Liam on Smart Pizza Marketing Facebook Live
Smart Pizza Marketing's Bruce Irving hosts Liam Oliver for one of his weekly Facebook Live videos. Bruce is a marketing visionary, consultant, and former pizzeria owner who interviews the leading minds of the pizza restaurant industry.
Liam Oliver on Smart Pizza Marketing
Smart Pizza Marketing Transcript
Bruce Irving: Hey guys, what is going on? Bruce from the Smart Pizza Marketing Podcast, uh, here with you on a Monday morning. Happy after Father's Day, hope you had a great weekend. Hope you have a great week coming up. I'm here with Liam Oliver, uh, product of Valassis Loyalty Solutions, Liam's gonna join me.
Bruce Irving: We're gonna talk a little online ordering, we're gonna talk about how you can use, uh, your own online ordering solution versus the third party one's. We're also gonna teach you how to increase your revenue, and figure out ways to get your customers to order from you, online, because you'll be happier, and it'll be easier, and you'll make more money that way. So Liam, thank you so much for joining me, uh, on the show today.
Liam Oliver: Hey Bruce, thanks for having me on board. Excited to be here. So a little background of where I'm from? It's actually,
uh, Director of Products at Valassis Local Solutions.
Bruce Irving: Yeah, I messed that up a little bit there.
Liam Oliver: Haha. Oh you're fine. It's...
Bruce Irving: (Laughs).
Liam Oliver: ... it's a, it's a weird, you know, title. One of the cool things about Valassis Local Solutions is that we build software, and serve up marketing solutions for over 60,000, small businesses, across the United States. So there are very few other ventures that are able to touch so many different businesses with a local presence. We're excited to be working with them. Among them, are over, 15,000 restaurants, and we have thousands of pizza restaurants that, you know, we really try to help lower their cost of customer acquisition every day.
Bruce Irving: So, do you work national or just in the US?
Liam Oliver: Yep, we're primarily domestic.
Bruce Irving: Right.
Liam Oliver: Companies outside of the United States do leverage our software, but it's primarily domestic.
Bruce Irving: So all of your data and all of your, anybody watching this who is in the US, you have a lot of data, and a lot of information for the people who are, you know, uh, US based restaurants, these are gonna be the people watching this mostly. We can give them a lot of information today, about online ordering, how to increase revenue, and uh, everything that makes that possible, through platforms like yours- your Total Loyalty Solutions?
Liam Oliver: That's right. And, Total Loyalty Solutions, is one of our products that drives online ordering software, email marketing, and loyalty solutions. And because it powers those tools, we're able to, you know, anonymize some of those data sets, and really provide insight into what's happening at the street level, for these, small restaurants.
Bruce Irving: And we're not gonna talk about ... we're gonna talk about Total Loyalty Solutions, but if you're watching this, this isn't gonna be a pitch for Total Loyalty Solutions. If you want to check them out, we'll link them up in the comments below. But we're really gonna give you some value today, about the difference between your own online ordering platform, and the third party sites. And then we're gonna give you some tips on how to increase revenue, as well.
Bruce Irving: So, this is gonna be very informational. If you want to check out Total Loyalty Solutions when this is over, you can contact Liam, or drop a comment below, and they'll get in touch with you. Uh, but if you're watching this, you're gonna get some information regardless of what platform you use, in order to be able to increase your revenue, using online ordering. So I'm excited to talk with you today about that.
Liam Oliver: Yeah, most definitely.
Bruce Irving: So let's get into the first thing, like, what is the different between your own online ordering platform, and the third party sites? I think people have a basic understanding of what it is, but what's the big difference?
Liam Oliver: Yeah, so when we look at online ordering platforms, we put them into two categories. The first is what we consider online food aggregators. Those are companies like GrubHub, E24, um, those that put multiple pizza restaurants onto a single platform.
Liam Oliver: and then the second is white labeled online ordering software. Those are solutions like ChowNow, Zuppler, Total Loyalty Solutions, that power your own online ordering software. And they allow you to keep all of that customer data.
