The playbook today
Eight lessons from the binder, rebuilt for today
The 1997 PizzaSMARTS manual was written for printed reports, carrier-route mailings and door hangers. The ideas underneath it were never about the tools. Each lesson below takes one principle from the original, shows what the manual said, and explains how to put it to work with today’s ordering data, email, text and neighborhood marketing.
Lesson 1Grade every customer: A, B, C or D
Sort every household by how recently and how often it orders, and you know what to say to each one.
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Lesson 2Customers and non-customers need different messages
Sales are customers times how often they buy. Each half needs its own strategy and its own message.
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Lesson 3Win the second order
First-time customers are fickle and usually go unnoticed. A welcome gives them a reason to come back.
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Lesson 4Rescue fading customers before they’re gone
C-Rescue: reach customers the month they break their pattern, ask what went wrong, and give them a reason to return.
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Lesson 5Mail the odd houses: test with a control group
Market to half the houses, leave the other half alone, and the difference between them is what your marketing really did.
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Lesson 6Probe first: test small before you spend big
Test several offers on a small sample at the same time, then spend on the one that works, at the lowest discount that works.
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Lesson 7Steering wheel, not divining rod: one number per campaign
Judge each campaign by the number it was meant to move, not total sales. Four numbers cover every campaign.
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Lesson 8Draw your battle map
Penetration by neighborhood shows where your influence is strongest, and where new-customer marketing will pay best.
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Every lesson links back to the page of the 1997 manual it came from. Read the whole manual online, or download the PDF.