Strategy

For millions of McDonald’s customers, the cost-of-living crisis means being more discerning. Every spending decision counts. Getting good value counts even more.

And, for every one of those customers, multiple brands are chasing their hard-earned cash, bombarding inboxes and lock screens with untargeted offers and deals.

But we’ve got a level of fandom other brands can only dream of. Instead of shouting louder, discounting harder, and focusing on the short term, we saw an opportunity to change the narrative.

We’re talking long-term thinking with a truly personalised approach. It’s about giving our fans more value now, in the moments they need us, while growing their long-term value and emotional affinity.

“MyMcDonald’s Rewards” is key to the McDonald’s value offering. Millions of customers earn points to get free food through the loyalty programme. But our analysis showed that millions of points remained unspent. Our customers could be getting more of what they love, for less. We wanted to help them enjoy the rewards they’d already earned.

Deep predictive modelling suggested that helping our customers unlock their rewards, helping them save money, would increase their affinity and their long-term value. It’s a win-win.

Rather than bombard our fans with generic deals, our strategy was to build an automated, multi-channel lifecycle programme. Content and offers would be dynamically personalised to each customer, meeting them in the moment they needed us, helping them save on their next visit, and giving them every reason to come back. All ensuring the most valuable customers always felt it.

To achieve this, 387 individual elements are dynamically assembled into over 13,000 personalised experiences.

Solution

To create hyper-personalised experiences, we had to throw out the standard approach. No flowchart could contain the complexity of these journeys, not to mention the countless nuances of how a customer might move into, out of, and between different phases.

We built our programme around four key phases – Welcome, Early Life, In Life, and Rescue – with messaging that evolves alongside fans’ relationships with McDonald’s, giving them the information and inspiration they need, at the right time.

Throughout, we pushed the Braze platform to new places, with custom-built interactivity to engage fans.

An innovative incentive email invites the customer to explore three offers, choose one and, with a single click, have it delivered directly to their app. A push notification follows, letting them know their offer is ready.

But offers weren’t the only thing behind our value pillar. We actively focused on unlocking the rewards our customers had earned but not yet used, prompting them to redeem unspent points to get their favourites for less, with enticing food imagery.

And, to build brand love, our engagement-focused comms offered up new interactivity.

A race-the-clock delivery game, playable right there in the email. A randomiser that showcases new products. A carnival game that reveals the customer’s rewards points total and highlights a product they could redeem for free. A fun quiz to help customers find a new McCafé® favourite.

We deployed over 100 incentives throughout the programme, targeted to individuals based on their value, purchases, preferences, and behaviours.

On top of all that, we optimised constantly, using Braze’s journey optimisation tools to test hundreds of variables, from subject lines, to tone, to creative, to offers, and more.

This blend of dynamic content, interactivity, and tailored offers, amplified by real-time data integration and advanced automation, created a programme that delivers unique, engaging experiences at unprecedented scale.