Liam Oliver: The big difference between the aggregators and having your own online ordering software, is that when you onboard a customer, or a customer orders online from you on the aggregators, they own all of your data, they have the opportunity to re-market to your customers, and promote other restaurants. But with your own software, you have every right to re-market to those clients, and improve their experience at your restaurant. So it's, it's really important that every restaurant owner's cognizant about where their customer's data is being used, and how they can improve that customer's experience.
Bruce Irving: And by data, for the, the guys who are watching this, you're really meaning email address, right? Because the other companies give you their address 'cause you're delivering it to them, or maybe not, and their phone number, but uh, you know, nobody really calls anybody nowadays, it's either a message through Facebook messenger, or WhatsApp, or, in a direct message, or an email, right? That's how people communicate nowadays, so that's the information that you give your customers, and the other companies don't, is that what you're talking about?
Liam Oliver: That's right. It could be a social profile-
Bruce Irving: Yeah.
Liam Oliver: ... uh, text message. It could be an email address.
Bruce Irving: Okay. And why is that important?
Liam Oliver: Yeah, so these are your customers. So traditionally, they never had a relationship with a third party. You know, that's really something that's changed up, four or five years ago, where these aggregators came to the marketplace, making it easy to add online ordering, but at the same time, taking all of that data. If you don't own your customer data, your customers are then going to be remarketed to by other restaurants and competing chains. and that's not a win for you at all.
Bruce Irving: Right, so what, what you're saying is that Grubhub and E24 are taking your information, and say you're in Boston, Massachusets, and they know you like to take, get take out, they're gonna re market you to other businesses, and show other businesses your information, maybe 'cause you'll order from them, rather than your own solution, you're just marketing yourself over, and over again, to them.
Liam Oliver: Yeah, that's right. So for example, you have Bruce's Pizza, uh, Pizzeria.
Bruce Irving: Right.
Bruce Irving: It would be fantastic, by the way.
Liam Oliver: What's that?
Bruce Irving: I said, which would be fantastic, by the way.
Liam Oliver: That's right, yeah. It's a, it's a living laboratory.
Bruce Irving: (Laughs).
Liam Oliver: Um, you could do it. And release all of the data.
Bruce Irving: Yeah, (laughs).
Liam Oliver: so Bruce you have your pizza shop, and you onboard all of your customers to Grubhub. Then Liam's Pizza Shop, being a savvy marketer we are, we go to Grubhub, and then we pay a higher percentage of our revenue, to be ranked higher in their algorithms, and therefore more likely to appear above Bruce's Pizzeria. Meanwhile, all of your customers are now coming to my pizza shop, because I'm sharing a higher revenue share.
Bruce Irving: Right.
Liam Oliver: whereas you had the opportunity to onboard them to your own platform, and therefore they would be more likely to stay onboard with you.
Bruce Irving: It's kind of like, Google, right? Like, Google does the same thing. If I want to market to people who are searching for Bruce's Pizza, and I'm Liam's Pizza, I can go on Google too, and buy keywords that, every time someone pr- types in Bruce's Pizza, my pizza shop comes up higher than theirs.
Liam Oliver: Yeah, it, it's similar, but the only thing is that with Grubhub you can pay to be at the top. You can do that with Adwords too, Google's advertising mechanism. But you get to keep the data from the customers that come from Google.
Bruce Irving: True.
Liam Oliver: ... once they're on your platform. With Grubhub, once they're there, they're there forever.
Bruce Irving: Now, I see people on their website sometime wh- which kind of baffles me, uh, they'll, they'll promote the fact that they use E24 and Grubhub. Like, to me, I, I always think to myself, why would somebody promote the fact that they do that? Like, they're getting a huge percentage from them, and they're literally driving their own customers, who come to their website or their social presence, to a more competitive marketplace.
Liam Oliver: Yeah, you know-
Bruce Irving: Do they not know that?
Liam Oliver: ... it, it doesn't make any.... it doesn't make any logical business sense. There, there is one reason where I would consider promoting a single aggregator, and that's the event that your pizzeria doesn't offer delivery, but wants to.
Bruce Irving: Right, maybe.
