What did Pizza Hut do to drive franchisee turnover?

On the eve of Pizza Hut’s recent Eagle Boys acquisition, the franchise invested in letterbox campaigns to boost sales revenues in supporting their many franchisees. The problem was that franchisees were sceptical that letterbox campaigns would be successful enough to justify the time and monetary costs.

Working with Salmat, Pizza Hut created a full-scale, three-month-long campaign for its franchise network, sweetening the pot further by matching every franchisees’ investment dollar-for-dollar.

The campaign was delivered through Salmat’s Fuse platform, which enabled Pizza Hut’s head office to centrally deploy and control the campaign, while franchisees could localise their execution.

The results for Pizza Hut and franchisees alike were almost immediate

• 138 franchisees opted-in to the campaign in less than five days
• Distribution costs were reduced by 25 percent with Salmat’s Fuse platform
• Franchisees saw four times the reach, leading to 96 percent of stores sales improving
• 19.25 million highly targeted leaflets were delivered to nearby residents
• On average, stores that took part in the campaign saw a sales lift of $485 per week

“We were truly astonished when it took a mere five days after the campaign options became available through Fuse for a whopping 138 franchisees to register,” explains Dave Anderson, Pizza Hut national local store marketing manager.

Franchisees were pleasantly surprised at how easy the campaign was to execute, and the strong improvement in sales performance, with 75 percent confirming they would participate in another co-funded program and 72 percent rating it successful. In addition, 88 percent of franchisees also reported they intend to maintain a letterbox program with or without co-funding from the franchisor.

“This campaign was incredibly easy to execute on thanks to receiving promotional materials, distribution instructions and every communication through the platform,” says franchisee Simon Billingham.

“Not to mention we saw an increase in profit over the term of the campaign of approximately 15 percent, with a major front of that coming from delivery.

“Specifically, we had an increase in docket transactions of approximately 80 to 100 transactions per week, which is now holding steady and maintained with an overall increase of approximately 45 percent.”

Anderson says the campaign will be beneficial for the future, too.

“By the end of the campaign we could tell from the positive responses we’d received that we were boosting franchisee morale and getting everyone on board with Salmat’s Fuse platform, which will make things so much easier for our network moving forward,” he says.