Shane Murphy (00:01.848)

Welcome back everybody today. We have Jamie McMahon. He's the owner of Hickory Station Pizzeria He's been operating that location for over 20 years and we're gonna dive into his history with marketing how it's shifted and how text marketing has helped him to Continue to blow up his business 20 years in Jamie I'm so excited to have you on today. Thank you for coming and sharing your experiences with the audience here

Jaime McMahon (00:30.392)

Well, thank you, Sean. I'm glad to be here. Yeah, so like you said, we've been here for 23 years now. And yeah, the industry has really changed a lot in that time. The big thing for me was when I first started in this business, the main form of marketing was mass mailing, sending out those menus. And we did that for a long time, right up until about 2020. That was the main thrust of all our marketing, sending out those menus.

And so here's the thing, even way back then in 2001, the menu companies will tell you, if you get a 3 % return on that, you're doing good. So for a long time, I just thought that was the way to go. That was the way I had learned and most of the pizza shops that I knew of, that's what they did. And so we just all did that. And around 2020, I just started thinking, gosh, there has to be a better way.

I kind of felt with the rise of third party services and online ordering, there had to be a better way to reach people than sending pieces out through the mail. And so I started doing research and eventually I came to text marketing at Boosley and I heard about Boosley on a couple of podcasts. I think the first time was over at SPM with Bruce and man, you've

you really caught my ear with that one. And so that's when I decided I had to give this a try. As I've mentioned, I am not a tech person. So this stuff, was all kind of a little scary for me, a little bit new. wasn't sure, you know, how would customers feel about getting texts from me? Are they gonna get annoyed? So I was very nervous about it. I put it off for a couple months. I kept thinking about it and I finally decided, look, man, what have I got to lose, right?

So we went ahead, we called you guys up and I have to say it was a pretty easy process. You guys, you guys were great. You really helped us out. You were able to go in our POS, pull out all the phone numbers we had. I think I was all over 12 ,000 at the time.

Jaime McMahon (02:45.176)

So we set up our campaign and the first thing that we did was you send out a mass text marketing to all of those phone numbers. All of our cell phone numbers we had in our system, little bit over 12 ,000 of them, asking them to opt in to our text marketing program. And we got a great response from that. A little over 2 ,000 people signed up right away. Now I just want to back up one second here. That first

Shane Murphy (03:09.656)

Yeah.

Yeah, please.

Jaime McMahon (03:14.36)

that first text we sent out. I wanted to give it a strong offer, so I did a 20 % off any order over $50 if you sign up for our text program. And so we sent that message out on a Saturday afternoon. I believe it was 3 .30 on Saturday afternoons.

We had a little miscommunication with Sean. We had meant to only send out $6 ,000 at first and then $6 ,000 the following week. But all $12 ,000 happened to go out at once. And let me tell you, we had the busiest Saturday we have ever had. I think honestly, I think we had about a $5 ,000 jump in sales that night compared to a regular Saturday. It was absolutely insane. And that was when it really hit me like, wow, this works.

Shane Murphy (04:06.754)

Thank

Jaime McMahon (04:07.704)

So obviously that was 12 ,000 texts that went out. That's not an every week occurrence. get a hit like that. But my god, we were just at the end of the night, we're all just looking at each other like, god, what the hell just happened? And so now moving forward, we're only sending out those text messages to the people that opt in.

Shane Murphy (04:11.02)

Sure.

Jaime McMahon (04:25.72)

And at this point, you know, we're around 2 ,400 or so. So we're sending those out every week. And I was really curious about this. And so I went back and I started crunching the numbers. I wanted to compare how we were doing this year to last year. You know, for the, we started in mid -May with Boosley. So I went back to May of last year and all the way up through August. And so far every month, we're up just about 20 % compared to the year before.

Shane Murphy (04:54.999)

Wow.

Jaime McMahon (04:55.576)

And I will say I even went back for January, February, and March, and we were about dead even from the year before. So definitely, I mean, the correlation is right there. You can just see it. We're averaging about 500 tickets a month more right now, compared to last year, month over month. I don't know if these results are typical for restaurants or pizzerias, but I do think it's important that

that people know about this. Gosh, I hope everyone's getting results like this, because it's absolutely amazing. I'm probably getting back 15 times the money that we're putting into it. So I would strongly suggest to anyone out there, you have a restaurant, you have a business, try it. You have nothing to lose. I mean, you don't like it. You can send it out once or twice and stop. But do it.