Liam Oliver: In that situation you have to strategically promote your own online ordering software, for take out, carry out but not for delivery orders. It's difficult to do, and it's expected in the future, that delivery's gonna be become sort of a commodity with white label delivery services and solutions like that. That would be the one area where, if you wanted to offer delivery, you didn't want to make the initial investment in delivery drivers, and the ongoing coast and liability to that supports that... that would make some sense.
Bruce Irving: How do you do that? How do you take your own online ordering orders, but then use a third party site for delivery?
Liam Oliver: I think that the way to do it is to first, make it a lot easier to order from your own online ordering software, than it is the aggregator. So that means making, your website easy as possible to use. Building up content, so it ranks higher in search engines.
Liam Oliver: and, you know, offering promotions for ordering from your own online ordering software. If they order from your own site, and you give them a 10% offer, it's a lot better than on-boarding them to Grubhub, and sharing 17% of your revenue, on average.
Bruce Irving: Right.
Liam Oliver: and then, of course, on there, instead of promoting Grubhub, what you want to promote is delivery. So, you know, for delivery we use Grubhub, and put some messaging on your website that supports that.
Bruce Irving: Yeah. That's a good point, you maybe- be instead of promoting Grubhub on your website, just say we deliver, and then, you know, when they ask how you deliver, you can just mention that you deliver through Grubhub. You don't necessarily have to promote them on your website.
Liam Oliver: Exactly. And you know, we think that times are changing a little bit, with delivery. Where there'll be some national networks that can provide delivery services.
Bruce Irving: Yeah.
Liam Oliver: DoorDash, and a few other companies are beginning to provide white labeled API's, that allow online ordering companies to provide third party delivery through your own platform. Um, and as the sharing economy grows, and, things like autonomous cars become possible, we think that it'll be easier than ever before, to offer delivery.
Bruce Irving: What about voice? How does voice, voice ordering move into all of this? I think that voice is gonna be popular, you know, with things like Siri, and Alexa, and all of these things popping up, like, you know, I mean, obviously it's not pretty close-
Liam Oliver: It's so cool.
Bruce Irving: ... but 25 years from now, people are gonna just be talking to their phones, and their digital products, more than they are physically using them. How does that work into what we're talking about today, with online ordering?
Liam Oliver: Yeah, so first off, it's really cool. I mean, who would have thought you could have the opportunity to, you know, talk to a speaker, um, and get a pizza delivered 35 minutes later? It's-
Bruce Irving: Right.
Liam Oliver: ... it's pretty remarkable. It comes down to, as you optimize online ordering, that you're channel agnostic. By channel agnostic, I mean, you want to be able to support several different online ordering experiences, so that your customer, wherever they are, they have the most convenient method to order from you. Today I would argue that only power users of Alexa, and Siri, are really leveraging voice capabilities. As time goes on, if people find that a convenient method to order you'll want to be able to support that capability. So-
Bruce Irving: Yeah, but I don't, I don't think that's, it's happening in the next year, but maybe two to five years from now. Like, our, my kids, who are, you know, 16 and below, that's how they're gonna consume information and order things online. They're gonna be talking to their phones 'cause they're much more tech savvy than we are.
Liam Oliver: Yeah, most definitely. I can't speak to what channel they're gonna be using, but I wouldn't be surprised if voice is one of them.
Bruce Irving: Yeah. And does, so when you, when you talk about how to order online from you, obviously people are like, alright, great, I have online ordering now. Now I want to get people to go there, how do you push people who maybe aren't digital, like, aren't the younger generation, maybe they're a little bit older, and they like to use the phone, or they, they're not aware of how easy it actually is to order online, and, and once they do do it, they actually enjoy it. How do you get them to do that? How do you get them to take action and go from, uh, a phone call consumer, or a walk in consumer, to ordering online?
Liam Oliver: Yeah, so I'd like to answer that in two ways. So first-
Bruce Irving: Yeah.
Liam Oliver: ... how to make online ordering comfortable and improve the user experience of an ordering user who might not be as, you know, tech savvy. And then the second part, is how to use online ordering to grow your business.
