Eat24: Life Without Facebook

Hey guys,

As you might have heard, we recently closed our Facebook page.

itsgone
RIP Facebook page.

No big deal. Just your average love story: Brand meets social media platform, falls head over heels… then one day the spark is gone so the brand writes a dramatic breakup blog and emails it to a million of their closest friends. Typical breakup stuff, you know?

Actually it was kind of a mess. Everybody freaked out. We tried to keep it (mostly) civil, but… well… You know it’s bad when your breakup makes CNN:

Screenshot 2014-04-10 16.24.15
Oops

Basically, the Internet exploded. People laughed, people cried, people yelled at us in all caps. A lot of people supported our decision to leave Facebook, but some people just got really pissed off. It seems we struck a chord with our fellow marketers out there (specifically the Uncontrollable Fiery Rage Chord). A brand without a Facebook page? How could you?! What does it even mean?! What’s going to happen?! Do you even marketing?!

Well, it’s been one month since we officially deleted our Facebook, and we have some news to share. Drumroll please. No, seriously, make a drum roll sound inside your head right now. Done? Ok. Are you sitting down? You better sit down. Alright. And the news is… Nothing happened. We repeat: nothing happened.

We closed our Facebook page, and absolutely nothing happened. The sky didn’t cave in. Hell didn’t freeze over. Tuesdays are still exclusively for Tacos. Everything is pretty much exactly the same as it was when we had a page. The only difference is now we don’t have to think about things like optimal headline length, preview image resolution, and the proper ratio of cats to cheeseburgers to maximize virality. Other than all our new found free time, not much has changed. We’re doing just fine. Thanks for asking!

movealong
Movin’ on up, movin’ on up

In fact, not only did horrible things NOT happen to us, but we actually had some pretty cool stuff come out of the whole ordeal. We figured we’d get some “Stay strong!” and “You’re better off single!” comments and maybe one or two “Aww, bae! I’ll bring over some Chinese takeout if you want to talk.” offers. And we did. But holy moly, we didn’t expect the Internet to slather us in a tasty sea of comments, tweets, and emails.

As with any breakup, there was a lot of drama. Some people took the news harder than others. We’re talking sad like they missed the breakfast menu by a minute…AKA super sad:

squirrelno

Other people played it cool and took the news in stride cuz they’re gangsta like that:

havarti
Pssst… it’s almost done.
flipside
BRB KIT LYLAS
ordertacos
Order tacos.

Most of our friends were really supportive of our decision to move on and thought we were better off eating chocolate everything and focusing our efforts on butt-groove art*. Thanks. You guys are too sweet.

seat
*Art.
sicbuttprintscover
Unrelated/Totally Related: We found this while googling “butt prints”

But everything wasn’t all wine and roses and nacho cheese fondue fountains. While most people were happy for us, some people (namely our fellow marketing professionals) felt like we needed a little tough love and self-reflection… which is a nice way of saying our breakup letter made them really f***ing angry, and they took to the comment section to let us know just how angry they were about it. We read each and every one of them (because we care) and you can too if you want, but we decided to save you some time and summarize all criticisms here:

A lot of you called us cheap for not wanting to spend money to promote our page or invest in Facebook advertising. The fact is that we’re totally willing to spend money (on stuff that works). In fact, we poured $1 million into Facebook last year. No joke (Just ask Dave from Accounting, he cries about it every day).

Funny story: App installs from the week following our breakup letter totaled 1.75x more than we got from all our 2013 paid Facebook ad campaigns combined. So… if we add the breakup installs to the paid ad installs, the ROI for that $1 million Facebook budget actually looks pretty good!

Many of you were amazed by just how terrible we are at our job. If Facebook wasn’t working for us, it must be our fault. Clearly we’re doing everything all wrong. Our timing is bad, our targeting is bad, and most importantly… our content is bad and we should feel bad.

i_have_no_idea_what_i_m_doing
Eat24 Marketing Dept IRL

Could it be that nobody Liked our posts because they sucked? Maybe. You, our marketing buddies, had a few choice words for our content, including “ignorant” and “unprofessional”. Ouch! Well, if you hated our status updates and breakup letter, you’d REALLY hate our weekly coupon emails.

