CASE STUDY: Papa Gino’s & D’Angelo Grilled Sandwiches Augments Direct Mail, TV Ads with SMS Messages

Papa Gino’s and D’Angelo Grilled Sandwiches (PGDA) sought an effective way to engage existing customers and attract new customers. With decreasing ROI of direct mail and television, they were looking for a way to directly engage with customers to drive increased frequency and spend. They found quick success sending SMS messages, measuring impact and optimizing campaigns to continue driving frequency and spend.

Mobivity’s AI-powered Recurrency™ platform allows brands and franchisees to access all their customer data in one place. Additionally, it enables customers to identify trends and transform data into actionable insights.

Mobile Messaging Campaigns served as the entrée for PGDA enabling them to send intelligent communications based on past customer buying behavior and trends.

The campaign started in November 2018 and continues today. 

Mobivity worked with PGDA to develop a successful subscriber acquisition plan engaging subscribers through owned channels including their website, social media and email, plus in-store marketing.  Mobivity also worked with Point-of-Sale provider Toast to ingest daily transactions via an API, enabling full campaign attribution insight and customer engagement data to develop future campaigns.

In just three months, the campaign drove over 25K transactions and $125K in attributable revenue. Additionally, subscribers had three times more visits over six months versus non-subscribers. Mobile offers sent garnered nearly 14x the redemption rate of the same offer sent via email.

SMS Powered PGDA through the Pandemic

When the COVID pandemic led restaurants to close their dining rooms, they shifted to take out and delivery. PGDA truly realized the value of owning the mobile messaging channel as it amassed valuable first-party customer data.

Using Mobivity’s platform, PGDA segmented customers into groups, including one campaign targeting lapsed customers—those not visiting in the 90-days prior to COVID restrictions—and messaged them with highly targeted “come back” offers. PGDA saw that mobile messaging drove twice as many return visits as non-SMS subscribers and 17% more than members of the company’s loyalty program. These targeted offers were sent amidst the pandemic when dining rooms were closed and stay-at-home orders were in place in New England minimizing foot traffic.

During the pandemic, PGDA saw mobile messaging deliver an average Return of Marketing Spend of 440%, higher than any of its other marketing channels.

“Our investment in Mobivity’s Recurrency Platform has more than paid for itself and has been a key tactic in driving repeat visits, resulting in significant transaction growth prior to the impact of COVID” said Deena McKinley, PGDA’s Chief Marketing Officer.

“Investing in driving customer adoption of this new digital channel allowed us to continue to produce sales while our dining rooms were closed and while walk in business was negatively impacted due to stay at home orders in New England.  Producing these results, especially bringing back customers who had lapsed, simply wouldn’t have been possible if we’d only had traditional paid media channels available. Building a Mobile Messaging program is a game changer for brands navigating today’s challenging business environment.”