How Jersey Mike's drove 2x mobile app orders with personalized messages on users preferred channels

With nearly 2,000 locations, Jersey Mike’s is one of the fastest growing sandwich franchises in the U.S. Since 1956, the team has carefully considered every aspect of what they do, from every slice of bread, to every sandwich, to every store, and every customer interaction. However, as ordering and buying habits became increasingly digital, Jersey Mike’s needed to embrace changing customer expectations.

Jersey Mike’s had recently developed a mobile application, but lacked the right tools to track and use data to deliver an optimized user experience. Working with its partner agency WWT, 

the Jersey Mike’s team underwent a digital transformation by rebuilding their digital foundation and implementing Twilio Segment as core to their tech stack. Armed with centralized customer data in Twilio Segment, product analytics in Amplitude, and marketing platform Iterable, Jersey Mike’s now has access to deeper customer insights to improve the digital user experience, personalize customer messaging, and increase mobile app orders.

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Transforming to meet changing customer needs

Consumers were doing more and more food ordering online, and the global pandemic only accelerated this trend. Jersey Mike’s was mainly interacting with customers at in-person, brick-and-mortar restaurants, but needed to shift to also provide customer-centric digital experiences.

While Jersey Mike’s had a mobile app, it was clunky, hard to use, and customers were asking for a better mobile ordering experience. The team wanted to improve the digital user experience and activate digital channels to ensure data was not fragmented. Jersey Mike’s needed to centralize customer data to improve digital experiences and meet changing customer needs. 

Centralizing customer data to optimize the digital customer experience 

Jersey Mike’s and its agency partner WWT implemented Twilio Segment to sit at the center of its new, more agile growth stack. Twilio Segment collects customer data from more than half a dozen of Jersey Mike’s sources, including its point of sale systems, mobile applications, ad networks, email service provider, and more. Twilio Segment then standardizes, cleans, and sends that customer data to Amplitude and Iterable to improve the digital customer experience. Kelly McGee, Director of Marketing, describes Twilio Segment’s role in Jersey Mike’s new growth stack:

“Twilio Segment is the source of truth for our data. All of our data goes into Twilio Segment, and then we send our data to Amplitude and Iterable to create a seamless experience and send personalized, relevant messages across channels.”

With reliable customer data powered by Twilio Segment being sent into Amplitude, the Jersey Mike’s team created dynamic customer cohorts and custom dashboards that unlocked advanced customer insights and product analytics. The team also connected Iterable to create personalized marketing campaigns. The new stack helped the team quickly and effectively optimize digital experiences, resulting in increased engagement and better mobile ordering.

Jersey Mike’s delivers personalized messages based on customer actions and attributes. 

Jersey Mike’s can now replicate the personal in-store customer experience by sending custom messages across digital channels, including email, in-app notifications, and SMS text messages. Kelly McGee explains: “Our franchise owners and crew members do a really great job of generating engagement in store: they get to know customers, they know their orders and first names. We wanted to bring that personalized experience into the digital experience, in both the app and in the messages we send. Twilio Segment helped us centralize our customer data to ensure we deliver personalized digital experiences.”  

With their new growth stack, the Jersey Mike’s team can set rules and workflows to engage customers with individualized marketing messages and offers based on specific actions, such as after a user makes an in-store purchase.

WWT, Jersey Mike’s agency partner, describes a triggered campaign workflow the team has built: “If a customer orders a Classic Italian for the fourth time in a month, Jersey Mike’s might send an immediate transaction message to that customer, asking, how did you like your Classic Italian sub for lunch? Did you know we also have Cheese Steaks for dinner?”

Customers also receive automatic messages with relevant offers at key moments throughout the customer journey. Such moments include when a user signs up for the loyalty program, their birthday, during customer appreciation months, or re-engagement messages for users who haven’t ordered in the last 3 months.

Not only can Jersey Mike’s personalize the message based on user behavior, the team can also personalize the channel the user receives the message on based on where that user prefers to engage with the brand. Kelly McGee explains:

“We use data from our mobile app to send more targeted messages on the channel users are most likely to take action on. For example, depending on the customer journey, somebody may act on our push notifications more than emails.”

This level of personalized messaging leverages reliable customer data powered by Twilio Segment, and has improved customer loyalty, email open rates, app engagement, and revenue. 

Jersey Mike’s designs the personalized digital experiences customers want.

With Twilio Segment, Jersey Mike’s is able to give customers what they want: seamless, personalized digital experiences. The team is now able to react to changing consumer habits quickly, and has doubled down on digital ordering and digital customer engagement. Jersey Mike’s growth stack is more agile and future-proofed, and teams are able to activate customer data to drive results.

Key results include:

• Online ordering more than doubled in the last year despite the pandemic

• Lift in key app engagement metrics:

  • Significant lift in revenue through app orders

  • Millions of new app users, and significant lift in monthly active app users

  • Lift in 30 day retention

  • Five-star mobile app experience

• Lift in marketing campaign engagement:

  • Improved email open rates

  • Improved offer redemption rates

What’s next? Jersey Mike’s next step is to bring in even more data to have a more complete understanding of in-store customers, app customers, and customers who purchase both in-store and online. The team also plans to enable their franchisees with the tools in their stack to ensure they are engaging customers when, where, and how they want to be engaged with. Armed with more data, the team plans to implement more testing to experiment with new channels and ways to use data to engage users. This personalization helps mirror the engagement customers love in Jersey Mike’s restaurants.