Marketing operating system

Every marketing job a pizza store has. One place.

Segments, cadence, journeys, win-backs, loyalty and deferred discounting, running across email, SMS, direct mail, flyers, TV, radio, search and the box itself. Built for one location or a thousand.

Access is by invitation. Tell us how many locations you run and we will set you up.

The marketing.pizza carrier pigeon with a sealed letter

Every week, six answers

The questions a pizza marketer actually has

01

Who is drifting?

The regulars whose gaps are stretching, caught at day 30 on their own clock, not at a fixed 60 days on yours.

02

What do we send them?

One message per segment, or it is not a segment. Cadence set per customer, capped globally across every channel.

03

What did it actually earn?

Measured against a holdout, not against the platform's own report. Incremental orders, in dollars.

04

Where is the trade area weak?

Penetration by carrier route inside a real drive-time polygon. Where the mail should go, and where it should not.

05

What is the discount costing?

Effective discount rate per store per week, with the deferred value still outstanding tracked separately.

06

What is on next month?

The fixture list, the school calendar, the weather triggers and the quiet Tuesdays that need the work.

Segmentation

One list and one message is why the discount goes to the wrong person

Most pizza stores send the same Tuesday email to everyone at the same time with the same three dollars off. That single blast pays the customer who was ordering anyway and ignores the regular who quietly stopped.

We cut the file on recency, frequency, ticket, channel, daypart and menu affinity, recompute it nightly, and give every cell exactly one job. A customer who slips from a fortnightly rhythm to a monthly one has told you something before they have consciously decided anything.

  • Personal lapse thresholds, set as a multiple of each customer's own median interval
  • Seasonality removed, so January does not hand you a fake list of thousands
  • Marketplace-only customers flagged for conversion, not for win-back

Read the chapter

FREQUENCY → ↓ RECENCY · 16 CELLS · ONE JOB EACH

Deferred discounting

Never give away today what buys you tomorrow

An immediate discount buys an order you were probably getting anyway. Value issued forward, redeemable only on the next order inside a window matched to that customer's own rhythm, costs nothing today, is paid only when someone actually returns, and buys the occasion after the one in front of you.

It is the strongest fence there is, and the highest-return place to deploy it is on a customer's very first order, where the churn curve is steepest and the second order roughly doubles the odds of a third.

  • Expiry window set from the customer's median interval, not a house rule
  • Issuance and redemption tracked as separate events with separate financial meanings
  • Outstanding face value carried as a liability, not booked as breakage

Read the chapter

RUNG 1 · DAY 0A reason, no discountRUNG 2 · DAY 12Deferred value, 21 daysRUNG 3 · DAY 30Best offer. Last one.VALUE UP · COST PER CONTACT DOWN

Channels

Marketing, not just email marketing

A pizza location competes on a street, not on a platform. The plan has to cover the channels that actually reach a trade area, including the ones the software industry stopped talking about.

Measurement

Incremental, not attributed

Every platform reports the revenue it is responsible for, and every one of them overstates it. Not dishonestly, but by construction. They count the people who saw the message and then ordered, and cannot count how many were ordering anyway. In a category where households buy pizza every couple of weeks regardless, that is a very large number.

We hold a portion of every eligible audience out, permanently, and report the difference. Two columns: platform-attributed for tuning inside a channel, holdout-measured for deciding where the money goes.

  • Campaign holdouts on every send, permanent holdouts on the whole programme
  • Matched-route holdouts for mail, matched-market for broadcast
  • Cohort retention by acquisition source, so cheap customers stop looking cheap

Read the chapter

4,182 +18.4% $9.4K TREATED VS HOLDOUT DRIFT DETECTED 312 regulars slipping DEFERRED VALUE $4,180 out, 28% redeemed

One plan

The marketing calendar stops living in someone's head

Most stores decide this week's marketing this week. Print needs lead time, mail needs longer, partnerships need arranging, and the best occasions in the pizza year are known months ahead. Everything done at the last minute is done worse and costs more.

We build the year from your own demand curve, the fixture list, the school calendar and the weather, then work the quiet weeks rather than the busy ones. Marketing a Friday you were going to fill anyway is a discount. Marketing a dead Tuesday is a business.

  • Booked far enough ahead that print and mail land on the right day
  • Roughly a third held back for the competitor opening or the weather turning
  • One plan the whole team works from, per store

Read the chapter

52 WEEKS · 19 BOOKEDJFMAMJJASONDTHE QUIET WEEKS ARE THE ONES WORTH WORKING

The playbook

46 chapters on marketing a pizza location

Written for operators, not for a search engine. Free, complete, no email required.

Marketing that fills the ovens.

One product, per location. Segments that update themselves, journeys that run without you, and a number at the end that is honest.