In its next e-mail marketing message, which will be sent next month, fast food chain Chick-fil-A will promote the rollout of a new peach milkshake flavor that will be available for a limited time. The effort is part of an ongoing revamp that the restaurant chain has been doing on its e-mail program since it teamed up with Atlanta-based BrightWave Marketing about nine months ago.
The chain recently announced BrightWave as its first e-mail marketing partner and agency of record. The e-mail service provider is managing Chick-fil-A’s e-mail marketing programs and helping to optimize its e-mail database of 750,000 people.
“We have this database of e-mail addresses that we’ve collected over three years, but we really need some expertise on what to do with a database like this,” said Michael McCathren, senior consultant, advertising & campaigns, interactive digital marketing at Chick-fil-A. “What I liked about BrightWave is that these guys have experience on the client side.”
Chick-fil-A, which plans to send about nine to 10 e-mails this year, uses e-mail to promote new products and to build brand awareness about services such as online ordering. The primary demographic is women age 35 to 45, but it includes different people nationwide.
Since the company began working with BrightWave, the brand has been looking at the clicks in e-mails to help determine future campaigns. For example, an e-mail sent out during the December holidays to promote a new peppermint milk shake tracked a number of clicks onto the ordering trays or catering option. Due to the e-mail’s popularity, the next e-mail message was about the catering service.
BrightWave is also in the process of conducting an e-mail survey with Chick-fil-A customers to ask what they are looking for in the e-mail program. The incentive to take the survey is a free year of Chick-fil-A.
“We’ve using the customer response in these surveys to see what e-mail content people are interested in and develop future campaigns from this,” said Simms Jenkins, CEO of BrightWave Marketing.
