CASE Study: Black Angus Steakhouse & The WOM Accelerator
Overview & Objectives
Black Angus Steakhouse, an established 46 unit casual dining chain, was searching for a way to leverage its existing brand advocates to help them activate their friends, family and co-workers to dine with the steak restaurant.
The Ink Foundry Angelsmith team adapted its WOM Accelerator tool functionality into a Facebook application to provide Black Angus advocates with a platform for sharing content and recommendations through out their social sphere.
For Black Angus, the WOM Accelerator is providing the brand with an opportunity to identify its biggest influencers, monitor their activity and further engage with those most passionate about the restaurant.
Additionally, Black Angus wanted to test various offers and is able to run multiple campaigns through one installation of the WOM Accelerator. Keeping the campaigns on the same platform allows for real time side by side results tracking.
To launch, Black Angus initiated an announcement to its 400,000 contact email database.
Results
Key KPIs for the brand were reached. Those include:
- 25 percent conversion rate from ‘liking’ the page to activating the content
- Identified approximately 3 percent of fans as influencers
- Extended the reach beyond the initial email database through shares with nearly 30 percent of the more than 9000 fans sharing content directly from the Facebook page
- Estimated program reach by the end of two weeks: 1,850,520
Solution Details
The most relevant content for Black Angus to share with its fans on Facebook is a discount.
The WOM Accelerator electronically distributes non-replicable prizes, special coupons and other exclusive digital items directly through Facebook, providing codes which are directly attributable to specific campaign offers to track conversions from the social network back to the each individual consumer.
The WOM Accelerator for Black Angus encourages word-of-mouth with a shareable and trackable offer that is individually designed and coded for each user. The platform accelerates high value recommendations from Black Angus’ growing Facebook fan base past those who are already familiar with the brand.
Although the campaign is still ongoing, the WOM Accelerator is allowing Black Angus Steakhouse to have a better understanding of which individuals not only have a large personal network but more importantly which consumers carry enough influence with their friends, family, followers and co-workers to drive redemption and purchase.
Behind The Scenes
The email announcement was sent during peak Facebook traffic times which could have spelled disaster for a poorly built application. However, prior to launching, Angelsmith load tested the platform to ensure it could withstand significant traffic in an extremely short period of time.
The results were spectacular. There were zero server outages and no slowdown of response time with the application.