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How Firehouse Subs turbocharged email marketing results

As Firehouse Subs shows, automation and segmentation pack a powerful one-two punch that creates a personal experience for subscribers and top-notch results for marketers.

November 9, 2016

By Cynthia Price, vice president of marketing, Emma

As a franchise owner, you know that great marketing means more than just frequent promotions and reward programs. To truly capture attention and inspire loyalty from your customers, you have to communicate the right message to the right audiences at exactly the right time—no small order. When you consider some franchises have hundreds of locations and thousands of customers, it seems nearly impossible. But with the right tools and strategies, it doesn't have to be.

Use the right tools

Email is a proven champion in the marketing world, driving an average 3,800 percent return on investment for U.S. businesses – double that of any other digital channel. Now imagine all that power at your franchisees' fingertips. Using modern email marketing platforms, franchises can capitalize on advanced features that enable marketers to create sub-accounts for each location and monitor performance from a centralized dashboard. They can also share creative assets such as logos, images and templates with franchisees to ensure a consistent brand experience for customers from San Francisco to Boston.

Consider Firehouse Subs. With more than 1,000 restaurants throughout the U.S. and Puerto Rico, Firehouse heavily relies on email to keep customers informed and engaged—and it's led to some seriously impressive results.

Embrace automation

The best email marketing is relevant, personal and timely. With advanced automation tools, franchise marketers can check all three boxes with ease. After the initial setup, automation does all the heavy lifting for you, actively engaging your customers without your team ever hitting "send."  

Here's an example: Thanks to a little smart automation, Firehouse Subs' new subscribers receive a welcome email immediately upon signup that includes a special offer and personalized expiration date two weeks from the date the subscriber joins. Subscribers also benefit from an automated birthday email, which includes a reminder to show their ID in their local restaurant to receive a free sub on their special day.

The welcome email is a total hit, generating a 76 percent open rate, while 50 percent of subscribers open their birthday emails. Beyond those impressive stats, these automated emails give subscribers immediate value, get them into their local restaurant and get them excited about future emails from the franchise.

Segment to be more relevant

Today's consumers are bombarded with irrelevant marketing messages, and let's face it: They're not having it anymore. 56 percent of consumers will unsubscribe from emails they feel are no longer relevant (Chadwick Martin Bailey). Thankfully, there's a simple way to ensure your message is hitting the right notes with each and every one of your subscribers: segmentation. In fact, it can increase open rates by 39 percent (eMarketer). Franchise marketers can segment their audience in many different ways—including subscriber engagement, purchase history, how/where subscribers signed up, and campaign results—to create the most personalized email experiences possible.

With more than 1,000 locations, Firehouse Subs often has requests for location-specific emails. That might seem overwhelming, but segmentation helps them handle it with ease. For example, when the team needs to announce a new location opening, it segments its massive subscriber list based on that location's zip code. The team can then identify a specific radius around that location and send an email to only those who live within a reasonable distance to the new store. That way, the Firehouse team reaches all the right people without alienating subscribers who live across the country with irrelevant messaging.

Reward subscribers early and often

Generally speaking, people subscribe to a company's email list because they want to get something of value in return: a coupon, helpful advice or free samples. By providing discounts, tips or exclusive offers, franchise marketers can keep subscribers engaged and coming back for more.

To promote the launch of its under-500 calorie menu, Firehouse Subs created the Hearty & Flavorful Challenge. The campaign invited people to complete a series of healthy eating and fitness challenges, then post photos of themselves completing each challenge to the campaign website—brand advocacy at its finest (and fittest). With the email addresses participants used to register, Firehouse Subs set up an autoresponder that sent a special offer or health tip to each person who completed a challenge.

Firehouse Subs also tracked participants' activity to identify additional opportunities to reach customers. The team segmented the campaign's subscriber list based on factors like their level of engagement or how many challenges they completed. Then, they sent special offers to those subscribers to reward them for participating.

With that smart strategy, the campaign was a huge success. Nearly 2,000 participants uploaded more than 5,000 photos to the campaign website. The campaign emails also performed ridiculously well, generating an average open rate of 83 percent and an average click rate of 48 percent!

With the right tools and some creativity, franchise marketers can create highly relevant, effective emails for customers wherever they're located. As Firehouse Subs shows, automation and segmentation pack a powerful one-two punch that creates a personal experience for subscribers and top-notch results for marketers — the ultimate win-win.