Bruce Irving: Okay.
Liam Oliver: So I think with offline users, traditionally legacy users, older users who are not familiar with mobile phones and computers, it's to make the user experience as simple as possible. That all starts with a call to action. So that could be including a business card has on online ordering offer included on every take out order.
Liam Oliver: That could be, leveraging social, older computer users are generally on Facebook, um, nowadays. and making it easy for them to, to discover online ordering. But the bottom line, with all online ordering, it's just a method to make it easy to order from you.
Bruce Irving: Right.
Liam Oliver: That's what it is, you want to make it as simple as possible. And then, with growing your business through online ordering-
Bruce Irving: Hold on a second, let me get, let me hop in there-
Liam Oliver: Yeah.
Bruce Irving: ... before you get into that part. Uh, I think that making it as simple as possible is huge. If you go, if you get somebody whose not a digital native, to go to your online ordering platform, and it's clunky, and it takes too many steps, their immediate default is gonna be to X that out, and just call you. So I think that's very underrated, people look at how much online ordering costs, first, rather than the usability if it, for people who maybe aren't digital native.
Bruce Irving: Like, people who are my, my kids are gonna figure it out. Like, you know, a- anybody whose 20 or 22 and under, is gonna be able to figure it out, and they're not, they're default isn't going to be to call you. But, anybody who's 30 plus, if it's too complicated, or too hard for them to use, they're not gonna sit there for 10 minutes, and try to figure it out. They're just gonna X it out, call you, and never go back to that platform. So I think that's something that a lot of people don't think about, is how easy it is to use it.
Liam Oliver: Yeah, and when you're launching software, and pizza companies are software companies now, I mean, Domino's is a software company with over 60% of their orders coming from online channels. You can't create fake behaviors in people. You're not gonna be able to force people to order online.
Bruce Irving: Right.
Liam Oliver: They order online because it's easier. And if it's not easier, they're either not gonna order from you, or they're gonna find another way to place that order.
Bruce Irving: Right, or they do- even if you incentivize them, if you give them a huge discount of five or $10.00 off, to order from you, if it's hard, they're just gonna call you and say hey, I want to use this offer, I know you have it, but I can't use it online, I want to use it now. And what are you gonna say, no? You going to argue with the customer? You're gonna have to make it super easy for them to actually execute on that offer.
Liam Oliver: Yeah, it's all about convenience.
Bruce Irving: Yeah. So let's get to the next part.
Liam Oliver: Yeah, online ordering for pizza restaurants, is really like introducing e-commerce into your restaurant. And one of the great things about e-commerce is that it makes it easy to track different marketing channels. and figure out which ones are working, and which ones have the highest ROI. So you're able to calculate your cost of customer acquisition through different channels.
Liam Oliver: and you do that by creating simple tracking methods. And that can be promo codes that are isolated to a specific marketing promotion. That could be unique links that, again, are isolated to a specific marketing promotion. So you can see how many new customers, and how many existing customers, are coming through those promotions.
Liam Oliver: And then you can take, sort of an all inclusive look at your business, and you can ask the question, how much is a new customer worth to me? You can base that off of customer lifetime value and things like that. Then you can decide which marketing promotions to sunset, and which promotions to really ramp up to the next level. As a result, you're gonna find your business paying less to acquire new customers, and having more efficient spend of your marketing dollars.
Bruce Irving: Do you, when you say, uh, unique links, is that tools like Bitly, or something like that? Where you can kind of track that link, or do you have you- does Total Loyalty Solutions have its own link building-
Liam Oliver: Yeah...
Bruce Irving: ... like.
Liam Oliver: ... so, Bit.ly and other URL shorteners do a good job of telling you how many people have clicked that link. Most online ordering platforms, such as our own, Total Loyalty Solutions, you're actually able to append a promotional code to a URL. What that means is you have your pizzarestaurant.com/online ordering/ and then a promo code to the end of it. That allows you to see exactly how much revenue was generated from that link.
Bruce Irving: And then you put that link on social platforms, or wherever you'd want to promote that?
