To many people, the International House of Pancakes (IHOP) is an American institution. Serving diner-style breakfast foods has proven to be an enormously successful business model, but there is one hurdle the company is still trying to get over.
While it's hard to find an empty table during peak hours on Saturdays and Sundays, the low level of weekday foot traffic isn't where IHOP executives want it to be. The reasoning might be easy to understand – most people lack the time to eat at a sit-down restaurant on weekday mornings – but that's not stopping IHOP decision makers from implementing solutions to increase business from Monday through Friday. That's why the company has launched a text message marketing initiative.
According to a case study detailed in Business 2 Community, one of IHOP's premium locations launched an SMS couponing initiative to send offers to recipients, offering them discounts on mid-week visits. Because the company knew it would have no trouble attracting business during the weekend, the coupons were exclusive to Monday through Friday. After one month, 105 text coupons were redeemed.
As expected, executives were thrilled by the campaigns early success. Because of the relatively low costs of sending mobile marketing messages, IHOP was able to increase profits without significantly expanding spending.
Ever Santana, the franchise owner at the aforementioned location, spoke to the news source about the success of the restaurant's efforts and the effectiveness of text messaging as a whole.
"This is really the most cost-effective way to reach consumers," Santana said. "It is low cost, easy to execute and it reaches a wide variety of people."
When marketers notice a fixable problem – in this case, the lack of weekday business – it's up to them to come up with the most cost-effective solution. Text messaging was a perfect fit. Swift SMS Gateway offers the tools needed to launch similar campaigns.