Shane Murphy (05:48.12)

Thank

Jaime McMahon (05:50.54)

That's all I can say, I do it. You will not be sorry. The percentage, the money I'm spending now on marketing, it's reaching people. It's bringing results, it's bringing people in, it's bringing people in more frequently.

Not just because you're not hitting new customers with this you're hitting your your people your customers are already coming in But they're coming in more frequently now, you know, they see those discounts come in they see that text come in and You know, I mean I literally there's customers that come in and but yeah I was waiting for that, know I waiting for that coupon to come in before I place my order this weekend So it's definitely working, you know things especially these days things are a bit tighter for people So giving someone an extra reason

to come into your place and order from you. It just makes all the sense in the world. And like I said, we've just had phenomenal results. Again, I don't know if these are typical, but like I said, man, just give it a try. mean, literally, there's nothing to lose.

Shane Murphy (06:47.586)

Thank

Shane Murphy (06:53.104)

And you you said a couple things that I love to hear and I think like these types of results aren't Aren't out of the aren't necessarily out of the ordinary like we're typically we we judge ourselves as we're doing a good job Based on not how much you spend with us or how many texts you send out. It's all about For every dollar you put in how much money is coming back and if you're getting you know $10 or more back like that's that's

an incredible return. Yeah, yeah. Exactly. And so, yeah, so if you spend a dollar and you're making 15 times that back, like that's what we love to hear. And that's what we want to have people experience. And you made that contrast to what the direct mail companies put out there of, if you get a 3 % return, which would be like, if I spend a dollar, I get a dollar and maybe like three cents.

Jaime McMahon (07:22.148)

no, not $10, 10 to 15 times what we're spending. That's what we're getting back. It's phenomenal.

Shane Murphy (07:51.544)

back, that's what used to be considered a really good marketing program. But the times have shifted. And you answered one question that a lot of people ask when they're looking into text marketing. like, how long does it take me to actually see results from this? And for you, you're describing, we sent this out on Saturday at 3 .30.

Jaime McMahon (07:51.82)

Right, what's the point?

Jaime McMahon (07:58.38)

Yeah, you were doing good.

Shane Murphy (08:20.044)

How quickly do you think you started seeing customers coming in and transacting?

Jaime McMahon (08:23.832)

I honestly, within about five minutes, we had our first order with that first discount code on it. And then they just kept coming. Like I said, that Saturday, mean, gosh, we were probably up at least 100 tickets over a normal Saturday. It was absolutely ridiculous. And we loved every second of it. That's what you look for. That's what you want to see. I do want to back up one second because I do want to point out to people

Shane Murphy (08:31.767)

Yeah.

Jaime McMahon (08:52.12)

You know, we are an established business. We're not a new business coming in and we're just trying some marketing. it can be a little bit easier to see. You know, if you're doing $5 ,000 a week in sales and you get a 20 % bump, that's $1 ,000. That's not bad. But when you're doing $20 $30 $40 ,000 a week and you see a 20 % bump, that's a big number. So I want to point that out to people. We've been here a long time. Our sales are pretty good.

And to have a big jump like that, that's amazing. So I just want to point that out to people. This will help your business. It doesn't matter if you've been around or you're just opening up. Be smart with your marketing money. You can't waste it. You can't afford to waste it these days.

And as far as I can, in my experience, this is the absolute best way you can spend your marketing money in the restaurant and especially the pizzeria business. You're targeting your customers. They wanna hear from you. They like you. They like what you're doing. Give them a reason to come back more.

I'm going to one thing I'm going to try. We've always sent out texts on Saturday. I'm going to I'm going to talk with Sean in a week or two coming up here. I'm going to do it on a Friday because that's always been our busiest day. So I want to see what happens when we really kick it in on a Friday when I want to see what happens with that. I want to see if we can. I mean, we're closed Mondays and Tuesdays, so when we send a text out on Saturday, we have Saturday and Sunday and then there's a two day kind of pause.

Shane Murphy (10:18.424)

Yeah.

Shane Murphy (10:28.865)

Yeah.

Jaime McMahon (10:29.524)

So I feel we kind of lose a little momentum there. So I want to try going in on a Friday afternoon and seeing if we can get like a Friday, Saturday, Sunday, get a bit of bump out of it and see what happens. I'm curious to try different days of the week and see what happens with it. And we're even just try some new messages. Hey, have you tried our new homemade mozzarella sticks or, you know, things like that. You don't always have to give somebody a discount. Just give them a reason.

