Marketing campaigns that spur immediate purchase and are viral in nature provide more value than most direct mail campaigns. For one local restaurant chain found that a mobile platform was one way to see such viral results.

Big City Burrito, a chain of 12 Mexican fast food based largely in Colorado, acquired 300 new customers in one month using mobile marketing, and plans to leverage the same marketing platform to retain those new customers.

Brad Harris, managing partner of Burrito Works, which operates the three restaurants, relied on traditional direct mail campaigns in the past to capture new customers. Last year, however, Money Mailer added a mobile feature to the direct mail couponing program Burrito Works used and Harris saw the value in it.

Because Big City Burrito is a small, young brand (the franchise began 14 months ago), Harris says he needed to create buzz and differentiate his stores from already established competitors like Chipotle Grill. Mobile couponing would serve as a way to get people talking and also appeal to the restaurants' young customer base.

So on January 13 his company sent a direct mail campaign to 10,000 16- to 34-year-olds in the Denver region. On the front of the piece, it said, "Want a free burrito?" Interested customers were directed to text a short code listed on the piece to get a coupon for a free burrito, and opt-in in the process. "We were aggressive because we wanted people to opt in," Harris says.

Customers started forwarding the code to friends, and at one local high school, the campaign became popular. Within the first two days Big City Burrito had 105 opt-ins from the school. The first 30 days of the campaign captured 300 opt-in customers, which Harris says the company will now use to market to on a daily basis. Because customer retention is more important than ever now, the opt-in subscribers will receive offers each day of the week.

The campaign ended on February 13, so Harris hasn't yet determined the program's sales conversions. But based on the sole fact that it helped to grow the company's marketing database, Harris says Big City Burrito will drop another big direct mail campaign this week. "It seems as though when the consumer has limited dollars to spend in a limited economy, they're prone to spend where they want to get deals," he says.