Web Marketing Association
Jeannie Fratoni

Souplantation & Sweet Tomatoes Restaurants (www.souplantation.com) (www.sweettomatoes.com) is an all-you-care-to-eat dining experience where you can enjoy the freshest ingredients and a meal that is your own creation. The freshness and unique experience needed to be a mirrored online. Red Door Interactive recommended building a web-based fundraiser application to make this fundraising more visible and available to the guests, as well as to streamline the booking process. The foundation for this application was solid with Souplantation.com being built by Red Door Interactive in the latest .NET platform for increased security, stability and sustainability.

Before the implementation of this web-based application, store managers were responsible for coordinating and promoting fundraisers in-store. During planning, our goals were to increase efficiency in the booking process both at a store and guest level, to drive awareness of the fundraising program, drive customer counts and ultimately sales as well as create opportunities for new guests to visit Souplantation & Sweet Tomatoes locations. The tool even allows store managers to create a custom branded flyer to promote the event as pictured here. Within six months of launch, these fundraisers generated over $1MM in sales. In fact, within the first month, over 200 fundraisers were booked which solidified a 100% ROI. Additionally, the fundraiser conversion rate has been steadily climbing, reaching a staggering 8.93% in September.

 Fundraiser Tool Results Highlights

• First Month of Launch: Over 200 Fundraisers booked providing 100% ROI
• Six Months Live: $1,060,352 in sales based on an AOV (Average Order Value) of $8
• Conversion Rate: Steadily increased to a staggering 8.93% in September

 Around The World in Eight Weeks

The Passport Promotion let guests enjoy world culture and cuisine without leaving home—Italy, Asia, Greece and Mexico!  The Souplantation & Sweet Tomatoes Restaurant’s guests are a highly engaged online audience, with a 1.4MM email list, over 58,000 Facebook fans, 14,000 Twitter followers and 13,000 blog readers each month. With a following like that, we knew the Summer Passport Promotion deserved a home page take-over.  We created an interactive feature to unpack the story of the Passport Menu, and entice visitors to dig deeper into the site.  The goals of the Passport Promotion were to increase in-store sales and traffic, awareness and trial of the featured menu, traffic to the landing page and brand engagement.

We designed an interactive feature where users were able to choose a postcard from the country of their choice and send it to a friend inviting them to join them at the restaurant. We also designed a landing page with fun facts about the countries, downloads with kids activities and savings, Club Veg sign-up and a find a location call to action.

Passport Promotion Results Highlights

• 383,528 total unique page views
• 65,415 total visits to the Passport landing page
• 19% overall postcard creation conversion rate
• 50 postcards sent per day throughout the campaign

Lessons Learned

Higher Value Offer: While 10% off is a good discount, the users expected a bigger discount on a promotion like this. Also, changing the offer as the menu changed might have sustained interest and this is something we will consider for next year.
Sustained Awareness: We promoted the Passport Menu through email and social media and there was very good performance at launch, which gradually tapered off during the course of the promotion. Perhaps more consistent participation would have been seen if we kept the awareness of it promoted better over the two months through all channels.

Testing Takes Time: A good rule of thumb is whatever time you think you need for testing, double or triple it. We had a few days for both internal testing and client testing to work through any defects. Ideally, we should have planned for one to two weeks.

Where Do We Go from Here for Souplantation.com?
Optimize: Continue to evaluate and act on our analytics results to optimize the site.
Keep it Fresh: Give users a reason to keep coming back for more through fresh and relevant content.
Grow Club Veg: Focus on acquisition tactics in addition to maintaining customer loyalty.

Souplantation.com has been an amazing success. We always knew the fans were loyal to the brand, and we couldn’t wait for the opportunity to provide them with a robust site and online experience. Now users have a reason to indulge in Souplantation.com and return for seconds, and even thirds!

