Ep. 277- GUEST: 🛑 STOP Asking for so much DATA! w/Auntie Anne’s, Carvel, Cinnabon, Jamba [Matt Bettis Sr Dir Customer Engagement & Loyalty GoTo Foods]

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We are back for do this, not that podcast presented by Marigold. And this episode is going to make you hungry. That is my guarantee. Why we have someone incredible here. Who do we got? We got Matt Bettis.

Now, Matt is the senior director of customer engagement and loyalty of Goto Foods. Now, maybe you don't know go to Foods, but I bet you kind of do. Okay. Goto Foods is the.

Schlotsky's. I can't say that right either. Seattle's best coffee. Basically everything you consume on a daily basis, it's match, responsibility.

And we're going to hear all about how he drives loyalty and customer engagement. I'm fired up to have him here. Matt, welcome to the show.

Thank you. Appreciate thrilled to be here and it's great to talk to you, Jay.

I appreciate that. So my. We're going to get into all things, but I'm just curious about something. If I worked where you work, I would, I think I would eat everything.

I would accomplish no work whatsoever. But you have access to all the greatest food on earth. Is it like right there? Is your cafeteria the coolest cafeteria on the planet?

Yes, that. That is accurate. It is the coolest on the planet. So we do have kitchens in, in the building where they doing tests of new items.

They're going to potentially launch in store. There's a lot of access to all of the brands. There was a joke, of course we rebranded as a company. We used to be called Focus Brands.

Now we are go to Foods.

There was a joke about when you joined the company you would put on the Focus 15, which was access to Cinnabon and Auntie Anne's and all of these phenomenal brands which are delicious but when you've got access to them all day, you have to make sure to in moderation, you know, to not, not put on too much. But yeah, it's, it's great to work for brands that are, that are so beloved by so many people. I mean, dream job for a marketer for sure.

So, so it's been a great experience here.

That is so cool. I mean to be a fan and then to actually be able to work someplace that you're a fan of, that, that's such a cool thing to do. So how did this happen?

Are you, have you just had just coolness around you your whole career? How did you wind up doing this?

So it's a, it's an interesting question. I, I never would have thought I would have been in this position when I started my career. I won't tell you exactly when I started it.

I want to maintain some mystery here, but let's say a while ago originally I was a computer engineer. My first, one of my technically my second job, but one of my first jobs was advising the Pentagon on technology strategy.

So I reported to the actual PENTAGON in, in D.C. for, for one of my first jobs.

The idea that a certain number of years later I would be advising marketing, loyalty and customer engagement for a food company was not exactly on my mind. I went back when I was doing this and there was a heavy implementation component to the technology strategy we were advising.

So I was a developer for about half of my day. It was not something I really wanted to be doing long term.

This is in a pre agile world, you didn't have as much agency over what you were developing. So I knew I had to go back and get another degree. I really didn't know what marketing was. I thought marketing was TV advertising and that was it.

Right. So I went back to business school and just started to take some classes in marketing and just absolutely fell in love with it.

I realized it's not only advertising, which is a part for sure, but there's a heavy data driven component to marketing.

It's product, it's pricing, it's everything else that really appealed to me as someone with more, more of a data mindset and more of a technology background.

So the roles I've done since then have really been all leaning more towards the data side of marketing and then that is a natural fit with loyalty programs. So I think that's how I wound up in loyalty programs, particularly in restaurants.

We're in a charmed position in a lot of ways because we have access to so much data and have the ability to really get out targeted messages, targeted offers, all of that. And that's, I know it's not what excites everyone. But it is actually what excites me. I've told people I'm not.

If you want a marketer to design a Super bowl commercial, I'm not your guy.

If you want someone to really dive deep into the data, figure out the exact right message at the exact right time to get to the exact right person, that may be something I can do.

I think you get the award for the hardest pivot in a career of all time. I mean, somebody going, yeah, I worked in the Pentagon and now I do loyalty programs for Carvel. Wait, what?

Well, I, I hope I, I hope I tell my 9 year old son, daddy worked at the Pentagon. He couldn't care less. I really hope someday this impresses him or one of it's got to impress one of his friends. I hope someday, but. But not me.

Impress you. Well, thank. That's all I wanted, Jay, was just to impress you. I don't care about him anymore. No, it's amazing, but yeah. Cool, cool.

Interesting start to the career. You never know where, where your career will take you.

