Pizza Hut

Delivering a Modern Loyalty Program with Mouth-Watering Rewards.

Challenge

Aware that its competitors were ramping up loyalty efforts and gaining market share, Pizza Hut came to us on a tight deadline to strengthen its own loyalty program. The company didn’t want to risk implementing an expensive platform that might not sync well with existing in-house technologies: it needed to quickly integrate legacy tech, meet the needs of more than twenty franchise stakeholders, and develop a scalable solution to cope with huge traffic for events like the Super Bowl.

Material’s challenge was to move fast to design, test, and build a robust and irresistible rewards program that Pizza Hut’s customers would devour.

Approach:

Tapped into existing customer database to identify crucial points in the customer journey and deliver targeted messaging.
Used platform-agnostic architecture to integrate legacy tech and ensure flexibility and scalability.
Developed prototype loyalty program built on personalization and predictive behaviour in less than three months.
Tested that program with existing customers. 
Transitioned millions of email subscribers to new loyalty program in six months.

Outcome:

From discovery to deployment, we enabled Pizza Hut to become a loyalty leader, reversing six straight quarters of same-store sales decline in the first quarter of the program launch. Conversion rates were huge, with 75% of email subscribers converting to Hut Rewards in the first nine months of the launch. Pizza Hut surged 5% in the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) – the biggest industry gain of the year – landing in the top spot among national pizza chains. We were thrilled to see our work recognized by both discerning pizza lovers and Newsweek, which named Hut Rewards one of America’s Top Loyalty Programs in 2022.

By delivering the right message to the right customer at the right time, we helped turn Pizza Hut fans into lifelong Hut Lovers, in the process ensuring that franchise owners are all set to enjoy a bigger piece of the pie.