Cicciobella is an established local eatery specializing in high-quality pizza, known for its dedication to local ingredients and fostering an intimate, familiar ambiance.
1. Context and challenge
Project summary
Creating the marketing automation and data infrastructure to support the strategic opening of a new location, focusing the investment on customer retention and customer lifetime value (CLV).
Initial situation:
Cicciobella faced the opening of a second location. The core challenge was to centralize the customer database and create coherent communication that would transform one-time buyers into loyal or VIP Customers. The ecommerce initial database stood at 4,000 customers, and the goal was to scale this number and monetize it quickly.
Project objectives:
- Integration and stability: Implement a centralized data structure (ecommerce, web and 2 locations) for unified segmentation with a loyalty program and an email marketing strategy.
- Accelerated growth: Increase the first customer database from 4.000 to 6.000 leads in 4 months (50% growth).
- Initial impact: Design and launch a pilot newsletter campaign to initiate loyalty and gather performance data.
2. Strategy and actions
My role focused on information architecture and the execution of communication strategy.
A. Data structure and loyalty framework
New data capture:
- Priority: Collect name, phone, postal code and email through a landing page that transmit the data to Mailchimp.
- How?: Creating our own customer community called “La familia”
- Platforms involved: Instagram, new web, ecommerce and Mailchimp.
- Incentive: The first newsletter "Queremos darte la bienvenida a la familia" (We want to welcome you to the family) incentive was used with a QR code linked to the Mailchimp landing page to encourage the first interaction or purchase.
Loyalty program development and launch:
- Segmentation: The 6,000-customer base was firstly divided into loyal customers (regular purchase frequency) and VIP Customers (high spend/frequency).
- Incentives for registration:
- 5% purchase discount in the first month as a family member.
- 3€ for each referral.
- Exclusive offers via email.
- Special discount on customers' birthdays.
- Weekly newsletter access
B. Newsletter campaign development and launch
Content creation and development:
Three key pillars were established:
- Themes: Doing benchmark, using content curators and searching in Google Trends topics as inspiration for creative content.
- Elaboration: Using the available information plus AI tools to help us generate content, planning it after.
- Scheduling: Use a Calendar for consistent send planning.
Technical implementation (Ecommerce & Mailchimp):
- Mailchimp account setup: The Mailchimp account was created, authenticated and configured. The workflow automation was designed and created. The database was imported and updated via CSV each week, having already around 4000 customers within the ecommerce store.
- Pizza box QR implementation: Including on each pizza box a QR code that leads to the landing page for data collection that will lead within Mailchimp.
- On site commercial action: Suggesting them to scan the QR on the counter and join the family.
First newsletter campaign:
- Name: "Presentamos CiccioBella News!!!" (Introducing CiccioBella News!!!)
- Observation: The campaign was launched early for high impact. The key takeaway was: "We received some messages wishing us luck. We managed to spark the feeling despite being a pilot edition. This is a good starting point."
3. Data and results
Infrastructure and Business Metrics:
- Lead capture rate: The new digital infrastructure achieved more than 50% database growth in 4 months (from around 4,000 to + 6,000 customers), exceeding the consolidation goal.
- Consolidated database: I finalized the creation of a centralized database of 6,000 active and segmented customers, a crucial asset for expansion.
- Loyalty Boost: The loyalty program incentive and automated communication resulted in a 28% increase in the Repeat Purchase Rate among initial customers.
Key email marketing metrics:
- Open rate: The pilot campaign achieved a 52.8% Open Rate (far exceeding the 10-15% industry benchmark), validating the database quality and content relevance.
- Click-Through rate (CTR) and Segmentation: Approximately 14% of opens resulted in a click, and 175 new subscriptions were completed. This proves the effectiveness of the CTA.
- Click behavior: The top clicks were to: "Cicciobella" (49 clicks), "Pizza del verano" (45 clicks), and the "Fuentemoral" link (47 clicks). This informs future segmentation and content preference.
Campaign conclusion:
"The campaign was satisfactory; we created a solid community and achieved much more new sign-ups into the family and impacted half of the audience."
Strategic conclusion:
The project not only achieved the expansion goal by providing Cicciobella with a base of 6,000 active customers, but it also validated the communication infrastructure with a 52.8% Open Rate on the first campaign. This demonstrates that the brand now possesses a scalable and efficient retention and monetization channel, ready to support the second store opening.