White Castle Takes Advantage of Mobile Marketing | Another Success Story

White Castle has become another example in a long line of success stories involving companies who have implemented mobile marketing. Recently, they integrated a mobile campaign into their marketing strategy and have seen the robust returns mobile marketing can bring. They launched their SMS campaign using a Text2Crave service which, whenever customers are near or around any of their restaurants, sends customized alerts and unique mobile coupons to them. Their customers are then given the opportunity to opt-in to White Castle’s service any time they are around or near a White Castle location. This allows them to control what and what isn’t sent to them, while also connecting into White Castle’s mobile campaign to get coupons and deals on the food they crave.

Shuli Lowy, Marketing Director at Ping Mobile, pointed out, “Mobile coupons delivered through SMS are known to have the highest redemption rates—dwarfing those of all of all other forms of distribution including direct mail, newspaper ads, mobile applications, television commercial and mobile banner ads.”

Lowy continued, “Particularly when it comes to fast food restaurants, SMS has proven to be widely effective. SMS coupons in this vertical can easily have redemption rates of 10-30 percent – especially when location targeting is added to the recipe.”

White Castle’s mobile campaign is simple and easy to understand, and that’s the beauty of it. Any normal street-goer who uses a mobile device or a smartphone is easily capable of opting-in to White Castle’s service. We’ll you how their campaign works.

Customers or potential customers who choose to opt-in to the service can do so by texting the keyword CRAVE to the short code 25787 (you’re welcome, White Castle, for the free
promotion). Now that the customers have opted-in to the service, they will now receive real-time text mesage alerts from White Castle any time they are within a 1-5 mile radius of any White Castle location. Now, you may think this could become a problem, especially if any of these customers are near White Castles often, but White Castle has implemented a setting into their mobile marketing campaign which limits the amount of texts they send to one customer to 6 per month. This prevents them from bombarding their customers with text messages and possibly annoying or irritating them to the point where they opt-out of the service, which is obviously not something you would want.

The coupons sent through the text messages range from from discounts for the company’s Angus Steak Chili and Brownie on a Stick to deals on Sliders and other favorites. Ms. Lowy chimed in, “The mobile marketing industry has been blessed with tremendous innovation in the space and the addition of many new, exciting forms of advertising. However, the majority of those campaigns can only be executed on smartphones.Smartphone penetration is currently at just over half of the market.” Luckily, the smartphone market is growing rapidly and the younger generation already dominates the smartphone market with 74% of 25-34 year olds already owning smartphones. This is a growing trend that you DO NOT want to fall behind on. If you do, you and your company WILL feel the effects of it.

In addition to the Text2Crave service, White Castle is also offering two free Original Sliders to anyone who opts-in to their service. So on top of the incentive to opt-in for deals on White Castle food and products, customers also have the added incentive of just opting-in for the free Sliders.

Ms. Lowy summed up, “The beautiful thing about SMS messages targeted by location is that it enables brands to catch the right person, in the right place, at the crucial decision making moment. Opted in consumers have already expressed interest in the brand and are therefore likely to engage with it further. They are being contacted in the right place as the system can gauge whether they are within the vicinity. Additionally, messages are often pushed out pre-meal time when consumers are beginning to contemplate where to eat their next meal. That is targeting.”