Shane Murphy (10:54.37)

Yep. Yeah, I think that's crucial because you mentioned, you know, these are people who they know you, they like you. Text marketing is taking your existing audience and the purpose isn't to just grab a brand new customer. It's how do we get your existing customers to come more frequently and spend more when they do. And structuring things is crucial for that. Like you don't always have to do a discount. You don't always have to do a deal. But when you do,

discounts, you also want to be wise in how you do that because you don't just want to give away the farm and you don't need to because these are your favorite. These people love you. You want to be wise in how you structure those deals. Maybe can you speak to how you've thought about that? I can obviously share some best practices and things that we've seen across thousands of restaurants, but how do you thought about structuring those offers in ways where they're very profitable and lucrative to you?

Jaime McMahon (11:53.752)

So I did look at that and when I said we were up 20 % for those four months, know, we've been using Boosley compared to last year. Those were our net numbers. I did go back and I looked at the discounts we were doing, taxes, all of it. Those were our net numbers. We were up 20%. So even counting into the next year that you're giving a discount on your food, what we found is

Shane Murphy (12:15.618)

Thank

Jaime McMahon (12:21.592)

When we do the higher discounts, say a 15%, even a 20 % now and then, people order a lot more. We see a lot more tickets that are in the $100 and $150 range when we do those offers. And so like I said, when I go back to the end of the month and I look at those numbers, those are net numbers. That's a 20 % net increase from last year. as far as for how it's structured, because of the way

Shane Murphy (12:42.359)

Yeah.

Jaime McMahon (12:49.552)

They are structured, like again, a lot of them, the discounts don't kick in until you spend a certain dollar amount. So that really helps too, but what that really does, or what we've seen here, is it pushes our guests to order more. They're seeing the discounts, so you know what, maybe I'll get that dessert this time, or we'll get that extra salad or extra pizza. They spend more money.

Shane Murphy (12:55.704)

Mm

Shane Murphy (13:11.554)

Yep.

Jaime McMahon (13:17.728)

And it comes back to you. So again, I I'm just, I really think it's important for people, give it a try. You know, I, I want to be fair too. Like no one asked me to do this. I'm doing this because I want people to know about, this is something I wish I'd known about years ago, honestly.

It's worth it. It's worth it. If you're on the fence about it, just give it a try. You have nothing to lose.

Shane Murphy (13:45.514)

And, you know, I, I mentioned this to you earlier, but coming from someone who like has been a found founded this company and, and really tried to build a product that delivers value. The satisfaction for me comes in this type of story and these types of experiences where it made a meaningful impact on your business. And hopefully that impacts only you personally, but your family, the people who work with you and

operate with you, that means the world to me, seeing it out in the world, making an impact. And oftentimes when people think about, I'm sending an offer to my customers. They say things like what you mentioned, am I just discounting my repeat guests? And the answer is like, no, often they're spending more money and they come more frequently. There was a study a few years back.

And it was, it was a big study with thousands of different restaurant locations. And they measured over 4 million transactions over like a six month period of time. So a lot of data. And what they were measuring was if someone was opted into a text club, how is their purchase behavior different from people who aren't? And what they found was not only like one of the surprising things was with a discount,

they're spending 12 to $15 more net on average on every transaction. And they transact almost like 175 % more frequently than the other group. And we've really tried to go after taking that to the next level of identifying who is a lapsed customer. let's maybe have the ability to send something different.

to the people who haven't engaged in six months or so versus the people who are coming regularly. So you can just continuously be influencing more of your customer base to do that. And they end up spending more than your average ticket size. And you can use that minimum purchase threshold to help them to spend more. If your average ticket is 30 bucks, make the minimum purchase 35 and watch what happens. And all of sudden,

Jaime McMahon (16:02.835)

Absolutely.

Shane Murphy (16:09.314)

They don't just get one dessert, they get a dessert for everyone in the family. And they add that one extra thing that starts to become the norm for their purchase behavior. And that's where the magic really happens and it escalates and escalates and really makes these types of windfalls. So I love hearing your experiences with that. Out of curiosity, have you used any of Boostly's gamified text?

Jaime McMahon (16:17.269)

Exactly.

Shane Murphy (16:38.796)

or anything like that.