Liam Oliver: ... exactly. Someone isn't going to type that in a browser, it's generally in an email, in a social platform, um, or somewhere that is easy clickable.
Bruce Irving: Got it. And what was the second part of that, uh, what you were just talking about? You, before, after the link clicks or tracking the link clicks, you talked about something else. What was that, can you refresh my memory on that?
Liam Oliver: When you have the unique link that's associated with your online ordering platform you can track revenue, the number of orders, and all of the transactional data associated with your clients, or your customers who have clicked that link. Where you can really only track the number of clicks when it comes to like a Bit.ly or something like that.
Bruce Irving: Got it. So when, you're, you're saying, like, if you do a promotion, and it tanks, you can kill it, because you can see not only did 100 people click it, but nobody bought it.
Liam Oliver: Yeah.
Bruce Irving: Versus 100 people clicked on it, and 80 people actually purchased through that link. Whereas Bit.ly will only show you the 100 and 100.
Liam Oliver: Exactly. And it's all about, you know, it, it sounds nerdy, but it's about applying a scientific method...
Bruce Irving: (Laughs).
Liam Oliver: to you're marketing promotions, because you want to spend your marketing dollars in channels that will generate you more orders, and new customers. Traditionally, you know, you would put an ad in the newspaper... if you were lucky you are counting the number of coupons that came back from that ad. Today you can get quantitative data from your marketing promotions, and in a really easy fashion, that'll tell you exactly what's working. And that makes your job easier, and you don't have to make hard decisions, because the data does it for you.
Bruce Irving: How ... so, in your experience, how much more is the average ticket, from someone who orders online, to versus traditional?
Liam Oliver: Yeah, it varies. There's a lot of data out there, you know, I don't want to give you an exact number. The general consensus is that's its increased number and that's because when you're ordering online it's easy to up-sell additional things. So you're-
Bruce Irving: Yeah.
Liam Oliver: ... you see a dessert, you want to pick up the dessert. Or you see a topping that you like, you're able to check that, and you're able to get it onto your pizza, for the additional incremental cost. So I've seen numbers anywhere from 10% to 40%.
Liam Oliver: A lot of the data, I will say, I question. That's because there are very few studies that have been done straight from POS transactional data, and then segmenting online ordering from it. So I think a lot of the data we see today are from online ordering providers that don't have an all inclusive data set, and they're using it to promote online ordering. But nonetheless, from our experience, online ordering values are higher from users who place orders online, versus in store, or over the phone.
Bruce Irving: Definitely. And I'll give you just some data, from our perspective, uh, with our clients and the people that we've talked to on the show. And it's over, you know, uh, 400 people that we have as clients, that we've talked to, and the average is anywhere from $4 to $7 more, per order, from people who order online versus traditionally, either phone call or walk in. And it's just because, when you give people time to, to browse, and do their own thing, rather than rushing them off the phone, they just tend to order more, because they're more relaxed, they browse more, they spend more time on your website, and they're not rushed.
Bruce Irving: Like, when we answer a phone, in the restaurant, and I know this 'cause I was in the restaurant and I did this myself, and a lot of people that we work for did it, um, you know, that phone's ringing, it's Friday night, you may have customers in front of you, you have other things to do. You're trying to multitask, so you're, you're first reaction is to get this phone call over with, as quickly as possible, and y- you're not upselling. Even though we all talk about upselling, and you should upsell on the phone, it very rarely happens.
Liam Oliver: And it can seem tacky, too.
Bruce Irving: Yeah, exactly.
Liam Oliver: When your up-selling over the phone.
Bruce Irving: Yeah, it seems like, you seem pushy. Almost seems salesy. But when you do it online, people expect it, first of all, because they're used to it with Amazon, and things like this, where they're starting to purchase more. But it just gives them the ability to spend more time, when people have more time they, you just purchase more. It's just a fact.
Liam Oliver: And they embrace it, when you add catchy descriptions and beautiful pictures It'll make someone more likely to spend a little bit more.
