The Bakery

A text messaging success story

The problem

I worked with a bakery some years ago that needed to double their business or they weren’t going to stay in business. They had been in business for about a year at the time I talked to the owners. They did all types of great loaves of bread and goodies but just not enough sales.

Starting on a solution

We suggested some advertising to get new clients but also suggested text messaging to invite their current customers in more often. First, we set them up with a program that would allow them to invite people who liked brownies in when they were fresh out of the oven. They didn’t bake brownies every day and they found that if they could send out to the brownie lovers that they were just bringing them out of the oven, they would get more sales. They doubled their brownie sales.

We then did this same thing with their lemon bars, eclairs, cake bites, all of their pastries and breads. It was a huge hit. Each person could choose what they were interested in getting information on and a special message would be sent to them. Lines at the bakery ensued! 

We then helped them with the daily sandwiches that they made from the bread they baked for the day. They had 15 combinations and each day they featured one of the sandwiches. Fresh bread, right out of the oven, and fresh meats, cheeses and other ingredients made them so very desirable.  Each day they would send a text message at 10 am to those that had signed up for the “sandwich for the day” club. They could then call in and order online for lunchtime pickup. Other customers that only wanted a certain sandwich would be sent a text message when their sandwich was featured.

This bakery had a menu of over 30 keywords for the customers to signup and get the bakeries to text these customers. Very shortly they had over 200 people that came in at least once per week. They also had many other customers that used to come in once about every quarter that now came in every week or so.

The Results

They didn’t just double their sales but had many months that were over 4x what they had before. 

There are a couple of things that you need to know about this company. We used dedicated lines to text from. This allowed us to have complete control of the keywords they could use. When you share a line, other businesses may have already taken the keywords that are perfect for your business. A private line also allows people to send a text back to you. It helps the customers have another way to communicate with you.

The bad thing that happened to this bakery is that I left the company that I was working for and the bakery decided that they could save money by going to another company. The new text company was using a shared line and the bakery had to change many of the keywords to use. They also found that it was harder to work with the software the new company used. They ending the use of their text messaging program and last year they closed their doors. The bakery owner thought that customers would remember to come in all the time. 

Takeaway – Customers need to be reminded of the service or products you have provided for them. That is how they remember to refer you when a friend asks about the services you rendered for that customer.