Jersey Mike’s, the nation’s leading fast casual sub sandwich franchise, wanted to reconnect with their lapsed customers and acquire new ones. Jeff Hemschoot, Marketing Director at Jersey Mike’s, explains, “Our goal was to test if digital could help us reactivate guests who hadn’t purchased in at least three months. We also wanted to target customers who have dined at competitors.”
To do this, Jersey Mike’s knew they had to learn more about their existing customers. But needed a partner to help them unify digital behavior to all transactions. They decided to conduct a pilot program with Epsilon.
We used CORE Transact℠ to find both Jersey Mike’s and their competitors’ customers and create the ultimate view of their spending patterns and digital behavior. CORE Transact℠ is our exclusive data asset comprised of non-modeled, third-party transactional data from over 1.5 million merchants. It spans across multiple card types and includes one of the largest participants in the card payment system. We see over $2.8 trillion dollars in spend per year across 200 million profiles—more than half of all card spend in the U.S.
“Epsilon’s solution helped us find the customer at the right time and on the right device,” says Kelly McGee, Digital Director at Jersey Mike’s. CORE Transact℠ identified millions of people that either converted at Jersey Mike’s or a competitor in the last 12 months. Each group was exposed to different offers and with our 1:1 decisioning engine, each message was delivered to the right person at the right time and on the right device. Kelly continues, “Finding customers that have dined at competitors with the transactional database is something we haven’t been able to do before.”
Throughout the pilot, collaboration and client education were a priority. When describing the relationship, Jeff says, “We were very impressed with the follow-up and follow-through from Epsilon. This approach was new to us, and every team member has been informative and happy to help.”
The pilot program enabled Jersey Mike’s to deliver meaningful messages to and convert both lapsed and new guests, without having to build a full CRM database. And the measurement was real-time and precise. Kelly says, “One of the unique things about working with Epsilon was the ability to track sales. Not only could we do it on our end with coupon redemptions, but also on their end with credit card data. This was really useful.”
The performance data showed that digital is an effective channel to win over new guests acquired from competitors, reactivate lapsed guests and deliver results reported with actual revenue that far exceeded their goals. Jeff’s concludes, “We were overwhelmed by the success of this program. We blew by our target ROAS.”
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