Speaking of emails… something strange happened with those too. Ever since we closed our Facebook page, our weekly email open rate went up. Like, way up. Back when we had a page, our average open rate was holding steady at around 20%. We’ve sent 4 weekly emails since the breakup and have seen a week over week increase, with the most recent one coming in at over 40% (!!!).

Not only are more people reading our emails, we’re getting more replies too. That’s right. People are actually opening, reading, and replying to a marketing email.

email1
Happy Friday indeed.
email2
All part of our evil genius plan…
email3
We <3 you more.

Occasionally we even get ones like these:

Screenshot 2014-04-30 17.53.08_2
We got your back, Amy!
Screenshot 2014-04-30 18.02.13_2
RE-subscribe.
coupon3
RE-re-resubscribe.

When is the last time you accidentally(??) unsubscribed to some company’s mass email, realized your mistake (???), then actually took the time to contact them and ask to be subscribed again(????)? For us it’s exactly never. Zero times. We barely even want to read our own stuff when we’re done writing it, and yet we get these requests all the time.

Since we deleted our Facebook, we’ve seen a huge increase in open rate, more replies, and more sign ups. If that’s content done wrong, we don’t wanna be right! Nah, we’re not here to toot our own horn. Honestly one of the main reasons we’re happy our Facebook is gone is that there’s no record of all the dumb stuff we posted there. So anyway, it could be that people are opening our emails just to laugh at how bad they are, OR… maybe when one communication channel went down, our customers found another one to take its place.

Communication with our customers was one of our major concerns prior to the breakup. Would they get confused about how to contact us if they needed a coupon, or had a question about their order, or simply wanted to know our top 4 favorite cheeses. Turns out the transition was totally a non-issue… turns out we have this incredibly convenient 24/7 Live Chat feature that lets people talk to us whenevs. In terms of social interactions, those simply shifted to Twitter, Instagram, and G+.

TL; DR: breaking up with Facebook was the best marketing move we made all year. Although we do feel bad for hurting Facebook’s feelings, causing such a stir, and dragging them through all the he said she said drama. Look, someone even made shirts about it:

teameat24
Congrats, Facebook! We got breakup of the year!

The future looks bright. Now that we’re one of those brands that doesn’t advertise on Facebook, we have more money to invest in the things that really count. We’re talking more weekday coupons, expanded restaurant options, more staff, and more Eat24 swag (shirts, bags, glasses, etc) to give out to our peeps.

swaggg
Swaaaaaaag

Added bonus? Customers can feel totally comfortable emailing us. No one has to worry about us selling their data to companies compiling lists of “target demographics”. Unlike some people we used to date.

So that’s it. Nothing much to see over here. We closed our Facebook, and nothing happened. Now allow us to get really real for a sec: We’ll never forget Facebook. We had some good times together.  All the Friending, Liking, Messaging and especially the Poking. Facebook pioneered the way toward making it OK to post photos of your food online, and we will always Like that. Facebook will always have a place in our heart, and we’re hopeful that we’ll always have a place in their stomach. Plus, who knows? Maybe one day Facebook will buy us for billions of dollars, so we definitely don’t want to burn any bridges.

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109 thoughts on “Eat24: Life Without Facebook”

  1. Love you Eat 24!!! You are all awesome and I appreciate your support for the events Ive had with the discount codes youve sent me, the awesome tweets, the amazing customer service.

  2. So Awesome!! I just read this and cant stop LOLing literally. Thank you. Im sick now um better. You are the tissue for my nose. (!!! Does that work?)

  3. Great!! It.must be theside of awesome fries I just ordered that made me smart… I added cheese for.. 75¢. Big spender I am.

  4. I commented on a post about this on Fast.co (http://bit.ly/RmC6Pf) but thought I’d put it on here too!

    Sounds like a little marketing peer pressure went on with the remarks of being ‘cheap’ for not following the marketing herd and using Facebook as a channel. And I can see how the open rate of email marketing would increase from dumping Facebook – fact is if you see a brand on your news feed all the time, then open your emails and see them again you’re probably going to be like ‘oh them guys again’ and feel bombarded with their content and marketing messages. Now that people who previously ‘liked’ their page no longer see their content on the daily they want to read about their latest x, y, z etc.

    Congrats on making it work without Facebook!