Read this article on Web Marketing Association’s website HERE

iMedia Connection
Jeannie Fratoni

Article Highlights:

• Red Door Interactive built Souplantation.com to be a completely customizable experience
• The new site has seen a 220 percent increase in returning visitors, a 17 percent increase in visits, and a 20 percent increase in gift card sales
• The company plans to keep the content fresh and relevant to give the users a reason to keep coming back for more

Red Door Interactive was hired to build an entirely new site for Souplantation & Sweet Tomatoes Restaurants, a chain of all-you-care-to-eat dining experiences that focus on fresh ingredients. We formulated strategies and recommendations of our own, but we wanted to hear directly from the most dedicated fans — the more than 1.3 million members of the Souplantation & Sweet Tomatoes Club Veg, the company’s advisory board (the Kitchen Cabinet), and users of the site. Because of their loyal following and passion for the brand, we wanted to build a site for them, by them. So, we sent out surveys and incorporated those results into our design, a step that, in the end, allowed us to validate our entire process from discovery and strategy through design and implementation.

Full Story >>

By Jeannie Fratoni
Creative Director, RDI

A 220% Increase in Returning Visitors—That’s a Lot of Cabbage!
Souplantation & Sweet Tomatoes Restaurants is an all-you-care-to-eat dining experience where you can enjoy the freshest ingredients and a meal that is your own creation. Red Door Interactive built an entirely new site for them from the ground up and the site visitors keep coming back for more. We formulated strategies and recommendations of our own, but we wanted to hear directly from their most dedicated fans—over 1,300,000 members of the Souplantation & Sweet Tomatoes Club Veg, their advisory board—the Kitchen Cabinet, and users of the site. With their loyal following and passion for the brand, we wanted to build a site for them—by them. We sent out surveys and incorporated those results. So in the end, it allowed us to validate our entire process from discovery and strategy through design and implementation.

The Challenge: Build a State-of-the-Art Site Incorporating Social Media and More
Souplantation & Sweet Tomatoes’ online community was growing strong since Red Door Interactive had launched their Facebook and Twitter properties early in 2009. Facebook fans grew to over 48,000 fans and Twitter had over 13,000 followers. We needed to unify that loyal following and grow it within the new site as well as cross promote contests and monthly menu promotions. When coming to the new site, we wanted users to see Souplantation & Sweet Tomatoes as the fresh, wholesome dining choice – where food goes straight from ‘Farm-to-Fork’. It needed to tell the story of how they hand-pick their growers for the highest quality ingredients and use those to create made-from-scratch salads, soups and baked goods. The content needed to be playful and ever changing. The site needed to allow the users to make it their own, just like in-store where you create your own unique meal and experience. With the opportunity to plan, design, develop and implement a completely new site from the ground up, it allowed us to create a completely customized experience for users and ultimately do what we do best at Red Door Interactive, Internet Presence Management.

The Goals

• Keep it fresh: Contemporize the site, make it relevant, exciting, interactive and delicious, and give the users a reason to keep coming back.
• Engage the audience: Implement a blog that allows guests to get inspired, share, communicate and engage in fresh content. Include a section with fun activities for kids.
• Personalize: Allow users to make this site their own just like the in-store experience.
• Grow Club Veg: Increase customer loyalty and grow memberships through initiatives such as refer-a-friend campaigns
• Grow the community:  Create an environment for the active social community to engage on the site via live Facebook and Twitter feeds.
• Make shopping easy: Develop a complex shopping cart for their online gift card purchases that allows users to ship to multiple addresses.
• Improve technology: Develop the site in the latest .NET platform for increased security, stability and sustainability.
• Increase store traffic: Boost in-store sales via an easy to use fundraising-booking tool.
• Localize: Allow users to select their home store which gets memorized and allows users to receive localized content and special promotions each visit.
• Searchability: Make the site SEO friendly to maximize organic rankings, traffic and conversions.
• Optimize: Research, plan, select and install an enterprise-class web analytics tool.

