Accelerating Growth and Enriching Loyalty in QSR feat. Scooter’s Coffee’s Mitch Walden

Billie Loewen [00:00:03] Hello, everybody. Welcome back to another episode of Room for Growth. I am sleepy. I am tired because I have just spent three wonderful days in Las Vegas with Braze for their annual conference, the Braze Forge Conference. This was our first year doing it in Vegas. It was so awesome to see Braze continue to grow and expand. They're just getting so large at this point. When I partnered with them 5 or 6 years ago, they were a relatively nascent platform, still figuring out their identity and they had a killer product, but they were just beginning the journey of this incredible growth in scale. And now seeing them in Vegas hosting a conference with all the rest of the biggest names in technology who show up in Vegas once a year to talk about how their tech is changing the landscape for marketing and engagement and for the clients they work with. It was so cool to see. I'm just becoming invigorated with new ideas about how AI is not just going to be a buzzword in marketing operations this year, but truly some technologies that are coming both within the Braze platform and as direct plug-ins are going to accelerate things like A/B testing and automation and how you make personalization decisions in incredible ways. I don't think I have been to a conference where I've heard more testament to the speed and value lift that clients are experiencing by leveraging a piece of technology. And as much as there is just so much disruption in the technology industry right now. The thing that I left Braze Forge understanding is that Braze continues to drive disruptive growth in how it allows marketers, technologists, and product owners to create experiences for customers that are engaging. and that are best in class, and that are tailored to who they are. Everything from how our clients and others are leveraging some of the really unique Braze channels and creating gamified experiences and connecting those to insights and data. But also, you know, just their platform has always been so flexible and scalable to bring big creative ideas to life. But today I have a wonderful guest on. I want you for a moment to think about your coffee experience and when you wake up in the morning for so many of us, or you're going about your busy day or you're getting kids to sports practice or to school, or you just need that mid-afternoon pick me up. Coffee is, you know, of course, some people are caffeine-free, but a little sweet treat or a little drink. But coffee really is such an important decision that we make on a very frequent basis in the coffee industry across the board. It's complicated. There are a ton of local and national players. There are many, many choices. Those choices change regionally. There are a lot of new entrants and brands to the coffee space every single year, and they can be really disruptive because it's relatively inexpensive to start scaling a coffee brand. So today when we talk to the Senior Director of Loyalty and Digital Marketing from Scooter's Coffee, I want you to think about, from a marketer's perspective, how challenging it is to truly create rewards incentives, nudges to change behavior for a purchase that is frequent to the point of daily, sometimes multiple times a day, where you are just fighting in real time for that consumer's dollar and for their loyalty and your differentiating experience across an in-person experience, a digital menu board, an app, a loyalty platform, every channel that you can possibly think of. That challenge for Mitch Walden is just what he breathes every single day. I'm excited to have Mitch on today to talk about how an overwhelming digital transformation challenge that landed in my lap and in the WillowTree lap about a year and a half ago has just completely changed the game for how Scooter's is going to market. He's going to talk in-depth about some of the campaigns that they've launched in Braze and how they are driving revenue for their business in a really scalable and unique way. He's also going to talk about all the technology decisions they made and how they moved at the speed of light to completely rebuild a digital experience in, honestly, one of the fastest timeframes that I've ever seen. I hope when you listen to Mitch today, you hear him talk about how the technology choices that he's made have truly been an accelerator to the growth that they're experiencing as a company and how you might mimic some of the tactics and tools that he's using to drive growth in your own business as well.

Billie Loewen [00:05:07]  Welcome to Room for Growth. We're so excited to have you. Recently we had the opportunity to hang out at Braze Forge, Braze's annual conference in Las Vegas, and you gave a keynote about what Scooter's is doing in the loyalty space to drive customer engagement, frequency of purchases, and leverage Braze to do all of those things. So I'm super excited to have a conversation with you about the strategies and tactics that Scooter's is engaging and how they're using various technologies to do that.

Mitch Walden [00:05:35] Absolutely. Thank you for having me.

Billie Loewen [00:05:37] Yeah. Before we jump into just some of the things that Scooters is doing and why they're such a unique brand in the space, let's talk a little bit about you today. You're the Senior Director of Loyalty and Digital Marketing at Scooter's. And before you arrived at Scooter's Coffee, you have had a storied and long career doing technology transformation, digital transformation, customer engagement at all kinds of places: Papa John's, AutoZone, O'Reilly Auto Parts. Tell us a little bit about where you started in your career and how you ended up here.

