March 12, 2010
With around 78 percent of American adults now owning cellular phones and nearly a quarter saying they would choose to receive updates about daily restaurant specials via their mobile phone, according to the National Restaurant Association, mobile marketing has become an important way to reach out to consumers. In this edition of QSR’s Best Practices E-Newsletter, you’ll see how nine Smoothie King franchises were able to drive traffic by implementing a mobile marketing strategy from Alexandria, Virginia-based provider Fishbowl.
The Problem: For nine Smoothie King franchises in the Nashville, Tennessee, area, demand for their frosty fare was strong during the hot summer months, but business had a tendency to cool along with the weather.
“We needed a way to drive business during the slow winter months,” explains Justin Tucker, office manager for the franchisees who own the units.
They were already sending out promotional material and coupons via snail mail, but direct mail campaigns are expensive, the benefits are not immediate, and it’s hard to tell if you’re targeting the right audience.
“If you do a huge mail-out to a neighborhood, maybe 10 percent of the people you’re hitting are your actual customers—if you’re lucky,” Tucker says.
He needed a solution that would provide a targeted, flexible way to reach out to customers when traffic was slow.
The Solution: At the Smoothie King annual conference in New Orleans, Tucker and his bosses learned about Fishbowl’s mobile marketing solution. Founded in 2000, Fishbowl is a leading provider of e-mail marketing for the restaurant industry. This year, the company added mobile marketing to its line of services, giving restaurants the power to connect with their customers via text messages sent directly to their cell phones.
Fishbowl was already working with other Smoothie King franchisees to grow their business with mobile marketing. Back in March the company launched its first mobile sweepstakes campaign with more than 500 of the company’s locations. After learning about the success of their fellow franchisees, Tucker’s bosses, who were already using Fishbowl for e-mail marketing, decided to give it a shot.
They signed up, and Tucker and others in the company started completing online training sessions to learn how to use the solution.
“That was an easy process,” he says. “It’s pretty self explanatory.”
Everything is run through Fishbowl’s online interface, so the system can be accessed from any computer with no downloading of applications required. A team member simply logs on to create a promotion—such as, “Come in for a free 20-ounce smoothie on Wednesday”—which can be sent immediately or saved for repeated use. The promotion is then sent out via text message to the mobile phones of any customers who have joined by texting a code to the number advertised in-store.
The Results: The Smoothie King stores rolled out the Fishbowl mobile marketing solution in mid-July, offering customers who signed up for the program a free smoothie. Point-of-sale signage was used to advertise the program, which customers could join simply by sending a text message to the number provided. In return, they received a text message entitling them to their free drink—all in a matter of minutes.
Just three months after implementing Fishbowl’s solution, Tucker estimates that around 1,100 customers have already opted in to the program.
“Two of our stores have increased by 80 [participants] in the last three days,” he says.
What’s more, it has allowed the stores to attract a whole new demographic. Tucker says customers formerly tended to be older. Since implementing the mobile marketing program, however, the stores have seen increased traffic from nearby high schools and colleges.
Particularly successful, Tucker says, have been buy-one-get-one-free promotions, which encourage loyal customers to bring in someone who might not otherwise have come in the door.
Tucker says he sends out promotions an average of every 10 days. When customer counts are down he can blast out a text message to try and increase traffic.
“I love it for the fact that it can be a last-minute thing,” he says. “When we get a slow day here or there, I send out a promotion and see what we can get. I think on slower days we’re seeing a little bit of help.”
