Archive for January, 2012

Super Bowl Sunday requires some serious flour power at pizza restaurants across America.

The National Restaurant Association said that 55% of Super Bowl viewers order food from restaurants and 65% of them pick pizza.  For most pizza restaurants, that means that Super Bowl Sunday will mean twice as many pizzas as their next biggest day of the year.

Last year, Pizza Hut and Domino’s sold 2 million and 1.2 million pizzas respectively on the day of the biggest game of the year. Papa John’s sold more than 1 million pizzas on Super Bowl Sunday topping its 940,000 that it sold on Super Bowl Sunday in 2010.

Papa John’s Gives Away Free Pizza on Coin Flip

This year, however, Papa John’s has cooked up a new promotion in an attempt to top 2011’s sales.  If you go to the Papa John’s website, you can choose the outcome of the coin toss if you are a member of Papa John’s Rewards.  If the majority of Americans choose the outcome of the coin toss prior to the start of the Super Bowl, Papa John’s will give away one large one-topping pizza plus a two-liter Pepsi MAX to its Papa John’s Rewards members.

If you like to gamble based on historical outcomes, this is not the best place to do so.  In the first 45 Super Bowls, heads holds a slim 23-22 lead so it must be the year for tails, right?  Interestingly, the NFC team has won the coin toss for 14 consecutive years.

A coin flip that matches the choice of the fans is going to mean that Papa John’s employees are going to be flipping a lot more free pizzas in February.  And, Papa John’s hopes that its Rewards members will be flipping out if they win.

Despite the potential cost of the free food, Papa John’s online promotion and television commercials starring Peyton Manning and Jerome “The Bus” Bettis are helping it build its database of email addresses and mobile phone numbers.  A mushrooming database for email and mobile marketing is the result of savvy efforts such as this.

Private Stores Playbook for Pizza Sales

But, it isn’t just the large pizza chains who are trying to earn a larger slice of the super-size Super Bowl pie.  Local pizza restaurants like Main Line Pizza in Wayne, Pennsylvania, are also getting into the act.  Last year, single location store Main Line Pizza offered a Super Bowl party platter via its text message marketing and received an 11% return rate.

“That blew me away,” said Robert Saionz, owner of Main Line Pizza.

“It has been very effective,” said Jennifer Saionz who handles the marketing for Main Line Pizza and creates the text message promotions.

Jennifer said that the 84444.com text message marketing company that it uses has packages as low as $45 per month for up to 1000 text messages, thus making mobile marketing the most inexpensive advertising that it does.

Main Line Pizza builds its database through store-front signage, stickers on its pizza boxes, and by offering an immediate 10% discount for any new customer that opts-in to its database and shows the text message.

Taking Action on Super Bowl Pizza Sales

Super Sunday is the biggest day of the year for many things: hours spent watching television; dollars wagered; pizza sales.  While it’s probably too late for your restaurant to purchase a $3 million spot in the Super Bowl, there’s still time to set up a text message marketing promotion to have a spectacular Super Sunday in pizza pie sales.

 

It is great to see that text message marketing is the most popular activity used by marketers followed closely by QR Codes.

The redemption rate for mobile coupons will grow to 8% globally by 2016, according to a study by Juniper Research.

Currently, Europe and North America are trailing Asia in terms of mobile coupon redemption.  By 2016, the study projects that over 600 million people will use mobile coupons.

Mobile coupons play a vital role in bridging the gap between online stores and brick and mortar stores.  Mobile coupons will become an important part of a retail store’s ability to compete with the cheaper costs of online retailers.

Total mobile coupon redemption values for 2016 will be $43 billion globally.  Marketers will become better at targeting and mobile apps will be a major driver of mobile coupon delivery.

You may have noticed recently that we’ve changed the way that we allow you to upload a list.  We used to allow customers to load a database from Excel or .csv files so long as they confirmed that it was indeed an opt-in list.

We have had to tighten this policy to ensure that all customers that use the shared short code 84444 are adhering to the Mobile Marketing Association Best Practices in regards to what constitutes a legitimate opt-in.  Now, we must first review the methodology used during your opt-in process to ensure that you’ve met all of the necessary guidelines.

So, the first time that you wish to upload a list, we will need to approve it first.  If you have a consistent track record of low complaints and opt-outs from your lists, we will re-instate the ability for you to upload lists directly on the site.

While this may be a bit inconvenient for you, be assured that this is being done to protect the predominantly legitimate users of our text message marketing service and to discourage those spammers looking for a quick hit or willing to stretch the rules of what constitutes a legitimate opt-in.

If you’re an advertising agency, then you are likely to be using mobile marketing.  That’s  a far cry from how things were a few years ago when we were a bit ahead of the curve when it comes to text message marketing and other elements of mobile marketing.