Mitch Walden [00:06:07] Yeah, absolutely. It's kind of been a blend of a lot as as several people...as stories kind of go the same direction, but I started in online marketing. So, kind of purely in trying to drive in digital marketing channels to drive sales. Through that, had the opportunity to move into kind of an e-commerce perspective and did some e-commerce merchandising and, you know, things like SEO and on-site marketing, building online communities, and really trying to engage the traffic that was coming to the website. And then at AutoZone, we kind of had a separate site for our loyalty and our e-commerce. And so we combine those two into one. And through that, I had the opportunity to learn a lot about the technical side of some of the marketing technology that we used and also as part of the project to morph those two together. And came out the other side of that in kind of a role that was more on the loyalty side of what AutoZone's digital business was. And then, from there, moved into CRM and direct digital and then into some media. So it just kind of continued to compound and we implemented Adobe's marketing suite there, which is kind of what led to the media move to leverage that technology through some of our media channels. When I joined Papa John's, it was purely in a loyalty role to start, and then through some evolution with the brand, we had to get really into it with our data, and we had to do that very quickly. And so I was part of the team that led that discovery and kind of enablement of some of our data. Once we had that data to a usable place where we then wanted to leverage it in our media. And so again, kind of stepped into a media role along with a loyalty and activation role for our known customers to be able to be more efficient with the way we spent media and have continued with similar as I've joined Scooter's. And so it's really been, you know, a lot of different roles, but they've all sat kind of at that intersection of data and technology and marketing and then a lot of change management and leading through the development of new technology, implementation, and functionality inside of those organizations and helping the organizations grow along the way to be ready and understand what having that new technology be. And so I love the space, as I know you do as well. It's a fun space that there's always something new and different happening. And you mentioned Braze Forge. We heard a lot of great stuff last week about all the new that's coming even within those tools. And so I'm really excited about where we're going.

Billie Loewen [00:08:47] Yeah. Before we talk a lot about the leapfrog strategy and the incredible pace of innovation that Scooter's has gone through over the past 18 months or so, let's just do a little rooting for folks who, maybe don't have a Scooter's coffee near them, on who Scooters is. So, obviously, Scooter's is a fast-growing brand at this point. And you're sort of at the dawn of a huge nationwide strategic growth phase. But in 1998, when you were founded, it was under pretty humble core values to hire amazing people, amazing drinks, amazingly fast in those core values and routine. Today, you all are based in Omaha, Nebraska. So you have kind of these roots in the Midwest that are now you're spreading kind of coast to coast and focused on the South. And you're in a really competitive industry. Like, the coffee space is no joke. There are tons of coffee drive-thru coffee kiosks, coffee, big guns -- you can think of all the logos in your head, and it's such a routine purchase for so many people. It can span different categories of competitiveness even within sort of the QSR space. Tell me a little bit more about who Scooter's is and what makes Scooter's unique in the coffee market and why you're so poised just from a brand perspective to think about a pretty big takeover.

Mitch Walden [00:10:00] Yeah. Well, you mentioned our brand promise of "Amazing people. Amazing drinks. Amazingly fast." And that kind of calls out our differentiator and what we strive for as a brand. It's to provide incredible drinks -- and we serve espresso, coffee, energy-based drinks, iced, and blended -- and we do it very quickly. So, you know, you may pull up to one of our kiosks, and they may have 6 or 7 cars in the drive-thru. And you'll still be out in five minutes, right? You're not there for 20 or 30 minutes, like you are at some other locations. And so we want to start our customer's day off quickly, friendly, and fast so that they can get off and on their way to whatever else it is that they're looking to do. You mentioned the growth and we are growing extremely fast. We had just over 400 stores a couple of years ago. We're at 800 now. We're on pace to double that again in the next five years. And so a lot of what our team is working on and focusing on is making sure that we're building the technology infrastructure and the platforms and programs that can sustain and support that growth.

Billie Loewen [00:11:08] Yeah, absolutely. I just think that expansion to 800 stores...it's a pretty wild number of stores. I mean, just to give some context -- like, Ulta has about 1,200 stores nationwide, and that's a hugely well-known brand. Coffee kiosks are obviously a bit different and drive to coffee locations because you can just have more in a single market. But it's an incredible sum of growth in a relatively short period of time. And then I love what you talked about, about just the differentiator in the drive-thru. Like, if you go to a Scooter's and you watch these drive-thrus, they move incredibly fast. Some of the differences are you don't do order-ahead and pick-up in-store because there's really no reason to do that. The baristas pride themselves on how quickly they move and how your drink is going to be like, freshly made the moment you hit that drive-thru, and it's going to be handed to you through a window. But still, the app and digital is such a critical component overall to how you're continuing to reach more customers and make sure that you're personalizing the drink experience to different regions, which is unique in coffee. Talk to me a little bit about what your remit has been in bridging this in drive-thru, in-store kind of experience that's so valuable that people love, they love their barista, they love, you know, even the baristas will talk about a car will drive up to order, and they'll hear the sound of the engine, and they'll know that it's one of their regulars, and like, already know the order. They'll already be like, "Oh, we've already got it coming for you." You get these fun stickers, like it's a lot of brand in-person that you are trying to match to a digital experience. Will you just talk a little bit about what you've been focusing on and what the core challenges have been?

Mitch Walden [00:12:46] Yeah, and you're exactly right that that face to face experience with our baristas each morning is what builds that relationship to our brand and what we depend on to really reinforce that brand promise, day in and day out. And as we move to directions that try to make us faster. That time to interact is minimized, right? Because we have to remove some of that interaction. So, we rely more heavily on our digital channels to replace that. Similarly, when we go into new markets where customers may not be as familiar with who Scooter's Coffee is. Our digital properties are the places where they experience us first, our mobile app and our website. And so we have to make sure that they create a realistic expectation, and that they are a quality extension of our of our brand and what people will see and get when they come and visit a Scooter's location. You know, our app is also our sole kind of mechanism for both our loyalty program as well as online ordering and mobile payment. And so it really has to make sure that it reinforces those functions from a brand quality perspective and that we're really putting it out there, and it aligns with what we want people to expect from our brand.

