Testing leads to 8 times higher conversion for holiday campaign

The Company
Peter A. Mayer Advertising is a full-service agency, based in New Orleans, which specializes in producing measurable results for clients in all areas of advertising, marketing, direct response, interactive, public relations and promotions.

Peter Mayer has been working with Piccadilly since 2007. The first Piccadilly opened in Baton Rouge, La., in 1944. In the decades since, Piccadilly has grown into a chain of 115 cafeteria restaurants operating in 15 states.

The Challenge
Piccadilly has a long history of serving home-style meals in restaurants across the Southeast. After 60 years, the company was looking to attract a younger clientele by focusing on online orders, and it knew its outdated website was not helping its case. Additionally, it was time to recharge its email marketing program. Piccadilly sought the services of Peter Mayer to help achieve its online ordering revenue goals and further engage with customers.

The Solution
Peter Mayer started using Silverpop Engage to send emails on behalf of clients in 2009. The agency selected Silverpop to help it improve deliverability rates and increase customer engagement through innovative Silverpop features such as Send Time Optimization and Share-to-social.

The interactive strategists at Peter Mayer quickly took advantage of Silverpop Engage’s capabilities when it came time to revamp Piccadilly’s email program. Focused on testing and optimizing, the email program was designed to drive customers into Piccadilly restaurants and promote online ordering for holiday meals. “Whether we’re testing subject lines, two creative versions of the same offer or one offer against another, every send goes to a split list, and the learnings help inform subsequent sends,” says Catherine Freshley, interactive strategist, Peter A. Mayer Advertising.

For the Easter campaign shown below, Peter A. Mayer Advertising tested two creatives using the same subject line.


Creative No. 1 incented customers to “Order Your Easter Dinner for Less than $5 per Person” while showing a family sitting down to a holiday dinner. The call to action for Creative No. 2 was to “Order Your Easter Dinner Online” and was accompanied by an image showing the items that could be ordered. Testing showed that Creative No. 2 was the winner, tallying a 26.9 percent click rate and an 8 times higher conversion rate when compared to Creative No. 1.

All of Piccadilly’s emails also use Silverpop’s Send Time Optimization and Share-to-Social features. “The seamless implementation of Share-to-Social and Send Time Optimization for every mailing eliminates costly development hours and allows us to be more sophisticated marketers,” says Kristy Olsyn, director of interactive strategy, Peter A. Mayer Advertising.

The Results
After implementing the new email program, average open rates rose to more than 20 percent while click-through rates more than doubled. When sending messages to highly segmented lists, such as its “Kids Eat Free” email to new subscribers, Piccadilly achieved even better results—open rates of nearly 50 percent and click rates of more than 30 percent. Coupled with its redesigned website and improved online ordering, Piccadilly’s optimized email campaigns led to a sellout of Thanksgiving dinners.

Peter Mayer’s efforts to improve deliverability with Silverpop’s help were also successful, with deliverability rates increasing from 88 percent to 99.2 percent and its email list growing by 11 percent in less than one year.

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Download the PDF to learn how Piccadilly achieved an 8 times higher conversion for online ordering through extensive A/B testing.