Objective: One of the earliest brand adopters of Snapchat, and GrubHub joined the platform in August 2013 with the objective of reaching Snapchat's core audience – a younger demographic that has been steadily moving away from traditional social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter.
Strategy: To effectively reach this audience, GrubHub focused on bringing its irreverent brand voice to life and capitalizing the platform's unique one-to-one image-based interactions. Along with weekly content, stories featuring user generated content, contests, giveaways, promotional codes and recruiting efforts, GrubHub became one of the only brands on Snapchat to interact with nearly all incoming snaps, seven days a week, through multimedia content and personalized interactions.
Outcome: As a result, GrubHub has consistently grown and scaled its user base organically, making Snapchat one of the brand's most engaging and fastest-growing social media platforms. GrubHub's active community has earned it the highest Snapchat score of any brand: a score of 53,668 as of December 31, 2014. GrubHub exemplifies what it means to be a brand on Snapchat by producing engaging content that feels native to the platform's intended use. And the results of these conversations are clear in our constantly growing number of followers and interactions.
As an early Snapchat adopter, GrubHub has helped pave the way and define what it means to be a successful brand on Snapchat. With the primary objective of reaching a younger demographic of hungry diners who may have shifted from traditional social media, GrubHub focused on growing its user-base and engagement through contests, frequent content and one-to-one interactions seven days a week.
Contests
In 2014, GrubHub hosted a week-long scavenger hunt contest dubbed "SnapHunt," a first for any brand on the platform. Each day for one week, GrubHub posted a new challenge for followers to complete for a shot at $50 in free takeout. More than 30 percent of GrubHub's Snapchat followers participated and the brand saw an increase of 20 percent in followers during the contest. In addition to larger contests, GrubHub also used the platform to provide additional value to followers every month through exclusive discount offers and giveaways.
Recruitment and IPO
GrubHub tapped into its community and successfully recruited an intern by instructing interested snappers to submit their best "Snapterpiece" and apply to the job through a dedicated link within a Snapchat story. The recruited intern spent the summer helping GrubHub create content by leveraging his doodle skills. To date, no other brand has attempted job recruitment on the platform.
Live IPO Coverage
On April 4, 2014, GrubHub hit Wall Street to ring in the opening bell for its IPO and snapped the entire day live from the floor. The story was complete with shots of our CEO ringing in the historic day with food suits photo bombing financial news reporters. GrubHub still remains the first and only brand to live snap an IPO.
Content and Engagement
From the start, GrubHub has been one of the only brands to engage with followers one-to-one, seven days a week, capitalizing on the platform's intended use. In 2014 alone, GrubHub sent and received a combined 40,000 personalized snaps, opening every snap and responding to a majority of those received. GrubHub supplemented one-to-one conversations with weekly content published through "my story." Stories that ranged from the absurd (asking users to snap us their cheesiest food pun) to newsworthy (live snapping our IPO). Though stories are multiple snaps rolled out over time, GrubHub has been able to maintain an average view rate of 87 percent from first snap to last snap.
Ok, so why should GrubHub win?
GrubHub successfully spreads brand awareness to a key demographic that has steadily moved away from more established social platforms and can be difficult to reach through traditional media. By bringing the GrubHub brand voice to life on a platform that has little brand saturation, pushing the boundaries of what the platform can offer and engaging with followers in the same ways they interact with each other, GrubHub leaves a unique brand impression on any follower who snaps them.
