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.

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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!

To promote Rubio’s Fresh Mexican Grill’s seasonal Langostino Lobster Event, Rubio’s teamed up with Dr Pepper in an integrated marketing campaign.

Our challenge was to create an engaging, interactive way to build awareness of the lobster event, encourage participation in our promotion and drive diners into Rubio’s restaurants while also making a connection between Rubio’s and Dr Pepper.

Rubio’s fans are social by nature, so reaching them via Facebook and Twitter was a natural. As fans became involved with the promotions, the buzz heightened and lively conversations lit up the Rubio’s Facebook Wall. The result was a stronger sense of community, increased participation on the Facebook fan page, and on Twitter, increased tweets and coupon downloads.

Each execution featured a look and feel consistent with Rubio’s fun-loving Beach Mex design. In addition, fans were encouraged to sign up for Rubio’s Beach Club, in which fans enjoy access to exclusive promotions, contests, special offers and a free newsletter via email.

Goals

Results:

• Rubio’s Facebook fans weekly growth jumped 121% and fan interactions increased by 277% during the first week of the campaign
• Rubio’s Twitter page re-tweets increased by 75% during the first week of the campaign
• 1,083 Beach club sign-ups during the campaign period

Reid Carr, ad:tech San Francisco Creative Agency Ambassador, plans to attend the following sessions:

Social
Marketing Masters: Social Media Strategies–Generating Leads & Loyalty

Content
Marketing Masters: Branded Online Publications — The Marriage of Premium Content and Advertising

Local & Mobile
Practical Strategies: Building the Better Digital Media Plan Location-Based Advertising Myths and Realities

For a complete list of the date and time of each session he plans to attend view his ad:tech profile.

Catch him at one of the sessions or follow him as he tweets live from ad:tech: www.twitter.com/icowboy

RDI’s president and CEO Reid Carr was selected as Creative Agency Ambassador for ad:tech San Francisco. You may be wondering what that means, and what his role is. If so, watch the video where Reid discusses what his role will be and how you can follow him at ad:tech San Francisco April 19-21st.

Greg Grunberg with Rubio's Business Supervisor, Lauren Dougherty

So how did the Yowza and Rubio’s partnership come about?

Rubio’s is one of Red Door’s social media clients (others include Souplantation, Charlotte Russe, and La Quinta Inns & Suites). During our ongoing monitoring, Red Door found a tweet from Mr. Grunberg himself urging Rubio’s to take a look at his Yowza! app. After a few tweets exchanged on Twitter (including a bit of pressure from Mr. Grunberg when he rounded up his followers to mass request Rubio’s on Yowza!), we brought him inside the agency walls for a meet and greet. Rubio’s is now offering exclusive coupons through Yowza! and its been a blast riding along Greg’s Yowza! train!

For more photos and video from the event, check out the Rubios and Red Door Facebook Fan Pages

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.

February 27 - San Diego’s longest running SciFi and Fantasy convention CONDOR starts today at the Handlery Hotel and Resort

February 28 – Juno Award Winning and Grammy Nominated 5-member Canadian folk-rock-Celtic-old time-bluegrass group, The Duhks, play Acoustic Music San Diego

March 1 – First annual Doggie Street Fair: entertainment, exhibits, pet obedience demonstrations, vendors with pet related products and services, contests, including best dressed dog, best pet trick, and owner pet look-alike competition. Breed specific rescue groups and local shelters will have booths and information on pet adoption.

Keep the family fun going and head over to Coronado for opening night of The Wizard of OZ

March 5 - AEA San Diego: “More Than a Color: Learn Best Green HR Practices from Local Executives Leading the Way”

March 5,6 – Gather at the independent La Paloma Theatre in Encinitas to watch The Present, a surf film by Thomas Campbell, maker of Sprout and The Seedling. The Mattson 2, who performed at the Red Door holiday party, has songs featured in the film and will perform live. For tickets and more information, visit the the Cardiff Patagonia store.  Speaking of Patagonia, corporate has a Twitter @cleanestline

This year, the San Diego Ad Club decided to host the first annual Pinewood Derby contest where local agencies race in-house designed boxcars. The Pinewood Derby supports this years ADDYs theme “Your ideas have legs. Now let’s see if they have wheels.” There were four awards given: Fastest, Slowest, Most Creative and Best Representation of an Agency.

The Red Door Creative team got together to concept some original ideas for our car while enjoying some Fat Tires during Red Door’s Beer:30. Beer:30 is a weekly event on Fridays held to boost morale by claiming 3:30 as “beer:30” and encouraging employees to take a quick break while enjoying a nice, cold beer if they choose. So, with a few gulps of  beer in us, what better idea then to make a Beer:30 boxcar! Our own Red Door brew to race down the tracks at the derby. Thanks to Will Hansen, Interactive Designer at Red Door, and his mad dremel skills, here is the final product:

The car represents the recent addition of Red Door Denver with the Fat Tire cap, and an agency branded label designed by Jeannie Fratoni, Red Door’s Creative Director, and Michelle Peck, Interactive Designer.

There was much hooting and hollering at the ADDYs Raid/Pinewood Derby last Friday evening as our Creative Team watched the Beer:30 car race down the tracks. While it wasn’t the fastest car of the bunch, it definitely stood out in the crowd. During the award ceremony, with gag-gift like trophies such as a toilet seat and brick, Red Door took home the golden prize (or golden syrup bottle) of Best Representation of an Agency. So, I guess our slogan “The best hour for freshly brewed ideas” proved to be true at the Pinewood Derby.

Wish us luck. We find out if we receive an award for our creative work at the ADDYs Creative Gala on March 20th.

She then said, “Hey Mom, you can’t start a sentence with and.”

“Well, Gina,” I said, rather at a loss for words, wondering how does she know this, “I’m writing Web copy. It’s okay to break the rules.”

My apologies to Gina’s first-grade teacher Mrs. Willis, I am one of those responsible for the decline of the English language. But as a copywriter, I’m not writing to please English teachers, I’m writing to strike an emotional chord with consumers in a hope to reach their wallets.

Occasionally, when a client reviews Web copy, they may question grammar usage. While overly formal, grammatically perfect copy may be a put off, overly casual language may look unprofessional. The idea is to find an appropriate balance.

In short, what’s the golden rule to remember? Consider your audience. When your readership is financial investors, the tone should more formal than when selling fish tacos.

Grammar rules that are okay to break:

1. Starting a sentence with “And” or “But”: Yes, it’s perfectly acceptable to start with conjunctions. Just remember that it is slightly more informal.

2. Contractions: Don’t. Aren’t. Isn’t. They’re all okay.

3. Sentence fragments: When you write like you speak, it’s okay to use sentence fragments for drama or emphasis. Really.

4. Slang: Go ahead and use slang, just be sure not to overdo it. Web copy for Jump Mobile, a pre-paid wireless service designed for  mobile-dependent, urban youth, is informal yet very light on urban euphemisms. Nothing is worse than a client trying to appeal to a target market and looking like a poser instead.

5. One-sentence or one-word paragraphs: This is particularly applicable to writing for the Web. Readers are typically skimming a Web page looking for a particular piece of information. Huge blocks of text can be visually intimidating and chances are, your reader will go click, click, good-bye.

So there you go. Write. Relate. Have fun. Get results.