A cornerstone of email marketing is testing. Perhaps it’s the day of the week that you send the message, or even the imagery and text inside the message. Arguably the
most prevalent element marketers test is the subject line. The appeal of doing so is clear: You have approximately two seconds to get the reader’s attention in their inbox as their finger hovers over the delete button. Optimizing those seconds is mission critical. Search for “subject line testing” on Google and you’ll be consumed by over 6.4 million results. The majority of that content will tell you that the “winning” subject line hinges on one key metric: the message’s open rate.
One of our clients, Pinkberry, performed an A/B subject line test. With an open rate that was 12 percent higher than subject line A, subject line B outperformed its counterpart. Based on conventional wisdom, Pinkberry should have gauged subject line B as the clear winner, right? Wrong. Most email marketers […]
In case you missed it, there was a common theme among publicly held restaurant chains’ July earnings calls: Loyalty Programs. Multiple brand leaders spent a portion of their calls celebrating their loyalty programs, unequivocally stating that the programs are indeed impacting the value of the respective organizations, and that the programs are providing a competitive advantage.
Even Chipotle, a brand that has been a notorious, non-believer in loyalty programs, noted the value in the data they received from their short-term visit challenge promotion, Chiptopia. The promotion resembles the tip of the spear for a longer-term program. Below is a recap of the notable loyalty program mentions. But first, here’s an executive summary of the highlights:
Bloomin’ Brands expects a 1% – 2% lift in sales as a result of rolling out its rewards program system wide, per CEO Liz Smith.
Dominos on its loyalty program: “All of this outstanding brand momentum helped us grow diluted EPS by 21% over the prior year quarter. Our recently launched loyalty program contributed significantly to our traffic gains,” said CFO Jeff Lawrence
Starbucks’ Howard Shultz stated, “Our loyalty program is the cornerstone of our digital flywheel, noting that the program now has over 19 million Starbucks Reward members…”
Panera Bread’s president Andrew Madsen said, “Let’s talk about loyalty. Our MyPanera loyalty program now sits at 23 million members that represent nearly 50% of our transactions and the program is growing. In addition, MyPanera users are very loyal with double the visit frequency of our nonmember customers. We believe this is by far the largest loyalty program in the industry and a significant competitive advantage.”
Chipotle Mexican Grill is encouraged by the level of data being mined from the Chiptopia loyalty promotion and will use it to further understand the behavior of its most loyal guests before the promotion, during the promotion and post promotion.
A cornerstone of email marketing is testing. Perhaps it’s the day of the week that you send the message, or even the imagery and text inside the message. Arguably the