Bruce Irving: Right. It, it, I- it, if I- I find it hard when, when people don't, the people who are in our business, uh, and it's tough, like the pizza business is tough, the restaurant space is, is tough. It's really hard to, especially in certain states, where minimum wage is really high, and uh, unemployment is really low, it's, it's tough to run a business.
Bruce Irving: And you have to be able to maximize your business, and do what's best for your, yourself, and your customers. And giving your customers the ability to order where they want to order, not where you want them to order, where they want to order and spend their time is your job.
Liam Oliver: Yeah. Without a doubt. Making it as seamless as possible is really an important trait of talented restaurant owners.
Bruce Irving: And now how ... do you find it easier to promote online ordering online, or offline?
Liam Oliver: You know, traditionally offline was really difficult. The reason was is there weren't methods to attribute purchases to offline. But today, with advances in, printing, and having easier to use point of sales systems, and online ordering platforms, it can really be the same. and that, the importance with offline media is to use a promo code or a landing page with a unique URL that allows you to track what traffic is coming, from those channels.
Liam Oliver: So one of our favorite marketing assets is Clipper Magazine, which is sent into millions of homes each month. It features offers from local restaurants from around your local community. What we encourage our clients to do, is to make sure that you're including the promo code that can be used for online ordering, or when they bring in the coupon, that it can be easily typed into the point of sale. And again, it's the same concept of that link we talked about earlier, where it shows you exactly how much revenue was generated from that marketing promotion.
Bruce Irving: Yeah, that's important to track your results. So you, you can't just throw it at the wall, and, and hope it sticks. You have to be able to, you know, track what you're doing, and then be able to measure it, and keep doing what's working, and kill what's not.
Liam Oliver: Yeah, don't spend a dollar of your marketing budget before you know how you're gonna track or attribute the transactions that come from it.
Bruce Irving: Yeah, it's hard to, 'cause I, I think it's a little bit challenging, too, like, when someone gets a flyer in the mail, or a postcard, they expect it to be salesy. I think people have a hard time, uh, with online versus offline, because they're treating online as marketing, when it's really branding that you want to do online, with a little bit of marketing involved. Offline, postcards, flyers, uh, menus ... like people are used to getting discounts and coupons on those, so that's fine. You, it, it, it's not the same message when you use Facebook, or Instagram, or Twitter, or email. Like, th- it's a little bit different, and you have to change your messaging up a little bit, and be subtle with it.
Liam Oliver: Yeah, and Bruce, do you have any experience with postcards? I mean, whatever your experience has been with, some forms of offline media?
Bruce Irving: So we try to say, listen, uh, digital marketing w- is what we do. Offline marketing is what we used to do. I still feel like it has its place, but I think you have to be more strategic with it, I think you could market your customers with, uh, flyers and postcards, to people who maybe have come to you, but haven't come to you in a while. Because mailing your whole city with a postcard that could or couldn't work, is very, very expensive. And it's a one time deal.
Liam Oliver: Yeah, you know, what we found is two things with the postcards is, first, that a postcard is really becoming similar to an email, where you can print in full HTML. And that there's no difference in a postcard than an email message, where you can have it completely variable to that household. So, you know, for example, a promo going to a household that has ordered from you before...
Bruce Irving: Yeah.
Liam Oliver: ... is different, than a home that's never tried something from your business. And you can vary those offers. Then the second thing that we've really seen, is that using postcards as a re-marketing method, so sending a postcard in addition to a text, or an email message, to somebody who hasn't ordered from you in the last 30 days, has really been an effective method of bringing customers back for more, and increasing their lifetime value at your business.
Bruce Irving: Yeah, I totally agree with that. We used to do something where we used to send out five different postcards. We'd have one if you were a new customer, which means if you've never ordered from us before. The next day we would send you like a thank you card. Uh, if we had a late delivery, you know, a, a delivery that was, in our business, more than 35 minutes was considered late-
Liam Oliver: Yeah.
Bruce Irving: ... we would send you a postcard the net day, saying hey, sorry for that late delivery, here's a couple dollars off with a coupon code. And then we would have a lazy customer program, where it'd be 30, 60, 90 days, where, if you didn't call us in 30 days you got this postcard. If it was 60 you got this one, if it was 90 you got this one. And then if it was, you know, 120, we gave you a free pizza, and if you didn't come back then, we deleted you.