All right, so I have a question about loyalty. All right, you all have 25 million loyalty members. That is a lot of people.

And what I, I know this is probably not the right way to ask it, but I'm just going to ask it. I go to the mall, okay, we have an Auntie Anne's in the my mall.

I buy some pretzel bites, I eat them, and then I don't really think about it for a little while. And then three months later, I go back to the mall, I go, I'm hungry. I'm gonna buy pretzels again from auntie ends. And I do.

Does that mean I'm a loyalty member? Like, like, how do you drive loyalty? It's amazing to me. Drive loyalty from people, like just buying these things casually.

Like, what are you guys doing to bring everyone together?

So it's, it's a really good point when you think about loyalty. There's of course the true loyalist, and we've got brands that have people coming in 10, 15, 20, even more times per year. I mean, once a week.

You know, that's a very important segment. But we don't want to ignore the relatively infrequent guests. You know, you coming in once every three months wouldn't put you super.

You know, you don't come in every week or anything. We still want to be able to drive you to additional frequency when possible. Now, when you talk about, are you a loyalty member?

We want to drive loyalty for all guests. Everyone that comes in the store. We want to drive brand affinity and loyalty. The, a lot of that focus is on the actual loyalty program.

So when you sign up for the program, whether you have or not, for Auntie Anne's or for any of the brands, and then identify yourself in some way during your transaction, whether it's in first party, meaning web or app, or in store, you can, and we have, you can scan QR codes, you can give your phone number. There are a bunch of different ways you can identify yourself. Then you're really in our loyalty program. We're then taking all of that data.

We're trying to match you up to vary to similar guests, to create segments and figure out how we can drive you to both have longer term tenure and loyalty, but also some additional transactions more in the short term. Additional transactions or additional spend.

Let's say if you're going to Auntie Anne's and you get Pretzel Bites, well, can we get you to buy a lemonade while you're there? Right. Things like that. Can we find key moments when you'd be more amenable to make another trip to buy Pretzel Bites?

I'm sure when you look at a mall brand, some of it is just based on, okay, I've got to return my khakis to J. Crew, so I happen to be in the mall. Can we make sure when you do go to the mall you're going to make that stop at Auntie Anne's.

Those are, those are all very important to us.

So it's, it's both the true loyalist who's coming all the time and that's their favorite place that they go to, you know, weekly or something even more. And the more infrequent person that we want to, you know, there's a big percentage change if we take it from three visits a year to four. Right.

It's a 33% increase. So, so both are really important.

You know, you just said something to me that I'm embarrassed. I don't ever really think I thought about which is within your loyalty. However you're defining loyalty of somebody.

You're, you're seeing if there's like minded people that are doing certain things and you're creating segments based on, on looking at what other customers are doing and making segments from that.

And you know, somebody may be a SaaS marketer out there and maybe they're not looking at, for example, how people are using their platform and if they look at people that are using their platform in a similar way, that could Become a segment. Right. Or a consumer brand. Could be all sorts of different things. I've always thought of segmentation or like, okay, they've bought this many times.

Their lifetime value is this, you know, they spend this much dollar amount. But you're saying that you're looking at segmentation in a totally different way.

Yeah, I mean, that's a big part of it for sure. This many visits, this much spend. We, you know, what are you spending on? What are the occasions?

What, what's the even things for a lot of our brands, Seasonality, day of week, all of these different things can contribute to a picture of who you are as a guest. And, and, you know, this is relevant for every brand.

From you've got a database of a thousand people to we've got, like you mentioned, in the, in the tens of millions. It's with us having so many guests in our database, we can build even, I mean, we can split that 50 different ways and still have half a million.

And I'm just pulling numbers out of thin air, but have a big base of very similar guests that we can kind of build journeys for to try and drive that, that incremental behavior, really, that's kind of our, our North Star is always trying to drive incrementality among those guests. So, yeah, it's a very, it's, it's where I am very lucky to be to have access to all of this data and be able to, to build those segments based on it.

So let's talk about data for a second, because I think marketers of all sizes, business, consumer, when they get that first interaction with somebody, there is a rush to collect a lot of data. Like, I need it all because we want to run these campaigns, we want to do all this stuff. But is that the right move?

Like when someone is first giving you their data, is are you just collecting a ton of stuff or are you kind of grabbing it over time? What is the right way to kind of get the data you need?

This is a, this is a really good question because I think the default is, well, what harm can it be to get more data? To an extent, it's not wrong. It's, you know, in some cases you just have more fields in a database. That's not the end of the world.

