Jane Goldman - Creative & Brand Strategy

An evolution of relationship marketing.

Challenge: Dunkin' Donuts sought to revolutionize its CRM program, aiming to boost customer engagement, grow its database, and better align its communications with the brand’s identity. From 2007 to 2012, I led the creative strategy, creative direction, and copywriting to transform the program into a powerful relationship-building tool.

Insight: Dunkin' needed a cohesive, scalable CRM system to connect more meaningfully with customers. A key opportunity was enhancing brand consistency and personalization across multiple markets, all while maintaining the spirit of "America Runs on Dunkin'."

Objective: Grow Dunkin's CRM database, increase engagement, and deliver dynamic, personalized content to a diverse audience across over 100 DMAs, supporting local offers and events while driving national brand consistency.

The Idea – Life Runs Better with Perks: Our first step was crafting the logo and tagline for the DD Perks program. The tagline, “Life runs better with Perks,” seamlessly extended Dunkin’s brand positioning, reinforcing the brand’s energy and connection with everyday moments.

Emails left to right: 2007, 2008, 2010

Execution - Perks Evolution:

In 2008, we introduced a new email template to streamline creative processes, allowing for easy customization across hundreds of DMAs. This improved efficiency, branding, and engagement. We optimized it further in 2010, ensuring compatibility with mobile and evolving email platforms.

🍩 We created Rapid Response Emails, enabling Dunkin' to launch targeted campaigns around weather events or special offers in under 48 hours—an industry-leading turnaround time.

🍩 The DD Perks Rewards loyalty program evolved into a national initiative after successful local testing, with dynamic, personalized email and direct mail campaigns driving awareness, engagement, and sign-ups. Customers were rewarded with coupons and special birthday offers, delivered through creative, non-templated designs for higher inbox impact.

Examples of the marketing emails created for Dunkin'. The DD Perks emails changed to DD UpDDate in 2012 to differentiate it from the rewards/loyalty program.

Rapid=response emails for trigger sends like weather or special limited-time offers.

Dedicated Emails: Whether it was for a new product, holiday, or to create awareness about a social media promotion, dedicated emails were designed without the use of a template. This allowed for more creativity and a higher impact in the customer's inbox.

DD Perks Rewards, Dunkin's loyalty program was initially centered around email and had its series of templated dynamic emails, plus website content, direct mailers, and, eventually, a mobile app.

When customers sign up for DD Perks Rewards, they receive physical coupons for a free medium beverage and another on their birthday. We created the DM piece they received and other direct mail pieces to get pre-registered DD Cards in customers' hands to grow the program.

Innovations: To increase brand differentiation, we explored a Perks Redesign, which extended beyond emails to include refreshed logos, DD card designs, packaging, and in-store signage. I also developed new engagement strategies, like Perks Day and a Refer A Friend app, driving exponential growth through partnerships with JetBlue and American Express.

Impact:

🍩 Over 5 years, our work grew the CRM database by an astounding 900%, helping Dunkin' connect with millions of customers on a more personal level.

🍩 The DD Perks email program transformed into a dynamic, multi-touchpoint communication platform, tailored to franchise needs while consistently promoting the brand’s core messaging.

🍩 The innovations and streamlined systems improved Dunkin's ability to engage with its audience, resulting in a more robust, responsive CRM program that paved the way for future loyalty initiatives.

Dunkin' was looking for a way to differentiate between its various communications. The DD Perks Redesign was an exploration of ways to do so. This included looking at logos, DD Card designs, packaging, in-store signage, and more. During the exploration,

I developed other extensions to create awareness and help grow the database through a Perks Day, Refer A Friend app on Facebook, and using partnerships that the brand already had (such as JetBlue and American Express.)