Pizza Hut Australia and direct marketing business Salmat have worked closely together for more 20 years to execute a number of marketing initiatives including catalogue distribution, SMS promotions, and email marketing. But recently, Salmat worked with Pizza Hut to develop a custom platform for their franchise network, designed to empower individual franchisees to implement national campaigns with centralised materials, distribution and communication.
The challenge
With more 355 stores in the ANZ market alone, Pizza Hut is already a big cheese in Australia’s pizza industry. That said, it turned to its marketing partner Salmat with an ask to rally their franchise network across Australia to engage in letterbox campaigns through their new, 'centralised Fuse platform'. It also hoped to simultaneously boost sales revenues and underscore its commitment to investing in its many franchisees’ success and wellbeing.
The only problem? Franchisees were sceptical that letterbox campaigns would be successful enough to justify the time and monetary cost of investing in marketing in an already crowded, competitive market. They were further dissuaded by their previous encounters with campaigns that required them to individually order and print their own leaflets. In addition, most would be logging into Pizza Hut’s customised Salmat Fuse platform for the first time. Having worked with Salmat for along time, Pizza Hut was confident they would deliver the results from their ambitious ask.
The solution
After initially being tasked with a traditional distribution role, Salmat came back to Pizza Hut with a proposal to run a full-scale, three-month-long marketing campaign to support its franchise network. Salmat and Pizza Hut worked closely to develop ‘Gold’ and ‘Silver’ campaign levels for their franchisees to opt into, with corresponding levels of duration, trade zones and distribution areas. Pizza Hut also matched every franchisees investment dollar-for-dollar to demonstrate their confidence in the effectiveness of the approach.
The campaign was delivered through Salmat’s Fuse platform, which enabled Pizza Hut’s head office to centrally communicate and supervise the campaign while franchisees could easily manage their local store marketing (LSM) activities, including tailoring materials for their areas, and selecting streets and areas surrounding their stores for the letterbox drops.
Results
Both Pizza Hut and its franchisees emerged from the campaign successfully achieving their goals, with the execution of the campaign considered a best practice for the company moving forward.
Dave Anderson, national local store marketing manager of Pizza Hut Australia, says: “We were truly astonished when it took a mere five days after the campaign options became available through Fuse for a whopping 138 franchisees to register. By the end of the campaign we could tell from the positive responses we’d received that we were boosting franchisee morale and getting everyone on board with Salmat’s Fuse platform, which will make things so much easier for our network moving forward.”
The campaign was also developed and executed 60% faster than before, thanks to the simplicity and customizable nature of Fuse. When the time came for Pizza Hut’s next campaign, 98% of campaign participants opted-in. In addition, 88% of franchisees also reported they intend to maintain a letterbox program with or without co-funding, showing Pizza Hut had achieved their goal of ramping up their Fuse platform and instilling their franchisees’ confidence in letterbox campaigns for the future.
Franchisees were pleasantly surprised at how easy the campaign was to execute and the strong improvement in sales performance, with 75% confirming they would participate in another co-funded program and 72% rating it successful. Leaflet distribution through Fuse cost only 25% of alternative distribution channels, but gave franchisees 4x the reach, leading to 96% of stores sales improving since participating in the program.
“This campaign was incredibly easy to execute on thanks to receiving promotional materials, distribution instructions and every communication through the platform,” Pizza Hut franchise owner Simon Billingham says.
“Not to mention we saw an increase in profit over the term of the campaign of approximately 15%, with a major front of that coming from delivery. Specifically, we had an increase in docket transactions of approximately 80 to 100 transactions per week, which is now holding steady and maintained with an overall increase of approximately 45%. This was achieved due to the wider range and depth of distribution compared to previously.”
Additional fast facts:
• 26% of store sales improved at twice the rate of stores not on the program
• 70% of store sales improved more than stores not on the program
• On average, stores that took part in the campaign saw a sales lift of $485 per week.
• 19.25 million leaflets delivered to nearby residents
• 75% of franchisees felt that having a consistent leaflet program would improve their weekly sales by 4-16%
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