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Keyword: Success
Text Messaging Hooks On-Premise Patrons
Almost
overnight, Howl at the Moon’s management at its Louisville, Ky.,
location has found a way to get bar-goers howling at its door for
events.
“We started the program November 17, 2006,” says Laura White,
general manager. “It was our 2-year anniversary in Louisville. We spent
the first couple of weeks just getting new numbers added to our
database.”
Text messaging has brought a shocking degree of added turnout to
the venue. It’s easy, but it has to be done right, White says.
“There’s a lot of rules to it,” she says. “How the program works is
what I call a double opt-in. If you were interested, you’d have to
initiate it.
“We have certain keywords, which I have the ability to set up and
change. For example, one we do is Howl VIP. If you wanted to be on that
list, you would send the keyword “Moon” to the number we have set up.
Once you do that, we send you a message back saying, “Hey, thanks for
joining. Reply to this message with a ‘Y.’ And once they reply back,
then they’re part of our list. It’s a 2-step process in order to comply
with federal regulations.”
Fifty Percent Return
“We’ve done several text message blasts, which have been incredibly
successful,” White says. “The last one we did was for Mardi Gras. We
sent a message to everybody that was in our database who had opted in,
and we gave them an offer of half-price drinks and free cover. And we
encouraged everybody to forward the message on to their friends.
The success rate for the marketing medium would please most bar owners.
“We had a 49-percent return,” she says. So we would have sent it to,
say, 1,000, and around 500 people claimed the offer, from either
receiving the offer or (receiving it forwarded from someone already on
the list of original recipients).”
Each patron shows the message on his or her cell phone at the door.
Ability to Analyze the Market
“The first time we did it, I think we had a 64-percent return. I
think that’s slightly higher than normal. You don’t get that with
anything, especially in the bar business.”
“The nice thing about it is, we can track where we’re getting our people from, because of the different keywords.”
“At one point in time, we were doing contests inside the club,
where we were encouraging customers who were already inside to
participate — to send a keyword to the number, and the 50th person
receives a free bucket of beer or a free T-shirt. We have five
keywords.
“We have an incredible marketing guy, named L. J., and we have a
keyword set up just for him,” White says. “So, when he goes out and
does his marketing — he’ll talk to people walking around or go to
baseball games, for example — he tells people to send the word ‘LJ’ to
(the number). It’s all instant. I can go to the computer and look at
how many people he’s gotten onto his list.
“So, I can tell that demographic is going to be the 21- to
25-year-old, predominantly women, because that’s what he usually gets.
For the contest we do, I know that the word we’ve chosen — say it’s
‘Moon’ — I know that those people are already in the club.
White says that for now, most of the text marketing at Howl at the
Moon is for drawing people in from outside, as described. But future
plans at Howl at the Moon include more in-house text promotions as
well. NCB
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