Qdoba Mexican Grill’s mobile loyalty program has seen an average redemption rate of 16 percent and it was able to increase membership.

The Mexican quick-serve franchise is using Tetherball’s mobile-loyalty services to expand its existing plastic-card-based loyalty program to reach a new audience. Tetherball said that the on-the-go audience increased revenue and traffic during non-peak hours.

“What’s most amazing about the success we’ve had together with Qdoba is our ability to measure and predict behavior,” said Jay Highley, president and chief operating officer of Tetherball, Indianapolis.

“We are able to deliver offers at times of day and during days of the week and actually drive traffic into times that are less concentrated during the normal business times,” he said.

Qdoba Mexican Grill, formerly known as Z-Teca, specializes in burritos and is owned by Jack in the Box.

Tetherball’s permission?based text messaging mobile marketing platform lets brands interact with customers through their mobile devices.

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Clients such as Qdoba can access real-time analytics and reporting on program performance and redemption through Mobiquitous, Tetherball’s Web-based analytics platform.

The Qdoba mobile program kicked off in early July at several holiday parties where nearly 20 percent of attendees opted-in (see story).

To join the program, consumers text the keyword BURRITO to short code 474992.

Point of-sale-material with the mobile call-to-action is present in store locations.

Mr. Highley said that Qdoba and Tetherball have been running late night campaigns at Qdoba locations near universities and they have seen a 40 percent redemption rate. He said that it has been a huge win for the program.

Qdoba said that the average redemption rates are 16 percent and the average opt-out rate is 8 percent.

Tetherball has launched mobile loyalty programs with several quick-serve restaurants.

In its second attempt at a mobile loyalty program, HotBox Pizza turned out better results with the help of Tetherball.

Tetherball renovated the initial “BoxStar” mobile marketing campaign with hopes of yielding fresh interactions without losing the original HotBox style. HotBox saw a redemption rate of 24 percent on the first opt-in offer before a 10 percent redemption rate on offers to follow (see story).

Dairy Queen is running a mobile rewards loyalty program using radio-frequency identification — RFID tags — to send coupons and offers to consumers’ handsets.

The quick-serve restaurant giant tapped NFC specialist Vivotech Inc. and Tetherball’s RFID-based mobile marketing platform to deliver targeted offers to mobile consumers. The RFID service is opt-in at the point of sale and Dairy Queen markets the program with in-store signage encouraging consumers to join the DQ mobile rewards program (see story).

Mr. Highley said that both Tetherball and Qdoba are very pleased with the results of the mobile-loyalty program.

“We’re both thrilled with the results this campaign is producing,” Mr. Highley said. “What is also encouraging is that these are consistent results month after month.

“I think the mystery is solved,” he said. “This is repeatable, mobile loyalty programs can produce consistent results month after month across multiple brands.”