The Solution

Overall Site
This is the fun part. This is why we all come to work everyday! It’s why we love what we do and where we begin to see all of our efforts come to life. But it’s not just about the beautiful food photography or the fun playful approach—this new site packs a punch in functionality to boot.

Souplantation.com is a completely customizable experience. Users can select their favorite background (mine is the penne pasta as you see above) and home store. Immediately they are served with promotions for their local restaurant such as a brunch call-out and it remembers their choices each return visit.

For the home page animation, we used one simple word—indulge—to tell 7 unique stories about Souplantation & Sweet Tomatoes Restaurants. There is a surprise and story behind every letter. The letter ‘u’ tells the story of how they hand-pick their farmers. The letter ‘e’ highlights their made-from-scratch menu items. The letter ‘n’ showcases the salad bar—55 feet of farm fresh fare. You’ll have to discover the rest on your own. Indulge!

Fresh Ideas Blog
The blog encourages visitors to communicate and discover fresh content. You can comment on blogs, tweet them or share them to any social community such as Digg, StumbleUpon, Twitter, Facebook or MySpace. We also included a Facebook Fan Box and a Twitter Stream with live feeds. Users can share what their favorite menu item is or even go as far as recommending a new one! The robust search allows you to find any blog topic, or you can just browse by category or popular tag cloud. Easy peas-y.

For Sprouts Only
This is the action packed section of the site for hours of activity. Here you can play an interactive arcade game called ‘Spud-man’ with classic music and all. Downloads in this section include coloring sheets, activity sheets and a ‘Travel with Sweetie’ picture. Animated screen savers and fresh desktop screens are also available. Join in the fun!

Gift Card Shopping Cart
We completely rebuilt the entire cart adding functionality and ease of use. Cha-ching.

Join Club Veg Form
We optimized the form and functionality to include localization and kept it short and sweet. Sign me up!

The Results

• 220% increase in returning visitors
• 17% increase in visits
• 20% increase in Gift Card Sales

(All data is compared year over year – March 2010 vs. March 2009)

Social Media Promotions

• 400 percent increase in Facebook fans as a result of the April “Pucker Up” contest

Online Fundraiser Tool

• Over 200 Fundraisers booked within the first month of launch providing over 100% ROI in less than thirty days

Club Veg Members

• 70,000 new members subscribed on Souplantation.com in the month of January resulting in over 1.3 Million members to date

Press

• Within one month of launching Souplantation.com, it was mentioned in an article on onextrapixel.com as a ‘mouth-watering’, successful food focused Web site design. The article can be viewed here ‘Eating into Restaurant & Recipe Web Design: 50+ Mouth Watering Websites’.
• Souplantation.com was a featured article on allaboutroimag.com ‘How Souplantation & Sweet Tomatoes Found Success With Its Email and Social Media Campaigns’.
• Souplantation.com was a featured article on qsrmagazine.com ‘A Fresh Look for Fresh Food Options’.
• Souplantation.com was featured in an article on clickz.com ‘E-mail Marketing’s Future in a Twitter World’.

Fresh Ideas Blog

• Over 4,000 comments were received within one week in response to a St. Patrick’s Day contest called ‘Eat Your Greens’. Prizes included two sets of 10 complimentary meal passes for blog readers and additional prizes for Facebook and Twitter participants.

Client satisfaction
We presented our client with three unique and thoughtful creative directions to choose from. We also created branded ‘indulge’ aprons for the team as a leave behind for an added touch.

@gingeranderson sent a tweet shortly after our creative presentation: ‘Can I shout from the rooftops how much I love Red Door? Once again, they blew our socks off. Awesome work.’

“We couldn’t be more pleased with our new Souplantation/Sweet Tomatoes site. Its fresh look and playful creative are completely in sync with our brand. With the inclusion of a blog, an online fundraiser tool and the “Sprouts Only” kids page, our engagement with our guests has dramatically increased. Our guests can really spend time on the site and feel more connected.” Jill Trecker, Manager of Guest Loyalty, Souplantation & Sweet Tomatoes Restaurants

The First 100 Days of Souplantation.com have been an amazing success. We always knew the fans were loyal to the brand, and we couldn’t wait for the opportunity to provide them with a new site. The new souplantation.com gives them a reason to return for seconds, and even thirds!

