World of Beer Uses WiFi and Beer to Gain Guest Emails

World of Beer Franchising, a craft bar and kitchen, with a U.S. and Asia footprint, is known as a popular gathering spot for craft beer aficionados and craft curious alike.  The brand experience offers live music, more than 500 bottled and draught beer, craft spirits, and globally inspired menu options for their very loyal fans. Keenly aware of the growing importance of targeted digital communications and omni-channel integration, our ten-year old brand faced a unique marketing challenge. 

The bar and entertainment industry has only recently started working to address the challenges of putting a firm metric on head count, dwell time and traffic.  Although World of Beer was an early adopter, we were finding the process of defining customers to be doubly difficult because our guests tend to “belly up to the bar” for a few drinks or food, some closing out their check between pints, later to stay for another round, which creates a double metric on customer count. 

At the corporate level, our lean headquarters team had a short-term goal to close the gap in data collection in order to keep our guests informed of promotions and special events.  Long term, our objective is to completely elevate our messaging with relevant personalization, across all World of Beer corporate and individually-owned franchise locations.  We agreed that it was essential to look toward new technology for the solution.

Historically, our marketing technology only had the capability to collect data on two platforms:  iPads showcasing a daily changing beer menu, and events with an email sign-up field, and corporate website email collection.  However, we were only seeing between 25-50 new customer emails per month, per location, with a total database that was insignificant to the traffic.  That database clearly did not match up to the average 200+ guests who visited each location per day.  Even integrated campaigns and offers had low open rates and high bounce backs.

What we needed first and foremost, was a seamless way to collect qualified consumer information.  We discovered that a solution to fit our needs had already been successfully implemented at two individually-owned locations in the Orlando area. That solution was the Bloom Intelligence Wi-Fi Analytics and Automated Marketing platform.

After assessing the success of the Orlando locations, we decided the Bloom Intelligence platform had perfectly aligned capabilities allowing us to scale to an enterprise solution.  The platform allowed us an opportunity to reward our guests for sharing their coveted emails by offering a custom triggered promotion of a free beer shot upon logging into the location’s Free Wi-Fi.

We are initially conducting a 17-location trial with a planned rollout to the entire system.  In the program’s first 20 days, 200+ emails per location were collected – well exceeding expectations. While the platform is currently only in corporate locations, franchisees are very excited about the direction this new technology has the potential to translate to increased guest engagement and visits, directly impacting their bottom line.

As a World of Beer franchisee, a key benefit is the scalable Bloom Intelligence platform designed to provide analytics for individual locations and top-line averages for all managed locations, offering such key-data as visitor return rate, average return rate and traffic, which varies by location.  All metrics are provided in real-time and are visible on an easy-to-read dashboard.

After three months, we are already able to anticipate an 89% ROI on implementation of the Bloom Intelligence Wi-Fi Analytics and Automated Marketing platform.  Based on initial results, we are on track to collect over 150,000 additional qualified guest emails per year, a quantum leap ahead of previous years.

The next step will be a masterful utilization of automated marketing.  The promotional program will expand from the current one introductory offer to utilizing multiple messages such as visit anniversaries and special events.  Each location will also have the capability to tailor offer campaigns around specific needs of locations, and customer behaviors.  For example, in North Carolina, state laws prohibit distribution of free alcohol.  Being able to cater to such individual needs enables all features of Bloom to work seamlessly across the entire franchise system.

As the rollout of our Wi-Fi analytics and automated marketing platform moves forward at World of Beer, we’re reaping real rewards seeing our loyal guests enjoying the brand’s experience more frequently