2013 highly commended: Subway Subcard, CRM - case study

Our 2012 SUBWAY® SUBCARD® CRM programme was a carefully-­phased, multi-­layered CRM programme that, despite being built from scratch from the start of 2012, managed to significantly beat all of its objectives, deliver improved customer value and add an additional £6.6 million+ sales to the business (a positive ROI of 3:1) in less than 12 months.

Or to put it another way, it sold enough delicious Foot Long Subs to stretch from London to Newcastle. Now there’s an image for you.

In slightly greater detail: SUBWAY® briefed us in January 2012 to use their points-­based loyalty card – the SUBCARD® – to deliver objectives including a 10% uplift in sales & visits and a 3% increase in customers using a SUBCARD®.

A new set of eCRM comms

We worked closely with SUBWAY® to build, test and learn from a set of eCRM comms. However, rather than just base those on a simple value/frequency segmentation model, we combined them with a further set of behavioural, trigger-­based comms (ie if customers earned enough points for a free Sub.) We also combined those targeted messages with non-­‐segmented tactical offers that worked as a complementary way of driving store footfall.

Add to that a further stream which reactivated 11.5% of lapsed customers and an ongoing focus on making our creative more engaging and relevant to our Sub fans, our programme:

• More than doubled our objective of a 10% increase in sales and visits to 26%.

• More than doubled our objective of a 3% increase in SUBCARD® penetration to 8%.

• Smashed our objective of keeping customers’ average spend the same, delivering an actual 13% increase.

Overall, then, we delivered a £6.6 million increase in sales in 2012 – that’s an extra £750 every single hour – a positive ROI of 3:1 and the basis for even greater success in 2013.

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