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RSSTake Papa John's, which emails every few days and sends multi-offer messages not only promoting its latest pizza concoction, but also the ability to receive Papa John's text messages on your mobile phones; its partnership with companies such as Netflix; and its Web service, where you can check off your favorite pizzas online to speed ordering.
According to Pizza Marketing Quarterly, the average online pizza order is $6 to $9 higher than the average telephone order. This is because online customers not only have a more leisurely experience than ordering by phone, but they also have access to the entire menu and can order without feeling rushed, says Pizza Quarterly.
Email promotions are a big component in driving visitors to the sites. As an example, while Monday is usually the slowest day for the pizza industry, according to Pizza Marketing Quarterly two third-party email promotions sent out by the NBA on two different Mondays in January drove some of the highest traffic peaks of the month for Pizza Hut.
And speaking of Web traffic, it is interesting to note that two of the most consistent email marketers (Papa John's and Pizza Hut) have Web traffic that is consistently high and almost identical, according to Alexa statistics -- while other brands such as Little Caesar's that do little email marketing show little Web traffic growth. While companies such as Pizza Hut, Domino's, and Papa John's send out email on busy pizza days (Thursday through Saturday), Domino's and Papa John's do heavy email promotions on slower days as well.
The most common call to action is a button in the email with the phrase "Order Online." Papa John's promotes impulse buys by providing a link to set up four preset favorite orders so they can be ordered with only two clicks of the mouse. Papa John's and Pizza Hut also heavily promote the ability to order through text messaging in their email promotional messages.
Almost a third of Pizza Hut's email marketing comes from third-party partnerships with organizations like the NBA. NBA Game Day Alerts are used to promote Pizza Hut's online game day delivery campaign.
We'll be publishing our full report shortly, and I will let you all know when it is available for download.
RSS FEEDS
For example, Papa John's sends coupons in the mail from the local store, but they can't be used online. They seem to operate separately (from the info I have received from our local store manager). I love ordering my pizza online, but not being able to access the snail mail coupons means I have to call-in instead (which negates the convenience of ordering online while I am on the computer, anyway).
Relevancy will be key to the pizza email/web campaigns in the future. Sending a meat email to a veggie person is almost rude. Papa John's and Pizza Hut have a great opportunity to really engage their online customers if they do it right!
Of course, service will have to stay consistently good to make it all work.
Thanks for the post; I look forward to hearing more!
Is this because: a) online customers have a more leisurely experience and access to the entire menu? (as you suggest) b) online orders are more inclined to be group orders? c) computer users are fat? d) other?
Also, other useful data would be: a) what percentage of orders are online? b) what percentage of orders are by phone? c) what percentage of online orders link directly to email offers? d) what percentage of phone orders link directly to email offers? e) what percentage of offer orders relate to email? f) what percentage of offer orders relate to letter box drop?
Answers to these questions would be a very interesting study.
I look forward to "Get your Pizza II - now with extra cheese"
It would have been nice to receive an offer for a veggie lover or cheese pizza just to let me know they are paying attention to my desires as a customer. Finally Papa John's blatantly overcharged my credit card and refused to refund the disparity, thus putting the final coffin nail in our long-standing e-commerce relationship.
Where did my business go? Louis Wing from BeyondROI knows - my local mom & pop pizza joint down the street, where the service is personal and a loyalty program offers the promise of free pizza.
What's missing here is the view and relevance to the true "connection" of the local customers to a national pizza company operating in their area. There is no brand loyalty to a chain, but there IS to a local Pizza parlor like the stereotype "Sal's Pizza" where you know and love Sal, and you'd even pay more to get a pizza pie from him because he served that with lots of love baked into the crust.
The same holds true for larger chains like McDonalds or Taco Bell. You wouldn't hold on to your hunger so you could get near your house and visit "your" local golden arches... No! If you made the decision to eat fast food, you'd find the nearest location and order up.
To back this up, I have some background info to add to the mix: I had developed and managed a customer loyalty club for Domino's corp a few years ago when I was working for an ESP, and we had little success in building up enough organic user signups to garnish a decent response rate. We used web-driven signup cards, and we had order-takers ask for emails during the order process.
In addition to the low signup rate, the response levels to the mailings (sent out several times monthly) indicated that local patrons were only interested in the coupons and the bottom-line pricing, and demonstrated no true loyalty to any specific brand.
Conversely, similar marketing programs I developed and set in motion for smaller, individual pizza operators and other hospitality companies had far greater success overall. The organic signups were much higher (using the same concept of web-driven email signup cards), and the response rates to offers and campaigns were always significantly higher in comparison.
In the end, the ESP I worked for lost the account with Domino's corp because of poor client relations,... but more important, they failed to prove the value proposition of the program. While some of the franchise operators did build up a small list of their local customers, it seemed as if the email medium was only an extension of their coupon marketing.
"Get Your Pizza" speaks volumes about the value of cross promotions and how online ordering is now gaining market share, which is fantastic. As a consumer, my experience was a good one. I recently ordered online and the pizza came just as I ordered, and the price was right.
Keep Digging for Worms!
Bill a.k.a. DR4WARD