Billie Loewen [00:14:08] Absolutely. So, Mitch, you and I met on a boat about 18 months ago. It was so funny. We were out at a Braze event, and Scooter's Coffee was not a Braze user yet. You were in the early days of embarking on a really major digital transformation project, not only of the native app experience, but the entire backend tech stack. And you and I had the joy to meet. We were having a cocktail for part of this Braze event, while we were doing a river tour around Chicago, and while everyone else was having fun, you and I were spending about 45 minutes really talking about what the best MarTech strategy was going to be to reach the goals that you had for engagements with your customers and how we were going to think about driving frequency through digital and how real time data needed to be, what kinds of personalization was going to matter... And then it feels like everything took off really fast after that. Will you share more about what has been done? As far as just the digital transformation work across, frankly, so many channels. I'm not going to list them. I'll let you do that. But just talk about, like, give us the the movie scene where we go from being the ugly duckling to the princess. Like what happened in between to do this huge reveal?

Mitch Walden [00:15:22] Yeah. And I mean, our meeting was somewhat by chance, but somewhat not, because the intent of attending that conference was because I had just joined Scooter's Coffee. And the task when I joined the organization was to represent kind of the loyalty and the direct digital elements of rebuilding and re-platforming our entire app technology stack. And so, you know, the intent going to the event that we met at was to be able to evaluate partners and be able to have the exact types of conversations that you and I had. And you know what? It was business. But it was fun, you know, that mapping exercise. But the great thing that we had, you know, with that conversation, and then I think what has made our relationship work so well over the last 18 months, 24 months, is we really weren't beholden to anything. There was nothing sacred in our tech stack. It was, you know, we were on a one-size-fits-all provider that was doing online ordering and payment and loyalty and app functionality and insights, reporting, and analytics. We knew that wasn't working for us, that there were some limitations that we were facing and that we needed to move away, and we wanted to understand what was the best-in-class partner of tech that we can put in place to power a new app that would position us for growth into the future. And so that was kind of what we talked about, right? What if we were going to pick a vendor for each one of those categories I just mentioned? Who would it be, and why would it be that partner, and how would they work together to create synergies that would ultimately benefit our business and make us more efficient and effective? Except for maybe one partner that kind of came into the conversation a little bit later, we implemented the exact stack of technology that we talked about during that 40 minutes on the front of that boat in Chicago. So, you know, the fact that we were able to work with a partner like WillowTree and yourself and the growth team and the development teams and design teams who could take our vision and help us evaluate partners that would help bring it to life and then build the structure through which it would, you know, kind of, live and get it done so quickly. And then, as you're aware, midway through this process that we thought we had kind of a certain amount of time to achieve, we were informed that no, actually the platform that we were on was going to sunset within, I think, the next seven months, and that we had to be off of all of their technology and on our new technology stack by that time. And so we had to kind of shift everything into a deeper gear and get there much faster than we originally had planned on it. And we were able to do so because I think we had such a great partnership and because we were able to work with partners that worked so well together, it made it a really good process. So yeah, that was an adventure, one that I'm glad we had a great partner on. But you know, now that we are on the new technology, it's amazing to see all the things it's unlocked for our brand, and it's fun for us. But we kind of knew that going in because we were the ones that kind of got to select all the tools with the expectation of what the outcome would be. What's really fun, though, is our leadership and our franchisees within our organization, and even our team members who are a little bit closer seeing it actually come to life and not realizing that we were that close to being able to do such amazing things. And then, you know, being so excited about what that means for our brand.

Billie Loewen [00:18:39] Yeah. So, really quickly, to summarize, in case we just distilled nine months into less clear of a bullet point list -- in nine months, we completely relaunched the app. Going from a platform to a native custom application. We rethought the entire loyalty strategy, the pricing strategy, the tiering strategy, the rewards strategy, and that is still in a phase relaunch. We replaced the engagement platform with Braze to do all-channel messaging, had a CDP with mParticle added to the stack. We added to Talon One as the loyalty platform, and we added Radar as geolocation and Amplitude as the analytics platform. And again, we went from zero to operational in nine months, which is an unbelievable pace. On top of just building, you know, even just an app, that would have been a huge chunk of work to do the migration of all of that messaging, the strategies, the promotions, roll it out, and have it really change the game for capabilities. And Mitch, part of the reason why you're here is I get to see these kinds of transformations all the time, and the speed with which Scooter's went from sort of nationwide promotions, nationwide campaigns to true one-to-one, automated, personalized, deeply rooted in metrics and insights into customer frequency and customer spend, has been unbelievable.

Mitch Walden [00:20:14] Yeah, we knew. You know, we, I think, had the benefit of having a program that was already up and running and an app that was kind of up and running. We had the benefit of being able to begin with the end in mind. We knew the vision and what we wanted to be able to do. We needed the tools to unlock it. And so I think, you know, the other great benefit is that while we had such a strong partner helping us to get all of that in place, we could be building the strategies right behind it with the growth team so that when we the minute we turned the technology on, we were ready to use it. There wasn't a learning curve, there wasn't a ramp up. We were really ready to go. And I agree with you. I mean, to be able to talk from a year ago of this being something that we will be able to do to within six months being able to do it and seeing the direct impact it's had on our business has been amazing. And you mentioned earlier, you know, some of the other companies I've been part of bigger companies with candidly, you know, more resources and bigger teams, but we weren't able to move near as fast because there were there were either pieces of technology that were so embedded and rooted into the organization that we couldn't move them. So you had to work around, which created complexity and lag, or we just there wasn't the agility to move as quickly as we did with some of the decisioning around strategy, etc.. And so it's been really fun to have this new, you know, high powered tool and be able to actually rev the engine on it, which is great. And I say that knowing full well that even as much as we've done, we have so much more runway to go with what we're able to do that that's what's really exciting to me is we feel like we've come so far, but we're just scratching the surface of what we're going to be able to do, which is really where the fun stuff is going to happen.

