This is the complete transcript of Restaurant Technology Guys Ep. 359 — Why Your Loyalty Emails Don’t Convert, with Yosef Peterseil of Blings. The episode page carries the summary, takeaways and players; this page carries the full conversation.
Yosef Peterseil is co-founder and COO of Blings, which has spent six years building a patented video format called the MP5. Instead of pre-rendering personalized videos as files, an MP5 is a single HTML template that assembles a video on the guest’s own device at the instant they click, pulling live data at that moment. One template, unlimited variations, around 60 kilobytes — and the guest data never leaves the brand’s servers.
In this conversation with Jeremy Julian, Yosef walks through what lifecycle and loyalty marketers are sending today, why text-heavy first-party channels underperform in a video-first world, and how a brand with nothing but a first-name field can start A/B testing video against its current birthday email. He covers the AI slop problem and where humans stay in the approval loop, offers that change after they’ve been sent, and the three ways a team can build these videos depending on how much creative capacity it has.
The case studies are the part operators will want: Habit Burger’s video friend-referral program, which Yosef says was the first of its kind anywhere and returned a 42% share rate and a 47% click-through-to-register rate against an industry norm of two to five percent; a McDonald’s loyalty video that shows a member their real point balance and past purchases; a Papa John’s campaign with a live countdown and a rotating offer; and a single Meta template that ran in 33 languages.
Jump to a section
- From a Brick-and-Mortar Exit to a Patented Video Format (0:01)
- Why a Text-First Inbox Fails a Video-First Guest (1:55)
- What Loyalty and Lifecycle Marketers Send Today (4:14)
- The MP5: One Template, Billions of Videos (6:02)
- Start With the Lowest-Hanging Fruit in Your CRM (8:11)
- What Actually Renders on the Guest’s Screen (10:25)
- Interactivity, and What the Guest Does With the Video (13:14)
- Offers That Change After You Hit Send (16:32)
- Email, SMS, and Rendering Video on a Train (19:07)
- The AI Slop Problem and the Human in the Loop (21:24)
- Do You Need a Studio to Make These? (23:58)
- Habit Burger’s Video Referral Program: 42% Share Rate (26:45)
- From Signups to Second and Third Visits (29:41)
- Sitting Alongside Braze, Paytronix and Punchh (32:47)
From a Brick-and-Mortar Exit to a Patented Video Format (0:01)
Jeremy Julian (0:01): Welcome back to the Restaurant Technology Guys Podcast. I thank everyone out there for joining us. As I like to say each and every time, I know you guys have got lots of choices. So thank you for hanging with us today. Today is a unique episode, and I’m excited to dig into it with our guest. But Yosef, why don’t you introduce yourself real quick? What you guys have built — dude, I’m blown away and I’m super excited to share it with our guests. But why don’t you give a little bit of background? Where did you come from and how did you get to where you’re at with Blings?
Yosef Peterseil (0:30): Sure. Well, thanks for having me, first of all, Jeremy. It’s great to be on. A little bit about myself. I studied an undergrad in psychology, then I did my master’s in business, part-time IDC, part-time Wharton. And in that time I actually had my first business, which was a brick and mortar business that I sold back in 2017. I worked for a VC for a while, kind of saw what it’s like to invest in companies. And then I’m like, I think I gotta be on the other side of this again. So me and a childhood friend came up with an idea to build a new video technology that hadn’t been seen before. He’s more on the technical side and he has a very unique perspective in client-side rendering, which is what our video is based on. And I did more the go-to-market and marketing and sales. So we fit together very well, and we’ve been doing this now for six years. Which is a long time.
Why a Text-First Inbox Fails a Video-First Guest (1:55)
Jeremy Julian (1:28): I love it. So talk to me a little bit about Blings, because again, when you and I got on before the show, you were explaining a little bit about what you guys had done. We’d gone back and forth via email. I’m like, hey, help me understand this. But I’d love for you to give a pretty high level on what it is that you guys are doing, because it sounds really, really cool and super unique and not something I’m seeing in our space, in the restaurant space. I’d love to have you talk a little bit about what it is, and then we can dig into how you guys are really moving the needle with some brands that you’re working with.