When you think about guests having to give you this data, you know, every piece of data they have to give you, at some point they're going to say, okay, this is too much. I'm not giving you all of this. You know, really what we want to do is get just the minimum required to get them into the program initially.

The minimum we really need to do our segmentation. What we want to be doing is progressive profiling.

So rather than someone comes into your, whatever your business is and you ask for information on them and this is, this is relevant. I've worked in B2B. I've worked several different B2C companies. This is relevant.

No matter where you are, don't ask for, you know, first name, middle name, last name, maiden name, you know, blood type, you know, birthday, anniversary. I mean, I've seen people that just say, well, okay, we need to get every single possible piece of data we possibly can. Get it.

Get what you need to initially, which oftentimes is like name and a communication channel. Could be phone number, could be email address. Get the rest over time and incentivize them to give you the rest.

Give them, give them incentives if it's points or whatever kind of structure you've got where you can say, hey, you know, great example, if we don't have your birthday, we can't send you a birthday offer. It's not possible because we don't know your birthday.

Well, we could send you an email saying, hey, why don't you tell us what your birthday is and then you'll be in to get this, get this birthday offer. We really want to make sign up for the program as simple and quick and easy as possible.

On the flip side, for our data teams, just collecting everything when you don't really have any path to ever draw an insight from it that can just cloud analysis, you've just got so much data. It's the whole signal for the noise problem. You've got all this noise and you can't find the signal because there's just so much data.

So you don't necessarily want to collect absolutely everything. Try and get, you know, enough data to get you the insights and set you up for the future.

But if you, if you try and collect too much, not only are guests not going to give it to you because of timing or privacy concerns, it also sometimes can make analysis harder. So, so get what you need. Not everything.

Yeah, it's what you need, not necessarily what you want. You want everything.

And then it's also, you know, when you get that initial communication channel, is there a lot of, is there a lot of focus on, okay, we need to kind of earn our, we need to really crush it out of the gate so that way we can kind of earn the right to ask for more information. I mean, is that kind of that welcome series, really important for your business?

It's incredibly important. That's. That's probably one of the most, if not the most important customer engagement strategy we have is the welcome series.

You may be very surprised to know this. And this is common throughout the industry. This is not just our brands. It varies by brand.

A very healthy portion of guests that sign up for loyalty programs never use them. I do not know why you would sign up for a loyalty program.

I mean, I can understand it every so once, and if it were 1% or something, say, okay, they signed up, they forgot, you know, something like that, totally fine. But it's. It's very high percentage, surprisingly high percentages. Never use it.

What we need to do, the second we've got, when you sign up, we've got your email address. A lot of people, they've signed up through an app, so we have the ability to send them push notifications.

We need to get them in for that first transaction, if not immediately, very soon. We really want to make sure that they're engaged with the loyalty program, that they don't just sign up, forget about it.

And then two months later and we. We see this just like every brand does, then they try and sign up again because they forget they even had it. Right. So driving that first purchase.

Also, once we get that first purchase, then we have some information on you when you just sign up. We can't do much with just your name and phone number and email address.

We can send you things, but they can't be really personalized once you start transacting.

And we know, Jay, if you go into Carvel, or let's say you go into Jamba and you have a favorite smoothie there, then we can start to understand, okay, people who really like that smoothie also are very amenable to this other menu item, something like that. So. So it's incredibly important to get them engaged with the program, not just. Not just signed up. Right.

That's super interesting about that. Instant fall off for a lot of loyalty programs. You're right. It's like, why would you sign up for it?

You know, something that you all do that I think any business should bring in that I don't know, is not on enough people's radar, which is the small things. Whenever I walk into a Moe Southwestern grill, I got one down the street from me. And this has been the case for years.

Everybody that works there screams out the second you walk in. You know, welcome to Mo's.

Oh, I'm very familiar. Yep.

Right.

Iconic to the Brand.

It's iconic to the brand. And instantly, the moment I walk in there, I'm like, oh, I feel good. I feel connected.

Like, even now I'm thinking about it, there's this, like, loyalty pole. Those little things matter. Right? Those things add up for your. For the whole process.

Absolutely. And it. You know, what we sell is food, for sure. Right. But there it is, such a competitive industry. I mean, I don't.

