Tech talk is complicated at the best of times. But how can you begin to understand if English isn’t your first language? This was the question behind a unique campaign that genuinely connected with customers, by talking their language.

Selling superfast Fibre broadband should be easy. Pretty much everyone wants it. Challenge is, everyone’s also selling it. The broadband market is cut-throat competitive, with loss-leading acquisition deals, low margin prices and constant noise about upgrading technology.

Spark’s existing upgrade programme was only converting 1.8% of customers. So, a new way was needed to cut through and retain more of their ADSL customers who were leaving at a rate of 19%.

Combining Helix Persona data with census statistics delivered a powerful insight about a specific target group: “all the noise about data plans, bandwidth and upload speeds can feel like a foreign language. But for 30% of Spark’s East Auckland customers it actually is a foreign language”.

This led to a bilingual campaign that turned that problem into an opportunity – a first-of-its-kind, double-sided letter that meant whatever your language preference, our message was tailored to you.

This drove nearly three times more customers to upgrade to Fibre. By retaining these extra customers, their propensity to churn was lowered by 11%, their valuable calling plans were retained and revenue protected.