Yosef Peterseil (1:55): Yeah, sure. I mean, first of all, when you think about the problem, right? We’re in a video world. All our members, all our users, even us — like when I had to fix my washing machine, I didn’t go into the manual anymore. I go to a YouTube reel, a quick video, and I’m like, how do I do it? You want everything to be quick. And everyone knows that. We are in a 100% video-first world. Yet we’re all sending these vague textual communications like email and SMS or even in-app. All the first-party communication today is lacking engagement. It’s lacking realism. So everything is very textual-based, textual-heavy. And no one’s really reading it. No one’s going into your newsletter and saying, my God, I can’t wait for the next newsletter, this was amazing — because it’s all text and some images. And we realized that’s a real pain. Everyone’s in a video world. We’re bombarding them with text. How can we make that converge?
Yosef Peterseil (2:53): And what we realized is if we’re able to uniquely turn every textual touch point into a personalized and interactive video, the assumption was that would be really great for the user, for the member. They would like it, they would interact with it, they would convert at the end of the day, right? And so that’s what we decided to do. And it worked very, very well from the start. So we’ve been growing in lots of different industries over the past six years — in Europe, in Australia, in South America, in the United States and Canada. And we’re just seeing there’s a real need for this and a real pull from the market for personalized and interactive videos to replace any first-party channel that you have.
What Loyalty and Lifecycle Marketers Send Today (4:14)
Jeremy Julian (3:38): Yeah, so talk to me a little bit about what that even means. Because you used a little bit of inside language, and you and I had time to talk. But for our listeners out there, I guess — what are they doing today? Why don’t we define what they’re doing today? Because I know, because you and I have talked about that. But what are they doing today, and how are you guys taking that and making it personalized in a way that is so different? Because it literally was a mind-bender when I read your guys’s intro, and then you and I’ve been talking. So I’d love for you to dig in a little bit deeper as to what are they doing today, and how are you guys replacing that in a different way that really, quite honestly, I’ve not seen in our space?
Yosef Peterseil (4:14): Yeah, so when you think of lifecycle marketers, of loyalty marketers, email marketing, CRM — what they’re doing today is sending out textual-based emails, textual-based SMSs, textual-based in-app, right? Push notifications. Everything is very text-heavy. So they already have different journeys, which from the beginning, from a welcome journey all the way back to a win-back. And then depending on the company, you’ll have an upsell, you’ll have a friend referral, you’ll have a cross-sale, you’ll have a lot of different things. A tier upgrade. There’s so many different journeys that they have. And right now they’re just sending them out over email. And our promise is very easy. We’ll say, let’s just test it. Here, try one of these. A/B test it against your current email. What is converting better? And it’s easy — people just relate more to video than they would to any textual. They just feel more special. They feel heard. They feel seen. You’re personalizing the medium and not just the tokens in the email.
The MP5: One Template, Billions of Videos (6:02)
Jeremy Julian (5:15): Yeah, so talk to me a little bit about how you guys were able to pull that off, because it sounds like it’s next to impossible. We’ve been talking about this in our world, and I’ve had other guests on the show before that are talking about one-to-one marketing and figuring out how to get to a place. And we talked about it pre-show, but it’s impossible for anybody to sit and record. Part of why everybody defaulted to text and/or to emails is I can throw it into my email engine and blast everybody with what it is that I need to put out there. You guys have now made it personalized without having to have somebody sit in a room recording for eight hours a day all of these personalized messages every day. So I’d love to have you talk a little bit about how you guys were able to translate that, because I think it’s a unique way, and I know you guys have patented your solution. I’d love to have you share a bit more about that.
Yosef Peterseil (6:02): Yeah, sure. So what are your options today? If you wanted tomorrow to create one million personalized videos, you would have to generate one million personalized videos, right? And there’s different ways to do that. You can render lots of things and you can say, okay, I’m gonna create one million videos now. It’s gonna cost you a lot of money. The data isn’t gonna be in real time, because it’s gonna be relevant for that moment in time. And the actual file format is extremely heavy. That’s why we don’t see it in websites.
Yosef Peterseil (6:33): So we took those issues and we said, how can we solve for that? And what we’ve developed and patented is a new video format called the MP5, which instead of rendering, instead of creating each video individually, we just create one video template. And that template is HTML. So you put it in your CRM, right? You create a new template and you put it in your CRM. And once the user clicks on it, it generates a video in that moment in time — meaning every user, once they click on the video, pulls in the data and the video is rendered on the end user’s device in real time. So we’re not pre-creating anything. It’s basically one video template that has unlimited personalized variations based on data for that individual person at that moment in time. So if you send out an email today and someone goes in in three weeks, they click on the video, that video is relevant for that second in time.
