1. Mercury® and pcAmerica help
Tasti D-lite unlock the social media
Case study
treasure chest.
Multi-location loyalty paired with social media
results in affordable, targeted viral marketing.
Introduction:
Tasti D-lite is a frozen dessert franchisor now headquartered in Tennessee with 60
locations throughout the U.S. and abroad. pcAmerica provides Tasti D-lite’s enterprise-
wide point-of-sale (POS) solution, Restaurant Pro Express. Mercury Payment Systems®
is integrated to Restaurant Pro Express to handle Tasti D-lite’s credit, debit and gift card payment processing and
multi-site loyalty program.
Challenge:
Social media and loyalty are two buzz words in many business-to-consumer operators’ minds.
“How often do you actually see a corporate entity communicating daily to their customers about everyday things?”
asked David Gosman, CEO, pcAmerica. “Some businesses open their doors and provide good customer service
while others go beyond. Tasti D-lite is always looking to do more -- to
be creative, hands-on, and communicate regularly with customers.”
“...we wanted to reward
BJ Emerson, Tasti D-lite’s Director of Information and Social
Technologies, wanted to build a better loyalty program for all their our customers with
store locations. The punch card loyalty system could not associate a
particular sale with an individual customer, track redemption rates, or
loyalty points for sharing
report behavior across locations. As a result, franchisees were hesitant their experience related
to honor loyalty transactions across locations, which forced customers
to manage numerous “TreatCards.” to the brand.”
Emerson also observed that customers were using social media tools and mobile applications, such as Twitter,
Facebook, and Foursquare, to talk to friends about their Tasti D-lite experience. He and franchise owners began
engaging social media tactics such as creating Tasti D-lite venues, and advertising “nearby specials” on Foursquare.
“Since we already saw a lot of activity on social networks, we wanted to reward our customers with loyalty points for
sharing their experience related to the brand.” said Emerson.
Solution:
To meet Tasti D-lite’s social media and loyalty goals, the first step was to move all
Tasti D-lite locations onto the same point-of-sale (POS) system. Once 100 percent
of the locations were installed, the next step was better customer engagement.
2. So, pcAmerica integrated with Mercury Payment Systems to provide Tasti D-lite with a one-stop payment
processing and multi-site gift and loyalty solution, TastiRewards. The online portion of the TastiRewards loyalty
program, myTasti.com, allows customers to register their dual-function gift and loyalty TreatCard to check points
balance.
While the MyTasti.com loyalty registration portal was being built, pcAmerica came
up with an idea to marry Tasti D-lite’s social netoworking and loyalty efforts. They
used Twitter’s Application Programming Interface (API) to connect Tasti D-lite’s
social network to their loyalty program. That way, Tasti D-lite was able to give
customers points towards Tasti D-lite products for promoting the brand online.
With the new technology in place, TreatCard holders at participating locations not
only earn points for purchases, but also for registering their TreatCard online at MyTasti.com and connecting their
account to Twitter, Facebook and/or Foursquare. By automatically sharing their Tasti D-lite experience with friends
and followers, they earn extra rewards toward free Tasti D-lite products.
Every dollar spent equals a point; 50 points garners a free frozen dessert. But, customers using the social media
tools get an extra point for every network they’re signed up for.
Once pre-authorized, when registered myTasti.com users present their TreatCard for
purchases or redemptions, a randomly selected post appears on their account for
their friends and followers to see. An example would be: “I just earned 7 TastiRewards
points at Tasti D-Lite Nashville, TN http://myTasti.com.” Links to coupons for the given
location within the message can be included periodically so that friends and followers
can benefit, too.
Security is a feature that was carefully integrated into the solution.
“When customers register their loyalty cards and their credentials into MyTasti.com, pcAmerica doesn’t actually
store the information – they get a token,” said Gosman. “It’s good for security and peace of mind. There are rules
and we’re following them very carefully.”
Results:
Enterprise-wide program
The customer loyalty functions within the POS software are extended through the integration with
Mercury Payment Systems so that points can be earned seamlessly across participating locations,
even if they have different franchise owners. Nearly all U.S. Tasti D-lite locations now use the same
pcAmerica POS-integrated credit, gift and loyalty program from Mercury Payment Systems.
