Campaigns have always proved to be of great use in order to get the attention of the public. But it needs a unique idea to make it viral. Campaigns that break previous records also tend to go viral. Starbucks a leading coffee brand have effectively used their CRM campaign in order to gain a large number of customers.
About Starbucks
Starbuck Corporation is a leading brand of coffee. Their products include different kinds of coffee drinks. Starbuck is an American Coffee Company started in 30th march, 1971. Their founders are Jerry Baldwin, Zev Siegel, and Gordon Bowker. Starbucks Corporation is headquartered at 2401 Utah Avenue South, Seattle, Washington, United States. Till date they have 22,551 number of shops worldwide.
Current CEO and Chairman of Starbucks Corporation is Howard Schultz and the president and COO is Kelvin Johnson. Starbucks Corporation is more than 15 billion US dollar company. They have achieve this feat in 44years by their hard work and creative way of marketing. They have large number of hard working employees which stand at 191,000 till date. Starbuck Corporation moves along with their subsidiaries Starbucks coffee Company, Ethos water, evolution fresh, Hear Music, La Boulange Bakery, Seattle’s Best Coffee, Tazo, Teavana, Torrefazione and Italia.
Starbucks products
Starbuck Corporation have a number of products different flavored coffee products and tea. Recently their launch of green tea in china by different Chinese name was a big hit. The instant coffee packets introduced by Starbucks Corporation in March 2009 with the name “Ready Brew” was a great success. The way they had campaign there “Ready Brew” by campaigning a taste challenge was the secret of their success.
Strategy Adopted
Over their years while launching different products Starbucks have did a great job in promoting their products through new ideas and campaigns. CRM campaign is one of the most successful campaign of Starbucks Corporation launched in United States for the Gold Card members. They made a thorough research of the birth dates of the customers. A database was made for keeping the birth dates of the customer which was used later to give extra benefits on their birthdays.
How will you feel when you receive a gift coupon from a company on your birthday? Will you not like to show brag about it on social media? Starbucks marketing campaign gave that opportunity to their customers. They started wishing their customers with a mail gifting them with a redeemable postcard. You can take that post card to any of the Starbucks shop and redeem your drinks. They took this opportunity to even update the database of the customers. So, updating all their marketing database annually helped them in better targeting their customers. They created two most important elements, first is to send a birthday wish and a request to update their info, and finally a postcard to redeem their gift drinks.
Behind the successful CRM campaigning of Starbucks there were 7 main ingredients included in their emails. Those are enlisted below:
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Basics
Look at the targets of their CRM campaign. They have strategically targeted the Gold Card members as they are the frequent users of their products. This helped them in keeping a track of their existing Gold Card members with an updated information. When this member brag about their gift in social media, the word spread about their campaign will motivate others to do their best to be the Gold card member of Starbucks.
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Event
It covers the basics and makes it center of attraction for the customers. The event shows the benefits of being a regular user of the Starbucks products. This all is possible for their database of birthdays.
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Multichannel uses
They are promoting this in different platforms. Email acknowledgment increases the excitement of receiving the redeemable postcard on their birthday which again is an effective use of different channels.
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Multipurpose benefits
Starbucks Corporation is not just wishing someone on their birthday through their mails but also asking them to confirm their drinks and making them to update their database about their info. They made and offer increasing the motivation level and trust of their customers and this even gave them an opportunity to update their database for better targeting.
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Encouraged other to share
Starbucks Corporation strategically planned this event on the birthdays of their customers as they will love to brag about their birthdays on social media platform. This makes it easier to promote their campaign.
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Innovative Ideas from the crowd
They have a website named My Starbucks Idea where customers can put their views on the changes of their products. Starbucks have always appreciated new and innovative idea from the customers.
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Social Media Platforms
They have given an opportunity to the customers to share their gifts and items received from Starbucks on different social media platforms – Facebook, Twitter etc.
Learning
The CRM campaign of Starbucks Corporation is a good example for strategically planning a campaign to make it viral. Campaigning needs new idea and a strategy that and bring together everyone to put their efforts in campaign. Campaign must be so inspiring that people itself are motivated enough to promote it further.
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