How Grubhub Revamped Their Onboarding Flow to Achieve an 836% Increase in ROI

Braze is a leading customer engagement platform that enables marketers to build personalized, cross-channel campaigns. Its Canvas Flow tool provides a no-code visual journey orchestration environment for automating multi-stage communications via email, push notifications, and more. Braze also offers an Alloys partner ecosystem for integrations with tools like Amplitude and Google Analytics.

Grubhub operates under Just Eat Takeaway, a leading global online food delivery marketplace with over 365,000 restaurant partners in more than 4,000 cities across the US. In addition to its core Marketplace offering, Grubhub has a Campus program working with over 300 college campuses to offer tailored dining experiences to students, including exclusive promotional codes and free Grubhub+ subscriptions.

Prior to implementing Braze, Grubhub faced persistently low student enrollment rates in its Grubhub Campus program. Many students began but failed to complete the onboarding process. The root cause was identified as a lack of clear communication about the program's benefits, resulting in poor adoption of the Campus offering among college students.

Using Braze Canvas Flow, Grubhub built a "Welcome Stream" campaign — a multi-stage, automated, cross-channel onboarding journey spanning 30 days and three phases: (1) Welcome Stage: triggered when a student connects to their campus in the app, delivering personalized emails and push notifications with a first-order discount; (2) Add Campus Card Stage: three emails and one push notification to verify student status and encourage adding a campus card; (3) Activate Grubhub+ Membership Stage: emails and push notifications to motivate students to activate their Grubhub+ Student subscription. Braze Alloys partner Amplitude tracked in-app sessions, and Google Analytics tracked marketplace orders via UTMs.

The team structured the onboarding campaign into three sequential phases over 30 days. Each phase targeted specific onboarding goals: initial engagement and first-order incentive, campus card verification, and Grubhub+ membership activation. The Braze Canvas Experiment Path feature was used to test diverse offers and optimize strategies. Amplitude and Google Analytics were integrated to measure performance.

Since launch, the campaign drove tens of thousands of new diners and hundreds of thousands of orders. Grubhub+ Student membership activation among students who entered the welcome stream was 188% higher than the control group. These results translated to an 836% increase in ROI, demonstrating the value of a dynamic, targeted onboarding strategy for long-term brand loyalty and immediate revenue growth.