2024 Bronze Marketing Automation

Agency: Armadillo

Client: McDonald’s

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Executive Summary

When the market went short term, McDonald’s went long: growing customer value and helping people get more from the brand.

Strategy

Predictive models showed that helping customers save money in the cost-of-living crisis would increase their value and build their affinity even further. The power of the McDonald’s brand was combined with complex personalisation and engaging customer experiences to create a fully automated, multichannel lifecycle programme. Instead of shouting louder, discounting harder, and focusing on the short term, the team saw an opportunity to change the narrative. Long-term thinking with a truly personalised approach.

Creativity

There were four key phases: Welcome, Early Life, In Life and Rescue. Messaging evolved alongside fans’ relationships with McDonald’s, giving them the information and inspiration they needed, at the right time. Creative, tech and data solutions were built around two pillars: exemplifying brand love and delivering more value.

To build love, innovative interactive elements were developed - like emails inviting fans to play a race-the-clock delivery game. More than 100 different incentives targeted customers based on their value, previous purchases, preferences and behaviours.

For at-risk customers, one email invited them to explore a selection of offers, choose one and have it delivered directly to their app; reignited their love, while collecting data about their favourites to personalise the next step in their journey. The campaign also actively focused on unlocking the MyMcDonald’s Rewards customers had earned but not yet used, prompting them to redeem unspent points to get their favourites for less, with enticing food imagery.

Results

Since launch more than 10.7 million customers have started their journeys, driving £11.3m in incremental revenue and over 670,000 incremental orders. Some 1.5million McDonald’s fans were migrated from the Early Life to the In Life audience.

Before launch, 60% of active customers were redeeming their points. The campaign target was 75%. In fact, it rose to 82%. In total, 1.6 million customers have been won back and placed an order while 1.4 million customers at risk of becoming lapsed have been saved. To date, the campaign has delivered a 32:1 ROI.

The Team

Armadillo - Alan Harris, Developer - Alex Mills, Campaign Manager - Amy Hurd, Lead Campaign Manager - Bethany Webb, Data Strategist - Charline Wang, Senior Campaign Manager - Charlie Bulmer, Senior Conceptual Copywriter - Chris Hughes, Developer - Daniel Rundle, Senior Analyst - Francesca Worsnop, Insight Analyst - Hamish Clements, Junior Animator - Hannah Waters, Executive Creative Director - Helene Hainneville, Insights and Analytics Director - Laura Hitchcock, Senior Campaign Manager - Lucy Darbon, Data Strategy Director - Luke Collins, Senior CRM Planner - Natalie Howells, Lead Copywriter -Nicholas Blake-Steele, Solutions Technology Director - Nick Beevors, Head of Strategy - Olivia Matthews, Account Director - Rachel Pyke, Project Manager - Rob Pellow, Executive Technical Director - Steph Dearing, Developer - Steve Brailey, Lead Developer - Will Barnes, Lead Digital Art Director - Zona Lewin, Senior Digital Designer

McDonald's - Nasia Vassiliou, CRM Manager