Liam Oliver: You're gone, yeah.
Bruce Irving: Because, you know what, we, we haven't seen you in so long, that you're probably either moved, or you hate us.
Liam Oliver: Yeah, most definitely. But, you know, for me, it's all about testing. Just send that postcard campaign, make sure there's a way to attribute it, and then compare it to some of your other marketing channels.
Bruce Irving: Yeah, like you said, just make sure it's different. Don't send the same postcard to a 30 day lazy customer that you would send to your whole area, because you want to make sure that when they come in, you can determine which one's working, and where it came from.
Liam Oliver: Yeah, and then when when you mean expensive for postcard marketing, generally what do you think the average spend is, for a, like an area mail campaign?
Bruce Irving: So, not sin- I don't think postcard marketing's too expensive. I, what I mean by expensive, is like, EDDM, where people are sending 10,000 flyers out, or-
Bruce Irving: ... yes. To a, to a, to a farm area, not necessarily to your database.
Liam Oliver: Yeah, you got to be strategic.
Bruce Irving: Yeah.
Liam Oliver: Although, you know, with proper channels, EDDM could be used. Generally saturation mail, and other discount postcard marketing products can do it for significantly lower than EDDM. I mean, you can get a price as low as $0.18 or $0.19 a household if done strategically, where with EDDM you generally start at $0.35, for a full service provider.
Bruce Irving: I'm a huge fan of like, if I get a ... and this may just be me, 'cause I'm a digital native, if I get a menu in the mail, eh, you know, from a, a new place, or a place that maybe I haven't been to before, my initial reaction is to go look them up online and see what they look like there. Because generally I'm gonna get more information from that, then a postcard or a flyer. So, if they don't have, if they give me a nice menu, and it's got nice photos on there, and they, and then I go look them up online, and they don't have a website, or I can't see any of their own products, or what they do, or how they speak, as a brand, I'm probably not gonna go to them, because I don't trust it.
Liam Oliver: It worked though. So first off, I agree with you, you have to have the fundamental website, right?
Bruce Irving: Yeah.
Liam Oliver: You have to have the online ordering, but assuming that you have online ordering, that postcard or menu just worked. It just-
Bruce Irving: If I, if-
Liam Oliver: ... yeah, you went online and you checked it out.
Bruce Irving: Maybe. Maybe if they did a good job, online.
Liam Oliver: And you know..
Bruce Irving: But for the most part, it's not. For the, I'd say-
Bruce Irving: ... I'd say eight out of 10 times I go to their website, and it's shit.
Liam Oliver: Yeah. I'm seeing, you know, companies like Postmates and Caviar, sort of start to transition back to print. And it, for me, the kicker with old school print, was that it wasn't trackable. You couldn't tell me how much was coming from that media source. But new school print, I would argue what's the difference from digital, other than how the eyeball is looking at it? Whether it's on the computer-
Bruce Irving: I'll tell you the difference. My kids will never go to the mailbox and check that mailbox, and they are trained not to. And they've never, and my wife, myself, has never gotten anything in the mail, walked over to my neighbors house, knocked on the door, and said you got to take a look at this postcard.
Bruce Irving: ... digitally, my wife shares stuff all the time, in Facebook groups, in, on Instagram. My kids do the same, so you're much more likely to get us to share something from your business, if it's good, digitally, than you will ever non digitally.
Liam Oliver: I agree with sharing, but discovery, I would argue that, if there is a flashy postcard from Chipotle, in your mailbox, which was one of their most successful campaigns, was a postcard campaign, that you're gonna go online and then share it. So for sharing, for loyalty, I would agree that online is much better. For discovery, I would argue... I have no idea, experiment for your neighborhood...
Bruce Irving: Yeah, I agree.
Liam Oliver: ... and see how it works.
Bruce Irving: The only thing that I say is like, th- you're not gonna get me to take much action offline if, unless it has an offer or discount on it.
