Subway franchisee Andy Kelly had recently taken over a Manchester site and was looking for a way to increase traffic, particularly over the busy but highly competitive lunchtime period. He needed a communication channel that would cut through and get his message noticed above everything else.
With read rates of over 98%, using SMS marketing was an obvious choice. Having built up a list of several hundred mobile numbers over a few weeks, he was ready to begin SMS marketing in earnest.
The first message that he sent, let people know that he was planning to send them news about the latest offers, giving customers the option to remove themselves from the list. About 3% of the recipients opted out at this stage.
The first SMS marketing message was to remind people about the now legendary £3 lunch deal. A choice of nine subs and a drink for just 3 quid. The message went out at about 11:30 AM, just as people were starting to feel a bit peckish. The response from this campaign was in Andy’s words, ‘overwhelming’. Overwhelming both in the sense that the number of people turning up was impressive but also overwhelming in that the staff could barely keep up with demand.
“We were a bit worried that we had underestimated the level of response. The last thing we needed was a queue of hungry customers that we couldn’t serve efficiently. We were so surprised about how many people came in just because they had received a text. Now that we have proved it works we will be using SMS marketing as a major part of our marketing from now on.”
If you haven’t tried SMS marketing before feel free to set up a free account. It will come with 10 free text credits so you can test the service at no cost. Please feel free to call us on (0117) 205 0202 if you would like to chat.