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Brixx Pizza serves up mobile coupons to drive traffic

Regional restaurant franchise Brixx Pizza is seeing a spike in sales and increased customer traffic from mobile offers during the normally slow Monday-through-Thursday period.

Before the mobile campaign, Brixx had worked with Money Mailer on a number of shared-mail campaigns. While the direct mail ad worked well for them, Brixx viewed a mobile campaign as a tactic to improve targeting and increase the number of potential customers the restaurant could reach.

"Brixx Pizza wanted to grow their revenue and differentiate the restaurant from the local competition and drive traffic to the restaurant at non-peak times," said Carol Kelly, co-owner/partner of Money Mailer, Charleston, SC.

There are 13 Brixx Pizza locations across Tennessee, North Carolina and South Carolina.

Brixx Pizza of Charleston, SC, is located in a busy shopping center close to a heavily traveled interstate

Through the shared mailing and mobile marketing campaign, Money Mailer was able to assist Brixx in their effort to bring in first-time customers while enticing current customers to increase their visits.

Brixx's top priority was to attract more customers to the restaurant by building a database of mobile-phone numbers.

Using the database, it could then market relevant offers directly to customers on a regular basis.

The restaurant also wanted to use the mobile coupons to increase frequency of visits by current customers.

Realizing how competitive the restaurant business is in Charleston and how extremely value-conscious the pizza dining crowd is, Brixx saw mobile marketing as a cost-effective way to target them.

Money Mailer introduced the mobile coupon text messaging campaign program to Brixx's management and staff, demonstrating how it worked on a mobile phone.

Brixx decided to integrate the communication tool into their marketing program, using the keyword BRIXXMTP and Money Mailer's short code -- 686868 -- in all their other advertising such as radio ads.

The shared-mail campaign was sent to thousands of consumers that fit the restaurant's customer demographics -- at least 30,000 homes throughout the nine counties in and around Charleston, SC.

The offer was spelled out simply so that consumers knew how to opt-in.

Money Mailer, in tandem with Brixx, reinforced the offers with in-store collateral such as banners, buttons, window stickers and table tents with the SMS call-to-action.

The restaurant's wait staff shared the opt-in code and offer with customers. As an incentive, customers who opted-in received a free appetizer.

"The waiter says, ?How would you like a free appetizer today?'" Ms. Kelly said. "Patrons say ?Sure,' the waiter tells them how to opt in, and they opt in."

Once consumers opted in, Brixx sent them mobile coupons, which included 50 percent off, buy-one pizza get-one free and two kids eat free with one adult purchase.

An example of a push message sent via SMS: "Brixx Pizza: kids eat free Sat. 4-8 with adult purchase, dine-in only." Consumers have to show their mobile phone at the point of sale to redeem the coupon.

Money Mailer sends out Brixx mobile coupons to the opted-in database roughly once a week, no more than four offers per month.

Integrating the shared-mail program with mobile coupons led to more than 517 opt-ins and counting.

Brixx Pizza's management said that they experienced a definite spike in sales due to the mobile initiatives.

As an important gauge of the program's success, the campaign increased customer traffic during the normally slow Monday-through-Thursday period.

"The mobile coupon program has been working well," Ms. Kelly said. "Brixx Pizza has achieved a huge volume of increase in traffic due to the mobile campaign -- in the triple digits."