Want to talk Dinner to Kids or Grandkids, Text them. Want to get a food order Time to accept a Text.

 

I know that I’m not alone when I say ‘if you want to hear from your kids, you have to text them.  How many of you have know it’s a lot easier to get an answer from one of your children if you text them rather than calling them on the phone.  Do your children or grand children pick up the phone or return a phone call after you leave a message?

Today, millions of Americans say they talked to someone when in fact what they did was text them.  There is some new research from Mobivity Holdings Corp. , a global provider of personalized guest engagement solutions that Steven Johnson, Grocerant Guru® at Tacoma, WA based Foodservice Solutions® thinks all food retailers should become aware of.

Mobivity’s 2021 Restaurant Text Marketing Benchmarks Report, demonstrates the success and impact of text message marketing programs on guest frequency, spend, and ROI for restaurants and many legacy food retail brick and mortar brands.

While looking at its own network data of 15 million subscribers and 500 million transactions from 2018 to 2021, Mobivity found that text message marketing subscribers visit stores 44% more frequently than non-subscribers.

In addition, once a consumer joins a restaurant’s text messaging program, the guest’s spend increases 23%. Measured over six months, a text subscriber can be valued at $12.15 on average in incremental revenue and Mobivity saw brands with incremental text subscriber revenue as high as $16.59.

Dennis Becker, Mobivity Chairman and CEO, stated, “Restaurants of every kind were particularly hit hard at the onset of the pandemic and continue to experience staffing, supply chain and traffic issues. The No. 1 takeaway they’ve learned is that building an efficient, direct to consumer owned media channel is critical – and text messaging enables that,” … “With text messaging open rates 5X-20X better - and often with higher adoption rates - than other owned media channels this lifeline helps restaurants connect with guests and offer them valuable offers that drive traffic and spend."

If Restaurants want Food Orders,  they should know that Text Marketing Outpaces Apps and Email in Loyalty & Retention

So, Guests who join text marketing programs stick with it. An astounding 96% of subscribers remain in a text program after 90 days, and 90% are still in the program after two years, outpacing app and email subscriber retention by a factor of 2X and 3X respectively.

Hit them when they are Ready-2-Eat Timing is Secret Sauce for Redemptions

The timing of offers matters. Mobivity’s benchmark data show that 60% of redemptions occur within the first 24 hours, and 39% of redemptions happen on the same day the subscriber receives them. Further highlighting the immediacy of text messages, more than 30% of redemptions occur within the first three hours after receipt, and nearly half of those are within the first.

Regular readers of this blog know that our Grocerant Guru® placed one of the first online ordering service CyberMeals with New England quick-service restaurant Papa Gino’s Pizzeria and fast casual restaurant D’Angelo Grilled Sandwiches (PGDA) back in the day.  Today they are utilizing Mobivity’s SmartMessage with patented Trusted Redemption technology to gain critical insight into each redemption which is a part of Mobivity’s enterprise-grade Unified Guest Engagement Platform. Leaders lead according to Johnson.

So, during the pandemic, PGDA saw its mobile messaging program deliver an average Return on Marketing Spend of 440%. The two brands also see much higher opt-in offer redemptions than the average, with Papa Gino’s having a 50% redemption rate and D’Angelo averaging a 47% redemption rate.

Becker continued, “Traditional mass marketing techniques are becoming less effective as consumers expect more personalized and authentic engagement, consuming media via new individualized streaming methods, and as tech giants hobble traditional third-party ad targeting. First-party data is the new oil that fuels brands’ ability to control their marketing destiny in a one-to-one world of marketing.”  

Mobivity provides a platform to connect national restaurants, retailers, personal care brands and their partners with customers to increase retention, visits and spend.

The full report is available for download here.

Are you looking for a new partnership to drive sales? Are you ready for some fresh ideations? Do your food marketing tactics look more like yesterday that tomorrow?  Visit GrocerantGuru.com for more information or contact: Steve@FoodserviceSolutions.us Remember success does leave clues and we just may have the clue you need to propel your continued success.

Smart Marketing is Nothing New at TGI Fridays

 

Success does leave clues and Ana Pia Guzman-Briley, MBA is the Director of CRM and Customer Engagement at TGI Fridays and she is one smart marketer according to Steven Johnson, Grocerant Guru® at Tacoma, WA based Foodservice Solutions®.

A brand is an invitation. If you want to invite consumers to your brand you must do it proactively, in an interactive participatory way, that focused approach is exactly what Guzman-Briley did last September when she launched a texting campaign.

The conundrum was on one hand, she had a hunch that there were certain customers who wanted more direct communication with TGI Fridays. Yet, on the other, there was the chance that texts from a restaurant chain could be disruptive or too intrusive.

Guzman-Briley stated, “SMS seems like a very direct channel that not a lot of people, in my opinion, would want to be connected to,” Success for the initiative, which pings users with product news and promotions, would be measured against the chain’s traditional loyalty program, Fridays Rewards. That channel was averaging 20,000 signups each month during the pandemic, down from 40,000 previously. 

Guzman-Briley continued, “We figured, OK, if we are able to get the same as the loyalty program, this is worth the effort,”. 

Four and a half months after it launched SMS marketing with software provider Attentive, the program has far exceeded that benchmark. The initiative is now averaging 62,000 signups a month, Guzman said, and generating better conversion rates than some of the chain’s other marketing channels. After four months, it had 300,000 users.

TGI Fridays sends about two or three texts a month with “very strategic news” about new products, special offers or bundles. (“Our users love learning about new products,” Guzman said.) Signups are driven via a popup on TGI Fridays’ website that offers 10% off the customer’s first purchase if they join. 

Messages are accompanied by a link leading to an ordering page. About 15% of users click through those links, and 84% of that group order the item, Guzman said, a rate that is “absolutely” better than its email marketing conversion.

Because SMS is such a direct channel, “you’re very prone as a user to go and read it” as opposed to email, she said.

Overall, the SMS program has a 4.5% conversion rate, while email is between 0.5% and 0.9%, Guzman said. 

Dallas-based TGI Fridays, which has about 380 U.S. locations, had been planning to do a text program since 2019. But for many restaurants, the pandemic has been a catalyst for adopting the new form of communication, said Amir Zamanian, general manager of Attentive’s food and beverage division.

“If you’re relying on your foot traffic and nothing else to get in front of your consumers, that’s not possible anymore” with dining rooms closed or limited for significant chunks of the past year, he said.

Many restaurants had previously used SMS for transactional purposes, like letting someone know their table was ready. Now, they are using it in particular to drive signups for other platforms such as an app or loyalty program, Zamanian said.

New York-based Attentive works with “a couple hundred” clients across the restaurant, grocery and food delivery industries.

For TGI Fridays, the next step is to integrate the texting pool with Fridays Rewards so it can analyze the data and see how users behave and where they overlap. One initial takeaway has been that SMS users are more likely to be in-store customers. They use the texts to “understand what is new at TGI Fridays and then go to Fridays,” Guzman said. 

She considers the channel another form of loyalty, one focused more on engagement than earning points or rewards.

“For me, the definition of loyalty is understanding your known users,” she said. “End of the day, if somebody doesn’t want to be part of loyalty and wants to be an SMS user, that’s fine. ... We still have a communication channel with them, we’re still encouraging that frequency.”

Are you looking for a new partnership to drive sales? Are you ready for some fresh ideations? Do your food marketing tactics look more like yesterday that tomorrow?  Visit GrocerantGuru.com for more information or contact: Steve@FoodserviceSolutions.us Remember success does leave clues and we just may have the clue you need to propel your continued success.