Lebara was founded in 2001 intending to bring something new to the telecoms industry. Given the rise in online consumer purchasing, Lebara has pushed a more aggressive online growth strategy requiring a reset in the way Lebara analyses data starting at the core through unifying, standardising, and enriching the data. As a result, centralised reporting can then be used with other data sources to show the best-in-class KPIs for better informed commercial decision making and enabled on-site testing.
Data is knowledge
Digital tracking at Lebara used to consist of a siloed approach, each one of the five markets (5C) using different platforms creating a mismatch of information and resulting in a variety of KPIs. Therefore, Lebara was unable to understand fully the customers lifecycle, churn triggers, and lifetime value, making it difficult to implement the most relevant commercial decisions.
From 2022, Lebara launched new web and app capabilities, providing an opportunity to move away from the siloed market dependant approach to digital tracking and to adopt a unified way of working, enhancing the team’s understanding of customers digital journeys.
The first step was a data layer update providing a solid data source in which to rely upon. Google Tag Manager (GTM) was used to send this data in a structured format to the relevant platforms such as GA4, Google Ads, and Facebook. A standardised approach ensured the ability to lift and shift across the group for maximum efficiency. Data ownership and publishing through GTM is now centralised to Group which removes inaccuracies in implementation and frees up 80% more time across 5C for analysis and insights.
Through standardising dimensions and KPIs, shopping stage gaps were reduced by 55% and the data layer was enriched with valuable customer information enabling better segmentation in analysis and testing. Once implemented, this data could be taken and moved to Lebara’s data lake and linked with other sources.
Globally structured data enables consistency between platforms, but EU cookie laws requiring users to opt into consent causes up to 30% data loss. A 30% movement impacts the dependency on reporting or insights and would limit GA4 use to only assist with trended data, not final figures.
Using the daily, country-based input data numbers, these acceptance numbers were used to upweight and normalise sessions to reproduce a more accurate traffic report source. Combined with a match against Lebara’s existing transaction database, the team was able to upweight the on-platform purchase to 100% accuracy.
Finally, marketing data was linked to attribute impressions, cost, and clicks to enable accurate attribution of CPO and marketing effectiveness.
Other report suites were created for specific on-platform journey analysis to identify where customer segments were dropping off. This combined with direct session linking to Lebara’s recording platform, enabled single session identification. A bug was discovered using this process and the fix resulted in an increase from payment to transaction of an additional 35%.
These combined sources and final numbers are used across the business as the single source of truth, attributing £300,000 annually for data quality and £100,000 in reporting benefit alone.
The enhanced visibility on-site as well as the advanced user mapping enabled the launch of successful Adobe Target AB tests and personalisation’s. To date, Target has brought in £2 million through testing and new personalisation’s are being rolled out across 5C monthly.
Topline metrics
- +26% increase in online acquisition across Lebara, utilising best in class journeys.
- +18% reduction in online churn.
- The on-site user journey showed only 40% of the shopping stage touchpoints and was inconsistent with the attributes presented. This number is now over 95% and can clearly identify drop-offs at a product or product-attribute specific level for new and existing customers. The data accuracy accounts for £300,000 annually in attributed revenue.
- Adjusting cookie consent to ensure 100% accuracy up from 70%.
- 4,000 uses of digital reports annually.
- Time saved by this data being available is £100,000 annually.
- Drop-off of 95% product transactions, impacting acquisition volumes in Germany. Session-specific debugging identified the overactive background checker and restored this to only a 60% drop-off.
- Adobe Target tests since release have generated £2 million in attributed revenue.
- An additional 2% uplift in sales for existing customers being rolled out.
Lebara’s implementation was built from the ground up after identifying a business need, developing a structure, and executing. Gaining trust and building relationships through regular sessions helped facilitate the smooth transition to the point Lebara is at now; spending time on optimisations and sharing insights and results rather than reporting or debating which KPIs to use.
Labour efficiencies are up five times and reports are updated automatically daily, creating reliable information in which Lebara and upper management can depend on. The single source of truth enables countries to plug into this and create their own specific insights.
