SMS Marketing Best Practices · SMS Marketing Examples

Mobile Marketing Example – Chipotle

Text GOLD to 888222 for Chipotle's text message marketing campaign

(Chipotle Mobile Marketing Campaign)

Tonight I visited Chipotle and noticed a new sign right above the counter. I was beyond ecstatic that they’ve started using SMS marketing, so I texted GOLD to 888222 to see how the new SMS campaign worked. I’m usually all about Chipotle, but this mobile marketing campaign I just couldn’t get behind.

The first issue I had with this mobile marketing campaign was that the call to action was completely misleading. The sign was referencing their fresh ingredients and the text message campaign call to action was “to learn more”. I was assuming that by texting I would learn more about these fresh ingredients maybe with a video, mobile website, or even a  fun fact about the fresh ingredients they use at Chipotle. What I got was nothing of the sort as you can see below.

The second issue I had with this SMS campaign was its complexity. Usually Chipotle is all about simple ingredients, but for some reason, they took the complete opposite route when designing their mobile campaign. It took nearly seven text messages as you can see below to opt-in to receive future promotions from Chipotle. That’s just too much to require from any customer.

Text GOLD to 888222 for Chipotle offers

Text GOLD to 888222 for Chipotle offers

Text GOLD to 888222 for Chipotle offers

If I was advising Mark Crumpacker, Chipotle’s chief marketing officer on how to fix this mobile marketing campaign, this is what I would suggest. Since the signs are already up, I would focus on tweaking the text messaging campaign to better fit with what the call to action on the sign is. Since the goal of this mobile marketing campaign is both to educate and have the customer subscribe to receive future offers, I would do the following.

First I would change the entire user experience of the SMS campaign, as you can see below from my new concept. A couple of reasons.

  1. It’s extremely long right now, so long that I stood in line, ordered my burrito, paid, and sat down before I finished the entire process to get to the call to action to subscribe to future offers. I’m guessing that currently, most customers abandon the campaign before ever getting to the end. Remember I own a mobile marketing company, I would have stuck it out for a while before giving up.
  2. I would put the call to action to subscribe in the first text message, just below the “learn more” fact about Chipotle’s ingredients.
  3. I would rotate the “learn more” facts received so that it seems that everyone gets a different unique fact.

The second change I would make is that if a customer had already subscribed and texted GOLD again, they would be directed to the original mobile trivia game, minus the call to action to subscribe at the very end. Sometimes those lines at Chipotle are crazy long, why not give the customers something to do while waiting.

The third thing I would do is to add a QR code, they make it easier for people with a QR code reader on their phone and they look cool.

What do you think about the changes I’ve suggested? Would you do the same?

Text GOLD to 888222 Chipotle QR Code


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