What comes next
PizzaSMARTS, rebuilt inside the Pizza Experience Platform
In 1997, running PizzaSMARTS took a data service, a monthly report in the mail and a marketing manual. Today the same ideas can run inside the software pizzerias already use. That’s the goal of the Pizza Experience Platform.
Steve Green, from his foreword
“As part of our work developing the Pizza Experience Platform, I intend to revisit and modernize these marketing strategies, combining the lessons learned from decades of restaurant marketing with today’s digital capabilities. My goal is to make sophisticated marketing tools more accessible, affordable, and effective for independent pizzeria operators.”
What the platform is today
The Pizza Experience Platform, at pizzae.com, is a family of products built by Pizza Communications for pizza lovers and the people who make pizza:
- Pizza Explorer, a global guide to pizzerias that ranks them on what reviewers say about the pizza itself, not just star ratings.
- How Was the Pizza?, where diners rate the pizza and the service at the places they eat.
- Accounts for pizzeria operators, where owners can claim their listing.
- PizzaTV, pizza media and video.
Where PizzaSMARTS fits
Each lesson in the playbook is something software can do on its own, using data a pizzeria already has:
| The 1997 way | The PizzaSMARTS idea | What software can do today |
|---|---|---|
| Monthly computer report | Grade every customer A, B, C or D | Grade customers continuously from order data |
| Welcome kit by mail | Win the second order | Send a welcome automatically after a first order |
| C-Rescue questionnaire | Rescue fading customers | Trigger a win-back message the moment a regular slips |
| Odd and even house numbers | Test with a control group | Hold out a random group from every campaign automatically |
| Probe mailing | Probe first | Split-test offers and pick the most profitable one |
| Customer Activity Report | One number per campaign | A live dashboard of the numbers that matter |
| Hand-colored battle map | Draw your battle map | Penetration by neighborhood on a real map |
These are the strategies Steve is revisiting as the platform grows. The aim is the same one PizzaSMARTS had in 1990: give independent pizzerias the kind of marketing the big chains pay for, at a price an independent can afford.
Be part of it
If you run a pizzeria, a pizza chain, or a company that serves them, and you’d like to help shape what the next generation of pizza marketing looks like, Steve would like to hear from you.