Pizza Perfection

Rakuten AdelaAdela Blackford, marketing manager at Rakuten Display, explains how Papa John’s drives sales through hyper-local targeting.

Two thirds of smartphone owners would be anxious if they accidentally left their mobile at home, according to the IAB (Internet Adverting Bureau). The UK is certainly a smartphone society; there are 7.4 connected devices in the average household, so understandably, we are seeing an increasingly complex consumer journey. As a nation of device-hoppers, brands must ensure they are present across all touchpoints and devices. Without a mobile strategy in place, marketers aren’t able to visualise the full picture and create useful shopping experiences. Marketers are already adopting mobile-first strategies as, after all, mobile is no longer the future, it’s a reality.

A key digital mobile strategy marketers are exploring is hyper-local targeting. It enables brands to deliver the right message at the right time by pinpointing consumers’ locations through their mobile devices and matching that information with customer profiles to identify and communicate to a highly targeted audience.

Hyper-local in practice
One brand that harnesses hyper-local targeting is Papa John’s, the third largest pizza delivery company in the world. It partnered with Rakuten Display to implement a mobile and cross-device strategy solution to drive orders to its newly-opened store in York, using location-based targeting.

Given that over 50 per cent of Papa John’s pizzas in the UK are ordered from a customer’s desktop or mobile device, Rakuten Display’s principal objective was to raise brand awareness and drive sales through digital devices. Hyper-local targeting was the ideal solution for generating awareness, acquiring customers and delivering sales. Geo-targeting gave us the ability to granularly target consumers in a three-mile radius in real-time (the delivery distance of the store). This allowed us to efficiently engage with the right audience for Papa John’s in the right context.

We knew that desktop sales were a key part of Papa John’s business and so layering a cross-device campaign on top of the hyper-local mobile campaign meant we would be able to capture the different stages of the purchase journey across devices, enabling us to cast a tight net over the geo-fenced area in York.

Getting granular
An important component to the strategy was identifying where the most engaged and relevant target audience would be. We used a prospecting solution to target consumers browsing, sports, food, online TV guides and other relevant websites on mobile. We also exercised a retargeting solution using a combination of IP addresses and Yorkshire Metro classifications to give us pin-point accuracy to ensure that we were only targeting the most receptive users to Papa John’s message within the catchment area. Thanks to our machine-learning technology, we were also able to retarget engaged consumers across screens to identify the most opportune moments to serve ads.

Results
Together, Rakuten Display and Papa John’s created a strong geo-targeting campaign with programmatic mobile as the backbone, using geographic, contextual smart targeting and effective utilisation of multiple data points.

Strong results were achieved based on the granularity of the campaign, driving a solid £2:1 return on ad spend for mobile-only targeting and an impressive £22:1 return on investment on the cross-device campaign. We gathered considerable insight supporting the success of a mobile and cross-device strategy: 57 per cent of ads served on a smartphone saw conversions on a smartphone. We also saw a strong purchasing trend between smartphone and desktop, rather than smartphone to tablet. The cross-device element not only created a seamless brand experience for the customer, but boosted brand affinity with those that were most receptive to the marketing message.

What’s next?
Papa John’s continues to pave the way through its innovative digital marketing strategies. The pizza delivery giant has achieved success with Rakuten Display on its latest promotional messaging push, where mobile and cross-device campaigns contributed to 24 per cent in total revenue from its full-funnel display strategy, and delivered a 6 per cent higher AOV rate compared to their desktop average.

Hyper-local and cross-device targeting are essential strategies for targeting on-the-go consumers in an increasingly digital world. eMarketer predicts 76 per cent of mobile display will be traded programmatically this year and it’s easy to understand why; being able to be where your consumers are, gauge consumer behaviour and deliver bespoke messaging in real-time is an incredibly powerful tool that marketers now have at their disposal.

However, marketers must appreciate that it’s not all automatic success. Calibrating KPIs will set expectations and allow for continual campaign optimisation, testing and analysis to be carried out to meet marketing goals. Hyper-local is just one weapon in the mobile armoury; expect to continue to see mobile capabilities playing a pivotal role in marketing strategy.

This sponsored article first appeared in the June 2016 print edition of Mobile Marketing. You can read the whole issue here.