Chipotle Mexican Grill, though one of the fastest growing restaurants in the U.S., was facing a challenge as people today shop for everything on their phones, including their next meal. To better serve its guests and compete in the marketplace,Chipotle determined that genuinely connecting with people starts in an unlikely place: email.
At this year's Association of National Advertisers (ANA) Email Evolution Conference, GALE Executive Creative Director Jason McCann and Chipotle's Senior Director Loyalty & CRM Jason Scoggins uncovered how Chipotle, in partnership with GALE, overhauled its entire loyalty experience and rewards program by getting more personal with its customers via custom yet creative email marketing.
"Within the first week, we had a million organic opt-ins to the program, and it continued to grow," said Scoggins. "That spotlighted the need for a robust CRM program. We suddenly had all these folks coming in and needed something more robust than just a quick batch and blast email that we would send once a month, so we brought on GALE as a strategic partner."
For Chipotle, GALE started with an extensive re-design of the Loyalty program to get more people rewards more often. We opened the Rewards Exchange, a store to let members redeem points for food and gear, and even offered the opportunity to donate points to charities. Members could also earn "Extras" – badges that helped boost rewards and incentivize behavior like digital ordering, multiple visits to the same restaurant, or participation in a special event like the famous Boorito.
McCann says, "Like many CRM programs and email systems, we think of it as stories powered by a system. So, we have incredibly custom-designed artwork from our amazing design team and some more standardized modules like offers, food imagery and buttons."
Next, GALE utilized data to further this digital transformation, and customer understanding grew more profound and specific. It led to more customized journeys triggered by their behavior and imagery to match their ordering preference, allowing the restaurant to predict when someone was starting to slip from their normal habits.
The result of this overhaul has led to Chipotle having one of the fastest-growing restaurant membership programs in history, skyrocketing from 8 to 31.6M members and touting increased sales and ROI across the board.
McCann and Scoggins also shared how Chipotle Rewards connected the business's mission of food with integrity by sending thank-you messages directly from farmers after customers enjoyed one of their ingredients. Doubling down on personalization, Chipotle celebrated members' anniversaries with a recap of their relationship featuring their favorite dish and order preferences from queso to guac.
McCann noted, "We've had the wonderful opportunity to take everything we know about the behavior of our members and their preferences and try to tell relevant stories against it. Data can be inert unless you apply creativity to it. So, many of our briefs to the teams are about how we can differentiate ourselves and what kind of interesting things we can do to make that data useful or delightful to our members."
Scoggins left marketers with one key ingredient for their CRM strategy: "What's working today isn't going to work two years from now, and it's not going to work a year from now. That's what we're always doing, looking at it as, is this message still relevant? Is this offer still relevant? Let's do some testing."
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