  5. Thank you for showing the world that all online marketing does not revolve around Facebook!! I wish most businesses would take your cue and do something else… and I own a social media marketing company!!

  6. I just read this, and the break-up article, and they are some of the funniest, and most insightful, things ever. I think it’s weird that actual marketing people don’t understand that not every brand belongs on Facebook. It’s like recommending an Auto Repair shop get a Pinterest account. You found what works for you, that’s what you’re supposed to do in business. BTW, I just downloaded the app. Your marketing wins, again!

  7. ok to be honest I’m down in South East Asia and if it wasn’t for your breakup I wouldnt have known Eat24. Any plans in expanding your services here? We got about 200 million people with 285 million mobile subscriptions and 45.5 million on 3G/4G subscriptions.
    Let me know if you want to invest here 😉

  8. That was our evil genius plan all along MUHAHA! Just kidding. Nothing evil about it, we just really want to feed you 🙂

  9. We’re wondering the exact same thing! Should we contact the Prime Minister?

  10. If any of those businesses want to do something else with us (have a dance party, eat donuts, etc) we’re always down. But for real, thanks for the love <3

  11. Yeah, you’re totally right. No one wants to be smothered with love (even if it is food love). Makes us a little more mysterious. Like a secret sauce…or something. Anyway, thanks for having our back and we hope to feed you soon, boo.

  12. Aww, what a sweet portrait of us. That’s definitely going on the wall. Check out our career portal (http://eat24.theresumator.com/) and if something strikes your fancy give us a holler. We’re growing everyday so check back often 🙂

  13. We’re still working on our American takeover, but we’d definitely love to put feeding South East Asia on our wishlist for the future.

  14. You guys are crazy. I like crazy. We’re going to get along just fine! Now to get my hands on some of that shwag…

  15. I’m only a little, tiny FB page who made the decision to flag FB for the exact same reasons before I found out that you’d done it…it sucks that pages that are there just because it’s a passion or it’s for fun are penalized. Anyway, you breaking up has validated my decision – thanks!

  16. Fantastic! I could never understand why so many so called professional marketers would advise a business to build their audience on someone else’s platform. It’s counterintuitive to growing your business; you’re growing theirs. You absolutely made the right decision. The fact that you spent a million bucks and Facebook didn’t try to woo you (and just added fuel to the fire with snarky comments) is a great example of customer service gone wrong. How much money do you have to spend with them in order to get some respect? 😉

    It’s so nice to see a company move back to their own real estate and not be cowed by others, and ultimately its the best decision you’ll ever make. Open rates and growing subscribers are much bet measurements of your success than likes.

    Wishing you all the best for the future, I know it will be one with a lot of bum prints in (please tell me they’re real and not Photoshop ;), I want to imagine all the fun in making that image).

  17. I agree with Mandy! great move guys, I just rebloged this on one of my network’s blogs!

  18. Look, I’m not saying you guys made the wrong call here. You’re clearly happier and you look great and it sounds like you’re meeting a ton of people already. I’m just saying as a marketer I like to keep my options open. You could have taken some time apart to think about it and see where things were going instead of pulling the plug completely and moving all your stuff out of the dresser when you left. You were already in an open relationship seeing other platforms. You could’ve let Facebook know that if it’s going to act that like, you’re going to treat it like any other social platform instead of your main squeeze. (I wrote a post related to this on my company’s blog because we think about this stuff too: http://www.extole.com/blog/facebook-reach-paid-earned-or-wasted/.) You’re personable, witty, funny…if you’d kept hanging out with Facebook you could have used it for some of what you initially appreciated it for and met other cool people through it without having the same relationship. Maybe that’s just jaded of me.

  19. hey y’all – who’s your WordPress person?

    you’re running an old version of WordPress (http://blog.eat24hours.com/readme.html) AND you’re not using a CDN? c’mon y’all! hit me up if you need some help. happy to provide some advice in exchange for some awesome coupons. or cash 🙂

  20. LOL so honestly I had NEVER heard of you guys and this is the very first time I am reading anything from you guys LOL cracking up trying not to wake the baby in the other room. I am going to guess you have something to do with coupons lol but whatever the case the hilarity is totally worth any and all junk mail you may send my email address… where do I sign up? LOL

  21. O hai! We do have a little something to do with coupons, but mostly food. We help you make food happen from over 25,000 local restaurants straight to your couch (provided that you have a couch in 1,000 cities nationwide). To sign up, head over to eat24.com and scroll down ’til you see the bit about coupons and love notes 😉

  22. We’re working on taking over the US first, but plans for World domination are possible. We’re already in 25,000 cities, so what’s next? Space.