Yosef Peterseil (7:29): So it’s pulling in the CRM data, it’s generating it on the end user’s device. It doesn’t matter if it’s a mobile device or a desktop. And that way we can actually create billions of videos in a millisecond, with a file format that weighs 60 kilobytes — and that data is never exposed to us. So it’s not like we’re telling you, send over your data, we’ll create all these videos. You keep doing what you’re doing. Don’t change anything. Just put in an HTML snippet and you’re done. And all the data remains between your server and the end user’s device. So it’s never going into Blings at any point.
Start With the Lowest-Hanging Fruit in Your CRM (8:11)
Jeremy Julian (8:11): Yeah, it almost sounds — I mean, it’s definitely unique and it’s really, really cool how you guys are doing that. I guess talk to me a little bit, Yosef. You and I were talking prior to hitting record about how most of your clients are taking this on. They’re not trying to take on their entire campaign, everything that they’ve got, because many times this is a ten-year-old CRM that they’ve got all these different win-backs and birthdays and anniversaries and all these different things. So I’d love for you to talk a little bit about what does it look like more practically? Let’s dig into — I think you used the birthday example, but use whatever example you want with a brand that you guys have seen — what’s happening and what’s changing within their world as they start to deploy Blings.
Yosef Peterseil (8:53): Yeah, so basically we’re gonna layer onto whatever they already have — any existing data, any existing journeys. Essentially, we have companies that use us for just, let’s think of tier upgrade for a second. Not every company knows exactly how many points. They don’t know which products they previously purchased, the members. Not everything’s accessible. So they’re not gonna go to tier upgrade saying, hi, first name, these are the products you previously purchased, this is how much each one of them costs, click here to finalize. So they’re not gonna do that, right? We can get to extreme personalization, but first we’re gonna go to the lowest-hanging fruit. What do you have? Do you have a birthday? That’s awesome. You have a welcome? Great. Let’s A/B test that. So you have first name, you have date of birth — that’s enough. It doesn’t have to be extremely robust, and definitely not at the beginning.
Yosef Peterseil (9:21): But once you see that we’ll outperform both birthday and win-back, and welcome and anniversary and an end-of-year summary — whatever it is that you already have existing — that’s when we see with our clients, they have an aha moment. They have a eureka. They’re like, hey, we have more data that we should be using correctly. And personalization, it’s definitely a buzzword of 2024, but it still is. If you’re not personalizing, you’re doing something wrong. Everyone knows that in the back of their mind. And this a lot of times ignites that transition to becoming more personalized, to hyper-personalization. Because you now have a video technology to adapt to.
What Actually Renders on the Guest’s Screen (10:25)
Jeremy Julian (10:25): So what’s getting delivered? Is it Colonel Sanders at KFC getting on the mic and talking about what the offer is? And obviously I’m saying it somewhat jokingly. Is it Shaquille O’Neal from Big Chicken standing there doing something? Or is it the text with a flyover of the products? Talk to me a little bit about what’s even rendering on the guest side when they engage with this video.
Yosef Peterseil (10:48): That’s a great question. And thank God for AI and for being in 2026, because what we would do three, four years ago is outdated. So what we can do today is a different ballgame. You can create a full-on production today, if you have the rights, with Shaquille O’Neal. So we’re just saying we would have Shaquille give us two minutes of talking, and we can personalize it for everyone after that. So it could be an avatar, someone actually explaining what they do that would be completely personalized for each individual — to two-dimensional animation, just showing burgers flying and your name here. So any kind of video that you want today can be created with an MP5, which wasn’t true a few years ago. So our technology, our product is super advanced today.
Yosef Peterseil (11:44): And you can connect different voices for different people, right? If you want different accents. So we created a video for Meta — one template, 33 different languages based on geolocation. So you only create one template. You have different languages, you have different accents for different places, different data, different narrations. So anything is possible. You could think out of the box. We really tell marketers that we work with: be creative. How can you stand out? What is it that we can do? Let’s do that.
