Australia-based pie franchise Pie Face has seen a huge increase in its social media presence after launching a monthly Pay with a Tweet campaign in its New York stores.

The campaign, which began in August, lets consumers trade social media currency for a mini pie on every first Tuesday of the month through the end of the year. After just two months of the campaign, Pie Face garnered 700 tweets, 300 Facebook posts and 200 Instagram posts.

“I was really trying to create a campaign the first few months of the year where we could integrate some sort of social community driver where we’re executing trials of our product and allowing people to taste Pie Face, but how we could potentially translate that to a community generator,” said Tennille Scicluna, senior marketing manager at Pie Face, New York. “So Pay with a Tweet was born.”

“We’re now two months in, and we’ve had such a great response, particularly with our loyal customers,” she said.

“It was a great way to reward loyal customers and get them to try new flavors. And then taking loyal customers and putting them on a community platform where we can communicate with them.”

Social pies
The second iteration of the Pay with a Tweet campaign took place on Sept. 3 between noon and midnight. This month’s pie flavor was Tandoori Vegetarian.

Consumers simply had to go to a Pie Face New York location and show a tweet, Facebook post or Instagram picture on their mobile devices. The post had to link to Pie Face in some way, then consumers could receive a mini Tandoori Vegetarian pie in return.

Each month, Pie Face will highlight a new pie flavor.

The campaign is set to run to the end of the year, but Ms. Scicluna imagines that if the promotion continues to be as successful as it already is, the company may extend the offer.

Pie Face is publicizing the promotion through social media as well as in-store signage for the few days leading up to the first Tuesday of the month.

Mobile results
After just two iterations of the Pay with a Tweet promotion, Pie Face has grown its social footprint by 100 percent.

The company uses Hootsuite along with other analytical programs to monitor social media, and the company is measuring the social media success based on a number of different data points.

According to Ms. Scicluna, Instagram has been the slowest of the three social media channels, but it has still yielded more than 200 posts for Pie Face.

Beyond the actual posts that consumers trade for pies, Pie Face has also reached 15,000 people on Facebook by promoting the Pay with a Tweet offer.

For both of the two runs, about 2,000 people have redeemed the offer in-store.

For Ms. Scicluna, it was obvious to leverage mobile social for Pie Face.

“I think it’s particularly our industry and our segment, it’s where we’re at,” she said. “You certainly need to be attempting to think above and beyond this kind of opportunity at any point. It’s inevitable.”

Final Take
Rebecca Borison is editorial assistant on Mobile Commerce Daily, New York