Whataburger

Whataburger Jumpstarts the New Year with a Delectable Digital Campaign.

Challenge:

January is typically a slow month for QSR brands (and pretty much everything else). When the Texas-based company Whataburger came to Material to figure out how to stimulate sales during a typically sluggish month, it didn’t have to try hard to convince us that there’s no better way to beat the January blues than with a scrumptious burger.

Our goal was to launch an engaging digital campaign that would win over occasional and disengaged guests and help both the brand and customers start the new year on a tasty note. To accomplish that, we had to create custom segmentations for different customer groups based on their purchase histories. We collaborated with our technology partner Braze to overcome limitations with a point-of-sale (POS) system that initially hindered our ability to use real-time data for targeted communications.

Approach:

Concepted the Whataburger “Streak Challenge” digital campaign to drive incremental visits, boost sales and forge brand connection.
Built a robust journey map that split members into five audience paths, enabling targeted messaging to each segment.
Developed order thresholds for each customer segmentation based on behaviour and order frequency.
Organized order data at the point-of-sale to build segments for each audience based on set criteria.
Developed personalized journey messaging, gamification and mobile activation.
Sent out “webhook” offers awarding prizes and congratulating members on completing the challenge.

Outcome:

The numbers speak to the success of our strategy: Whataburger jumpstarted the new year with a 28% increase in overall digital sales for the campaign period, a 44% average YOY increase in digital sales, and a 72% YOY lift in digital sales for January 2023. The revised loyalty program has generated over $4 million in incremental sales and a 64% higher YOY digital adoption rate. What a great result for Whataburger!

We were thrilled that our highly impactful campaign was recognized with a 2023 ISG Paragon Awards North America in the Innovation category, which recognizes service providers that demonstrate “imagination and entrepreneurial spirit in helping organizations future-proof their businesses and better serve clients.”

Material’s Whataburger campaign was also selected as a runner-up for the Agency Partner Story of the Year in the annual Braze Torchie Awards, which celebrate customers and partners within the Braze community who have found innovative ways to leverage the Braze platform and who use technology and forward-looking strategies to build the future of customer engagement.