All About ROI
Melissa Campanelli

During the presentation, attendees learned how Souplantation & Sweet Tomatoes — a healthy-eating restaurant chain with 112 establishments in 15 states — grew its monthly Club Veg email newsletter membership from 712,000 subscribers in September 2008 to 1.2 million subscribers to date through several email and social media initiatives.

In January, for example, Souplantation & Sweet Tomatoes — along with its internet marketing agency Red Door Interactive — encouraged subscribers to refer friends to sign up for its Club Veg email list.

Subscribers were enticed to get their friends and families to sign up for Club Veg emails with exclusive members-only offers, birthday discounts and additional coupons. Subscribers who got the most people to sign up had a chance to win 20 free meals at any Souplantation & Sweet Tomatoes restaurant.

The results? Of the 70,000 subscribers who signed up in January, 17,000 were attributed to the refer-a-friend campaign.

Full Story >>

Congratulations to Red Door Interactive for winning two Internet Advertising Competition (IAC) awards for our work with Rubio’s and Cox Communications. The IAC Awards are a national competition put on by the Web Marketing Association. This isn’t our first time winning, but it is just as sweet every time.

So what exactly did we win?

For Rubio’s, we won Best Restaurant Website for our complete site redesign. Our goal was to encourage customers to think of Rubio’s as a fun, healthy alternative to fast food. We did this by creating a destination site that was a map to the world of Beach Mex. “It’s not a destination, it’s a state of mind” the copy reads. Visitors can click on points of the map and learn how to speak Beach Mex, take a road trip with Rubio’s founder, send a postcard or hang out on the beach. They can also sign up for the Rubio’s Beach Club or even place an order online.

For Cox Communications, we won Best Internet Service provider Rich Media Online Campaign. The goal of the campaign was to convert more AT&T high-speed Internet customers to Cox with media placed on networks such as AOL, MSN and Yahoo! You can view the Rich Media Ad here.

All of our past awards  are available on our Red Door Awards page. Wish us luck for the San Diego Addy’s! Our Beer: 30 Box Car won Best Agency Representation a few weeks ago, but tomorrow is the unveiling at the actual awards show.

Well, my Christmas wishlist is officially complete. Finally, after years of limited smartphone options from Verizon, the wait is over (or at least until early November). I have been a devoted Verizon customer for many years and their ‘network’ is what has kept me a customer. The new Storm a.k.a. BlackBerry Thunder seems pretty amazing with it’s ClickThrough suspension system that acts like a tactile button. It also boasts a 3.2 megapixel camera with flash. The features continue.

Read the full cnet article here.

The Verizon site also has a good video of first reactions.

This article is a good reminder of best practices. Something we practice here at Red Door across all departments from creative to user experience, search and tech.

Usability and the utility, not the visual design, determine the success or
failure of a web-site. Since the visitor of the page is the only person who
clicks the mouse and therefore decides everything, user-centric design has
become a standard approach for successful and profit-oriented web design.
After all, if users can’t use a feature, it might as well not exist.

This site provides a nice ‘visual’ directory of web 2.0 applications and services. I like how they use all of the logos on the page with quick descriptions as you hover to see if it’s something you’re interested in. A nice add for del.icio.us…

This link was emailed to me by Damien. It’s an iPhone craze! So what does everyone think the sales will amount to from today alone?

“iPhone Lines Across the USA, a Gallery By You”

I realize that this is old news by now, but I figured one of us had to at least get it in our blog archive on the release date…

iPhone, the revolutionary combination of a mobile phone, widescreen iPod, and Internet communications device, is coming to the online Apple Store and retail Apple Stores on June 29, 2007, with AT&T as the exclusive U.S. carrier partner.