Billie Loewen [00:21:54] Yeah. Really quick, before we move on, because I'm going to just ask you some questions about how this has changed the campaign landscape for you. And I get asked all the time, what's the difference between organizations that are able to move with this kind of agility and those that aren't, from a partner perspective? So, from an agency, some of the things that I see that are really different about Scooter's that allowed this type of transformation to happen at the speed is 1) from the WillowTree perspective, we work with three folks at Scooter's day-to-day across IT, product, and then Mitch, what you're doing in marketing and loyalty. But we work with the three of you, and you are consistently just one unified voice, for sure. All three of you show up to almost every meeting, and not every meeting -- you know, we have meeting efficiency -- but like, you show up very aligned on the direction that we're going. You give us the same message consistently, and you are just very present every day in the decisions that are happening. And then there's just a tremendous amount of trust and freedom in that relationship to build. Like often times, we'll be in a meeting, and you'll say the words like, "Hey, teach us what we don't know here, but here's what I think." And you create a lot of room and space for that back and forth and alignment. It's just a really great partnership. Even the partnership itself feels different. But I want to talk about, for a moment. Scooter's has an internal conference every year, a conference where you meet with your franchise owners, and you help update them on what the digital roadmap might look like for the next year and where the company is going and what they might expect. And you gave a wonderful keynote at that conference this year talking about how capabilities to reach customers on a store by store, but regional/city/state basis, has really changed. Will you talk just a little bit about some of the core points that you talk to franchisees about how Scooter's are shifted through this process.

Mitch Walden [00:23:48] Absolutely. What we were doing previously was kind of a two-level approach. We were running national promotions that were basically one-size-fits-all, batch and blast to our full system, all members of our program. And then we were allowing our local stores and franchisees to run promotions at that level, which sometimes included just a single store. Other times it would be multiple stores that were part of the franchise group. But the way that our stores are organized, that doesn't necessarily include even all stores in a city, for example, like if you go to Dallas, Texas, you know... of the 35 stores that represent that market, there might be 24 different franchisees that own those stores, and so it just created a very disconnected experience for our members, most importantly, that it was not easy to understand which offers were available, at which stores. It created confusion and dissatisfaction. And then we know it also created a lot of waste because the franchisees didn't have the data or really the expertise to really be able to efficiently launch some of these campaigns and truly be high ROI-returning strategies, which isn't a hit on anybody, it's just they had available. And honestly, we didn't have much more available to us at the corporate level. But we did a little bit better. So, you know, end of that story is that you created a lot of bloat in the system, a lot of discounts that weren't necessary, a lot of, you know, rewarding of things that maybe you didn't need to be rewarded because customers were going to purchase anyway. And then a lot of confusion at the local level, honestly, just a lot of work. I mean, we were doing hundreds of these every month to get a little bit of result, which was just not an efficient use of bandwidth either. And so as we've evolved from kind of that one-size strategy to more of a targeted strategy, we're able to be much more efficient with the dollars that we invest promotionally, and we're able to look at our data holistically across the entire system to understand what customers are doing what things, and then target customers based on that and based on their behavior and the behavior that we want to try and move them towards, versus where they live geographically or which store they might be most frequently visiting, etc.. And the result that we've seen from that is, number one, it's been much, much more efficient because the way our technology integrates, we build a segment of customers in one tool, and it seamlessly populates across the others. And so we can go from, you know, loyalty campaign to messaging campaign to analytics, and be able to read the performance without having to rebuild or possibly have lags or gaps or whatever in our data. So that part is huge. We've been able to do templating. We've been able to repurpose and leverage campaigns across, and then we've been able to be much more efficient in targeting groups of customers that we want to move in certain directions with specific offers. Sometimes, we can be more aggressive than we otherwise would have because we understand the incrementality that's driven by that campaign. And in other times we're maybe less aggressive, but it still works out. So we have we have made a huge evolution in our targeting, and we look forward to getting even further down that journey. But it's been a huge change.

Billie Loewen [00:27:18] Yeah, I think, often brands either because they're not investing enough upfront in a customer journey or because they're just afraid of really changing from the sort of local flavor or this local personalization, they often don't realize how much waste they're putting into their promotions, how they're just giving the wrong people the wrong discounts. And there are so many customers who really and truly will keep purchasing with you at exactly the same frequency if you reward them in the right way, but you're rewarding them correctly. And we see this frequently that many brands give away too much value too early without actually building the digital behaviors and the habits that they want to see from the customer's exchange. Like there does have to be a value exchange. You know, customers today expect points. They expect rewards. They expect to be personalized and thanked and rewarded for their shopping behaviors. But on the other hand, they do have a high tolerance to exhibit the digital behaviors needed. And figuring out how to strike that balance cost-effectively in a way that reduces waste and creates the greatest efficiency and spend overall is something that's virtually impossible unless you have this really integrated bi-directional tech stack where you can understand who are your most frequent purchasers and are they dropping off. Of course, you want to retain those folks but don't want to give away too much. Who are your brand new customers who are just onboarding to the brand and you want to start to build a different relationship with them? So that is certainly one of the things I love about how Scooter's has just matured overnight in approach.

