“Ice, Custard, Happiness” is the slogan for Rita’s Italian Ice, but “Give them something to talk about” could be the mantra for its social media efforts. With this year’s First Day of Spring promotion, the frozen-treats chain gave customers plenty to chat about, especially on Facebook. As a result, in less than three weeks Rita’s gained more than 100,000 new Facebook fans.
Rita’s already had a robust Facebook page prior to this year’s spring event. Fans “can’t wait to tell you what they think of Rita’s and their favorite product,” says Katie Hooper, account supervisor for Lorél, the agency that works with Rita’s. “We were trying to harness that sort of passion, and we felt that Facebook gave us the right platform.”
The company hitched Rita’s quest for more Facebook fans to its flagship marketing event, the annual First Day of Spring promo, in which the more than 550 Rita’s shops give a free treat to every “guest” who visits on March 20. This year the First Day of Spring promo marked the debut of a Peeps-flavored ice, a co-branded item from Rita’s and Just Born, the manufacturer of the marshmallow confectionery.
To get the conversation started, Lorél came up with the “Find Your Peeps-onality” tool for Rita’s Facebook page. Fans could click on an image of their favorite Peep — Mellow Peep, Sassy Peep and VIPeep were among the more popular — and then have the image appear on their Facebook wall.
Rita’s promoted the campaign in its radio ads, stores, posts on Twitter, and e-mails to members of its loyalty club. To take part, though, people had to go to register as a fan on the Facebook page.
FB Peeps
All told, 52,000 people clicked on the Peeps-onality tool, appreciably more than the 40,000 who entered the sweepstakes. And Rita’s doubled its Facebook fan base in less than two weeks, surpassing its goal. What’s more, interaction from its fans, in the form of wall posts and the like, quadrupled.
Now that it has more than 225,000 Facebook followers, Rita’s is making sure to keep the conversation going. It knows that the focus needs to be on converting those follower numbers into sales, and one way to do so is “to make sure that we keep those fans engaged with us,” Hooper says. “The more we put out there to our Facebook fans, the more they engage with us,” Hooper says.”
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