Beggars Pizza Big Cheese Club

THE ORGANIZATION Beggars Pizza has been bringing a delicious array of pizza and Italian food to Chicagoland for nearly 40 years, serving guests at 22 restaurant locations—in addition to being the official pizza served at U.S. Cellular Field, home of MLB’s Chicago White Sox. From the time Angelo Garetto opened the door to his first customer in 1976, to the current day, the Garetto family has taken great pride in maintaining a commitment to quality, value, service and family.

THE CHALLENGE With a family atmosphere and a strong commitment to the local community, Beggars Pizza recognized the potential that a loyalty program could have as a means to engage and interact with its best customers. Beggars turned to Paytronix for help building the loyalty, email and mobile solutions for a core loyalty program that would excite guests to enroll—with focused promotional offers to increase visits and spend from those key, loyalty-program guests.

THE SOLUTION In April of 2014, Beggars Pizza launched its loyalty program, inviting guests to join the Big Cheese Club to earn rewards, Beggars swag, free food and more. Beggars set lofty goals for enrollment in order to build the critical mass of guest enrollment and registration required to then engage with guests and match loyalty promotions to customers’ interests. With a variety of Paytronix tools providing easy methods for enrollment, guests quickly began signing up in store, online and through Android and iOS mobile apps built with Paytronix.

Beggars leverages a tiered structure that encourages guests to spend more in order to move up to higher levels and better prizes, so loyal customers quickly began earning rewards. Guests begin as a Beggars Buddy, then as members earn and redeem points they quickly advance to become a Little Cheese member and at the top tier, a BIG CHEESE.

Every step of the Beggars Pizza loyalty program is geared towards compelling guests to earn the highest, BIG CHEESE tier. Paytronix messaging capabilities play a strong role in motivating and reminding guests to reach their next tier, allowing personalized campaigns to be run, or accommodating three versions of each campaign with tailored and differing incentives/reward values for each loyalty tier. Lower tiers can be reminded to spend more and reach higher tiers for improved rewards.  Guest behavior data captured during member visits enables relevant, timely, and productive messaging to higher tier members.

All messages that are sent via email are matched with push and in-app notifications in order to reach Beggars mobile app users, integrating the email and mobile platforms to remind guests of their great rewards available. Guests also receive a push and in-app message in their app when they earn a new reward from the core program, or when they enter into a new tier as part of the core rules.

These relevant, triggered messages work to encourage guests to visit more frequently, as rewards are sent often and expire quickly. Beggars can drive additional visits and spending with one-to-one promotions, issuing special offers and rotating rewards each month, in addition to birthday, anniversary and other special occasion campaigns. For 2015, Beggars is featuring an added special promotion each month, loading a free reward onto customers’ accounts that has driven terrific response from guests who eagerly anticipate the calendar date when their special offers appear.

Reaching Customers Their Way – By reaching guests how and when they want—from the restaurant’s point of sale (POS) system, to email, to offers pushed to their mobile phone—Beggars can motivate guests to come in and spend money. Loyalty members dine with Beggars Pizza multiple times per week just for the Big Cheese Club and to use the loyalty program. They want to get more points in order to reach that next tier and incrementally better prizes, driving a lot more repeat dining customers.

Mobile Platform Offers New Ways to Engage Guests – The Mobile app use numbers for Beggars have steadily increased, and with it has come new opportunity for 1-1 engagement. In January 2015 about 30% of loyalty registrations are enrolling from a mobile device. This increased mobile use has allowed for more triggered and campaign-based push/pull messages to guests on their mobile devices. The popularity of the Beggars Pizza loyalty apps has Beggars exploring how Paytronix can help with geofencing and other mobile initiatives later in 2015.

Robust Reporting Drives Greater Relevancy – Beggars Pizza closely monitors what efforts are working best with Paytronix reporting, so offers and campaigns can be changed up for variety and the best impact. Paytronix is integrated directly with the Beggars POS system to view reward earnings and redemption in real time, with all of the loyalty program data providing insight into both larger trends and individual customer impact. Beggars can compare campaigns to the number of visits they compelled, and quickly identify which offers directly increase a guests’ amount spent. Email campaign reports show which offers are opened, how many customers use the reward, how much they spend when they redeem, and more.

The Benefit

In just six months after launch of Beggars’ Paytronix loyalty program, the Big Cheese Club has met all of its goals for enrollment and registration. But the real success of the program is most apparent by talking to the guests themselves, and Beggars Pizza employees who have also embraced the program.

“We hear a lot from our loyalty customers and they really like the program, and particularly how easy we’ve made it to redeem rewards and get value from being in the Big Cheese Club,” said Kimberly Melvin, marketing coordinator at Beggars Pizza. “It’s clear that our offers are relevant. We stopped our loyalty email campaigns for a brief period and heard a lot of complaints when our guests hadn’t heard from us—they want messages at least once or twice a month.”

Thanks to a flexible campaign management platform and robust reporting, Beggars Pizza can quickly identify what’s working and what’s not as they rotate in fresh campaigns to keep guests engaged.

“Paytronix reports show us where to tweak the program. We like short expiration dates so guests have a reason to act now, but a recent email promotion’s reports showed our offer was relevant but customers didn’t have enough time to use it. We aren’t just trying to get people to sign up for the Big Cheese Club, the goal is for guests to redeem and USE the rewards. Active members visit our restaurants more and spend more. So we extended the expiration and that promotion did great.”

When Beggars Pizza began to promote its mobile apps, the mobile platform itself boosted registration rates quickly across the board, and were particularly appealing to millennials which led to a spike in enrollment. In a single month, Beggars had a 7% increase in loyalty registrations coming from ages 16-35, primarily via the mobile apps.  

“The Beggars Pizza loyalty program helped us reach more millennials and exceed all of our launch goals. Members are excited to get our emails and promotions, and we’re always looking at how we can do something even more special for our most loyal customers. Paytronix helps us identify new opportunities and keep our offers fresh and relevant,” added Melvin.