Pizza Today - March 2021 - 59

give you the power to get personal with
your customers. Use it. It's time to leverage that data in e-mail, text, direct mail,
in store and on delivery/carryout communications. " Current resident, " " Dear
Sir or Madam " or " Customer Number
X " fall flat when you are trying to build a
relationship with your guests.
* PUSH NOTIFICATIONS OUTPACES SMS. Though these are very
different concepts, they both allow
pizzerias to deliver messages directly
to customers' devices. Push notification
drive the customer to instantly engage,
while SMS is a direct 160-character
text message delivered and opened in
seconds. Krueger says Farrelli's relies on
SMS for more specific annual birthday
and anniversary messages. " We're going
to rely more on the push notifications
feature of the app, " he says. " For us, we
like the push notification more and
essentially it accomplishes the same
thing. And for us, it's built into the cost
of the loyalty program. "

technology, Krueger advises evaluating them
through your brand filter. " The bigger question is how do you utilize that to enhance
your experience to be relevant in some way
to your brand? You just really need to know
who you are as a brand. If these things fit,
that is where the opportunity is. "
These marketing trends are only a drop
in the bucket of what's available to help
you market your restaurant. It can seem
cumbersome to review everything available.
Krueger offers some tips for looking at

marketing trends. " The reality is the
opportunities are endless, whether it be
social media, new social media things
popping up, new technologies popping up, "
he says. " You just have to be able to have
that filter to say there are going to be new
things coming out all of the time, that does
not mean we should do them. We should
only do those if they fit with our brand. " n
DENISE GREER is the Executive Editor
at Pizza Today.

* CAUSE MARKETING. Community outreach and fundraising is at
the fabric of pizzerias. It's an area that
pizzerias received a return during COVID-19. Communities supported their
local pizzerias as they have supported
their communities in the past. Cause
marketing will continue to thrive. " The
pivot to virtual events and fundraisers,
due to accessibility, has created new
opportunities for our fundraising
program to support local communities, "
Levy says.
* MARKETING TECH ON THE
HORIZON. There are a number of
hot technologies to watch this year.
Augmented reality (AR) and chatbots
are here. AR has caught fire with the
retail market with the ability to " try
on " anything while shopping online. In
restaurants, menus are being reimagined
as 3D views.
Chatbots are being deployed on restaurant websites, apps and social
accounts right now. Chatbots are facilitating online ordering.
When it comes to advancing marketing
M A R C H 2 0 2 1 / P I Z Z AT O D AY. C O M / 5 9

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