E-marketing - the future of customer communication

An increasing number of pub operators are using electronic marketing techniques to keep in touch with their customers. Glynn Davis looks at the future of customer communication.

Televising a West Ham versus Ipswich match on a Sunday afternoon in late October wouldn't normally have generated a huge amount of trade for the Provoke bar in Ilford, Essex. But by using text messaging and email as marketing tools it took a lively £2,000 over the bar.

By creating a database of the names of people that had registered for a Provoke reward card and capturing information on their likes and dislikes, the bar sent a message to 30 West Ham fans telling them the Ipswich match would be shown live. A small outlay led to a busy bar and set the till ringing.

The man behind this innovation is John Mills, chief executive of Starcom, the recently-formed company that operates Provoke bars. Mr Mills spent 20 years in the technology industry and decided to use mobile phone and internet technology to market to the bars' target audience. He says: "We are taking our bars to the face of the consumer and are targeting the local community and nearby office community."

Mills recognised that for the lucrative 18 to 35-year-old market, text messaging and email use is widespread and sending promotional messages to them via their mobile phones and PCs is a cost-efficient method of one-to-one marketing.

Although it is still early days, Starcom intends to build the business up to 12 Provoke outlets over the next year, and to add names to the in-house database along the way, thereby building a powerful marketing tool.

Communicating​

Also recognising the value in communicating with a target audience in this new way is Mark Taylor, commercial director of Nightfly. Despite the company being wholly owned by Diageo, it sits independently of any of its brands and offers its services to any pub, from a single outlet to the major pub operating companies with thousands of outlets.

What Nightfly offers is a continually growing database - that is expected to contain information on 150,000 people in the 18 to 30-year-old age range by December. The data includes age, sex, the area in which they live, their favoured drinks and preferred entertainment. From this database a pub operator can select specific types of people and then target them with relevant offers. For this service the pub operator pays Nightfly a fee of 20p per person targeted.

The main aim is to simplify text messaging and emailing and make it appealing to the whole of the pub sector.

"You can say that it's a sexy piece of technology, but that's not the important point. You need to strip away the technology and we have set up Nightfly so that everybody, regardless of size, should be able to take advantage of this form of marketing," Mr Taylor says.

Although many pub owners may be unsure about text messaging, Mr Taylor says that the important thing is that the consumer is already fully aware of its potential.

"Licensees can just look around their venues and see people text messaging each other. The consumer doesn't need educating," he says.

By targeting specific people in this way, Nightfly has enjoyed redemption rates of around 10 per cent, although it can be much higher for some promotions, compared with much lower levels normally achieved by other forms of direct mail marketing.

Mr Taylor says the key to making electronic marketing successful is using a quality database - whether you set your own up like Starcom or buy one in as and when required from companies like Nightfly - that contains up to date and relevant information. It must also have been cleared by the Data Protection Act, whereby every person on the database has given their consent to be emailed or text messaged by a third party.

If you choose to set up your own database, then it would be necessary to buy the required database software to hold personal details and to then extract these when needed. To capture the data there are various methods that can be employed. These include issuing reward cards like Starcom, which are handed in to the barstaff, or to use posters or beer mats requesting people send a text message to register on the database and to make themselves available to receive special offers in the future.

Whichever route is taken, according to Pamir Gelenbe, director of marketing services company Flytxt, which specialises in text messaging marketing, such a database "opens up the door for a range of people who'd not previously done one-to-one marketing".

There are a variety of ways of using the database.

Getting customers into pubs is ultimately the objective and this can be done by advertising promotions in the pub or to make the outlet "special" by advertising forthcoming entertainments. Popular promotions include two-for-one offers and giving a free pint to the first 50 people to send a text message to an advertised number.

Punch is among the early customers for Flytxt. Initially this was with a Carlsberg promotion run across 40 leased Punch outlets, but from November it has been expanded to encompass 180 pubs. Mr Gelenbe says that for such initiatives it is essential to make the offers relevant to those people you text and to allow them to easily "opt out" of receiving text messages in the future.

Messaging​

Evidence of the value Punch places on text message and email marketing is its involvement in another initiative, this time at Punch Retail. Its two "The Assembly" bars will shortly be offering promotions on Budweiser beer via text messaging.

John Fish, marketing manager of new concept developments at Punch Retail, says the company has been working with database management company Mfinity to build up a database. Punch will then pay Mfinity 5p for every message that is sent.

Although it is still early days, Mr Fish says it is critical to have your staff involved in this form of marketing as it is essential for them to sign up as many people as possible on to the database. He says future developments could involve interactive communication with customers in the bars using their mobile phones to request specific tracks from the DJ.

Already using cutting edge forms of text messaging to attract customers is late-night bar operator Po Na Na. It has just had its first "Flirt night" at its Embargo bar in central London. Using the technology of Time2Flirt, customers were able to text message anyone they wished to flirt with, without having to exchange their real phone numbers. The company is considering the roll-out of similar nights to as many as 30 Po Na Na outlets around the UK.

Richard Boyask, founder of Time2Flirt, says that one of the major advantages of text messaging, over other forms of marketing is that it is instantaneous. "You can hit them with a text message at 8:30pm on a Saturday night. We could hit the whole of a town and drive them to the nearest Po Na Na bar."

Mr Boyask believes that such innovative use of text messaging is a sign of what we can expect in the future. Mr Taylor agrees that the opportunities are massive and he advises small operators to at least be experimenting with such forms of marketing.

"In two to three years time what we have now will be like still having a black and white television today," predicts Mr Taylor.