P’Nut Street Noodles (P’Nut) is a restaurant group founded in 1997, serving authentic and affordable Asian street food across 11 venues in NSW and QLD. This Asian street food brand aims to bring alive the authentic experience of a hawker street in Asia with authentic ingredients and sauces made from scratch using local ingredients in Thailand.

Nothing’s packaged. Nothing’s commercialised. Everything is as authentic as if you were really in Bangkok.

Keveene Penilla, Marketing Manager, P’Nut Street Noodles

The challenge

P’Nut wanted to uplift customer engagement to achieve greater retention and longer customer lifecycles. By employing HubSpot as their CRM platform, they aimed to increase their understanding of customers to reach them more strategically and personally. “We want to make sure they’re receiving things they love to engage with, such as updates on their favourite dishes,” said Keveene.

Taking P’Nut to the next level required tech innovation. They noticed that many of their customers had an “aversion to email” and found an opportunity to deliver more significant engagement with SMS. The group saw the effectiveness and results of SMS when it came to supplementing email immediately.

SMS gets right in front of them at the right time so they’re more likely to engage

Keveene Penilla, Marketing Manager, P’Nut Street Noodles

The solution

Through HubSpot, P’Nut built out and implemented more complex omnichannel workflows using both SMS and email in their CRM. They found that this helped increase open rates straightaway.

P’Nut saw a 50% increase in sales by integrating SMS into their workflows for their promotional campaigns.

SMS has worked extremely well in driving conversions for flash offers and personalised communications aimed to surprise and delight customers

Keveene Penilla, Marketing Manager, P’Nut Street Noodles

RELATED: Learn how a leading wine retailer used SMS + email workflows in HubSpot to re-engage 50% churning customers.

Instead of sending customers communications that may not be relevant to them, P’Nut leverage HubSpot’s workflow capability to trigger SMS after certain conditions are filled. Similar to Vinomofo’s successful campaigns, SMS are only sent within a certain timeframe if an email hasn’t been opened.

Another example is how P’Nut has integrated text communications as part of their welcome journey. To help encourage new customers to join their VIP program, they use offers like 10% off your next order, get your 9th order free of charge, and special birthday rewards. All of which are communicated via time-specific SMS and email workflows through HubSpot and the MessageMedia integration SMS for HubSpot.

Previously, P’Nut used a business model similar to Dominos, which was based on sending their entire customer base the same offer every week. This didn’t drive the ROI or traction they needed. Dominos has a national reach, unparalleled to other hospitality businesses. For small entrants or fast-growing venues like P’Nut, personalising offers around your customer’s unique journey and their data (preferences, dislikes, interest, history) creates better, long-term affinity over competitors.

Use cases

Currently, P’Nut adopts two primary use cases for SMS:

Flash offers

These are special, time-bound offers sent at specific times to encourage immediate transactions. According to Keveene, these are delivered at 11 AM (before lunch) and 3 PM, when customers are “daydreaming about what to eat for dinner.”

Marketing campaign support

We’ve now got a beautiful, really in-depth workflow in terms of retention.

Keveene Penilla, Marketing Manager, P’Nut Street Noodles

Customers receive an introductory 10% off their next order when they sign up for P’Nut’s ‘Saucy List’ VIP program.

To motivate customers towards rewards, P’Nut reminds them of their progress with simple text prompts.

To encourage repeat purchases and increase basket sales, customers are sent additional offers. A different offer is sent the following week if a customer does not convert via email or follow-up text, such as getting a free side with your next order.

We’ll make sure we’re targeting our customers with the foods they like, and not the items or offers irrelevant to them, like gluten-free. Our objective is to ensure that the customer is always getting the value they want from their orders.

Keveene Penilla, Marketing Manager, P’Nut Street Noodles

Depending on what converts, P’Nut will re-assess the data to calculate the best behavioural triggers for that customer. Through this process of audience segmentation, P’Nut will be better able to better target and personalise messages both through medium and content. Given their concern around sending too many messages that result in unsubscribes, this will help ensure strategic message sends in future.

The results

When we use SMS for last-minute or flash offers, we have seen a huge jump.

Keveene Penilla, Marketing Manager, P’Nut Street Noodles

P’Nut saw a clear trend that the addition of text messaging to marketing campaigns and HubSpot workflows strongly correlated with uptake in sales, voucher redemptions, and more. Whether it was for $1 dumplings or $10 laksas, time-based offers sent via text messages got “great results” for P’Nut.

Keveene believes that customers respond much better when the message is right in front of their eyes, which can positively impact conversion. They see a lot more return business thanks to SMS as opposed to email.

Additionally, the personalisation element through segmented workflows adds immediacy and care to any communications. For Keveene, she believes it tells customers, “P’Nut knows who I am, and they’re targeting me with something that interests me.” That messaging means customers are more inclined to make that purchase again.

The future

P’Nut continues its innovation streak by now focusing on its website and online ordering platform. They are also hoping to adopt richer text messaging technologies, such as a multimedia messaging service (MMS).

They would also love to have a fully integrated SMS system for ordering and delivery, so customers get a notification when orders have left the restaurant or are close to being delivered.