Mitch Walden [00:28:54] And it takes a lot of trust, right? It took a lot of that evolution and trust from our franchisees because, obviously, they're extremely invested in their business. It's their business. And so they want it to be successful and to kind of turn over ownership of nurturing those customers and driving those sales to a corporate organization sometimes was was a hard step to take. The data that we were able to provide and the insights that we were able to kind of guide those conversations with, because we could see our customers so much more clearly through tools like mParticle and Amplitude, we could actually understand, you know, that a customer isn't a store customer really with Scooter's Coffee, especially in areas where we have a lot more store density, they're a Scooter's Coffee brand customer, and we need to treat them that way and nurture them across a relationship with the brand. And our stores are a key part of that. But the strategy has to be overarching. It can't be to a store level because if we only look at the viewpoint that one store has, we miss a lot of the activity and a lot of the story that's told when you look in a more broad view. So that part, as we could manage that conversation with more data, started to get easier and easier. And then as we started to be able to deliver some results and show the impact that the strategy was having and the returns that we were able to drive, then it got easier still. And so it's definitely been a process, but one that was based on data, that then built trust and then performance, which then strengthened trust. And we're continuing to go forward with that.

Billie Loewen [00:30:21] Now let's put our money where our mouth is just a little bit. Mitch, our listeners love very specific ideas of campaigns that maybe they can try to replicate. I love talking about this one because you have to be relatively capable and mature in Braze to be able to do it, but will you share the example of the weekly challenge and the points-based campaign that we set up in Braze, and just talk about the complexity of the canvas that we set up and ultimately what it achieved for the business?

Mitch Walden [00:30:50] Yeah, I'll try to remember these numbers off the top of my head that we went through, but yeah, so the concept of this campaign and then a little background, you know. When we look at our customer base, you know, we're a routine part of our customers week and day. And so we have a good percentage of our customers that visit us every day. We have an even larger percent of our customers that visit us multiple times a week. And so we're definitely... Our cadence is high frequency, as opposed to, you know, other categories where maybe a monthly purchase or a couple every couple of weeks is high. For us, that's high. And so we needed to create a campaign, that we could still leverage, to try and drive incrementality beyond that with that customer group. And so what we came up with was this purchase frequency campaign, which challenged customers to purchase five times in a week. And we had an escalating bonus that went along with each subsequent day. So if you purchased on Monday, you got a bonus. If you purchased on Monday and Tuesday, your Tuesday bonus grew by a little bit. And then same thing with Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, so that if you purchased all five days in total, I think you achieved 200 bonus Smiles, which in our program is the equivalent of an extra drink free drink. So, it really did have a pretty good incentive to complete the challenge. This works great because it kind of had appeal for a wide audience of our membership because even if you were only a one-time-a-week purchaser purchasing twice for you, it got you more than what you would have normally received. And same thing if you were at twice-a-week-on-average purchaser, a third-added purchase still got you benefit all the way up. And what we did to target this even further was we did some bookends in terms of our targeting. So we only included customers who had recency. So, meaning they had an active purchase within the last 30 days. So we weren't trying to reengage. It was an active customer group. We were trying to drive and then we capped it out. So anybody that was already exceeding for purchases in a week on average, we excluded because while we love those customers, we reward them in other ways. They didn't need to be part of this campaign because we only wanted to drive incrementality. So, you know, through building that. And then I joked with Ross last week, you know, I have the ability magically to oversimplify everything. So to me, explaining that the way I just did felt like, yeah, we should do this really easy, right? With our new technology, there should be no sweat. And of course, the team made me think that because they're so amazing at how they how they execute. But looking at that in the canvas that we built in Braze to support that campaign, I think there were 44 different actions that were built in that campaign to trigger all of the different messaging along the way from the introduction through to the daily reminders of progress and then the completion confirmation. And it was cross-channel. So we included in-app messaging, we included email, we included push. So it really was a very thorough campaign, which was incredible. And I think that, you know, the incrementality that we saw, and this kind of nods then from Braze over to Amplitude, we were able to track that audience because we were able to have a holdout audience as well, so we could do a true A/B measurement. And seeing the, you know, fall-off day over day in that campaign, against our base level audience, I think that the end total was that we drove, I think, almost 500% incrementality through that fifth day purchase, you know, with the campaign. So it really was effective. What that equates to in our business was nearly a half-million dollars in incremental revenue over the course of that week, which you know, is not maybe big for some organizations, but for us, it was material. And and by no means is it a home run by itself, but layered in with everything else that we're doing, it certainly made an impact and one that was felt. So we really appreciated that. And then there was even kind of a side piece, which was really cool that we were able to include. So there was kind of a fall-out channel as well for customers that didn't maybe complete that Monday purchase and start themselves down the path for the promotion. We actually offered them a separate kind of substitution offer that "Come back any time this week and make a purchase, it will give you double Smiles," and I think that campaign as well generated another $50,000 in revenue. So there were several mechanisms that were enabled in this campaign. I love it. And it just speaks to the complexity of what we're able to do in such a simple fashion because of how well the platforms integrate together and how -- I mean, think about trying to do that manually between building each of those daily offers and then mapping them to a communication platform that can seamlessly communicate them out in real time without having to rebuild and remap. And then you had a separate fall-out audience that was tied to it. And then to have the reporting be real time, that we could see the performance from day to day and what we were tracking in Incrementality. It was great. I mean, I couldn't have asked for a better execution and really a great example of how powerful this platform is.

