Milio’s Sandwiches

Madison, WI

Milio’s Sandwiches is a sandwich shop serving gourmet sandwiches on award-winning bread. Founded in 1989 with one sandwich shop in the heart of the UW-Madison campus, Milio’s has grown to 32 restaurants — both corporate and franchise locations— located across Wisconsin, Iowa, and Minnesota. Initially, The Digital Ring worked with Milio’s to optimize their social media accounts. Now, we run all aspects of Milio’s marketing, helping the brand drive sales through email marketing, digital advertising, content creation, and more. We’ve won six American Advertising Awards for the work we’ve done for Milio’s.

In 2018, we designed and built a new website for the sandwich shop, improving upon the user experience, online ordering feature, and information available on their previous site. The new site has seen a 7% lift in web sessions and a 15% lift in web sales per store. To complement the new site, we also implemented e-commerce tracking that allows Milio’s to measure and analyze all web transactions, which helps guide their business decisions.

Check out the new Milio’s site here.

Development: website design / development / API integrations / user experience / user interface / content creation / software integrations / wordpress / custom software development / responsive design / quality assurance / usability testing / front-end development / back-end development / hosting and server management / landing page development

Strategy: branding / messaging strategy / product naming / research / software consulting / strategy testing / new product optimization research / thought leadership / media relations / crisis communication / community relations / trend analysis / market landscaping / opportunity mapping / market segmentation / customer acquisition / customer retention / process improvement / business technology / competitive strategy / gap analysis

Creative: ideation / design / copywriting / art direction / naming / identity / packaging / brand identity / logo design / graphic design / advertising / collateral design / video / swag / signage

Social: social media strategy / editorial calendar creation / promotions / social media monitoring / community management / reputation management / analytics and reporting / social management / campaign creation / contest development / content creation / graphic design

Advertising: print / content integration / promotions / cross-platform integration / radio / magazine / newspaper / billboards / outdoor advertising / out-of-home / strategic media plan / customized media management / coupon promotions / direct mailers

Digital: search engine optimization / search engine marketing / email marketing / analytics and reporting / digital display advertising / social media / ad creation / video marketing / google analytics / conversion rate optimization / marketing automation / attribution / retargeting

Working with The Digital Ring has been beyond my expectations! I love that I have a whole team at TDR constantly ensuring my marketing is strategic and fresh. It adds so much to my business!

Mike Liautaud, Owner and President

A Multi-Objective Campaign

In 2015, Milio’s Sandwiches, a regional sandwich shop boasting 42+ corporate and franchise locations, tapped The Digital Ring to help design and implement a social media promotion that would not only surprise and delight Milio’s fan base, but would also achieve the following objectives:

Build Milio’s email marketing database by gathering new customer data and supplementing existing customer data
Increase social media engagement
Amplify Milio’s brand awareness
Drive in-store sales following the campaign

#LifeIsBeautiful2015 Giveaway

In response to Milio’s objectives, The Digital Ring helped create a two-part integrated social media campaign.

Part One: Las Vegas Trip Giveaway

Part one of the social campaign gave Milio’s Facebook audience the opportunity to win a trip for two to the Life is Beautiful Festival in downtown Las Vegas. The prize included VIP tickets to the festival, roundtrip airfare, lodging for three nights, and $500 in spending cash. The Digital Ring’s promotion of the giveaway included:

The design of in-store materials (window clings, bag stuffers, and table tents)
The creation of social media ads and written content
The production of a paid digital advertising campaign on Facebook
The execution of an email marketing campaign targeting Milio’s existing database
The purchase of media ad space like Madison’s Isthmus and iHeartRadio

Part Two: Building a Loyal Fan Base

The second part of the giveaway focused on creating positive feelings around the Milio’s brand and garnering brand loyalty. With the help of TDR, Milio’s launched an email marketing campaign gifting all giveaway entrants with a free “Buy One Get One” coupon.

Campaign Results

As a result of the campaign, Milio’s added over 1,400 new email subscribers to their database. On top of that, they gathered valuable demographic information on current and prospective customers. This, in turn, aided their efforts to more accurately segment and message their audience. Additional results were as follows:

15% increase in Facebook fans
30% increase in Twitter followers
92% increase in Instagram followers
31% share rate on Facebook
94% of entries were new email subscribers

Since the success of the 2015 Life is Beautiful campaign, The Digital Ring has taken ownership of Milio’s marketing efforts and continues to create compelling campaigns for the popular sandwich shop.