RAAK

In Dominos Pizza’s June earnings report their CEO Chris Moore reported the company had increased its pre-tax profit by nearly 29%. By all accounts this was a fantastic result.

Mr Moore points to the rise in online orders — which now account for 32.7% of all orders — as proof that their web and social media efforts are paying off. Moore reports that when it comes to the web, “Our main Facebook site now has in excess of 36,000 fans … In addition, we have led the way with social media initiatives such as affiliate marketing, our superfans programme and the development of a link up with Foursquare.”

RAAK wanted to find out more. So we asked Dominos to share a few secrets with us and they obliged.

RAAK: How does your affiliate marketing and Superfans scheme work?

DP: Our social affiliate tool is free to install on a user’s social network profile page, website or blog and we then pay them a commission for any Domino’s sales generated.

Our Superfans activity is a weekly competition on our Facebook page – every Friday at 5pm we reward the Pizza King and Queen, a free pizza based on how many new friends of theirs have become fans of our page.

RAAK: How do you use Facebook to drives sales?

DP: Facebook provides a great way for us to engage with our fans and customers. It’s an ideal platform for promoting our latest products and promotions, as well as collecting their feedback and views. Many of our franchisees also have their own Facebook pages for their stores and use them opportunity to highlight their own deals and in-store offers.

RAAK: Every Wednesday, the mayor of any Domino’s store receives a free small pizza. In addition, any Foursquare user who checks in at a Domino’s store via Foursquare and spends over £10 will receive a free garlic pizza bread, which of these incentives, being the mayor, or merely checking in, do you think were most positive for your business?

DP: Our customers are heavy users of social media so it makes sense for us to communicate with them in this way. Following the success of our recent Facebook superfan initiative and affiliates’ widget, Foursquare was the obvious next step. We think both incentives have worked well so far as they give our customers another reason to go in-store.

RAAK: Dominos does not have stores with dine-in restaurants in the UK. Online sales is a major and growing revenue stream for Dominos. Foursquare is all about going to physical stores. Isn’t it odd for you to use Foursquare since your primarily a delivery service?

DP: Local marketing activity is a key part of our strategy and new tools such as Foursquare, which encourage people to engage with their nearest store, provide another great opportunity. In addition, we’ve just launched a campaign around lunch with our new oven-baked subs, which are ideal for people to either order for delivery or pick up themselves from their nearest store during a lunchbreak.

RAAK: Did you find that there is a problem of users gaming the Foursquare system to become mayor of Dominos?

DP: Foursquare already has measures to ensure users are physically in or around locations when they check in by checking venue location, venue radius, device location and device accuracy. If Foursquare thinks a user is far away from the venue based on those criteria when they check in, it will display an “Oops, it looks like you’re a little far away” message. If Foursquare thinks a user is consistently far away from where they’re checking in, they won’t award the user with points, badges or mayorships for check-ins that don’t appear legitimate. As a result, we’re confident that users aren’t cheating the system to become a mayor of Domino’s.

RAAK: Many businesses struggle with the question where to put social media in the company. Be it PR, brand, direct response, online or even customer service. How do you do it?

DP: Because of the wide and varied nature of social media, we share the activity between a number of departments, including marketing, PR and customer comments. Marketing and PR tend to lead ongoing activity such as Facebook and Twitter, with support from our customer comments team as needed. Our marketing team and digital agency arrange our proactive communications and
activities, such as our recent YouTube takeover to promote our lunch campaign.

RAAK: Facebook has just launched Places. It has a userbase several times the size of Foursquare. Do you think it’s an interesting marketing opportunity?

DP: We’ve had great success to date with our Foursquare promotion here in the UK so it will be interesting to see how Facebook Places is received by both brands and the social networking community. We’ll certainly be keeping an eye on it.

RAAK: You are launching an iPhone app. What do you hope your app will achieve?

DP: Online orders account for such an increasingly large proportion of our business so a Domino’s app was the obvious next step. We wanted to make it even quicker and easier for customers to get a piping hot pizza, wherever they are. In true Domino’s style, the new app does just that and also adds in a bit of fun, which builds on the great success of our interactive pizza tracker. We hope our
customers will app-solutely love it!

RAAK: Dominos seems to have embraced social, mobile & location. Why do you regard it as important?

DP: We spend a lot of time looking at the demographics of our customers and making sure we’re communicating with them using the latest, most popular and relevant media. Social, mobile and location all fit within our core marketing strategy as an effective means to reach our target audiences.

RAAK: Have you considered services like Groupon as part of your strategy?

DP: We already use a number of voucher code websites as part of our very successful affiliate marketing programme. We’re always looking at possible new sites to partner with and, of course, this would include the likes of Groupon, among others.

RAAK: Why is Dominos so forward thinking compared to other brands in the social and online space?

DP: We’re always looking for new ways to communicate with our customers and the latest innovations to enable us to do this. We’re excited by the growing number of opportunities available and want to make sure that as well as delivering delicious, piping hot pizza, we’re also a brand that people want to engage with and keep looking out to see what we’ll do next.