  23. We’ve made peace with our decision and have never looked back. It’s never easy to end a relationship, but we’re glad that we’ve had so much support from our friends. Also double bacon cheeseburgers have helped.

  24. We’re lucky to have so much support from friends like you. Friends that would share the last curly fry with us. Friends that would never double dip. Friends that understand how to pronounce “Pho”. Thanks for the love!

  25. No, thank you. We wish you the best. May you prosper like a burrito filled with beef and bacon.

  26. We’re talking disco fries without the disco crazy. I will get my megaphone out of the garage for this one.

  27. I work with several non-profits and we have seen the same thing. Instead of sending them a technical discussion of the issue, I simply send them your original break up article, and everyone understands. Thanks for the clear, fun, accurate experience trying to understand this issue that many of us are having. I also showed it to my 13 year old as an example of clear, professional, accurate and punchy writing.

  28. love you guys! love that your company is showing the world what marketing can be without facebook.

  29. Aww, well we’ll always have email, and this blog right here. But we understand you gotta do what you gotta do 🙂

  30. You guys are clever, good at marketing, and your product is sexy, so that helps. I’m glad things are working out for you and I wish you well.

    However, just because your breakup worked, doesn’t mean it will work for others. Don’t underestimate the boost in media attention you got from your entertaining “breakup”.

    This is a wake-up call for Facebook, but they aren’t the enemy. Fast forward when all this media attention has died down. There are hungry customers using Facebook on their phones. If I were your competitor, I would go “all in” on Facebook right about now.

  31. You’re absolutely right! We don’t want to leave anyone hungry, and we do hope to resolve our differences with Facebook someday.

  32. As SEO specialist from time to time as freelance … I was always telling my co called clients. Not to go with this ad platform named FACEBOOK … no company small or big or medium one should rely on facebook. After facebook went on wall street, I knew this would happen (I mean with the ads and facebook, not you). You are the first one to be enough bold and brave to do it and share it with the world … LOVE your posts. Indeed you keep it real.

  33. “We are free in a free web space.” YOU TELL ‘EM! This comment was a thing of beauty. Much love <3

  34. As a social media professional who is dealing with Facebook’s crap, this article was so uplifting!!!

  35. And yet your kept the FB shares! Nicely done though, really good posts (this one and the breakup one, didn’t read further sorry!) 😉 Makes me want to order some take out, but you’re not in Europe… YET! Text me if you get there, I’ll show you around and we can have a tacos together 😉

  36. You guys crack me up! I am bummed I can’t ask for a coupon on FB, but I applaud your smarts and ethics! I wish I could break up with FB but it’s “complicated”.

  37. We understand 🙂 And you know you can always look for us on Twitter, Instagram or Google+ or even right here in the blog comments to ask for a code… Here comes one now! Coupon code ‘parm’ is ready to save you some dough.

  38. Well, if you can do it and your brand survive, I’m guessing I can do it, too. Yippy!! #happydance I hate Facebook. Drama central, and as a smaller blogger I have almost no interaction on my fan page anyway. I’m revamping my existing blog, launching another, my other social media platforms are growing while that one’s stagnated somethin’ fierce, and I’m just over the drama of Facebook. Thanks for putting this out there for the rest of us! #encouraged

  39. I am a marketing intern for an industrial company, and we’re having the same issues with Facebook. When we post photos or links to blog posts, unpromoted posts are barely seen by any followers, and promoted posts are “liked” almost exclusively by spam accounts in Mexico and South America. It’s such a waste.

  40. Really, really deep. Completely resonates with my experience. Refreshing to read this from a much larger organization. I will follow you all on Twitter.

    I joined an experiment “99 Days without Facebook” http://99daysoffreedom.com/troy-johnson1 only 35K people joined. Technically I only lasted 37 days. Facebook is so firmly entrenched into the Internet it is actually hard not to at least have an account. For many organization their Facebook profile is their only presence, and many sites require a Facebook login comment.