Liam Oliver: Generally yes. Unless it adds convenience, like, for example, grocery store delivery. Or if some one is...
Bruce Irving: Possibly, yeah.
Liam Oliver: ... new to your area, yeah. But for a traditional business, like pizza, it's hard to drive transactions without having some sort of offer for free delivery, buy one get one, or something like that.
Bruce Irving: I love it though, take, experiment, experiment with your offline, mix the two together, put offline with online, put 'em together, merge 'em, see what they comes up with. But then gain, track it right? Like, you're never gonna really know how you're doing, unless you track the results, and see how those offers are coming in. Maybe you do do two di- two, two programs that are exactly the same, that just use two different coupon codes, do one digitally and one non digitally, and see which one performs better.
Liam Oliver: And repeat that every month.
Bruce Irving: Yeah.
Bruce Irving: Consistency is key with anything, right? If you're not consistent with it, nothing's gonna really work over time.
Liam Oliver: Yeah, for sure.
Bruce Irving: Cool Liam, so where can people go check you out and see, get some more information about what you guys do, or how you do it?
Liam Oliver: Yeah, definitely. TotalLoyalty.com is the best place to go for online ordering research and online ordering software. In addition, you can find information on there on email marketing,and other ways to drive customers back to your business for more. Um, that's the, that's the spot.
Bruce Irving: Do you do email marketing, too, with Total Loyalty Solutions?
Liam Oliver: Yes. So Total Loyalty does three things really well. We launch mobile apps with loyalty programs, email marketing, and online ordering solutions.
Bruce Irving: Let me get a question, I know we're just trying to wrap up here, but I'm gonna throw one at you-
Liam Oliver: Yeah.
Bruce Irving: ... talk to me about the mobile app. Is that something that the consumers are using? Do you have any data on that? People ask me that all the time, and I really don't have that much data, so I'd love to get your feedback on that.
Liam Oliver: The way the mobile app plays is for loyal customers who are ordering from you more than once or twice a week. Those are the customers that are gonna use your mobile app. Otherwise, you want to optimize your website for online ordering first.
Bruce Irving: Okay.
Liam Oliver: So, your fundamental, business plan 101, for marketing for a pizza restaurant, for me, is to get online ordering on there. It's sort of your point of sale in the cloud. Make it really easy to order from you, to go directly to your website and then order. The mobile app and email marketing are steps two and three.
Bruce Irving: Cool. Yeah, 'cause I get a lot of questions about that, and I get a lot of mobile app companies emailing us, giving us data, and I'm like, you know what? I know how, is it, is it something that a lot of folks are gonna download your app to order from you online? Or are they just gonna go right to the URL and try to order from you there?
Liam Oliver: We see between 10 and 20% of orders coming from our clients mobile apps. Those are the customers that order the most frequently.
Bruce Irving: So the, your good customers who are gonna be coming to you frequently, once or twice a week, are gonna download the app, because it's convenient for them?
Liam Oliver: Exactly. And, and once they download it, you got 'em for life. Um, because you're able to have-
Bruce Irving: Yeah.
Liam Oliver: ... you're able to have another channel of marketing, push notifications. You can put a loyalty program in there that makes it easy to bring them back for more.
Bruce Irving: Cool. Liam, what was the website URL again, that people can go visit?
Liam Oliver: TotalLoyalty.com.
Bruce Irving: Awesome. Thank you so much for joining me today.
Liam Oliver: Bruce. I appreciate it. You have a great day.
Bruce Irving: Guys, if you have any questions for this, uh, hit the comments below. If you have any questions for Liam, or for Total Loyalty Solutions, or for me, uh, drop a comment below, whether you're watching this live with us, or you're watching this later, on your own time. We'll be monitoring the comments here, so if you have any questions about what we talked about, on the show today, whether that be about email, or uh, mobile apps, or online ordering solutions, or how to increase your revenue using online, just drop a comment below, we'll be monitoring these, and we'll see 'em. So guys, thank you so much for tuning in, either live or the replay, we'll see yeah.
Liam Oliver: Thanks Bruce.