Purple connects PizzaExpress in UAE

Purple, the intelligent spaces company, and CDW, the international IT solutions provider, today announced its partnership with PizzaExpress UAE.

PizzaExpress UAE selected Purple and CDW to offer fast, free and secure guest WiFi to customers while gathering valuable analytics. CDW has delivered a fully integrated solution comprising hardware, software and services in partnership with Cisco Meraki, Purple and Microsoft Office 365. The solution is currently live at all PizzaExpress restaurants in the UAE region.

Purple was chosen to replace PizzaExpress UAE’s existing guest WiFi, which had delivered patchy coverage resulting in customer complaints. Customer experience is very important to the business and therefore the key objective was to provide accessible WiFi quickly and easily.

The team at PizzaExpress UAE also realised that they were missing a valuable opportunity to collect data and gain real-time insights into customer behaviour with an analytics platform. Prior to using Purple, the marketing team had little visibility over how often people visited, what their favourite choices were from the menu, when they were due special loyalty offers and how they interact socially with the PizzaExpress brand.

PizzaExpress UAE now also has the ability to export data into a separate database via the API, and then use this data to keep CRM and email marketing records up to date.

Previously the database was stale and printed vouchers were not driving sales. The existing database contained around 30,000 email addresses and by using Purple, an additional 10,000 unique active customers were collected within a few weeks of installation.

The first PizzaExpress UAE offer published using the Purple platform was a free pizza voucher with a very short end date, which resulted in over 100 redemptions, driving incremental sales of other items such as drinks, starters and desserts.

PizzaExpress UAE has now replicated this campaign with other offers, including two for one on main courses and two for one on Iftar meals. The objective of these deals is to drive footfall and increase spend. Results have been very strong with over 300 additional covers generated from the email campaign. PizzaExpress UAE revealed that one batch of outbound emails can increase a single day’s sales by up to 4000 Dirham (approximately $1000).

Nick Freeman, Head of Marketing at PizzaExpress UAE, said: “Compared to the other platforms we looked at, Purple is more robust, the reports are impressive and the portal is far more visually appealing and easy to understand. The automated emails are good for saving time, allowing us to focus on planning new marketing campaigns.”

Gavin Wheeldon, CEO at Purple, comments: “Our partnership with PizzaExpress UAE shows the benefits of having a fast, free and secure guest WiFi offering, combined with easy to use detailed customer analytics. Purple has changed customer WiFi from a customer pain point to a valuable asset, introducing a measurable sales channel for the business as a whole in the process.”

Pavan Gangotra, Account Director at CDW, said: “I have worked with Najeeb Ahmad, Group Infrastructure Manager for Pizza Express, for a number of years; orchestrating IT solutions and providing assistance in fast moving retail work and socially connected environments. PizzaExpress can benefit from CDW’s retail expertise around the use of Purple within their restaurant, which in turn will revolutionise the global social perception of PizzaExpress UAE and improve sales going forward.”

The option to log in through social media has proved popular with PizzaExpress UAE customers, as almost 2000 people logged into the WiFi through Facebook alone in the first few weeks.

Furthermore, since switching on the ‘Ask for a Facebook like’ functionality in the portal, PizzaExpress UAE has recorded a 52% increase in Facebook page likes in less than a month with an increase of 181% in page impressions in the first 4 weeks with an anticipated growth of 294% in the first three months.