And when you go to Moe's, I'm sure you've got five other Tex Mex or Mexican or options that are very similar. And that's not even counting. If you're going for lunch, you've got sandwich options. You've got all this other stuff. Mo's is a great example.

Everyone, when they. When a guest comes in, the. The team members all say, welcome to Moe's in a way that everyone can hear. It is creating an experience.

It's creating something that's truly differentiated in an industry where it's very difficult to be truly differentiated. So I think that's where we want to. We want to be as a company is in. Have something. Not just another burrito place, not just another sandwich place.

We want to be a truly differentiated experience beyond just menu. So I think that's a fantastic example.

Yeah. And I think everybody could bring that into their business. These little things that you stand out, you got to break through the noise.

Speaking of breaking through the noise, probably your biggest work accomplishment, and this is off script, was that you were awarded the best costume this past holiday season, and I believe you were. What were you? Obi Wan Kenobi. Is that correct?

This is correct. First two things are correct about this. This is my biggest professional accomplishment by far. I was talking earlier today.

I still have the sheet of paper. Best individual costume at Goto Foods. I haven't even gotten it framed, so I got to get that framed and put up somewhere so that people know.

Yes, I would. I. You. You may be shocked to know this, but maybe I was a little bit of a nerd back in the day. I'm sure you can't tell now, but I would. Had a star.

I bought a Star wars costume. It must have been in like. Like when the Phantom Menace came out in the late 90s, and it still barely fits.

So I've been getting lots of good use out of that. So, yes, won the costume contest. Biggest professional accomplishment here, possibly of my entire career.

So wait, I want to know. Okay, so you. If you weren't going to be that, what was the second choice that you Were debating between.

Between that and you were really about to be, you know, I don't know, Darth Vader or Yoda or is it all Star Wars Universe?

So it's. I really wanted my team to do. I'll tell a real quick story. I. I want my team to go in a theme for Halloween.

So last year my team was going to go as the Scooby Doo characters because we had the right number for Scooby Doo. Long story short, I was born in Dallas and was long raised a Texas Rangers fan. Well, if any follow baseball.

Texas Rangers made the World Series last year. I bought a ticket and flew and went to the game and I was like, sorry, guys, Scooby Doo Halloween is canceled. Return your costumes.

So we didn't get to do that last year. This year I really wanted to do something themed to our restaurants. I thought I had a really good idea, but I don't like to force things on my team.

And they just didn't get a big. You could tell there wasn't a lot of momentum around it. Auntie Anne's this past year actually launched a fragrance called need with a K, K K N E A D.

It was. I understand the reaction. It did phenomenally well. It drove so much buzz and it is because of the power of the smell of those pretzels.

You walk into the mall and you smell pretzels. I've had some on me, by the way. I didn't get a bottle to myself, but I've been in meetings with the chief brand officer. She brought a bottle.

I said, well, give me, give me a little bit. I got a date with my wife later.

Let's.

Let me get some of that. So my idea was let's all go as. Let's do branded fragrances that are kind of silly.

You know, things like, you know, John Deere smell like a tractor or something like that. We'll all, we'll all build one. You just could tell there wasn't a lot of excitement around it and I couldn't get them on board.

But that was my idea for Halloween this year. If I hadn't done my Star wars costume, which is my fallback, we would other branded fragrances beyond Auntie Anne's need. So.

Well, I'm glad you don't work at a fertilizer company. That's all I'm going to say.

Exactly.

Unbelievable. There's many things about that that's unbelievable. Well, this episode has been unbelievable. You're awesome.

Listen, we're going to put all your info in the show notes. But how does everybody follow you, connect with you, get involved with you? What can they do?

Yeah, so I'm on all of the social media channels. Really the best way to connect with me. LinkedIn. Matt Bettis. I don't think there are many others benefit of having a relatively unique last name.

But yeah, always happy to connect with people. We do.

Like I've mentioned to you earlier, when these brands are so iconic that when we have a job posting I people I get a lot of people reaching out because everyone is so eager to work at this brand that they've known since they were a baby and some or children in some cases. So always happy to talk through our brands, talk through marketing, anything.

If people want to reach out to me on LinkedIn and I'm there as Matt Bennis would love to talk to people.

That's amazing. We're gonna put that in the show notes. I learned a lot today. I'm gonna go eat everything now. Matt, thanks for being here, man.

Please do. Thank you so much, Jay. I really appreciate you having me. It was great to talk to you.

You did it. You made it to the end. Nice. But the party's not over.

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