Mama Fu's: Election Night Promotion Registered a Win for new Media Advertising, Online Ordering

Mama Fu’s: Election Night promotion registered a win for new-media advertising, online ordering
By ALAN J. LIDDLE
AUSTIN, Texas (Dec. 22, 2008 ) —While much of the nation was glued to TVs and websites the evening of Nov. 4 watching the historic presidential election play out, Mama Fu’s Asian House chain executives were interested in a vote of another kind: the kind consumers cast with their wallets.
Expecting election fever to drag down business, management at Murphy Adams Restaurant Group of Austin, operator of six Mama Fu’s units and franchisor of the Pan Asian concept, decided to test the chain’s new eClub e-mail loyalty program, online-ordering system and delivery capabilities. Those digital resources and that service option only recently had been added in the aftermath of Murphy Adams’ March acquisition of Mama Fu’s trade dress and franchising rights from Raving Brands Inc.

An e-mail offer for Mama Fu’s Election Night Special advertised a $5 discount on takeout and delivery orders and included a link to the chain’s online-ordering portal.
Anchoring the Election Night trial was an e-mail blast through online-services provider Fishbowl Marketing Inc. of Alexandria, Va., to the approximately 7,700 eClub members affiliated with three restaurants in the Austin market and single units in Bentonville, Ark., and Hollywood, Fla.
The “call to action” was an “Election Night Special” of a $5 discount on takeout or delivery orders of $20 or more, said Randy Murphy, president and chief executive of Murphy Adams.
Featured in the promotional e-mail was a clickable link to online-ordering pages developed by Dallas-based OrderTalk, which has a strategic partnership with Fishbowl.
“The net result was that instead of having 10 percent less sales than a typical Tuesday [on Election Night], we had 10 percent to 15 percent more sales,” Murphy said.
Of campaign metrics, Murphy said: “We had over a 25-percent open rate. Typically, a high benchmark is [a rate of] 20 [percent] to 21 percent.”
In all, he continued, 73 people redeemed the e-mail coupon, or nearly 1 percent of the mailing list.
“That’s a direct-mail type of redemption [rate],” the operator added, “and we did that with e-mail that didn’t cost us anything” beyond the service provider’s monthly fee.
Murphy said that while the test was “on a small scale,” it proved “tremendously effective,” given that it was the first attempt to drive business with a time-sensitive offer. Income from the e-mail effort, about 30 percent of which came through the online ordering channel versus phone calls, contributed to the “biggest one-day [sales] totals for online ordering and delivery” yet, Murphy said.
Using publishing tools and company-specific materials provided by the marketing services provider, Murphy Adams spent “less than an hour” preparing the Election Night e-mail blast, Murphy said.
Likely up next, Murphy said, is a New Year’s Eve e-mail blast leveraging the eClub database that currently contains about 10,000 names collected, in large part, using paper sign-up pads in the restaurants.
Beyond its six restaurants, Murphy Adams franchises seven Mama Fu’s restaurants to others.
Murphy said a dual-service format—fast-casual-style counter service at lunch and table service at night—tested at the three Austin-area restaurants for three years would be rolled out to all future franchised branches.
“A unit in our system can do about $1 million in revenue a year,” he said.
New-media marketing, promotions and advertising are part of the plan for growing sales along with unit counts in 2009, Murphy said.
He reported that, among other related developments, his company already has tested opt-in text-message marketing with “decent feedback.”
“Including social-networking [initiatives] and search engine marketing, it will be at least 25 percent, but maybe as much as 35 percent, of our total [advertising and marketing] budget,” Murphy said of 2009 new-media spending.
That 10-percent cushion represents potential additional spending for search engine marketing, of which he says, “I am a big proponent.”