    Glad to see you all using Discus too. Discus could actually make the Internet more social, while allowing everyone to maintain, and profit, from their own platforms.

  41. Just posted this on FBook. Tell your marketing department that I’ll have a puppy playdate with them anytime.

  42. FACEBOOK TO CHARGE USERS $2.99 MONTH.
    Here is why, beginning Nov. 1st I will be deleting my Facebook account. I am tired of being
    used as a stooge by Mark Zuckerberg to make billions. First, when I
    first joined Facebook you had to rate a college babe (hottie or nottie)
    to gain access to the site. Then, as Zuckerberg used Facebook users to
    prop up the price of his IPO, (which failed at first but is now making
    more money than anticipated) in January of 2014, Facebook came up with a
    mathmatical formula based on number of “Likes,” content of post, the
    number of your Facebook friends and other factors to decide how many
    Facebook users would see your posts. Only 1/3 of your Facebook friends
    now see your posts. The number of poeple responding to my posts has
    dropped to one or two out of some 750 FB friends. I am just not
    generating enough viewership to market/sell my books. If I am going to
    have to pay to use Facebook, I will open up a professional account and
    pay the monthly fee to generate viewership. This way I am gauranteed a
    certain number of new viewers every month.
    “Economic times are
    tight, the ads on Facebook are not as profitable as we had planned. Our
    costs are going up as hundreds of thousands of individuals continue to
    join the site every day,” Horner said. “There’s so many pictures of
    cats, and all of those costs add up, we just can’t foot the bill any
    longer.” – See more at: http://nationalreport.net/facebook-begins-charging-users-2-99mo/#sthash.kKOPUtzG.pPNb9JdF.dpuf

    You think you’re tired of cat pictures Facebook? There’s no way in hell
    I am going to pay you $2.99 a month to view cat pictures while you
    stuff your corporate coffers with billions sucked from Facebook users.
    Facebook has been a HUGE disappointment for me, the level of
    intellectual stimulation I had hoped for just hasn’t been there. To call
    Facebook users low information users is to put it kindly. The
    intelliegence level I have experienced on Facebook has been of trying to
    relate to a third grader and I am thinking even American third graders
    are more intelligent than Facebook users.
    If you are one of these
    low information Facebook users and you do not want to pay $2.99
    beginning Nov. 1st to keep your Facebook account, here’s what you to.
    Post the following on your Facebook page every day until someone that
    works there at Facebook actually wakes up, stops playing one of the
    dozens of Facebook games like Farmville and notices your post. Which may
    be in the year 2525.

    ‘I AM POOR FACEBOOK PLEASE WAIVE MY MONTHLY FEE’.
    Make sure you include the hashtag #FacebookMonthlyFee. –
    See more at: http://nationalreport.net/facebook-begins-charging-users-2-99mo/#sthash.kKOPUtzG.dpuf

    Here’s my bet Mark Zuckerberg- millions have stopped using your
    pathetic service already, jumping to Instagram, Twitter, Linked In and
    other social media sites. You can bet by the time you charge every
    Facebook user $2.99 a month- you will have few users left and mostly
    morons at that. What professional will want to use Facebook with nothing
    but morons who use the site. But if you’re going to charge me to use
    your useless service- I am damn well going to get my money’s worth and
    make sure, under the law, that if I pay to use Facebook, you provide the
    services you promise or I will sue the shit out of you. Nothing Personal-Just Business.
    ~Kilburn Hall

  43. I’m a bit late to find this post and maybe because I live in Indonesia… Yeah, I’m from Indonesia. But don’t worry and be calm, I’m not here to spam. Just wanna say I love your posts. I don’t eat cheeseburgers or tacos here and I don’t even know there rest of the food pics you shared but your posts make me laugh… I hope you guys consider making a branch in my country… because I’m tired of wearing pants. Sorry for the bad English.

  44. Don’t apologize! We love you, and if we could express our feelings towards pants in Indonesian even half as well as you can in English, we’d be so happy.

  45. FB is too much about manipulation. I like the way you focused on respect. That’s how I assess FB and email marketing. If the sender shows respect for their readers’ time and intelligence, I’ll give them a read. A long email that is all about them is disrespectful, but your long message, sort of about you, was truly entertaining and informative. Respectful.

