News

Arby's new loyalty campaign rewards fans for social sharing

October 10, 2013

For Arby's new loyalty campaign, "The League of Brisket," which promotes its Smokehouse Brisket Sandwich, the company has deployed an omnichannel platform from PunchTab. The campaign rewards guests for trying the new sandwich, and for joining the league where they complete challenges to earn prizes.

Participants are specifically rewarded for uploading purchase receipts, as well as for engaging across a variety of channels, including checking in at an Arby's location, taking online quizzes, Tweeting, liking, and completing online challenges. For example, an Arby's fan can earn 1,000 points for uploading a photo on Instagram using the #LeagueOfBrisketRewards hashtag, and get another 1,000 points for checking in at Arby's on Foursquare or Facebook. For making a purchase and uploading the receipt, Arby's customers will receive 3,000 points.

According to a news release, this is the brand's first deployment of receipt scanning. Arby's activated the campaign across its 3,400 locations without POS integration. In its first week, 24 percent of participants who checked in purchased the sandwich and uploaded their receipt.

"PunchTab-powered campaigns influence purchase decisions in the retail environment and allow brands to gather valuable data about shopping behaviors, which they can then use to optimize their marketing programs," said Ranjith Kumaran, founder and CEO of PunchTab. "We design campaigns that let organizations like Arby's implement quickly, and solve common challenges, like tracking purchase behavior back to marketing initiatives."

PunchTab created mobile web and web components for the Arby's campaign, allowing customers to upload a receipt without requiring an app download. When users make a purchase, they can take a picture of their receipt and submit it via the mobile web site. The receipt image is automatically uploaded and upon verification, points are rewarded. Alternatively, consumers can upload their receipt from their computer and submit it online from the campaign home page.

"With PunchTab's receipt scanning abilities, brands can quickly enable loyalty campaigns that focus on increasing traffic and volume. Marketers can easily tie engagement behavior to purchase data, while gaining full visibility into what consumers are doing," said Angela Sanfilippo, chief marketing officer at PunchTab. "These are important retail insights marketers can't always attribute to engagement — and something completely unavailable to brands who sell through third party retailers.

The engagement campaign was created through a partnership of Arby's, PunchTab and Arby's AOR, Crispin, Porter & Bogusky. It began Sept. 29 and runs through Oct. 30.

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