Successful retail companies know that communicating directly with their consumers can be very good for business, and that mobile offers a very powerful channel to do this. But actually implementing this communication is often not an easy task.<\/p>\n
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PizzaExpress<\/strong> – a UK restaurant chain with over 300 locations – has announced their partnership with MePlease<\/strong>, a mobile marketing platform that is designed to help business stay in communication with their customers, and at the same time harness the power of social media to grow the business.<\/p>\n \n \n The basic concept behind MePlease is quite simple – consumers opt-in to received “treats” from retailers that they like. According the MePlease, treats might be anything – from a special invitation, to an upgrade, an exclusive discount, or maybe even a drink on the house.<\/p>\n MePlease facilitates the sharing of these treats and communication by close integration with social media platforms. It also has the ability to include voting, competitions, customer feedback, location check-ins and the sending of treats and promotions which enables companies to help achieve specific business goals such as increasing loyalty, acquiring new customers, and driving footfall.<\/p>\n And equally importantly, the platform provides the consumer with complete control as to the treats they receive: <\/p>\n Numerous consumer studies have shown that this feeling of control is a key ingredient for making consumers feel comfortable with accepting marketing messages.<\/p>\n PizzaExpress will be using MePlease to enable interactive customer voting during the final round of their \u2018Create Your Pizza Challenge\u2019, which has drawn 50,00 entries since the competition opened.<\/p>\n John Sullivan<\/strong>, Director of Group IT at Gondola Group, PizzaExpress\u2019s parent company, said, \u201cWe really like that MePlease enables us to directly engage with our customers using their trusted one-to-one communication channel. Recently over 10% of our MePlease users texted in for a special lunch event at our Richmond restaurant; this response rate was very encouraging and happened within 15 minutes of sending the initial call to action.\u201d<\/p>\n Here is short video of MePlease in action.<\/p>\n
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