The inside of Red Mango in downtown Omaha across the street from the new TD Ameritrade baseball stadium.
Red Mango, a chain frozen yogurt and smoothie joint, has become quite the hangout for Creighton students after opening earlier this summer. Not only is Red Mango’s location at 13th and Cuming streets, a quick walk from campus, but its promotions via Twitter and Facebook have allowed CU students, as well as any other customers, to save big bucks ontheir purchases.
“I love [Red Mango’s] use of social media,” said Arts & Sciences junior Zac Holmes, who frequented Red Mango about once or twice a week this summer. “During the summer, you could usually get 20 percent off of something if you mentioned their Tweet. Sometimes they would even post a riddle on their Facebook page and if you were the first correct responder, they would set you up with a sweet deal for the week.”
Just because summer is over, though, does not mean that Red Mango’s promotions are. Just recently, its Twitter account, @RedMangoDTown reached 100 followers and offered 50 percent off that day to all their followers.
“When we run discounts or specials on our Facebook page or Twitter we get a pretty good amount of people that mention they saw the post or Tweet,” said Arts & Sciences junior and Red Mango Team Member Peter Higbie. “I think it is a good way to market to our customers with so many people using
Facebook and Twitter.”
Arts & Sciences sophomore Annette Kueser worked in Residence Life on campus this summer and said she walked to Red Mango several times with her co-workers. She said she really likes how Red Mango posts its daily flavors on their Facebook page.
“It’s great because then I know if they have the white peach flavor or not,” Kueser said. “But sometimes it’s fun to be surprised.”
Higbie said the Red Mango downtown Omaha location is also working on other ways aside from social media to promote themselves to Creighton students, particularly the Greek community. According to Higbie, the Red Mango in downtown Lincoln holds competitions between the sororities and fraternities at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, and whichever Greek organization brings in the most money gets a certain amount of the profits donated to its national philanthropy.
“They have talked about implementing something like that at Creighton later in the year, so I think that would be a great way to market to Creighton students,”
Higbie said.
Holmes said Red Mango could also attract more CU students if they offered a student discount or JayBuck$, too.
“I think most of [Red Mango’s]business so far has been word of mouth,” Holmes said. “If they accepted JayBuck$, they’d be packed all the time. It’s a great way to end the day or to escape the heat without breaking
your budget.”