As mobile campaigns go, Auntie Anne’s latest really hit the sweet spot. To promote its new Honey Whole Grain Pretzel, the snack chain created a contest that helped the brand draw more than 200,000 registrants—far exceeding its 100,000 goal.
Auntie Anne’s engaged customers through a virtual pretzel-twisting game and in-store taste tests on Sampling Saturdays, says Matt Simon, marketing director for the brand. The campaign also used mobile-optimized QR-code scanning to drive brand education.
Data shows customer engagement exploded during the campaign, with the average Auntie Anne’s customer spending nearly four minutes on the site each visit. Social engagement via Twitter and Facebook also contributed to the promotion’s success; more than 4,800 tweets and 13,000 Facebook shares mentioned the campaign. In addition, one-third of all registrations stemmed from mobile Web and SMS registrants.
Promotions like this new Auntie Anne’s campaign are an effective means of engaging with a brand’s valuable customer base, says Meredith Hillman, vice president and account director for ePrize, the digital engagement firm that helped create the mobile campaign.
She says the results demonstrate the impact that mobile, social, and in-store campaigns can have on customer engagement. “We worked with Auntie Anne’s to craft a campaign to better engage in a dialogue with their valued customers, and the results spoke for themselves,” she says.