Jaime McMahon (16:39.114)

So I've been thinking about that. I really want to try the lottery one. I really like that. I think it's super fun. I'm nervous about all the extra pizzas I'd be making that initial day. But I do want to try it out. That's one of the ones I want to try this fall, because I do think that's such a fun one. I think that it would really engage people. And I think one of the aspects about the text marketing that I think

really helps is just by the nature of it being a text message, people already have a positive feeling about it. You get a text message from friends, family, people you care about. So you already kind of get that, I have a text message. You have a positive feeling about that. And you open up and you get a nice little discount. Or like I said, I might even just try just sending some messages. Hey, have you tried it?

this item or have you tried this item yet or try and just see if you can kind of subtly push sales that way a little bit sometimes. Like you said, try structuring different messages and see what happens. But I just have to say, mean, right now, just what we've been doing has been working great. And I'm really excited to see how we can really, as we go further into, we get more time into it, how we can finesse it, get more out of it, use it better.

Like I said, I'm going to schedule a call with Sean for probably next week and I wanted to talk to him about some of these things. He's got some really good ideas too. He's a really good guy.

Honestly, I can't think of a better use of your marketing than text marketing at this point.

Jaime McMahon (18:29.784)

Sending out a little over 2 ,000 texts out a week for four months, we're getting 500 extra tickets a month. again, these are repeat guests. These aren't new guests coming in. We're getting our current guests to order 500 times more a month.

Shane Murphy (18:42.882)

Yeah.

Jaime McMahon (18:52.029)

I don't know where else you're gonna find that. I can't think of anything.

Shane Murphy (18:54.456)

Yeah, because I mean, if we put this into perspective for your restaurant, if you've been using Boostly for four months, that's equated to almost probably $100 ,000 in extra sales over that period. And you've also tripled the number of reviews that you've had since starting with us. I think Boostly's generated an additional 200 five -star reviews for you guys on your Google listing.

Jaime McMahon (19:08.024)

Close to it, yeah, yeah, close to it.

Shane Murphy (19:23.16)

You you jump started your audience really well, which sometimes that's another question people often ask is like, Hey, doesn't it like I've tried text marketing before and I a sign up in my store, people text to join and gosh, it took me years to get 100 subscribers in that text club. by leveraging that point of sale data and know, Bruce Lee's proprietary methods to get people to join right out of the gate. You've jump started that.

and saved yourself years of time. And those types of impacts we want to bring to the world. We want everybody to have this type of experience because it's a life -changing experience. And I just feel so blessed that we get to be along with this ride for you, watch you succeed, and see you iterating and drawing and experimenting. It is such a fun thing to be on the sidelines and watching,

Jaime McMahon (20:16.376)

Well, I want to point out one more thing also is, on this phone call with Sean next week also, we've reached that time where we have to export new phone numbers again to you guys. So now any new phone numbers that have come in the last four months, four or five months, you'll get to pull out. So I'm expecting now our, when we get those opt -ins, we'll probably close for about 3 ,000 texts per week. So, and now it's snowballing and it's going to keep growing.

Shane Murphy (20:26.84)

Sure.

Jaime McMahon (20:45.472)

So these results are going to keep growing. So it's just a great system. You guys have done a great job. mean, should give yourselves a pat on the back for that.

Shane Murphy (20:48.3)

Yep.

Shane Murphy (20:55.928)

Jimmy, this is a super high praise and thank you for sharing your story today and for all these accolades. Like it wouldn't be worth doing on our end if it weren't for these types of stories. So thank you for giving us that satisfaction and for like raising your hand to say, Hey, I want to share this with, with the world. want to share my experience because of the impact that it's made. So thank you for coming and sharing. Like this is a

What a blast that was.

Jaime McMahon (21:28.212)

Shane, I hope you get at least one person out of this that calls you guys up and is like, hey, I want to give this a shot. just final words, guess, just you're out there listening. Give it a shot. Make the phone call. Give it a shot. I'm just telling you this because I wish someone had told me this before. So go out there. Give it a shot. You're going to make money on it. It's going to do good things for you. You will not be disappointed.

Shane Murphy (21:33.474)

Thank you.

Shane Murphy (21:43.682)

Thank you.

Jaime McMahon (21:58.806)

Yeah, I guess that's my advice to people. Jump in.

Shane Murphy (21:58.882)

See me?

Shane Murphy (22:03.202)

Thanks again. This was amazing. And again, it's been so fun. Thanks for coming on today.

Jaime McMahon (22:09.292)

Thank you Shane, I really appreciate it.