6 Highly-Converting Welcome Promotions in the Food Industry

What are welcome promotions?

Welcome promotions are acquisition-focused promotions that offer discounts or other perks to first-time clients. Besides a fun copy and visuals unique to your brand, most welcome email campaigns usually include an attractive discount deal to increase the number of first-time order as soon as possible.

In this blog post, we will cover a couple of inspirations for welcome campaigns based on real-life use cases from the food industry. We hope you will find them helpful in planning your next campaign! 

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Examples of welcome campaigns from the restaurant and food delivery industry

1. Cerveza Siempre – welcome discount coupon

One of our customers, Cerveza Siempre (brand of ZX Ventures), a beer subscription service in Mexico, has launched quite an aggressive welcome campaign offering a 300 pesos discount coupon. It was a short-term campaign focused on market penetration. This type of campaign can be a good inspiration for companies entering a new market or launching a new brand. The discount was applicable for three purchases, motivating customers to purchase more times than just once, building brand loyalty to the brand early on. 

Promotion conditions: 

• Welcome discount coupon of 300 pesos for beer subscriptions. 
• Possible to use it on three independent purchases, of 100 pesos each. 
• It cannot be combined with other promotions. 

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2. Doordash – multiple welcome promotions

Doordash, a food delivery company from San Francisco, runs various welcome campaigns for first-time customers. These campaigns target different product groups and give different discount values. Even the basic campaign with $5 off and free shipping has a different visual each month to test various visuals. It is a fantastic strategy to test which type of campaign works best for specific customer segments or in general. 

One of their welcome email campaigns offers free delivery and $5 off the first purchase for $15 minimum purchases. They send notifications when the promotion is close to the expiry date.

Promotion conditions:

• Valid for first-time users only. 
• Orders must be worth at least $15. 
• Redemption limited to once per person. 
• For the promotion holder (person who received the email originally) only. 
• Only for account holders on the Doordash website. 
• Not valid for the alcohol product category. 

Another campaign, promoting a new product category, targeted at the first-time purchases of that category offers 25% off the first alcohol order. 

Promotion conditions:

• The total discount on the order is capped at $10. 
• Offer valid only in specific timeframes – Monday through Thursday 12 pm through 11:59 pm and Friday through Sunday from 10 am until 11:59 pm. 
• Redemption limited to once per person. 
• Discount split equally among all items ordered. 
• Only for customers with a valid DoorDash account. 
• Non-transferable (only for the discount holder).

They also run welcome promotions for first-time clients of a certain restaurant. Here, for example, 20% off the first order made at Cosi restaurant. 

Promotion conditions: 

• Limited to one redemption per person. 
• Only for orders above $15.
• Valid only in participating locations.

3. Fairytale Brownies – 10% off the first order with a unique coupon code

Fairytale Brownies, a family-run brownie and cookie store, sends a really sweet deal for newsletter subscribers – a 10% off their next order with a unique discount code. They give a very short window of opportunity to use their welcome offer (only 3 days!) to motivate the new joiners to purchase from them as soon as possible. Smart move! 

Promotion conditions: 

• Expires in 3 days since issuing. 
• The code has to be applied at the checkout. 
• Cannot be combined with other offers. 

4. Sugarfina – 20% off for confirming email address

Sugarfina, a luxury candy boutique shipping to U.S. & Canada, gives an even sweeter deal than Fairytale Brownies to welcome new subsribers onboard. They offer a whopping 20% off for double opt-in. A great way to make people confirm their subscription, right? 

Promotion conditions: 

• Only for orders above $50. 
• Only for the receiver of the discount. Non-transferable. 
• Valid for 7 days.
• Not valid for Sweet Steals sale items. 
• Redemption requires applying the code at the checkout, unless the customer clicks through the email and places the order, then it will be auto-applied. 
• The offer is not valid in brick-and-mortar stores. 
• Limited to one-time use. 
• Cannot be combined with other offers. 
• Offer is not valid for special orders, gift cards, custom orders, drop-ship orders, gift wrap, taxes CandyDrop purchases, sale items, or non-Sugarfina branded items.

5. Baskin-Robbins – BOGO welcome sale

Baskin-Robbins is an American multinational chain of ice cream and cake specialty shops & restaurants owned by Inspire Brands. Baskin-Robbins offers a BOGO sale as the first deal for their newsletter subscribers. If you buy one cone, you get another one free of charge. The email contains a barcode for the deal that can be used in the physical store. That discount and others can be accessed from the mobile app and shown to the shop assistant at the check-out. The email explains how to use the deal and the promotion limits. 

Promotion conditions: 

• The promotion can be used only if the second item is the same or lower value. 
• Limited to once per customer. 
• Valid only for the ice cream scoops (not waffle cones nor toppings).
• Non-transferrable.
• Only available in the U.S. branch. 
  

That is a good example of anti-fraud promotion limits that protect the promotional budget.

6. Godiva – 15% off the first purchase

Godiva Chocolatier is a Belgian chocolate maker. Godiva offers 15% off the first purchase for first-time customers, in a form of a standalone coupon WELCOME. 

Promotion conditions: 

• Valid only for first-time customers.
• The customers must create an account to use the discount. 
• They have implemented a $599 cap on the applicable orders to protect their promotional budget and better target their campaign (only individual customers). 
• The offer is valid only via certain sales channels (online, not in physical stores, or via resellers). 
• They have excluded various product categories (like subscriptions, gift cards, fresh fruit collections) from the offer. 
• Not valid for resale.

Best practices for welcome promo campaigns 

Having read through 30+ welcome email campaigns, here are the main trends that we saw: 

• They usually contain an amount ($) or percentage (%) discount in the value between 5-20% or $.
• Most often these discounts work with unique coupon codes that can be used only by the coupon holder (a person it was assigned to originally).  
• They often involve free shipping. 
• They have a specific timeframe to be used in, usually from 3 days to 1 month since the publication. 
• Welcome promotions usually cannot be combined with other offers and deals. 
• Such promotions usually require users to share their data and accept marketing communication permissions (subscribe to the newsletter or create an account). 
• Often the welcome email has one follow-up reminder about the discount one day before the discount expires. 
• Welcome promotions usually exclude some product groups, commonly gift cards, wrapping, subscriptions, other brands (than the discounted one), and on-sale products. 
• Sometimes these promotions have a cap on either the total discount applied or the total order value the discount can be applied to. 
• The promotional emails were usually sent outside of working hours, after 6 pm. 
  

We hope these inspirations will help you design your next acquisition campaign. If you would like to launch such a promotional campaign but do not have the right software to do it, Voucherify is an API-first Promotion Engine that can power any of the above-mentioned promotions with all the limitations and distribute them omnichannel. It is also quick and easy to integrate and get started with.

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