Targeting the Teen Demo
Text messaging attracts this free-spending group.
In 2007, Tropical Smoothie Café introduced national Flip Flop Day to celebrate the first day of summer. As part of the promotion, the 275-unit chain gave free smoothies to the first 500 people who wore flip flops into its stores.
Texting for Smoothies:
Along the way, however, the chain’s marketing team observed some customer behavior that helped inform its strategy going forward. "A lot of young people who came in started texting their friends about the deal," says Barbara Valentino, Tropical Smoothie’s vice president of marketing and communications. Sensing an opportunity, Valentino and her staff began to research ways to reach teenagers through text messages. The result: the Tropical Smoothie Café Text Club.
The company now uses the text messaging club to connect immediately with teens, offering them discounts on new menu items and special deals on days when traffic slows due to inclement weather. Recently, when testing a new coffee and green tea smoothie, stores sent a special promotion via text messages. "We saw a 20 percent redemption," Valentino says. When stores marketed another promotion on Bob Marley’s birthday, those that used text messaging saw 10 to 40 percent redemption—compared to a 4 to 5 percent redemption rate for the typical direct-mail coupon campaign.
Database Building:
For Valentino, text messaging offers an innovative way to "capture the mindset of that group." She credits developer Chris Kramolis in Little Rock, Arkansas, for spearheading the promotion. To build a text-message database of cell phone numbers, he started with point-of-purchase materials—counter cards and flyers. "He also has a great relationship with the local radio folks," which he leveraged to help get the word out, Valentino explains. "He created a contest—text to this number—and he gave away two Nintendo Wii’s and a Guitar Hero video game. These were prizes he knew the target audience was after."
Kramolis now has a list of about 4,000 numbers in his system, and Valentino is using his template to build similar text-messaging databases for the company’s other locations across the country.
Excerpted from Restaurant Business, August 2009
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