Einstein Bros. uses social media to draw and keep a fan base

Its free-bagel-with-a-schmear campaign was only the beginning

A Facebook coupon campaign delivers a 5,800 percent jump in your fan base. You’re all done—sitting pretty, right? 

Einstein Bros. Bagels said no—it was time to work on making sure those 405,000+ fans would keep coming back for more.

“We knew going into this that we weren’t just going to get our fans all in one day and then not do anything with them,” says Kate Phelps, program manager at Creative Alliance, the agency Einstein hired. “We had to have a strategy for what to do once we got all of our fans: how we would talk to them, how we would give them something to keep them engaged.”

Let’s look at how Einstein developed and realized that strategy.

Learning about online customers

Before starting an online conversation, it’s wise to gain insights into your customers.  

As part of the run-up to its bagel giveaway, which was scheduled for late January, Einstein joined Facebook in October, and then monitored what fans were writing about.

Einstein learned several things about those fans: Most were women in their 30s, spent a lot of time on Facebook, and had families and soccer teams to buy bagels for.

“We wanted to understand who our consumers were and what they do in their everyday lives before we started to talk to them,” Phelps says. “We didn’t want to talk to them about things they didn’t care about.”

Among the things fans weigh in on, it turns out, are their favorite varieties,says Einstein chief concept officer James O’Reilly. Questions like “What did you do this weekend?” have elicited good response, as have subsequent coupon offers.

About a week before the Jan. 25 promotion—in which its Facebook fans could print a coupon for a free bagel with cream cheese—Einstein enlisted its nearly 7,000 fans for a soft launch. This included testing the special “instant-print” application for the coupons, which Einstein built specially for Facebook. If anything went wrong, the team figured, these loyal fans would be forgiving.

The promotion was a huge success, with the fan base growing from that 7,000 tally to more than 400,000. So, then what?

Creating an engagement plan

Einstein has committed to creating a strong relationship with its customers and a community where fans feel comfortable giving input about products. O’Reilly envisions that the fans will help build the brand. “The customer is truly in charge,” he says.

The communicators’ engagement plan resembles a monthly calendar, including national and regional store promotions. It also features holidays  such as St. Patrick’s Day and high-profile happenings like March Madness (the NCAA basketball tournament) on its Facebook page. (A recent status update about March Madness got 297 comments, 162 “likes,” and a slew of mentions afterward.) The Facebook fan base has grown steadily, and comments keep rolling in.

“We put it [the monthly calendar] together as an outline,” Phelps says. “We won’t stick to a script per se; we’ll go listen and respond to things that consumers want to talk about.” Because that flexibility is built in, Phelps says, the outline has been easy to follow.

O’Reilly points out, however, that real engagement goes beyond just tossing coupons, offers and advertisements out to fans. And Phelps puts great stock in candid exchanges with the audience. “As long as you’re honest, the response is overwhelmingly positive,” she says. “[If] you try to ignore or defend something, it can take a different spin.” 

Staffing the networks

With more than 400,000 fans, Einstein will have plenty of questions to answer and problems to solve. So, an important element of the Einstein online presence is that a full-time employee handles all of its social media sites (Facebook, Twitter, and the busy-mom social network Divine Caroline).

The online “voice” of Einstein Bros., a veteran customer service rep, knows the company inside out. She is encouraged to craft the status updates, answer questions, make comments and solve problems.

“Fans don’t want to hear from an ad agency or PR firm; they want to hear from Einstein’s, someone who knows the brand inside and out and can answer any questions they have,” Phelps says.

Without a consistent online presence, those questions can go unanswered—and that can hurt the brand, Phelps says. But if the company responds right way, “the consumer says, ‘Wow, I just had an awesome experience with Einstein’s. I feel like they’re there for me.’ ”