In the midwestern and southern US, Casey’s is the place to go for gas, groceries, gifts, and much more—including pizza. Casey’s handmade pizza has so many diehard fans that this convenience store chain is also the fifth-largest pizza chain in the nation. And its breakfast pizza—featuring cheese, scrambled eggs, and a host of other toppings—is a staple.

Casey’s Social Media Manager, Jasmine Riedemann, faces a dual challenge in creating an effective social media strategy for a company that’s been around since 1968: keeping loyal customers feeling good about the brand while introducing Casey’s to new audiences.

“We have older and newer generations of customers, or ‘guests,’ who have passion for Casey’s,” she explained. “We’re just trying to win the hearts and minds of Casey’s customers in the best ways possible—and sell more pizza, of course.” Those efforts, according to Riedemann, include providing strong customer care and creating content to engage and entertain audiences.

Casey's Instagram post featuring wrestler David Carr eating a slice of pizza

Building a thriving, online community of guests is a top priority for Casey’s. That’s why Riedemann and her team use Sprout Social—after recently transitioning from Social Studio—to help them execute a data-driven strategy that amplifies the brand’s reputation on social media They’re also working closely with Casey’s Guest Relations Team (GRT) to make sure customers have a positive experience when communicating with the brand online.

To achieve that goal, the two teams are making full use of the partnership between Sprout Social and Salesforce.

The integration has been a game-changer. It’s opened a floodgate of communication right within the tool between our social and Guest Relations Teams.
Jasmine Riedemann
Social Media Manager

From days to hours: Accelerating social media response time through Sprout’s Service Cloud integration

Riedemann, an Iowa native, is a longtime fan of Ankeny, Iowa-based Casey’s, which she says is all about “good times, good food and good people.” And she worries about the potential brand impact when the company can’t respond promptly to guests who reach out on social media—primarily on Facebook—to say good things about Casey’s, ask questions or share concerns.

Until recently, it took up to three days, on average, for Riedemann and her team or the GRT to respond to guests online. A lack of visibility and general miscommunication about whether a response was being handled and by whom were at the root of the delays. Casey’s guests now receive responses to their messages within three to five hours, on average, according to Riedemann. This represents a 90% faster response time for guests.

The reason for this dramatic change? The company recently transitioned from Social Studio and implemented Sprout’s Service Cloud integration, which creates one centralized location for Salesforce customers to gain a full, 360-degree view of customers and support them on any channel. Riedemann’s team and the GRT can now respond directly to customers from within Service Cloud, and they can optimize the customer experience through intelligent, automated case creation and routing.

Riedemann said that learning how to work with the new tool has been a “snap” for everyone involved. Importantly, the integration helped Casey’s improve its social responsiveness essentially out of the gate.

We saw a dramatic improvement in our response times within just two weeks
Jasmine Riedemann
Social Media Manager

She added, “By having these two tools working together, our team can see the full picture of what’s happening with guests, including their case history. The reporting is amazing, too. For example, we noticed that on one Saturday a few weeks ago, our response time had increased to about seven hours. We alerted the GRT, and they investigated the issue to pinpoint the reason for the anomaly to prevent it from happening again.”

I cannot applaud the Sprout Social and Salesforce integration enough for what it’s done for our teams. The communication between our Guest Relations Team and social team has improved tenfold because we can see who addressed a case and what actions were taken.
Jasmine Riedemann
Social Media Manager

Riedemann said her team loves the real-time capabilities of Sprout’s Service Cloud integration, which helps ensure they never miss a beat in helping Casey’s deliver standout customer care. “If my social media specialist and I are both in the tool and looking through the inbox, we can see if the GRT has responded to a message or if we should do it,” she said. “We can even see if someone from the GRT is in the process of typing a response, so we don’t duplicate efforts.”

For the first time in about five years, our Guest Relations Team reported that they didn’t have a backlog of messages to respond to. Sprout’s Service Cloud integration is a big reason for that.
Jasmine Riedemann
Social Media Manager

Pivoting content strategy on the fly to respond to real-time trends surfaced with Sprout

Beyond the integration, Riedemann and her team are using many of the Sprout platform’s features to help Casey’s live up to its brand promise, “Here for Good.” Insights gleaned from Tagging and Listening help them stay nimble and create social media content that resonates with Casey’s diverse audiences. That includes creating localized campaigns for customers in the 16 states where Casey’s operates.

Casey's Instagram video featuring Chef Andrew

Sprout’s social media analytics and reporting tools give Riedemann and her team visibility into the performance of Casey’s campaigns and content on a monthly basis, or more often if needed. They also use the Post Performance Report in Sprout to analyze content performance at a granular level. “During our biweekly check-in with our creative and social teams, we look at the Post Performance Report more in-depth and also examine real-time trends to decide whether we should shift gears with our content plan to take advantage of those trends,” she said.

Tracking social media metrics with Sprout helps Riedemann and her team confirm they’re hitting their goals for increasing impressions and engagement across Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. It also helps them set the bar higher with more confidence. “For example, our organic reach rate on Facebook is about 3%,” said Riedemann. “We know that’s pretty high, but now we want to hit 4%.”

Sprout Social helps Casey’s keep its guests coming back for more

Looking ahead, Riedemann said her team intends to use insights from Sprout to guide future investments that can help Casey’s build deeper connections with its guests — and increase its slice of market share as a convenience store and pizza chain. They also plan to experiment more with LinkedIn, to connect more effectively with B2B customers, and TikTok, where the brand could potentially increase its collaboration with social media influencers.

If you’d like to experience firsthand how Sprout Social can help your brand amplify its presence on social media, sign up for a free 30-day trial. And to find out how Sprout’s Service Cloud integration can help your business deliver world-class social customer care, request a personalized demo.

Since we’ve implemented a strong, data-backed strategy using insights from Sprout, we’ve seen our content performance grow significantly year over year.
Jasmine Riedemann
Social Media Manager