Billie Loewen [00:36:06] Yeah, I don't know of any brand that's going to hear, "We can drive half-million in incremental revenue every week from just a subset of your customer base by proving that we're changing the behaviors of their frequency and it's perfectly scalable." It's not exactly set-it-and-forget-it. I kind of hate that term because no campaign is truly set-it-and-forget-it. But it is a low-maintenance campaign that we can launch with multiple versions. We can change the creative, we can add a challenge to it. We could apply it to a different segment with slightly different logic. Like it's a beautiful campaign for that reason. To your point, just looking at the if/then logic of: If they purchased, then this message. If they don't, if they're opted into these channels, if they're not... definitely took some technical skills. But again, once it's there, it's there. And then I wish that we could show our podcast listeners what the results look like. But you know, picture a big bar graph that shows Day One, the control group and the group receiving the promotion, of course, purchase at a very similar frequency. Like that's what we'd expect. That makes sense. But then Day Two, you immediately start to see that group receiving this campaign outperformed by almost 3X the group from day one. And then on Day Three, it, of course, goes down, like the number of people who ultimately opt into making five purchases isn't going to stay at the same height every single day in terms of quantity, it's going to go down. But every single day the group receiving this campaign was outperforming the control group by just about 3X.

Mitch Walden [00:37:39] When you compound that incrementality over a five-day campaign, that's where those numbers start to grow so large. And yet being able to show that so clearly to our leadership and to our franchisees, those types of I mean, you can't argue with a number like that, really. That makes my job really, really easy when we go into, you know, to ask for support to do more of those types of things.

Billie Loewen [00:37:59] Totally. More customers just equals more revenue, more weeks in business. Like, it'll be interesting to see if there's fatigue around this campaign and how long it lasts. But I think so often when you're a marketer talking about loyalty programs and engagement in digital, it's just like so many bullshit terms. Often they're like, "No, what does that really mean? Like, give me an example." And this campaign is such an example of: We launched it to a specific subset of customers. We wanted to take very specific actions. We targeted them specifically. If they took the intended action, they got their reward points right away. Like, you're able to gamify the experience. So at the moment of purchase, they felt the experience of making that purchase decision and getting rewarded for it, which is so critical. There are so many loyalty programs that you don't see those points for a week or two weeks. And it's that delay that's just kind of a buzzkill. And then ultimately, whatever channel decision they use to opt in, whatever purchase decision they make, they get feedback. And the campaign for them changes immediately with them. Like, that is truly an example.

Mitch Walden [00:39:03] And the great thing was, you know, we executed similar types of campaigns on our old platform where we would do, you know, we would market it upfront as 'Buy three times this week, and you'll get a bonus reward." But we couldn't track it in real time. We could track from the back end. So we manually then would look at the end of the week and see who had 3X purchases, and then we would manually push the reward out. But it took multiple steps that all included manual work, and the customer got no reinforcement of their progress throughout. And so the actual completion rate was much, much lower. This, I think the power was that each step along the way, the customers were being reinforced, reminded, putting that top of mind. So that was like, "Ooh yep. I gotta make that purchase today to keep on my streak for this week." I think that's where a lot of the power in incrementality came from was just the communications and those touchpoints along the way that reinforce the progress and what they were getting.

Billie Loewen [00:40:01] Yeah, I get to talk to so many different businesses about why we love Braze. And I always tell them like, hey, we are a platform-agnostic agency. As an agency we work in about 30 different CRMs at any given time. We're experts across many CRMs. But I am just a Braze evangelist because A) my teams love working in Braze, some of the most advanced marketers just absolutely love the flexibility the platform gives. And frankly, there just are not a lot of platforms in the market that can do a campaign of this complexity, with this level of bi-directional data flow across their stack and this level of accuracy. And that's truly what differentiates Braze in my mind, why I think they're going to keep growing and keep expanding and getting more customers, because they're just doing something unique in the capability space.

Mitch Walden [00:40:49] Yeah. And when you talk about real-time and then integration with the other platforms that help to power those campaigns, I mean, that for us was huge. Because you knew that was a big concern of mine when we went down the path of a separate loyalty and communications platform was "How are we going to make sure that those are staying in sync?" Because if I'm building offers for a group of customers and I'm communicating to a different group, and they get out of whack somehow, I'm going to hear about it all day from, you know, from my customers, my franchisees, my leadership. We never had an issue. We've been in sync, you know, the entire time, which has been amazing. And then when you start thinking about the additional pieces that are coming with AI and what that will impact in terms of like our ability to truly do one-to-one targeting at mass scale without having to just have a huge resource drain in the organization, you know, it starts to become crazy with what we're gonna be able to do. So I can't wait for us to take that next step. I know we've already come a long way, but that's where I'm where I'm looking as we look forward.

