1Problem
Contact moments with families with several children
De Pannekoekenbakker is a chain of 15 pancake restaurants. Their strength is simple: families keep coming back because it feels warm, friendly and familiar. Except… families are complicated too. Several children, different ages, birthdays, changes of address, and often only one email address (the parent’s or carer’s).
The wish was clear: to be able to congratulate children personally on their birthday (and preferably send a fun reminder two weeks beforehand), and to make it easy to sign children up for the KidsClub. But there was something else: every KidsClub member had to automatically receive a member card at home, via an external card supplier. You don’t want to keep track of that by hand in lists and spreadsheets, because that is where it goes wrong.
On top of that, De Pannekoekenbakker is a franchise: marketing wants a central overview, but individual restaurants also want to communicate locally with their own guests.
2Solution
Custom add-on with a card supplier integration
For De Pannekoekenbakker we built a custom add-on in MailCamp that lets you link up to five children to a single email address. For each child you record, among other things, the date of birth, address and a unique card number. That made the KidsClub truly “child-focused”, without every child needing their own email address.
We then automated the member card process: every month an Excel export is generated automatically in the format the card supplier needs, so that new member cards can be produced and sent out. The communication is also set up smartly:
- 2 weeks beforeTwo weeks before the birthday an email goes out automatically (a friendly reminder).
- On the birthdayOn the birthday itself, a congratulation follows.
- Age 13As soon as a child turns 13, they move on automatically: KidsClub ends, and an invitation to the “regular” mailing list follows.
Finally, the whole franchise works with one central main list, but with segments per restaurant. That way locations can email their own guests in a targeted way, without duplicate lists and without data chaos.