Interactivity, and What the Guest Does With the Video (13:14)
Jeremy Julian (12:18): Well, and the thing that blows me away so much, and I know we talked about it earlier, is just the idea of doing it at scale. Because prior to a solution like what you guys have built, it’s impossible. You can’t send a personalized message. You can potentially get to the data where you’re personalizing and you’ve got multiple journeys, and you’ve got the soccer mom and you’ve got the business guy, and you build these avatars, but those avatars can get delivered, and then you segment your market — but not to the level where now you can create not just a personalized text message, but something that’s being delivered.
Jeremy Julian (12:46): So now they’re receiving this video, whether it’s Shaquille O’Neal coming on saying, check out our new Nashville hot chicken sandwich, to this burger flying in and all of these different paths. You talked about it being personalized, but you also talked about the guests being able to engage with it. I’d love to hear what the guests receive and what is their engagement? Because most of the emails are just pretty static and then you hope to get them in the building. So I’d love to have you talk a little bit about what that looks like from an engagement perspective, especially on the first-party side.
Yosef Peterseil (13:24): Yeah, so everything is very much connected to data. So we know what videos people like to engage with more. Like a welcome series. I’ll give you an example, something working very well with QSRs today as a welcome series. It’s: hi, first name, we have a gift for you. Click to reveal the gift. And everything is very nice in animations, and then you click on that, and then it opens a specific gift based on person, location, whatever — if there is one. Or it could be generic, very simple. All we needed is first name. And interactivity. So the MP5 video is made of HTML. HTML, for whoever doesn’t know, is really what every website is made out of. So every website can be clickable. Every website you can scroll, right?
Yosef Peterseil (13:54): When you look at your Instagram page or Facebook page, everyone gets the same thing, and everything is clickable. But you see an MP4 video in there, it’s always static. It’s never gonna be live. So our video essentially lives with the page. You refresh the page, the video itself also refreshes. So basically any kind of interactivity is welcome. Every video has a KPI. So we want someone to click, we want someone to buy. What’s the best way to get someone to buy? Is it to have another click in the middle saying, hey, click on this to reveal your gift? You click on that, you get a gift. Or maybe it’s just put that call to action in as fast as possible and get them to click on that so that they’ll actually redeem whatever it is you want. So there’s a lot of data behind each one of these different videos, for each one of these different journeys. I’ll tell you one thing in a welcome journey, I’ll tell you something else in a win-back journey or in a tier upgrade journey.
Jeremy Julian (15:12): And are you typically trying to drive them to digital sales or in-store engagements, or a little bit of both, I guess? Because again, I think there’s different strokes for different folks. And I know when I talk to restaurant operators out there, they’re trying to drive people — marketers are constantly trying to get attention. And then once they get attention, they’re trying to get action. In that action, do you guys have the ability to even drive behaviors that way through these videos? Is that kind of what you guys are trying to do?
Yosef Peterseil (15:37): Yeah, so again, that depends on the KPI. A lot of times it is omnichannel. Like, make sure to go into the store and redeem this — that’s one use case that we’ve done many times. Another time it’s just complete a purchase from within the actual video. So you want this, you can actually click on the video, it connects to an API, and you either redeem or you actually purchase through the video. So it depends on how tech-savvy the company is. Do they have APIs? Do they even know what APIs are? A lot of times they don’t. And that’s fine. That’s the majority, I would say, even the companies we work with in QSR. We have the ability to do amazing things based on whatever data and whatever abilities you have, but we are very adaptable. Even for someone that only has first name, and that’s the only thing they’re doing in their CRM, we’ll still be able to help you a lot.
Offers That Change After You Hit Send (16:32)
Jeremy Julian (16:32): Yeah, so talk to me a little bit about how dynamic the offer can be. You talk about rendering the video real time. You talked about earlier, you send out this text, you send out this email, and they don’t engage for three weeks. Well, maybe my offer today was to try the new Nashville hot chicken sandwich that’s only available till the end of the month, and it’s only available for the next ten days. Do you guys have the ability to do an if-then statement that says, hey, if I don’t open it till ten days from now, that Nashville hot chicken sandwich is no longer there and I need to try the new buffalo chicken sandwich that’s coming out? Is that part of what it is? Because in that static email that’s rendering when you send it, it’s out and it’s gone. And when they see it, it may or may not be able to be there. I’m just wondering how dynamic can you guys make those offers based on where the guest is at, how close a store is, any of those kind of things when they render that video.