  46. PS. Kudos for having the courage to straight-up leave such a toxic, one-sided relationship. We’re keeping things casual with Facebook right now, while we play the field a bit. (But Shhhhh – keep it on the DL, we don’t want Twitter and Vine getting all upset.)

  47. I’m behind on the news and just read this article (and the breakup). On behalf of (very) small businesses trying to make a name for themselves, and “using” Facebook to do it, thank you for saying what needed to be said. Frustration for us is high and return is low. I haven’t broken up yet, but I’m looking around (the equivalent of window shopping on match, tinder, etc….).

    Thanks for sharing the story and showing the world will not end if and when we leave. Cheers!

  48. Congrats again on the breakup!! We don’t have the cajones to break up with them yet, but I am getting close. I have cursed at FB many a times, which makes me look like an idiot since I am yelling at my computer, while I work by myself at home. Another reason why FB can suck it 🙂

  49. I somehow missed this story but have lately become more of an Eat24’er instead of a GrubHubber. I wanted to go Like your Facebook page because of your witty writing and regular couponing. It’s ok that you’re not there, though. I totally support the decision here.

    Keep up the good work. And thanks for being awesome to my tummy.

  50. Honestly, i had never heard of Eat24 before the breakup, probably because I live in another part of the world, and I feel really sad i didn’t – i kinda missed all the food porn burrito jokes :S. You guys write the most awesome posts, still I want to follow for your awesome food jokes, and hope someday you´ll touch land in good old Europe 🙂

  51. Alas, I am at a loss. I lay my heart at thy Eat24 feet. I bet thy mercy upon me, your lowly servant, kowtowing to your mighty will. I’ve yet to see the Eat24 coupon in my electronically enhanced communication system known as gmail. Has thou turned a blind fork towards me? Something vexes thee? How shall I prove my love for the almighty coupons? Yea, I shall bear my shame and don a sackcloth and flog myself with chains of macaroni necklaces made by the local Kindergarten class and painted by not so clever naives. Just say that you forgive me and once again will grace me with those ever so golden coupons….sigh…

  52. Doth tho thinketh we’d ever leave you hungry? We haveth code “rambo” to help wash down that mutton and mead. Also send thy email address over to media@eat24:disqus .com so we can checketh thine coupon email list.

    Yours,
    EAT24

  53. Eat24 how do I love thee…let me count the ways! I am enraptured by thy words and my thirst and hunger satisfied. I thank thee from the bottom of my bursting heart! 😉

  54. Please make TexMex a thing in New York, please….I’m so lonesome…lol

  55. Please say that Eat24 will one day be available in S. Australia. I’m moving there to be with my Aussie husband and I’m addicted… 🙁

  56. Ha! I love this! So funny. Such a long break up letter and follow up that it made me hungry. I just placed an on order on your app. Yep. I see what you did there…. sneaky LOL <3

  57. Basically, the Internet exploded. People laughed, people cried, people yelled at us in all caps. A lot of people supported our decision to leave Facebook, but some people just got really pissed off. It seems we struck a chord with our fellow marketers out there (specifically the Uncontrollable Fiery Rage Chord). A brand without a Facebook page? How could you?! What does it even mean?! What’s going to happen?! Do you even marketing?!

  58. Basically, the Internet exploded. People laughed, people cried, people yelled at us in all caps. A lot of people supported our decision to leave Facebook, but some people just got really pissed off. It seems we struck a chord with our fellow marketers out there (specifically the Uncontrollable Fiery Rage Chord). A brand without a Facebook page? How could you?! What does it even mean?! What’s going to happen?! Do you even marketing?! https://img.clippp.com/48a3544b8ec389a5da4c99238cdbf32f_students-in-a-classroom-clipart-free-download-clip-art-free-classroom-clipart_451-355.gif

  59. Shallow minds may believe.. only limited by hunger , thirst and general un-ease that yor sic advertising world slams, jus like that 2bob watch only a dog would wear. how much miserable failure in wearable BS can u feed em out there ? Hopeless fanfare of endless menus and choice.. quite obvious hedonist territory. U and most marketers have NO idea (which is why u follow

  60. Is there an article about why you re-opened the Facebook page? I feel short changed after reading the two articles about you breaking up just to realize that you have a page. Although I can surmise that you probably don’t spend on Facebook ads anymore.

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