Billie Loewen [00:41:48] Yeah. So crazy that one shitty integration, like one platform, that didn't speak to each other... If the loyalty platform didn't speak to the engagement platform, the analytics platform didn't speak to loyalty and engagement... Like, one integration would have potentially derailed all of the success of the campaign. Like, this made it impossible. But then, yes, I love something else you said, like, one thing that really stood out at Forge this year for me is that, and I love this: Hopefully, manual A/B testing is nearly at the end of its lifecycle. There are so many AI features coming out that integrate with different platforms that automate A/B testing so that you can do it at just non-human scale. You can A/B test every creative component of your email. You can A/B test across different audiences. You can set up that contextual awareness so that you start testing one thing in order. And it's not just random variables, like there's a real science to how you test and optimize these messages, but add AI on top of it, in the way that marketers historically have had to manually track -- what did we test and what have we learned from it, and how do we make changes to our audiences and our segments and who we target -- that's just going to be a thing of the past. Like, AI is going to create so much lift through this optimization, but you have to have the bones right first.

Mitch Walden [00:43:07] And the growth team hears from me all the time: you know, when we have to run a campaign that we can't do a test on, it drives me nuts because I don't like having to infer results. I like to be able to truly measure and have an accurate representation of what we've driven for incrementality because it's such a key to what we're doing. Right? So I agree with you 100%.

Billie Loewen [00:43:31] What else are you seeing in the loyalty space, you know, outside of Braze? But I'm curious if there's other trends and things that are just really have your ears up because you know they're going to shift consumer expectations.

Mitch Walden [00:43:44] For me, you know what I'm really excited about, and you're aware that we're working on, you know, launching a pilot of some new loyalty functionality that will be coming out, you know, through the back half of this year and into next year. One of the things that I'm really excited about and, you know, not talking specifically about Braze, but Talon One, which is the platform that powers loyalty for us, is the ability to unlock experiential levels of rewards. And I love that for so many reasons. One is because it lets us tie customers with benefits that don't necessarily add a hard discount into my system. You know, with a franchise environment, there's always sensitivity around discount rates and giving more stuff away regardless of how high the return is on giving that stuff away, there's always sensitivity about just adding more and more giveaways into the system. So, you know, being able to add benefits that don't necessarily come with a hard cost but that have a huge perceived value to the consumer, I think is huge. And then the other thing I love about that is it's much more difficult. Number one, it's harder because not many companies are to that level yet where they're thinking that way. But number two, if you do it right, it creates a huge barrier to entry for someone to try to come in and mimic what you're doing. So if you create these unique brand experiential rewards that are either part of your core program or that are unlocked at different levels or statuses inside of your program, I think, they check so many boxes in terms of being able to be efficient, tie your consumers emotion to your brand, and then create a very difficult thing for you to have someone come in on top of you and maybe do it a little bit better and then all of a sudden you've lost your advantage. So that's, you know, as I look forward to loyalty, that's that's where I'm looking. And then the other piece is sustainability. So how do we build a program today that works for what we need right now and the roadmap that we can see in the next 12 months? But then I feel confident can grow and adapt with us over the next five years without us having to rip the thing out and completely rebuild it. Because managing through change with consumers, as we know, is very, very difficult. And the fewer times that we can go through those big fundamental changes, and instead just be able to tweak or add or modify slightly, the better off we are. And so that's what I love about the direction we're headed with our program that we're testing here and moving forward with hopefully within the next couple of months is it does those things and some of it's included up front, but a lot of it's built into the functionality that we can bring in as fast-follow so that we are going to have an evolution that, kind of, continues on for us for many years, not only with the growth that we'll see inside of our organization but just the changes in the different things that we're going to want to do based on trends and in all the different stuff.

Billie Loewen [00:46:32] Yeah, one of the things I absolutely love about the tech choices that Scooter's makes, and the reason I recommend these platforms so often to other clients of ours is because there's tech that you rip out and there's tech that you implement. And we have, to date, never taken Braze out of any partner organization that we work with. Sometimes, you know, when you're working in a CDP and an analytics platform and a geolocation platform and a deep-linking platform and a loyalty platform and engagement platform, like there's a lot of room to not do that setup right or to not adopt all the features at full value. And there's always ways we can optimize that. What I generally love about the tech stack y'all chose is those are just not platforms that we're seeing get ripped out and replaced with better platforms or platforms that continuously grow. And then the other thing that you didn't mention and, Mitch, you are allowed to tell me that we have to just completely cut this out because we can't even tease it is the holiday campaign has us just buzzing with creativity and excitement and ways of bringing like a really creative holiday experience that's going to be in-store. It's going to be digital. It's going to be so visceral and nostalgic and beautiful and fun. Like, we are all just counting down to this cross-functional, cross-division-of-the-company effort to do this like massive partnership and holiday experience and scooters. And that's fun, too, The way that tech lets us be creative and think wildly outside the box and gamify the experience and change it very quickly to match an esthetic that is super unique.

