Vodafone’s Partnership With Urban Airship

Thoughts from Vodafone’s Principal Device Manager for Vodafone’s Consumer Products and Services, Thomas Neumann, on what he looks for in a business partner, integrations between our respective teams, and more.


Vodafone is one of the world’s largest telecommunications companies delivering services in more than 150 countries. One of Vodafone’s primary goals is to pave the way to digital life for its customers.

To support that, Vodafone is communicating across a variety of digital channels — from mobile, to voice assistants and more — in a contextual, relevant way.

Vodafone uses Urban Airship’s AI marketing orchestration and notifications to take the guesswork out of marketing orchestration and their customers’ data do some of the critical thinking for their team.

We were lucky enough to interview Thomas Neumann, Principal Digital Products Manager, Vodafone Consumer Products and Services, on what they look for in a business partner, integrating between our respective teams, and more.

What do you look for in a business partner?

“I’m convinced that in today’s business you can only survive when you collaborate. Mutual trust. You share the success — maybe also the failures — but you listen and you get your input.”

How does Urban Airship fulfill on that need?

“We had lots of concerns around going from an old in-house development to a managed service. What we have seen over the last two years is that Urban Airship is not a vendor. You’re a partner for us.”

What has been a key part of the integration between our teams?

“For us here the key is Connect — getting the raw data, which captures all the events happening on the mobile device, is one of the key sources for us to leverage this data to make use of real-time campaigns. Then of course putting that together with other information — what we know about our customer — and be able to create a more personalized, real-time customer experience.”

What does marketing orchestration mean for your team?

“Artificial intelligence takes the guesswork out of marketing orchestration and lets our customers’ data do some of the critical thinking for us. It’s quickly becoming one of our ‘easy buttons’ to better and more productive customer experiences across every digital engagement channel. Since Urban Airship’s platform is open, we will be able to reach our customers on digital channels such as RCS or voice assistants and moving forward to IoT and chatbots, which we can expand at scale.”

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