Domino’s unveils ‘intensive’ move from ecommerce to omni-channel future

Domino’s is piecing together data across all channels through partnerships with Sky, Weve and 4oD to develop a consistent experience for myriad types of shoppers.

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The pizza chain says it is planning to introduce more location-based campaigns through mobile devices.

The process aims to let customers move seamlessly among all retail environments and will be completed by the end of the year. Domino’s, like many companies currently structuring around digital, believes merging its ecommerce and retail efforts to act as one, unifying omini-channel is key to personalising the customer experience.

Four “buckets of activity” sit behind the brand’s vision, spanning improvements to generating actionable customer analytics, integrating TV and mobile advertising more closely, location-based marketing and innovation. Despite sitting on a wealth of customer data stockpiled over the last four years, Domino’s says it is not yet able to use that data to fully bolster customer engagement, improve loyalty, optimise budgets and boost sales.

Data from the company’s digital platforms, which are housed on separate databases, are being tied together in partnership with Arena, to create a more holistic view of customers that is then used to understand their offline behaviours. To that end, Domino’s is matching its own data to data from Facebook, Sky and 4oD. The business declined to give further detail on what the tie-ups would lead to but says it is exploring the integration of customers’ TV habits with their mobile devices to more “discreetly” serve content.

Simon Wallis, marketing and sales director at Domino’s, says location-based marketing, performed at a local level by franchisees, is another key objective of the overhaul. Domino’s is a business of 850 stores nationwide and more needs to be done to push local marketing beyond leaflets and radio ads, he adds.

Weve, the mobile advertising and payments joint venture between the UK’s three largest operators, has been brought on board to help realise the plan. The pizza chain is gleaning search data from EE, Vodafone and O2 customers to serve local customers with targeted promotions in order to drive store purchases, an area the business feels has “untapped” sales potential. Data from outdoor industry planning tool Route is also being considered for future initiatives.

Wallis adds: “Much of our digital activity has focused on engaging people when they’re on the sofa but now we’re able to start looking at what they’re are doing when they’re out and about.

“Some of the changes from this will open up new occasions for us. If we could target the lunchtime occasion far more efficiently with people in and around the store then it could open up new opportunities for increasing ‘carry-out’ sales for us.”

Separately, Domino’s is making changes to how it creates branded content after seeing early efforts such as online sitcom “The Support Group” have a significant impact on sales. Wallis admits current content is “not best in class” but claims investments made to improve the timelessness of posts and free-up resources to spot opportunities that will elevate future efforts.

Crowdsourced campaigns that require minimum effort from fans alongside Instagram content to exploit the popular social media trend of taking food pictures are also being prepped.

“In this world of paid, owned and earned we have a desire to move more into the owned and earned space with our content”, adds Wallis. “A lot of the activity we’re doing at the moment is about understanding people’s historic behaviour to try and predict what customers are going to do and therefore tailor our marketing activity to support that as oppose to relying solely on their historic behaviours.”

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