CMO Hire Sparks Applebee’s Marketing Automation Pipeline

🚀 Battle Card: Applebee’s

• Michelle Chin, Chief Marketing Officer · 🔗 LinkedIn

• This Applebee’s sales trigger underscores a data-driven push to elevate marketing, deepen guest connections, and sustain traffic growth. → Source

• Underdeveloped in-house marketing capabilities

• Insufficient personalized guest engagement leading to churn

• Primary: Marketing Automation Platform → Streamline campaigns & boost guest engagement

• Expansion: Customer Data Platform → Unify guest insights & personalize offers using this Applebee’s sales trigger

• HQ: Pasadena, CA

• Employees: ≈ 50,000

• Rev: ≈ $3 B

• Website: applebees.com

🤼 Competitive Intel

Marketing

• Adobe — Marketing Cloud
• Unique edge: Comprehensive analytics & campaign orchestration
• Evaluated by CMO for enterprise-grade support

• HubSpot — Marketing Hub
• Unique edge: All-in-one inbound & automation for mid-market
• Evaluated by Dir. Digital for ease of use

• Salesforce — Marketing Cloud
• Unique edge: Robust CRM integration & AI insights
• Evaluated by VP Marketing for scalability

Ops & Supply Chain

• Toast — POS & Restaurant Ops
• Unique edge: Seamless front- and back-of-house integration
• Evaluated by COO for operational consistency

• Oracle NetSuite — ERP
• Unique edge: Scalable financials & inventory management
• Evaluated by CFO for end-to-end visibility

• Blue Yonder — Supply Chain Planning
• Unique edge: AI-driven demand forecasting
• Evaluated by Supply Chain Lead for inventory optimization

Product/Eng

• Braze — Customer Engagement Platform
• Unique edge: Real-time messaging & personalization
• Evaluated by VP Product for in-app engagement

• WalkMe — Digital Adoption Platform
• Unique edge: Guided UX improvements to boost feature adoption
• Evaluated by Product Head for user activation

• Segment — Customer Data Infrastructure
• Unique edge: Unified data layers for all systems
• Evaluated by Engineering Lead for data governance

✅ Do-Now Checklist

Next Step

🧠 Copy My Prompt for Personalized Cold Outreach

────────────────────────────
✏️ YOUR COMPANY
────────────────────────────
OUR_COMPANY   = ❑❑
OFFER_BRIEF   = ❑Marketing Automation Platform to streamline campaigns & boost guest engagement❑
PROOF_METRIC  = ❑≈ TBD❑
CTA_STYLE     = ❑quick_call❑
TONE          = ❑friendly❑

────────────────────────────
📌 TARGET COMPANY
────────────────────────────
NAME        = Michelle
COMPANY     = Applebee’s
DEPT        = Marketing
SIZE        = ≈ TBD
BOTTLENECK  = Underdeveloped in-house marketing capabilities
EVENT       = Appoints Michelle Chin as Chief Marketing Officer
DETAIL      = appointment as Chief Marketing Officer
PAIN        = underdeveloped in-house marketing capabilities
SRC         = http://cts.businesswire.com/ct/CT?id=ftfLlWd9aZbF2NXfwppam3Bd664=&newsLang=en&newsId=20250825348990&div=41152219
SIM_CO      = ≈ TBD
WIN_METRIC  = ≈ TBD
NEXT_SIZE   = ≈ TBD
EMP_EST     = ≈ 50,000
REV_EST     = ≈ $3 B

────────────────────────
TASK FOR CHATGPT
────────────────────────
Role: “NewsletterForLeads SDR-Assist”.

Validate any ≈ guesses via SRC.

EMAIL  (keep breaks):
Subject: ≈ TBD-person Marketing

Michelle—noticed your Marketing team is ≈ TBD.

That’s when Underdeveloped in-house marketing capabilities slows growth.

We helped ≈ TBD fix this with Marketing Automation Platform to streamline campaigns & boost guest engagement.

Result: ≈ TBD.  
Quick call?

PS—next bottleneck hits ≈ TBD.

DM ≤45 words, TONE:
Saw your post about appointment as Chief Marketing Officer — underdeveloped in-house marketing capabilities.  
Marketing Automation Platform to streamline campaigns & boost guest engagement. ≈ TBD.  
Quick chat?