Gruppo Terroni began in 1992 as a small storefront in Toronto selling made-to-order panini and a few imported Italian goods. High-quality ingredients and authentic Italian recipes made Terroni a standout in the Toronto dining space—and allowed it to grow.
Today, the restaurant group boasts 13 different outposts across Toronto and Los Angeles, with multiple distinct brands under its purview. But the foundation of thoughtful sourcing and devotion to the owners' Italian roots never wavered—a fact to which Marketing Director Francesco Giorgio, who was born in Italy and joined Terroni in 2019, can gladly attest. "When I ate at Terroni for the first time, I was shocked,” he says with a laugh. “I was like, ‘I think my nonna might be in the kitchen.’”
In the last 5 years alone, Gruppo Terroni has launched 4 new brands, opened 5 new restaurants, and debuted a line of its own products. E-commerce has become a robust part of the group's overall operation, too—a plot twist that began when a certain actress-turned-royal featured the brand's Peperoncini Piccanti on her food blog.
As foodies across Canada and beyond clamored for these famous hot peppers, which were only available for in-person purchase, Terroni met the moment with a single Shopify listing and a modest online order operation that would eventually grow into La Bottega di Terroni.
"Our store has come a long way since. It's been quite the journey, and Mailchimp has been a huge factor," explains Francesco, who says email marketing is responsible for two-thirds of the company's online revenue. "It really made it so much easier for us to pinpoint exactly what we needed to do to keep customers engaged, win customers back, reward our VIP customers, or just welcome customers in the first place. All of those things help us keep growing.”
Telling the Terroni story—with the help of automations and segmentation
For 25 years, Gruppo Terroni didn't bother with traditional marketing; word-of-mouth was more than enough to keep the company growing. Email marketing emerged primarily as a means of educating guests about the brand’s Italian traditions.
"We don't cut our pizzas. We don't serve cheese with our seafood pasta. We don't serve balsamic with our bread and olive oil. Because, traditionally, you just don't do those things in Italy,” explains Francesco. “We wanted to be able to educate our customers on why we do things the way we do them.” At first, weekly newsletters told a larger story about Terroni’s ongoing devotion to quality. And eventually, welcome automations helped Terroni inform newcomers about the company’s history and sister brands.
But when restaurants were forced to close their doors during the pandemic, e-commerce and digital marketing became a pivotal income stream. Suddenly, Terroni wasn’t just educating customers on its history; email had become a real-time way to inform loyal customers about how the business was evolving in the face of lockdowns.
"The restaurants were closed, the cafes were closed, and the bakeries were closed. So we had to bring all that online. We had bread, pastries, pizza kits, and even virtual pasta classes," explains Francesco. “Mailchimp played a big role in being able to communicate exactly what we offer, and getting that information to the right people at the right time."
Terroni used Mailchimp to segment their audience by interest: Patrons who mostly engaged with the bakery, for example, would receive every email about ordering bread, but might be left off of the pasta class campaign or wine mailer if they hadn’t shown interest in those things.
"Back in those times we were sending a lot of communications. I mean, we had to make money somehow," he explains. "Mailchimp helped us segment audiences in a way where we didn't have to blast these newsletters to everyone on our mailing list."
Using integrated platforms to increase customer engagement
As Terroni's e-commerce operation evolved, Mailchimp's Shopify integration became a crucial tool for growth. When Terroni’s wine agency, Cavinona, launched a wine subscription in 2021, the brand used customer behavior data from Shopify and Mailchimp to deliver information about the new offering directly to the people in their audience who’d want it most. Then, they continuously adjusted their marketing strategy based on customer engagement.
“What’s wonderful about Mailchimp, and then our integration with Shopify, is that we're starting to understand the practical aspects of our relationships with customers,” says Marketing Coordinator and Team Supervisor, Megan Woodhouse. “We know our wine club subscribers, for instance, are super motivated by education. But with the integration, we can also learn when to deliver this content, then see how much we made from it."
Cavinona's welcome journey boasts a whopping 39% click-through rate, a strong indicator that Terroni's test-and-adjust approach to customer communications is helping them deliver the content customers want to see. Francesco says that about 90% of the customers who joined Cavinona's wine club at launch are still subscribers—a feat he and Megan attribute in large part to the way they've been able to act on customer behavior.
"We want to keep a kind of symbiosis where our customers are valuable to us, but we're also providing something that they genuinely want," says Megan. The wine club, for example, originally offered just 1 box of wine, chosen each month based on seasonality. But when the analytics showed that customers tended to prefer either red or white wine—rarely both—the clear solution was to offer 2 different subscription boxes. "Obviously it becomes more profitable that way,” Megan continues. “But it also means that we're serving our customers better.”
"[Automations] are a great way to make sure a product that interests someone is getting back in front of them again and again. They say someone has to see a product or a message a certain number of times to really invest in it. With Mailchimp, we are able to make sure that what is relevant to that customer is being put in front of them consistently."
Winning back e-commerce customers with triggered campaigns
A huge component of Terroni's audience engagement strategy lies in winning back lapsed customers. These kinds of campaigns are especially important for subscription-based products, like Cavinona's wine club, that commonly see subscribers pausing their monthly delivery for things like travel. These customers often need a gentle nudge to remember to re-start their subscription.
One such win-back campaign, which invited users whose memberships had lapsed to download all of Cavinona’s wine guides at once, delivered a 77% open rate and a 28% click-through rate, driving $8,000 in monthly recurring revenue for the Cavinona Wine Club. "The content was informative and enticing enough to spark curiosity. You want to drink the wine you’re learning about," explains Francesco. "From wine guides and educational pieces on our winemakers, to shipping notifications and countdowns to the next box, we use Mailchimp to stay as connected as possible to this community."
On a broader level, Terroni maintains ongoing automations to remind La Bottega or Cavinona shoppers of their abandoned searches or forgotten carts. "They're a great way to make sure a product that interests someone is getting back in front of them again and again," explains Megan. "They say someone has to see a product or a message a certain number of times to really invest in it. With Mailchimp, we are able to make sure that what is relevant to that customer is being put in front of them consistently.”
Scaling with sincerity
"Mailchimp has helped us in so many different ways,” says Francesco. “We started marketing because we wanted to educate, and one of the best vehicles for that was email, being able to tell a story every week." As the brand has grown, Terroni's personalized strategy allows the group to continue sharing the warmth and hospitality that won over its community in the first place—just on a larger scale.
"We're very careful about the way that we communicate," explains Megan, citing owners Cosimo and Elena Mammoliti as the inspiration behind the brand's approach. "The experience that someone would have had 30 years ago, coming into the restaurant and having a conversation directly with them, is the same kind of experience we're trying to share with a wider audience. We just want 50,000 people to get to hear their voices instead of 5."
Published: September 25, 2024