providing a range of products and services for consumers, businesses, and governments since 1985. Apart from its mobile services, Vodafone also offers fixed broadband and TV services, cloud and hosting, internet protocol-virtual private network services, roaming, and unified communications services.

While Vodafone has been making steady inroads across markets globally, the advent of the internet and the emergence of various social media platforms subsequently gave a further impetus to Vodafone’s growth. And Facebook played a key role in powering that growth as the telecom network carried out wonderful campaigns via the social media platform.

So, here’s how Vodafone leveraged Facebook to consolidate its position in three markets to help you understand the marketing potential of Facebook and how you can use it to meet your goals.

1. Vodafone Turkey

Vodafone is the second biggest mobile operator in Turkey, with more than 26 million subscribers in 2021.

Their Objective

Vodafone Turkey sought to offer its subscribers great new deals to help retain those who were considering canceling their contracts.

Solution & Approach

To retain more customers, Vodafone Turkey wanted to compare the effectiveness of Facebook subscriber-centric targeting solutions compared to an audience created using internal Vodafone Turkey customer data.

The two audiences were shown an ad that linked them to the MyVodafone app, where a personalized offer was presented to them. This was described as a “last offer” before their contract expired. Customers could examine the complete terms and conditions and then decide whether to accept the offer.

The ad creative was built by Vodafone Turkey’s in-house creative team to follow Facebook’s best practices for mobile-optimized ad creative. Assets were framed for mobile in 4:5 and 9:16 formats for feed and Stories, respectively, and ran on both Facebook and Instagram. The ad creative was designed to be attention-grabbing, highlighting the customized offer (“Vodafone Turkey has a special offer for you”) and featuring animation displaying minutes and gigabytes emerging from a gift package.

The Result

Vodafone Turkey’s Facebook campaign performed extraordinarily well, leading to 11.5X more incremental retained customers and a 39% lower cost per incremental offer acceptance by using Facebook-subscriber-centric targeting, compared to using its own customer data. Also, the campaign resulted in 63% more incremental offer acceptance through Facebook subscriber-centric targeting.

2. Vodafone Spain

Vodafone was launched in Spain in 2000, where it offers a range of telecom services, including fibre internet, TV, mobile, and fixed telephony.

Their Objective

Vodafone Spain wanted to highlight the advantages of its special summer offers and generate awareness, engagement, and sales for its summer campaign.

Solution & Aproach

Vodafone and its agency Señora Rushmore partnered with the Meta Creative Shop team to create a series of mobile-first ads for Facebook. Different ad sets were created to appeal to the different sets of people it was trying to reach: existing customers, non-customers, and people within a particular geographical area.

The campaign included eye-catching ads in a variety of formats, including video, photo, carousel, and Stories. Non-customers were shown ads highlighting the benefits of joining Vodafone while existing customers were shown offers for additional services. All the ads drove traffic to the Vodafone website to find out more or subscribe to the offer.

Combining its own customer information with Facebook’s subscriber-centric targeting solutions allowed Vodafone to send its different offers to existing and prospective customers across Spain. Vodafone also wanted to specifically boost its subscriber numbers in the major Spanish cities, so it ran a smaller campaign aimed at people living in Madrid, Seville, Barcelona, and Valencia.

The Result

Vodafone Spain’s Facebook campaign turned out to be a major success. The campaign resulted in an 8.2-point lift in standard ad recall. Also, the message association saw a 2.4-point lift.

3. Vodafone Italy

Vodafone is one of the biggest telecommunication companies in the Italyn market and is part of Vodafone Group, the largest pan-European and African technology communications company.

Their Objective

Vodafone Italy wanted to improve the performance of its direct response-focused Facebook lead ads, which traditionally had used only images.

Solution & Approach

Vodafone Italy decided to test its existing Facebook lead ads that used still images compared to a new set of lead ads using video. The telecom company worked with Meta Business Partner The Story Lab to develop a series of videos for lead ads that would quickly communicate the benefits of being with Vodafone Italy.

To ensure it was making the most of the video format, Vodafone Italy ran a 7-day “pre-test” phase for the campaign, producing three different videos. The videos’ performance was judged on view-through rate, conversion rate, and delivery. Feedback from the comments on the ads helped Vodafone finetune the campaign video.

To compare results between the video and image ads, Vodafone Italy used an A/B test in the Meta Experiments tool. The Experiments tool is free to use and keeps test results in one place, including those created in Ads Manager.

The Result

Vodafone Italy carried out an impressive Facebook campaign, which delivered outstanding results. The campaign led to a 48% decrease in cost per lead among people aged 18–34 and a 9% decrease in overall cost per lead. Also, there was a 47% decrease in cost per click.

Bottom Line

Despite the emergence of a plethora of marketing avenues, Facebook easily remains the most sought marketing platform for most brands. With its various features like mobile-first video ads, Meta Business Partners, and its messaging service, Messenger, Facebook offers brands plenty of marketing options to choose from. However, to capitalize upon the potential of this excellent marketing avenue, brands need a combination of solid marketing strategy and impressive content, which can help them create maximum impact. And it looks like Vodafone figured that out much earlier!