Yosef Peterseil (17:23): That’s a great, great question. We’re actually just launching a campaign now with Papa John’s, where every two weeks it’s gonna be a different offer. So what we did there is there’s a countdown to a specific time. So you get the offer, you’ll see the clock ticking. It creates a sense of urgency. You go in three days later, it’s the same clock, it’s the same thing that’s actually ticking down. At the end of those two weeks, for them specifically, it’s gonna be: sorry, this offer is done. So the video would change. The same video now changes, saying that’s done, we will be back with the new offer. That’s one option. And click here to continue shopping.
Yosef Peterseil (17:52): Second option, which we can also do, is just switch that offer to a different offer. Or more than that, even A/B test it. So have one with a click — click to reveal the offer — and one without. They can both run in parallel. Whatever’s converting better, our algorithm knows how to optimize and say, okay, for this specific population, make sure to use only the one with the gift reveal. That’s working better. And then at the end of those two weeks, it would start again with a different offer, that same A/B test, but it would be timed based on whatever the business need is.
Email, SMS, and Rendering Video on a Train (19:07)
Jeremy Julian (18:38): Well, that’s pretty cool that you guys are able to even render different videos, not just based on time, but even your A/B testing. A lot of digital marketers, whether it’s text and/or email, are doing exactly what you’re doing. They’ll send out a thousand emails and whichever one gets clicked the most, then they’ll push everything that way. The fact that you guys are able to do that on the backside with video is really, really cool.
Jeremy Julian (19:07): Where are you guys finding the most success? I know a lot of people — you talk about the fact that you guys can get any content out based on what you get from that guest. I know that SMS is a big piece. The return rates oftentimes are greater on that — text message, for those that don’t know what that means. Emails are also something. I guess, where are you guys finding the most success with rendering video? Because SMS is great, but mobile data is not always as great as plugged-in data on a browser and all of those kind of things. I’d love to hear a little bit about the back-end story of where you guys are at, because rendering video on a mobile while I’m on the train in New York is probably a little bit different than sitting at your house right next to a cell tower or whatever else.
Yosef Peterseil (19:47): So for us it doesn’t matter. We have developed technology called HLS. It’s a little bit like YouTube, right? So if you’re on YouTube on a train, what does it do? It decreases the quality of the video, but makes sure that it loads right away. So the loading time will always be zero. The quality might decrease based on the access you have to Wi-Fi.
Yosef Peterseil (20:14): But in terms of the differences, I wouldn’t compare email to SMS at all. It’s two different channels. Like here you’ll see a 30% click-through rate, and here you’ll see a 0.05 click-through rate. You know what I mean? In the same company, people react differently to mobile. People like mobile more. It’s also more expensive. So a lot of times a lot of companies are steering away from that or have it in the roadmap for next year. A lot of companies have it in the roadmap for next year, for several years. It’s something we’re gonna get to. We’re collecting. But it’s a different being. And for us it doesn’t matter. What we would say is: let’s see what you’re doing here. We’re gonna increase it from 30 to 35 percent, to 60 percent, right? Whatever. We’re gonna A/B test it and see what we can do. Same thing with the email, same thing with the push. We see them as different channels and we have a different strategy on each one, based on whatever our client is telling us about their members. We wanna see their members. We wanna understand how they act and how they would react to a video.
The AI Slop Problem and the Human in the Loop (21:24)
Jeremy Julian (21:24): I love it. Talk to me a little bit about, I guess, discernment from the clientele side of things. Everybody’s worried about AI slop and everybody’s worried about putting stuff out there that doesn’t represent the brand well. A lot of marketers always get this: well, you’re sending stuff out and you’re rendering it on my behalf. I’d love for you to talk to those listeners that might be a little bit skeptical that you’re just sending AI video slop out into the world, that’s not only not driving the behavior that you’re looking for, but it might even damage the brand if not done well.
Yosef Peterseil (21:57): Yeah, that’s also a great question. I think it’s a legitimate fear that everyone has, because we’re seeing so much of it. And if a company isn’t fearful of that, they should be.
Jeremy Julian (22:08): Yep. I mean, we don’t need somebody with six fingers on a hand. Everybody remembers the video of Will Smith eating spaghetti that looked like he had three eyeballs or whatever else. And I think that’s a lot of people’s perception, because to your point, that was three or four years ago. But people keep bringing it back around to say, well, this is what it was. So sorry, I’ll let you keep answering the question. I do think everybody should be skeptical, but tell me why you guys have built the guardrails around that to make sure that you protect the brand.
