Having a Meatball: “Summer of Figo” Stimulates Sales, Taste Buds, & Napa Adventures

Combine the major ingredients of social media, email marketing, and customer incentives — plus meatballs! — and a digital marketing recipe for savory success emerges.

FIGO Pasta — an Atlanta-based restaurant chain whose seven locations encourage guests to uniquely customize pastas, sauces, and key ingredients — implemented such a campaign in “Summer of FIGO.” Point of Vision partnered with Sherpa! Web Studios to deliver delectable results.

Campaign Strategy

The five-month program aimed to build awareness of FIGO’s brand, drive additional business during traditionally slower summer months, attract and engage new FIGO Pasta Facebook fans, grow FIGO’s email marketing list, and cultivate ongoing engagement to ensure long-term, social-media campaigns.

A $3,000 getaway to Napa Valley, California, for two motivated FIGO customers to like their favorite FIGO location on Facebook and request a special passport with a total of $15 in free food, serving as both a coupon book and record of visits measured by punches.

When their Passport received five punches and they enjoyed the benefits of coupons each trip, such as a scrumptious meatball of the month, guests handed the cashiers their completed passport as their entry into the giveaway.

To whet appetites and participation, Facebook check-ins were enabled for every location while several weekly updates to engaging content were posted to Facebook and Twitter, supported by ongoing monitoring and timely replies.

Facebook’s advertising platform was selected to help spread the word of the campaign through Figo’s fanbase.

Also, FIGO’s contacts were also migrated to an enhanced email platform with segmented lists and browser-tested template for 16 hand-crafted and scheduled communications.

Results

The outcome brought home the meaning of FIGO: outstanding, truly appreciated, much loved.

The campaign lifted company-wide sales growth by 6.8% over the previous year.  When factoring out historically underperforming locations, the campaign lifted sales by 9%.

What’s more Facebook fans were a highly engaged audience, helping spread the word virally to their friends about the sweepstakes and offer:

• Fan counts increased by 302%
• Facebook pageviews by 467%
• Facebook check-ins by 317%
• 83% of Facebook fans interacted with FIGO online on a monthly basis

What’s more, the Summer of FIGO campaign reversed an expected downward sales trend, allowing stakeholders to say, “Prego!”