Domino’s continues to lead the way in innovating the digital ordering experience, with its latest strategy promising to enable customers to order a pizza in seconds using an emoji on Twitter.

The new service launches on Wednesday, May 20. It encompasses several key trends, including how important digital ordering has become for restaurants, the growing interest in leveraging social media – where consumers are spending much of their time on mobile – to enable purchasing and the use of hashtags and emojis to streamline engagements for mobile users.

“Customers who add their Twitter handle to their Domino’s Pizza Profile will be able to re-order their Easy Order by simply tweeting #EasyOrder or the pizza emoji to @Dominos,” said Tim McIntyre, vice president of communications at Domino’s. “Domino’s will then send their Easy Order through an automated direct message, which customers must confirm.

“Customers who do not have a saved Easy Order will be prompted to set it up in their Pizza Profile,” he said.

“Emojis are fun and simple; by having our system recognize the pizza emoji as a signal that you want to place your established Easy Order, the process is streamlined down to seconds. We’re paying attention to the devices our customers are using and want to be there for them when they want to order pizza using their preferred device.”

Social commerce
Domino’s took to Twitter this week to announce the new service with tweets filled with pizza emojis.

The strategy is the latest example of food and beverage marketers offering popular products taking to Twitter to drive excitement and sales.

In 2013, Starbucks was as one of the initial retailers using a tweet-to-buy program that integrates tightly with the coffee chain’s popular mobile loyalty program (see story).

Last summer, Coca-Cola extended its “Share a Coke” campaign and embarked on its first social commerce foray with the introduction of a Twitter program that enabled users to send a soft drink to their friends for $5 (see story).

Visual cues
By leveraging emojis to support the Twitter commerce strategy, Domino’s is joining a growing trend toward the use of visual cues to streamline experiences for users of smartphones, which have small screens, making it frustrating to have to key in a lot information.

For example, Burger King recently ramped up awareness of the return of a popular menu item, Chicken Fries, by rolling out a chicken-inspired emoji keyboard for mobile users (see story).

Approximately 50 percent of Domino’s sales in the United States now come via digital-ordering channels and 40 percent in international markets.

Digital ordering
The chain has been consistent leader in driving innovation on mobile since launching its iPhone mobile ordering app in 2011.

In the spring of 2014, the chain launched an iPad app in an example of how to leverage 3D technology and touch-based features to create a compelling mobile ordering experience (see story).

Last summer, Domino’s launched one of the first fully responsive mobile commerce sites in the restaurant industry (see story).

Other innovations include bringing voice activation to its mobile ordering app and integrating mobile ordering into wearables platforms such as Pebble, Android Wear as well as Samsung Smart TVs.

Domino’s has also extended ordering to Ford cars.

“We’re very excited to add this to our other ordering platforms: Samsung Smart TVs, Pebble and Android smart watches, smart phones and tablets, our voice app “Dom,” desktops and laptops….and your good, old-fashioned telephone,” Mr. McIntyre said.

Final Take
Chantal Tode is senior editor on Mobile Commerce Daily, New York