Yosef Peterseil (22:36): Yeah. If someone sees AI slop, they won’t trust the brand anymore. That’s done. It’s something that we’re very well aware of. I mean, it’s very different, but I love nature videos. Like I see all these reels, and I saw this snake against an iguana, and the iguana had two heads at a certain point, and then it turned into one head. I’m like, my God, I’m unfollowing this channel. I do not trust them anymore. They had my belief, I don’t anymore. That can happen to any brand. QSR or nature channel, doesn’t matter.
Yosef Peterseil (23:04): For us, there’s always a human component. Nothing is ever 100% AI, and everything is approved by the client. So we have lots of different abilities to get a video to 70, 80% done very quickly. And we can turn around any video within 72 hours. So it’ll take the context, it will take the text. It’s not going to be 100%. But we have people on our team that will take it from the 70, 80% to 100%, getting the client’s approval. A lot of times we’ll have four, five, six, seven different variables, and we’ll say, look, this scene will be created eight times with something different in each one, just to prove that. We send it out, and then we see what’s converting best. And that our algorithm will do by itself, after all the scenes were approved.
Do You Need a Studio to Make These? (23:58)
Jeremy Julian (23:58): So for those that are out there that have never had to record — they’ve been a text warrior, they’ve been a Canva user, or use some form of other marketing where they’re used to rendering emails and getting the top-of-the-fold stuff. How hard is it to get that same message into a recording? Because you guys are having to have them record the templates, and I can hear these marketers that have been doing it for 20 or 30 years going, there’s no way I can set up a studio to do all of these kind of things.
Jeremy Julian (24:27): And for those watching on video, they see your smile. Tell us how hard it is or how easy it is to create the videos that you guys are talking about. You mentioned scenes just a little bit ago. I’m assuming with all of the technology we have — even today recording this podcast, it’s like, five years ago when I started these things it was a hell of a lot harder to do these podcasts on video than it is today. So I’d love for you to dispel those myths that say I gotta go to some Hollywood-level studio to record my thirty-second clip for people.
Yosef Peterseil (25:01): Yeah. So we have a few different ways to create the video. One is a professional video editor. So anyone using something called Adobe After Effects, creating videos, can use our technology. We have a special extension for that. So if you have someone in-house generating videos, do whatever you want. You want an avatar, you want two-dimensional, whatever it is you want, do the same thing. Use our extension. You got that for yourself. Or we can do that for you if you want, like a full-on branded production.
Yosef Peterseil (25:31): The second option is using templates, existing templates in our platform. You just need a click, another click to connect. Very easy. You can change things you want in the template within our platform — change your logo, change your colors, change the wording. Everything is really at the tip of your fingers. Very easy. So you’re using an existing template that already proved value for similar brands. The third option is just taking that email and pasting it into our AI. So it’s like a text AI, it’ll give you that output, which will take you again to 70, 80% of the way. You can change it yourself, or we can have our creators look at it and say, this is what we would do, and change it very, very easily.
Yosef Peterseil (26:01): So you have those three ways, from extremely customizable with Adobe After Effects, to do-it-yourself and customize it however you want, to anywhere in the middle. As well as, by the way, Figma. So we have an extension for Figma. If you have designers in-house working on something, we can pull it from Figma and turn it into an MP5 video today. So you get all the design, you do what you want. If it’s with an avatar it’s gonna work a little differently, but assuming it’s not, directly from Figma and we animate it.
Habit Burger’s Video Referral Program: 42% Share Rate (26:45)
Jeremy Julian (26:45): That’s amazing. Let’s talk about some success. I know we talked a little bit earlier about the Habit Burger. For those that are not familiar with Habit, it’s a West Coast-based burger brand that recently got bought by Yum. I know you guys are doing some really, really cool stuff. And when I saw the numbers, quite honestly I’m like, all right, really, are we delivering those kind of numbers? So I’d love for you to talk about the success, because you guys have been doing some work with Habit and really driving some additional engagement that they weren’t. And they’re owned by one of the biggest restaurant brands in the country, Yum Brands now. So they’ve got people in house that know how to do this stuff for Taco Bell and KFC and whatnot. But obviously you guys are driving some success. So I’d love for you to talk a little bit about Habit Burger and what you guys have been able to do for them.
