I was about to start a new thread about Text Marketing but decided to search it first and since this thread was only a month old I figure why cloud up our board…
Anyway many stores in my chain have begun doing text marketing. Since I have 4 stores I had 4 very different experiences that I would like to share.
First off TEXT MARKETING does work and can work well for a long time if you learn how to use this tool properly.
The company we found with very good rates is actually local to the Denver Metro area but is able to service the whole country - they will be at Pizza Expo so please check them out
www.wisper.com
We pulled lists from out POS database and they did the rest from there. Some of you may already be worried about the legal side of such tactic and I can assure you it is a legal. Maybe it is not moral, but we can discuss that too.
My bigger stores in Longmont and Boulder both had large databases of near 50k phone numbers in them [mistake #1 pull only list no older than 6 months since last order - I am now pulling T-120].
My smaller stores had near 16k. In my big stores I went with a less agressive offer [$7.77 for a 14" 2 Topping]. My smallest market I went with a slighlty more agressive offer [$5.55 for a Large 1 Topping]and in the store I am bringing back from the dead I went balls out, offering a 12" 1 Topping for $3.99 [Food Cost was 29%]. I also included in the text that I would lower my minimum for FREE Delivery to $7.77 for this 3 day only event. The full lists were partitioned and 1/4 or 1/2 total went out of each store. Land lines bounce as the texting begins.
Going back to my mistake of pulling too old a list 90% of the complaints that came in were from the people in the databases that were just too long ago since they had ordered. We had a total of 200 phone calls of which 25 were in the completely upset range and the rest were simple OPT OUT complaints. We had sent out 28,000 texts on a Friday night at 3PM.
Large Residential Store barely knew the texts had even hit.
Smallest market did very little response as well.
Large store with Campus in Boulder had best dinner rush in several years and stellar late night from the students who received the text.
New project store had best response with the most agressive offer. We recorded our first 100 pie hour since taking it over and the 3 day offers redemption was 258. We had an increase over the previous weeks sales of $1000 all packed into that Friday, Saturday and Sunday.
It seems the people who responded overall really liked the fact that this happened the way it did. The folks that were upset were thought we were doing something illegal and all claimed to not have texting as a part of their plan and since they got hit with 2 texts that would cost them upwards of 50 cents. We offered a FREE 12" 1 topping pizza as compensation to any who wanted it for their troubles.
I scrapped my 4 lists and pulled new ones with last order date no older than 10/31/11. Lists are considerably smaller but more reflective of my current customers. We will hit full lists again the day after I get back from Expo.
The future of this for me is to then add to these lists by “organic growth” and having a keyword to opt in and put it on everything.
FYI - stores in my chain that did not make the mistake I made with super old list did not report but 1 or 2 angry people and very few opt out calls.
Just thought I’d share my experience and give this company a recomendation in the process.
Online ordering is merely a tool to ease ordering process. Email marketing is often to repetive and falls to spam folders too often. Text marketing is working your database of CURRENT customers.