Mitch Walden [00:48:05] Yeah. And you know, I think inside of our organization, we had gotten used to technology being a limiter, and that it was always, "Well, we can do all these things. But you know, when it comes to the tech side, we're probably going to have to go a little bit lo-fi because we just can't support it." What's been great about planning for this holiday campaign was that that's kind of how it started, right? And as you know, we were at an onsite in Omaha back in June, I think, when the WillowTree team brought us some ideas and some ideation around directions that we could go. And I think at that point, we connected the dots and said, "Hey, why couldn't we do this for this holiday campaign? Because, you know, we're already down the path of heading this way and it feels like there's application. Let's talk about it." And so again, in true form, because we don't do anything where we actually have enough time to really do it right. We put this together and the team kind of built this out. We actually put some of the other priorities a little bit on hold while we kind of streamlined this, and we were able to deliver an amazing set of functionality that will really enhance, not only enhance, but I would even argue will kind of be the the forefront of the experience around some of our holiday partnership that we have coming up that will launch in the first week in November. So yeah, and what that's done, not only has it again reinforced the credibility of the investment that we've made in our technology, because to your point, you don't understand it until you see it and feel it. And I think even with some of our leadership, despite all of the communication that we had around what we were doing and the extent that we were changing the platform that was powering our app. Even though the app somewhat looked the same, it really was a much, much different and a more powerful engine. It's difficult to understand that until you really see it. When it started coming to life, and our teams could see that happening and what it would look like in the functionality, it was awesome to just see them, number one, light up and, number two, really start to think differently about how we could leverage digital to deliver on our brand message. And so, the strategy session that we had back in August is a great example of this, and we had a couple of the WillowTree growth team attend, actually growth and dev teams. But every single planning session that we had for 2025 included a heavily driven digital element because of what they've seen around what we were able to deliver for holiday. So it has completely transformed, I think, the way we think about our digital channels, apps specifically, loyalty program secondarily, to deliver on our brand promise to our customers. And it's now being part of the initial and primary thought, as opposed to like an add on and "It's going to be underwhelming, but we probably should include it." Now, it's like, "No, we need to make sure we're thinking about this. Like, it needs to be part of the overall strategy because it's going to deliver this amazing experience." So to be part of the team that's now getting to be part of those conversations, it's been a huge change, right? Because we've gone from kind of being this, like back seat kind of, you know, "Hey guys, come along, whatever" to now we're leading a lot of the conversations and driving a lot of the strategy that's going to help with this. So that's been a lot of fun and really is, I think, a huge testament to what's been built, and the trust that, you know, not only our team, but we think of the WillowTree team as an extension of our group internally, that the WillowTree team is bought with all of our organization as well. So we really love that.

Billie Loewen [00:51:35] Yeah. And likewise, shout out to Kelsey and Richard at Scooter's and the rest of the Scooter's executive team. Yes. So supportive and so encouraging in this just huge transformation effort that we've been going on together. It's been a really, really fun journey, and hopefully our listeners can hear how excited you and I sound. Like, okay, Mitch, I cannot let you out of here until you answer the most important question that I always ask everybody. Okay, so this is a podcast about customer loyalty and what drives true loyalty and how to create it. So I'm curious, what brands are you truly loyal to and why?

Mitch Walden [00:52:14] Great question. So based on their loyalty program or just that I'm loyal to them? I guess that's my caveat question for you.

Billie Loewen [00:52:22] Ooh, I maybe a little of both. I mean, I'm always curious. You know, there's like the brands that you just use every day and don't even think about it. But then I am curious, who's your favorite loyalty programs?

Mitch Walden [00:52:32] Yeah. So I would say from a loyalty program perspective, I'm a little beholden to my, you know, alma mater of Papa John's. I like that program. I like their product. And so you can't see me zoomed in on my face but you can probably tell from my face I'm a pizza consumer. So, you know, that's one that I do use and I do like. You know, from a product and a brand loyalty, you know, from a clothing perspective, I love Cole Haan stuff, and I know their stuff fits the same every time. It's going to have the quality that I want. I don't have to worry about like trying it on. I just know if I order the size, it's going to fit. I'm going to like it. Same with, you know, some of the clothing brands that I'm a part of. So, you know, there there's that. I think for me. And then, you know, this kind of goes back a little further. It's not necessarily a brand, but I grew up in Nebraska. I'm a big Nebraska Cornhusker guy. And as we've discussed jokingly, it's been about two and a half decades since Nebraska football has been really relevant, yet it still has this cult-like, loyal following of fans who have, you know, been in love with the brand forever. And it's because, as I spoke earlier, it's this emotional connection right to when they were good or growing up and watching games with your parents and your grandparents and your friends or going to games and having the stadium food and being a part of that crowd. So, you know, to me, that really reinforces that emotional connection to a brand. So a few examples that I would throw out. They're probably not the best but you caught me on my heels there.

Billie Loewen [00:54:02] I think I think it speaks to all the reasons that we stay loyal and nostalgia is a big one.

Mitch Walden [00:54:08] It's functional, tied to emotional, tied to some, you know, some just hard financial as well.

Billie Loewen [00:54:14] Yeah, that's exactly right. Well, Mitch, thank you for joining today on Room for Growth. It's been overdue, but what a fun time to finally get to talk about all the work that we've been doing together. And I'm so excited for what's coming next. I hope everybody who is near a Scooter's holiday time just make a little time and space to first of all, download the app because you're going to want the digital experience and the digital chance to win and be rewarded. But second of all, make sure if you have not been to a Scooter's location yet, that you scoot on around and have an amazing drink amazingly fast.

Mitch Walden [00:54:45] Awesome. Thank you so much.