Panda Express Email Marketing

Background/Objective

Panda Express, the country’s largest fast casual Asian dining chain, has long understood the power of email marketing to drive instant revenue and build long-term customer loyalty among its subscriber base.

As a long-term client, Panda chose Sonnenberg to steward this top conversion channel. With a blend of creativity, technical understanding, and a flexible process that allows us to respond quickly without sacrificing quality, we've been fortunate to manage their email campaigns for over five years. In managing these campaigns, we've been successful in understanding key segmentation, building brand loyalty and driving conversions.

Strategy

Even though the conversion is a high priority, we wanted to add value and nurture customer relationships with every campaign. Subscribers who receive personalized content and have a relevant and memorable experience are more likely to open future emails and, therefore, convert with future promotions.

Today’s consumers are inundated with commercial emails and can become blind to promotional messages, so we had a unique challenge to break through the noisy inbox and get noticed. It starts with understanding customer personas, creating appropriate segmentation and testing every aspect of emails, from timing to subject lines and creative treatments.

Consistency is key and we've been able to ramp up the frequency of campaigns to a degree that maintains interest and awareness, without overloading subscribers and undesirable churn rates.

Execution

We've updated the email template several times to make sure the channel evolves visually as the brand does. In our latest iteration, it meant incorporating some of the beautiful line art from their locations and packaging. We also introduced some curves that help compel scrolling further down the message.

Most of the emails are A/B tested for subject lines and other content. Learnings are continually gathered and folded into upcoming campaigns. Upon opening, each email greets customers with stunning visuals that reinforce Panda’s brand identity and resonate with the chain’s delicious food that their guests love. We opted to leverage live text as much as possible in emails, in case viewers don’t download images and for accessibility.

Email campaigns are a business of time. That means we need messages that are relevant and compelling. So to make sure we’re hitting the mark, all links in all campaigns are tagged for both email and web analytics, so that the complete journey can be seen and incorporated with each subsequent message.

Outcome

By creating an engaging experience with every email, we’ve helped Panda build trust and rapport with its national audience. Our campaigns have helped turn casual customers into loyal customers and loyal customers into fans.

Visuals, offer creation, and messaging drive engagement through a crowded email environment. We dive deep into the analytics and gather data-driven insights to optimize each campaign - delivering the right message to the right person at the right time.

We have supported a variety of initiatives from different departments, each with unique promotional goals. We adapt to the needs of these various stakeholders and endeavor to effectively communicate to the brand audience.

A consistent percentage of customers convert on each email through a seamlessly integrated ordering system, delivering revenue on-demand for the brand. Under Sonnenberg’s campaign management, email continues to be a top ROI channel, beating industry conversion benchmarks regularly.

We’ve helped Panda onboard onto two new platforms through the years, providing critical backend support to ensure no gaps in customer experience. As they continue to expand their customer base, we meet KPIs by maximizing the efficiency of the email marketing machine.

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