Pizza chain’s keyword campaign earned 100,000 text opt-ins in 12 hours

Company

Our client is a large pizza chain with stores in the United States, Canada, and the United Arab Emirates.

Challenge

Increase delivery of text messages within local communities.

This pizza chain has a large national audience. Yet they strive to connect with communities at the local level.

Recognizing that text messaging is an effective way to engage local communities, they use Upland Mobile Messaging to empower their stores to text customers about store-specific discounts, inform them about charity events, or just to remind customers to pick up a few pizzas before a local event. With profanity filters and other platform limitations in place, franchisees can send texts that resonate with local communities while retaining brand standards.

Of course, this chain can’t deliver localized text messages if customers aren’t on their text messaging list, so they sought a way to grow their text messaging opt-ins and win new customers. That’s why they went big with a nationwide push for customer acquisition.

Solution

An irresistible keyword campaign.

Upland Mobile Messaging helped this pizza chain create and execute a keyword campaign to grow their mobile list and connect new customers with fresh pizza. The campaign offered free pizza to the first 100,000 people who texted “FREEPIZZA” to their short code. (A short code is a five to six digit phone number used only for text messaging.)

They set up a clear, compelling offer that directed users through a simple series of text prompts, ensuring people could claim their free pizza with ease. Once customers completed the opt-in process, they received a promotion code that could be redeemed online for a free pizza.

“The support we had from Upland was amazing. They helped us build our keyword campaign and stood by us the entire day to ensure its launch was successful.” – Digital Marketing & Lifecycle Manager

Upland Mobile Messaging provided support throughout the campaign, helping the chain identify and address any unforeseen issues. When autocorrect prevented some users from successfully entering the campaign keyword, Upland Mobile Messaging revised the campaign in real-time to ensure these customers received free pizza as well.

Results

Fresh pizza, fresh customers.

The chain promoted their campaign on social media, where it went viral. Though the campaign was originally created to run for six days, the 100,000 free pizza codes were claimed in less than 12 hours! They closed their campaign after 160,000 opt-ins, giving an additional 60,000 customers a deal to try their pizza as well.

The campaign proved wildly successful on many levels. Our client grew their mobile list and connected with new customers via a marketing channel where previously they saw only a 1% conversion rate on average. And because the promotion required customers to redeem their offer online, they were also able to collect customers’ email addresses during the ordering process. By driving both mobile number and email list growth, they gained new opportunities for connecting with customers in the way they prefer, improving the customer experience.

With new connections to new customers, this pizza chain can customize messages to their national customer base at a local level, driving deeper relationships with fans of fresh pizza, no matter where they are.

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