When we think of the world’s top online brands, we typically think of eCommerce and technology giants like Amazon and Apple, however Domino’s, the world’s largest quick service restaurant, also claims to be among the top five eCommerce retailers as a result of the incredible work they are doing to stay exciting and relevant to today’s customers. The company’s global dominance features powerful online capabilities including fifteen different ways to order, and this dynamic approach combined with their popular loyalty programme are together driving incredible success, with 101 consecutive quarters of sales growth recently announced.
Given how critical it is to get the basics right, Domino’s first embraced an honest yet risky strategy in 2009 when admitted it had an inferior-tasting product. Their approach was a powerful example of how authenticity can inspire trust, and the “PizzaTurnAround” campaign allowed it to effectively re-invent itself as a “surprisingly honest brand”.
Alongside the product focus, Domino’s launched its online ordering platform over a decade ago in 2008, a strategy credited with creating the foundation for its success and becoming the largest pizza company in the world – a milestone it achieved in February 2018.
With its product and platform in place, the brand’s “deliciously creative” digital marketing initiatives are now playing the lead role in its ongoing dominance. Their Domino’s Rewards programme is a classic example of a clear, consistent and compelling loyalty programme that’s easy to understand and use, and it’s continually enhanced with clever and unexpected tactical ideas that are truly engaging users. Let’s look at how this “online food ordering icon” uses a clear consumer focus and the power of the latest technology to differentiate itself in such a competitive industry.
Domino’s Loyalty Strategy:
Rewards
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- Domino’s launched its loyalty program in 2015, focusing on driving purchase frequency as its main business objective.
- Their loyalty programme rewards you for ordering, with each order over $10 earning you 10 Rewards points.
- Six orders (or 60 points) entitle you to a free medium pizza. Simple!
- The company recently claimed to have over 20 million members of its program!
Domino’s App for US Customers
Clever Concepts
While some of the brand’s campaigns are more PR stunts than anything else, others make great commercial sense. For example, I’m not convinced how compelling the wedding registry option is proving (which allows guests to pick pizza as a wedding gift!), but there are some ingenious ideas that we can learn from. Here are my favourites:
- With ever-increasing demands on our time and attention, consumers are becoming increasingly averse to exerting effort in their daily lives. Domino’s answer? The “zero-click” order. A genius approach that requires one initial set-up, and then a repeat order is created and delivered automatically when you open the app and simply wait for ten seconds.
- The brand knows that groups love pizzas and companies are a great target market. Domino’s is the first restaurant I’ve seen to integrate ordering with Slack – an online productivity tool that facilitates collaborative working – and now pizza orders! So simple and so clever.
- Along with traditional desktop and mobile channels, Domino’s has excelled in creative ideas to order. For example, in the US, you can simply tweet or text the pizza emoji to order your favourite, and social assets such as gifs, snaps and emojis have also been captured from social channels and used in the brand’s TV campaigns.
- This year’s Superbowl concept is both innovative and effective – earning powerful publicity from some of the top media sites in the US, including CNN, CNBC and Inc.com. With the football final driving pizza consumption to one of the highest days of the year, Domino’s decided to celebrate everyone eating pizza – their pizza, competitors’ pizza, home-made pizza – even pretend pizza! Dubbed the “points for pies” concept, it invited users to send pictures of their pizza, no matter where or how it was made or bought, with loyalty points for simply sharing the image. Domino’s digital team then used artificial intelligence software to verify the uploaded content for pizza to ensure only pizza pictures were rewarded!
Similar to their Rewards programme proposition, users earned 10 points per picture uploaded, with a commitment to awarding 100 million points toward free pizzas and pies during the program’s 12-week duration. While it might not make immediate sense to consumers why they are being rewarded for buying pizza from competitors, for Domino’s these customers were like gold dust – they shared their data, become engaged app users, and of course have clearly identified themselves as pizza lovers and potential customers for future orders. Another compelling clever concept! Watch the TV campaign below, which aired in early February ahead of the big football final, to see how simple and effective the concept was.
Domino’s Piece of the Pie 2019 TV Campaign
Technology Driven
With so many clever and creative concepts, it’s no wonder that Fast Company describe Domino’s as one of the world’s most innovative companies. In 2018, the then-CEO Patrick Doyle explained that the company is “as much a tech company as we are a pizza company” with half its 800 employees in its headquarters working in software and analytics!
I’m certainly impressed, and now off to order myself a delicious Domino’s pizza – purely in the name of loyalty research of course!
Domino’s App for US Customers
About Us:
Liquid Barcodes is a leading global loyalty and digital marketing technology company specialized for the convenience store and food service industries. Our proprietary cloud-based technology platform allow retailers to create and manage their digital marketing campaigns with a proprietary process we call the “customer connection cycle’ to engage, promote and reward customers’ activities in real-time across digital and media channels.
How we do it:
We have developed the most advanced loyalty and digital marketing technology platform specifically for convenience store and foodservice retailers globally.
Retailers use our self-service dashboard to create and manage loyalty driven marketing campaigns that increase purchases with their existing customers, as well as effectively target and acquire new customers through partners or paid media channels.
One core component of live loyalty is gamification. We have gamified branding, loyalty and promotions. We believe this approach is essential in order to get customers’ attention and ultimately truly engage them with repeatable actions thereby winning their loyalty.
Check out some of our exciting/proven results here:
About Me:
Chief Content Officer, Liquid Barcodes and Independent Loyalty Consultant
With over twenty-five years of marketing experience, I specialise in loyalty marketing consulting, managing consumer loyalty propositions, strategy and operations. In addition to working with Liquid Barcodes, my clients have included Telefonica O2, Three Mobile, Electric Ireland, Allied Irish Bank and The Entertainer, as well as Avios – the global points currency for some of the world’s top airlines. I am also a judge for the Loyalty Magazine Awards.
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