“Because Tasti D-lite is a brand, customers expect a national loyalty program that allows them to earn
points at all locations,” said Emerson.
First in class technology
In January 2010, ten locations kicked off Tasti D-lite’s integrated social network-loyalty program.
Nearly all locations are expected to be participating in the program by spring of 2010.
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3. “We’re excited to be the first to offer this kind of social media-loyalty program,” said Emerson.
“Not many processors have multi-site loyalty available like Mercury offers - and it works really well,”
said Gosman. “Multi-site loyalty seems like such a basic concept but I don’t know many companies,
including national chains, that are actually doing it.”
Robust Reporting
The fully integrated loyalty functions within each POS system can now report points earned and
redeemed by location and customer, as well as birthday redemptions, on a global basis. Equipped
with this information, individual franchise owners are now willing to adopt a nationwide program.
As a result, customer participation in the new TastiRewards program is expected to draw more new
customers and encourage existing customer purchase activity with a single TreatCard.
Affordable viral marketing
Gosman says social media users have an average of 91
“We helped customers
friends in their network. About 50 percent of their network are earn more points and
geographically nearby and have the same interests.
they helped us roll out
“The magic is that Tasti D-lite is able to target-market at a low
cost through a reputable source,” said Gosman, “because
our loyalty program.”
TastiD-lite is getting exposure to a network of friends that are
mostly in the same location with the same interests.”
Gosman suggests that the social media-loyalty program has created a “currency” for posts. In Tasti
D-lite terms, a Twitter “tweet” is 1/50th of a frozen dessert.
Gosman speculates that no one has a tried and true formula for social media success— yet! He
asserts that Tasti D-lite’s ability to connect customers’ in-store activity to their social network activity is
“a great example of the first company to work towards unlocking the social media code.”
Mutually beneficial
“We helped customers earn more points and they helped us roll out our loyalty program,” said
Emerson.
Company branding
“We’re becoming known as a social-friendly brand,” said Emerson. “The abilty for customers to earn
more points with Tasti D-lite will distinguish us in a competitve marketplace.”
Positive engagement
Early adoption rates show that 25 percent of those customers registered online are opting to connect
their accounts to one or more social networks.
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4. “The number of people who are registering their loyalty cards and connecting to the social media
sites is really encouraging,” said Emerson. “We can see the tweets go out
and it’s pretty cool. Plus, the feedback from the employees and franchisee
owners is very positive.”
“Everything with social media is new, so it’s difficult to predict or project
the outcome. However, the participation we’re seeing is very encouraging,”
added Emerson.
“So far, it’s only been a minor add-on, so that’s a great return,” concluded
Emerson. “When the weather warms up, there’s going to be a lot of buzz
when people visit Tasti-d-lite this summer. It’s going to be crazy.”
Easy integration
“I’ve managed many IT projects in the past, and the Mercury development team did a great job
helping pcAmerica enable features for our Tasti D-lite customers and ensure a smooth integration,”
said Gosman.
The Future
Together, pcAmerica and Tasti D-lite continue to improve the loyalty program by adding new features.
“We’re going to grow it from here. Mytasti.com is going to be the community for everyone,” said Emerson.
With new features being developed every day, some recent additions include:
1) Customers can now pre-authorize more than ten new messages that randomly cycle through
and post when a purchase is made by a social media-loyalty subscriber.
2) One of the message options includes a coupon, thus bringing a monetary value to social media
streams.
3) Facebook was integrated to the social media-loyalty program.
“Tasti D-lite is pioneering this realm,” said Gosman. “They’re known for getting a lot of customers to
participate and drive up sales at their individual stores.”
myTasti.com will serve as the basis for the Tasti D-Lite branded online community and will be
expanded to allow customers to compete for points, earn additional rewards, provide product reviews
and connect with other Tasti D-Lite fans.
“Over time, specific product purchases and customer behavior across locations will provide a
wealth of information which will be used to make more efficient menu item and flavor development
decisions,” said BJ Emerson. “This will lead to targeted product recommendations and opportunities
to engage with customers on myTasti.com through flavor and product reviews as well as competitions
related to loyalty activity.”
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