Yosef Peterseil (27:30): Yeah, so what we did for them is actually very unique. We all know friend referrals. It’s something that works some of the time, it doesn’t work the other times. We understood, first of all, it’s very important for a referral program to have a two-sided incentive — the one that’s sending, the referrer, and the referee. They should both be getting something. So that was a starting point. Now, it was actually their idea. They’re like, hey, let’s turn this into a friend referral video. We’ve never done that before. Like, this sounds great. The current referral rate is anywhere between two to five percent. We went out with that. And think about it: this is the first-ever video referral program in the world. They were the first ones to do that.
Yosef Peterseil (28:00): What does that mean? It says, hey Jeremy, you just won a free burger. Click here to redeem. You click — that’s an API. You got your burger right away. And it says, do you want to share the love? Yes. You click yes. Who do you want to share with? And then you can type in the video, because it’s HTML. Yosef. In the video, you’re doing this. And then you click share, it opens all the sharing capabilities you have on your device. You could send it through social, you could send it through text, wherever it is you want. And then I get a video saying, hi Yosef, Jeremy just sent you a free burger. So you just generated a video for me. It’s not spam. You get to more people. And the reactions were incredible. So we had a 40, 42% share rate. And a 47% click rate that wanted to register.
Yosef Peterseil (29:00): So it’s different — like, the way we started, people are craving video. People are almost expecting video. And we need to give it to them. And so the referral was something, when we’re talking about creativity, we didn’t even think about that. That’s why we like to understand our client, we like to understand their pains, their focus, what they need to do. And then we could come out with a game plan: this is what we should do together for the next year. We need these five campaigns. Let’s change the bottom line. Let’s move the needle in the way that you want it to be moved. And we have different use cases for each one of those directions.
From Signups to Second and Third Visits (29:41)
Jeremy Julian (29:41): Yeah. And so on that, I’ve got a good friend that works in the loyalty space, and she’s been on the show — Olga. She actually used to work for Yum years ago. And we talk about it. She actually just posted an article about it recently, about getting people to sign up is great, but really loyalty and driving behavior is really what you’re looking to do. She said two articles this week where people are like, signups are up but sales are down. That doesn’t do anything for us.
Jeremy Julian (30:10): So I’d love for you to talk a little bit about some of the other brands that you guys have driven, not just the signups. That’s really cool that we gave away some free burgers and we’ve got 42% share rate and 47% redemption rate. But second visits and third visits and fourth visits are really what we need in order to drive top-line sales for Habit Burger. And I know you guys have done that across McDonald’s and some of the other brands that you’ve worked with. So I’d love for you to share a little bit more — not just about getting people into the program, but how do I get people to spend more, engage with the brand more and do all of those kind of things? If you can share a story or two, that would be great.
Yosef Peterseil (30:46): Yeah, so first of all, you need to think of a KPI. What is the goal of each video? Just like you would for an email. What is that goal for the email? What is the goal for the video? For a friend referral, we’re trying to get people to register at the end of the day. So it’s an acquisition play. It’s not even a retention play. It’s how do we acquire through existing users? So that’s what we were measuring. And that is the first step.
Yosef Peterseil (31:14): Once you do that, how do you get people to continue buying? And that’s a different video. And we’ve done something, like you said, with McDonald’s that was really amazing — a very loyalty play. So someone that made at least one purchase got a video saying, hey Jeremy, this is the amount of points you have, and these are the products that you previously purchased. And you show them how much each one costs, how many coins you need to redeem. And once you click on that, it actually opens up and says, okay, here you go. You can actually buy this now for this amount, or you get this one for free. Come redeem. And once you get someone in, they buy something else. So that’s another different strategy to get from first to second purchase, or second to third purchase.
Yosef Peterseil (32:12): But just showing a member that you know them. We know what you like. We’re not just showing you random things. This is what you like. You’re a McFlurry guy, and this is what you need. Here, come back and get that. So once you show members that you care about them and you’re not just spamming them — there’s so much spam. It’s a race to the bottom. And it’s not so much in QSR. I think QSR, fast casual, actually the food and bev is better than a lot of other industries, like what we see in retail. They are sending out two emails a day. I’m like, why would anyone like your brand? It is 100% spam. So you gotta also be aware that you want to send them something that counts. And any touch point, it should count. Otherwise you’re just spamming.
