CRU Holdings

Success Story

CRU Holdings

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53,000 New Customer Contacts

All captured in a GDPR-compliant way for future contact.

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4,000 Reviews Collected Automatically

Boosting the volume and value on Tripadvisor and Google.

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£45,000 Return-to-venue revenue

Generated using Stampede email and SMS marketing.

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25+ Marketing Automations

Saving time by sending promotional emails on autopilot.

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Overview

CRU Holdings is a chain of six pubs, bars and restaurants in Inverness, Scotland, ranging from American-themed cocktail bars to steak and seafood restaurants – all with different specialities and marketing needs.

  • Scotch & Rye – Scotland’s Best Bar & Kitchen (The Scotsman Food and Drink Awards)
  • The Whitehouse
  • Prime Steak & Seafood
  • The Classroom
  • The Imperial
  • The Wee Bar

CRU has used Stampede to create more than 45 marketing campaigns and events to date across these venues, while a single Valentine’s day campaign generated an approximate repeat visitor ROI of £45,050. Using Stampede has also improved average Google / TripAdvisor reviews by 0.5 stars, created unique cross-venue promotions, and helped CRU generate significantly more revenue per customer.

The Challenge

Many venues have struggled due to changes to business rates, rising alcohol taxes and digital competition from food delivery services. It is also thought that many young people do not go to pubs and bars as often as previous generations.

To compete in a challenging market, CRU needed creative marketing solutions to optimise the performance of its venues and automate as much of the process as possible. Its main objectives were to:

  • Generate more income per customer
  • Increase the number of visits per customer across all venues
  • Encourage cross-venue promotions and events
  • Improve customer reviews (in terms of volume and score)
  • Identify quiet periods
  • Attract more customers – especially during quieter times of the week

The team themselves are knowledgeable, proactive and incredibly helpful. They are happy to do as much work as is necessary to ensure you are getting the most out of the system, and are reactive to your business’ specific needs.

“The Stampede system has become such a powerful marketing tool for us at CRU Holdings. It is well designed, flexible and integrates seamlessly with other systems to form an essential part of our targeted marketing and data collection.”

Grant Murray – Business Development Director, CRU Holdings

The Solution

Email and SMS – A vital way in which Stampede helped CRU improve customer loyalty and generate customer visits was via automated email & SMS such as:

  • Frequency Triggers – eg. a free beer, glass of wine or cocktail after the first visit. Free food after 10 visits.
  • Left Venue Trigger – e.g £5 off when you spend £25 next time.
  • Event Trigger – eg. a free birthday cocktail, Christmas and NYE deals
  • Not Seen In Trigger – eg. £5 cocktails, 2-4-1 pizza, free brunch (based on time since the last visit)

These triggers enabled CRU to automate most of its marketing outreach and provide highly targeted promotions to its customers. This approach saved CRU valuable time and resources, and also improved the conversion rates of its campaigns considerably.

Upsell – Stampede displays promotions direct to customers’ mobile devices whenever they return to CRU venues. Similar to Instagram Stories, these promotions would include:

  • Food deals – eg. Limited time menus, Sunday roasts, bottomless wings
  • Drinks deals – eg. happy hour events, 2-4-1 cocktails, prosecco brunches
  • Events – eg. live music, Karaoke nights, Christmas bookings, cocktail-making masterclasses, whisky & fudge tasting

By beaming promotions directly to customers’ devices, CRU can inform visitors of deals and events without the cost and hassle of printing paper fliers and promotions each time. This is a more measurable, instantaneous and eco-friendly alternative to physical promotions and allows CRU to experiment with different promotions depending on their specific need that day. For example, if one CRU venue is significantly quieter than another on a Friday night, it can offer customers a drinks deal at the other location.

The Results

The digital promotions created with Stampede have had a significant impact on CRU’s financial success, as well as how it operates its venues day-to-day.

They have enabled CRU to track which events and deals resonate with its customers and make better future decisions based on real-world data. This data has helped CRU optimise its venues and create the weekly and monthly event/promotion schedule it uses today. This also acts as a framework for use in all future venues to ensure they can replicate the same success.

The best-performing campaign sent 280 automated offers to Scotch & Rye customers 60 seconds after leaving the venue to promote their sister bar across the road.

This campaign had a 24% conversion rate and an approximate ROMI of £1,340 in two months.

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