Innovation in Action: How Two Brands Are Leveraging AI and Automation

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By Mary Hanula, Senior Director of Marketing, Eulerity

I recently sat down with two franchise brand leaders to hear about the impact automation, innovation and AI have had on their brand. They discussed what their marketing challenges they faced with previous vendors, what new features and solutions have catapulted them ahead, and the impact all of this has had on the franchisee journey. In this article, you’ll hear from Ashley Mitchell, Senior Vice President of Marketing for Streamline Brands, a group of leading swim school franchises, and Brittany Graff, Senior Director of Marketing for Painting with a Twist, the nation’s most popular paint and sip concept. Here’s what they had to say about the remarkable results they’ve seen with us as their marketing automation partner.

Tell us about the challenges your business faced with previous vendor partners.

Brittany: “We came from a more traditional digital agency setting and being in that setting was much more rigid, structured and commision-based. There was not a lot of creative control or channel placement, as it was just Facebook or just Google Search. One of the challenges of that structure is that the franchisees have strong opinions and not being able to control things is a problem, and having that more rigid structure was a problem for us. When we were exploring other options, we came across Eulerity and they really did check every single box in what we were looking for in our next digital provider — multi-channel, ability to adjust the budget at any point in time, creative control.

Every studio offers something different so it’s really important to us that they have the flexibility to create their own ads if they want to in order to reflect their local studio offerings. Being able to set one budget and go to all these channels was a home-run to our system for sure. At the end of the day, our whole marketing department has one goal, which is to make marketing easy for our franchisees. They wear a lot of hats and we want to take that off of them and this is one of the best solutions we put in place to help with that.”

Ashley: “With all the different brands we have, there’s immediate complexity in what we do and we needed a solution that we’d be able to tailor to not only the brand level, but also the local level. Previously, our digital marketing was a bit fragmented and was not managed all centrally. We did have a relationship with a more traditional agency, and they only did paid search for us only at a global level. This meant we managed our marketing fund, paid for it for franchisees, but it was all regionalized, which means we had to get everybody in that region to agree on things. For anyone that works in franchising, you understand that that is a difficult thing, they are never going to agree, and that was just for paid search. We didn’t have a centralized solution for any other channels. We had some preferred partnerships in which people would go out, but they would do them on their own. As you know, if that doesn’t come from the corporate team really closely managing it, who knows what that is going to look like that that agency is then going to work on. They’re supposed to run it by us for approval, but we didn’t know if it was happening or not and had to constantly worry about it. All the things that go into it, such as vanity metrics with a certain number of impressions were being explained to us, but we don’t know how deep the transparency went. We needed something where we could have more control and also give our franchisees more control.

When we went through the process we looked at a bunch of different people. I reached out to a friend who I knew was using Eulerity on the client-side and asked for the down and dirty of if this brand is a good partner, is it working, what do you like, what do you not like? She spoke very highly of it since her brand had great success with Eulerity. With Streamline, we actually manage the brand in-house, so our Digital Marketing Manager is in charge of all things Eulerity and is the main point of contact for the franchisees. We work with the platform and provide the support internally, which is pretty impressive given that we have around 250 locations across 8 different swim brands.”

Since you’ve both been longtime Eulerity clients and seen the platform continue to evolve over the years, which features are you using or excited to use that you want to tell others about?

Brittany: “I’m really loving the ChatGPT integration. It’s super helpful for creative blocks and social and ad copy. One thing that we have been taking advantage of is creative folders. Since we have a bunch of different event types, we need lots of creatives for every event that we offer, such as girls night, date night, private parties, etc. We’re currently organizing all our ads and content into those folders so that franchisees can go directly to the associated folder and activate ads that will go directly to their account that pertain to what they have going on at their location. There are so many things Eulerity is offering. Many things have come to life that I initially expressed as a need or a want to make my job easier and to make it more effective for our franchisees. Every time there is a product rollout, it’s something that has crossed my mind and I’m amazed by how Eulerity continues to stay on top of all the trends, even rolling them out before they are a trend itself! They have always been at the forefront of AI strategies and implementations and continue to amaze me with making marketing automation and machine learning a part of our daily lives and strategy.”

Ashley: “If there is a need from a franchisor, you can tell the Eulerity team and they actually make something happen with it if they are able to. It’s not just something that gets thrown on a piece of paper and they always stay ahead of the curve. For us, we are really excited to be using the ChatGPT integration for content and for social and paid content. We actually use the resource Eulerity put out on how to generate great ChatGPT content, so I’m excited to continue doing that on the platform. This saves time and is really cool. Another great feature is the custom dynamic variables, since all of our locations have such specific markets. We’re in the neighborhood business, so they do have different promo codes and opening days and all their point of sales are separate. To be able to roll that out where we don’t have to make all those specifics for them means we save a lot of time on our end.”

What’s your number one challenge and how is it being solved?

Brittany: “One of the biggest challenges we faced before the partnership was transparency and reporting. One of the biggest selling points for me and my team was the use of Google Analytics and last-click attribution and the absolute transparency that comes with it. I’m able to look into our own GA account, but also they have all the stats up in our brand dashboard as well, which is very convenient for us and the franchisees. That transparency has helped so much with adoption. For our brand, Eulerity is an opt-in program, so it’s not necessary that they participate, but we have a 75% adoption rate because of the flexibility and key selling points that Eulerity solves for us. The results that our studios have seen from this program that continues to drive the adoption and keep our studios on the program all go back to the results that they can physically see in their account and Google Analytics thanks to the Eulerity platform. It takes time off of myself and my team because they are able to connect the dots on how their investment is performing and connect the dots on the local level.”

Ashley: “Our brand can be super competitive, with everyone trying to have the best results and I like that it shows their performance against both the industry average and against brand average and against each other. If they are performing differently than the brand average, they ask themselves what they need to do to get to that level, which drives a higher investment and more impressive outcome. They’re highly competitive and they absolutely love it. They share and brag about the badges they get in the app, which makes it such a fun experience. What’s great is that our franchisees are able to be as competitive and immersed as they want, so if someone just wants to use the platform they can still do that in ways that serve them the best.

Another one of my favorite things about Eulerity has to be the brand control. It’s huge that we have it, and we can give some control to the franchisees. We open things up and give them the ability to create their own ads if they want. They definitely don’t need to since we have all of the different options already in there with the dynamic variables. They can create something and then it goes up to corporate for review, which builds trust with franchisees. It shows that we’re trusting them to run their business, but they also know that we are here and they don’t have to do anything.”

Brittany: “The budget is a huge thing too because with the former agency we were with, whatever budget franchisees started with was what they had to stick to until the next enrollment period, which was a problem. They would see their results and they couldn’t even increase their spend if they wanted to. With Eulerity, they’re able — literally by the second — to adjust their budget either up or down, which is truly life-changing for everyone. For example, we have holiday seasons that are really big and competitive for us where everyone is fighting for keywords, and they can easily bump up the budget in the months leading up to it then drop it back down super easily. They have the control to do that and no longer feel trapped or in this long-term commitment.”

Mary Hanula is the Senior Director of Marketing for Eulerity, the world’s leading marketing automation software. The company brings brands AI-optimized digital marketing, optimized ad spend, seamless ad creation, and automated ad deployment — all available on the first ever online advertising app. Eulerity prides itself on partnering with Fortune 500 companies and top franchise brands to revolutionize digital marketing and give business back to business owners. Learn more about Eulerity here.

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