Sitting Alongside Braze, Paytronix and Punchh (32:47)
Jeremy Julian (32:47): Yep. No, I love your idea of KPIs and making sure that people are doing it for a reason. One last thing I want to talk about before we let people know how to engage. The fear that the marketers sitting here listening have is: I’ve already got my program set up with my email. I’ve already got my Thanx, Punchh, Paytronix, whoever the player is that’s out there — there’s lots of different players out in the market that are doing these things. You guys sit alongside of them. You’re not replacing them. So I’d love for you to dig in a little bit to that, just to set people’s mind at ease that you’re not ripping and replacing everything they have. You’re augmenting what they have and giving them capabilities they don’t have today.
Yosef Peterseil (33:28): Exactly. It’s email on steroids. You have email — we’re not going to replace that. You have a system set up — we’re not replacing that. We’re a very copy-paste, snippet, easy-to-use something that will make whatever it is you’re doing actually convert. We’re going to increase the engagement on whatever journey you have. So right now we’re working on partnering directly with Paytronix and with Punchh. We’re already an official Braze partner, and we complement each other. It’s definitely not — so we’re working on just making it official so that, like you said, people won’t fear so much. It is a new technology. No one wants anything else on their tech stack. So we’re trying to see how we can become native, to help out the actual marketers that fear change. But I can say there’s nothing to fear. It is very easy and it is just gonna help the bottom line. That’s what we’re here for.
Jeremy Julian (34:24): Make them look like superstars in the process, because they’re gonna get two, three, four X what they’re getting today. So how do people learn more? How do people engage? Where should they go to dig in? I know you guys have got some different paths to drive people down towards.
Yosef Peterseil (34:40): Yeah, so I don’t know when this is going to be aired. We’re going to be at Fast Casual. First of all, we’re definitely gonna be there. You can find me on LinkedIn — Yosef Peterseil. You can sign up on the website, blings.io. And I usually reply pretty quickly. If you want to hit me up on LinkedIn, that would probably be the best place. Or the website. Or if you’re coming to Fast Casual, we’re gonna be there.
Jeremy Julian (35:06): I love it. Yeah, probably come out right around then. I’m thinking about it. That’s here in Dallas, I think, sometime in October, I believe, is Fast Casual. So awesome. Well, I’m excited to continue to see what it is that you guys are doing. I think it’s a really unique offering and I’m excited not just to learn, but I think it’s a real good medium. I’ve got kids. I know that they watch these dumb YouTube shorts and Instagram reels and TikToks. It’s like that’s all they live on. Everything is twenty, thirty second videos. They don’t want to read anything anymore. Even my ten-year-old daughter’s like, can we get it on Audible, Dad? I don’t really want to sit and read that book. Can you buy it on Audible for me so I can just sit and listen to it?
Jeremy Julian (36:00): So I think in general, you guys are hitting a real sweet spot to be able to engage, especially with this next generation of users, in a way that is gonna resonate with them and really drive the behavior that people are looking to do. So thank you guys for creating, and thank you for sharing a little bit about your guys’ journey. Is there anything we missed on the show that you want people to hear about before we sign off?
Yosef Peterseil (36:11): I think we really covered everything important. I didn’t emphasize, but we’re never exposed to any data. And that makes us very, very unique. So I will emphasize that. Another fear that a lot of marketers have is, are they gonna go into my data? No. So we’re never exposed. It’s SOC 2. It’s everything we need, even though we don’t need it — we have it to make sure that everyone is secure. And we’re very excited. Next few months we have some big — if you follow us on LinkedIn, you’ll see some very good QSR launches that I can’t yet talk about, but it’s gonna be a very good couple of months now.
Jeremy Julian (36:52): Awesome. Well, thank you for coming on. Thank you to you and your co-founder for creating what it is that you guys have done. To our listeners, like I said at the onset, thank you guys for listening. Thank you guys for continuing to show up every week. If you haven’t already subscribed, please do so, and make it a great day.
Yosef Peterseil (37:08): Thank you, Jeremy.
Listen to this episode, see the takeaways and find the players on the episode page: Why Your Loyalty Emails Don’t Convert — Yosef Peterseil, Blings | RTG Ep. 359.
