Cold Stone Creamery® is famous for its ice cream Creations™, which contain any combination of fruits, nuts, or candy. Its popular Birthday Club provides members with free ice cream on their birthday. The company wanted to open this club up to all customers—not just children—and move the program enrollment online. In doing so, the company also wanted to centralize customer information, lower costs, and streamline marketing efforts. Cold Stone Creamery teamed with Microsoft® Gold Certified Partner TopLine Strategies and implemented Microsoft Dynamics™ CRM, which provides the foundation for the online Birthday Club program. Today, Cold Stone Creamery has immediate access to customer information, increased program enrollment, and lowered costs associated with the Birthday Club. The company also has an easy-to-use, familiar solution that it plans to extend to additional areas of its business.

1. Microsoft Dynamics
Customer Solution Case Study
Ice Creamery Connects with Customers,
Lowers Costs with Easy-to-Use Solution
Overview “Microsoft Dynamics CRM provides us the ability to
Country or Region: United States
Industry: Retail and Hospitality—Food
better serve our customers by delivering relevant
Service Industry communications and the innovative products they
Customer Profile
desire.”
Cold Stone Creamery® serves ice cream, Heather Dorr, Senior Manager of Marketing Information Systems, Cold Stone Creamery
shakes, smoothies, and cakes to
customers around the world. The company Cold Stone Creamery® is famous for its ice cream Creations™, which
has more than 1,400 stores and
approximately 30,000 employees. contain any combination of fruits, nuts, or candy. Its popular
Birthday Club provides members with free ice cream on their
Business Situation
Cold Stone Creamery wanted to implement birthday. The company wanted to open this club up to all customers
an online Birthday Club program—open to —not just children—and move the program enrollment online. In
all customers—and at the same time,
create a better connection to its doing so, the company also wanted to centralize customer
customers. information, lower costs, and streamline marketing efforts. Cold
Solution Stone Creamery teamed with Microsoft® Gold Certified Partner
Cold Stone Creamery teamed with TopLine Strategies and implemented Microsoft Dynamics™ CRM,
Microsoft® Gold Certified Partner TopLine
Strategies and implemented Microsoft which provides the foundation for the online Birthday Club program.
Dynamics™ CRM, which provides the Today, Cold Stone Creamery has immediate access to customer
backbone for its online Birthday Club
program. information, increased program enrollment, and lowered costs
associated with the Birthday Club. The company also has an easy-
Benefits
 Streamlined, immediate access to
to-use, familiar solution that it plans to extend to additional areas of
customer data its business.
 Increased enrollment, lower costs
 Easy to use, minimal training
 Moving forward

2. Situation managed CRM system could have benefits
In 1988, Donald and Susan Sutherland beyond its new and improved Birthday Club.
opened the first Cold Stone Creamery® in The right solution could also be used to
Tempe, Arizona, and took the initial step manage information related to its area
toward their goal of delivering the world’s developers, franchises, stores, and crew
best ice cream. Two decades later, the members—and to provide company
company has more than 1,400 stores and executives with deeper insight into all these
30,000 employees around the world. In relationships.
addition to cakes, smoothies, and shakes,
Cold Stone Creamery specializes in serving “With our previous system, customer
customized ice cream Creations™ that are information was dispersed among several
created by mixing ice cream with any disconnected databases that were managed
combination of nuts, fruits, and candy on a by external vendors. As a result, we couldn’t
frozen granite stone. get a clear picture of our customers and often
had to wait as long as a week just to access
“Using Marketing Cold Stone Creamery’s Birthday Club program customer data,” says Dorr. “In addition to
Automation in Microsoft is one way that the company demonstrates
its deep appreciation for customers. This
gaining immediate access to customer
information, we also wanted to reduce the
Dynamics CRM, we now program rewards members with a coupon for expenses associated with each mailer, speed
deliver over 5,000 free ice cream that can be redeemed on the
recipient’s birthday. The program originally
the enrollment time, and open the program to
all of our customers.”
birthday e-mails a day to catered to children under the age of 13. To
participants, reminding become a member, parents filled out a card Solution
and mailed it back to a third-party vendor Cold Stone Creamery started by evaluating
them to celebrate their who was responsible for entering the contact several CRM systems, including NetSuite
birthdays with Cold information into a database and sending out
coupons to participants in the mail. While
CRM+, Salesforce.com, SalesLogix, and
Microsoft Dynamics™ CRM. In the end,
Stone Creamery.” 200,000 customers happily received their Microsoft Dynamics CRM—a solution that
coupons for free ice cream, Cold Stone provides the tools and capabilities needed to
Heather Dorr, Senior Manager of Marketing
Creamery wanted to create a system that create and easily maintain a clear picture of
Information Systems, Cold Stone Creamery
would help build stronger connections with customers—was the winner.
ice cream lovers. They arrived at an updated
customer relationship management (CRM) “We chose Microsoft Dynamics CRM because
solution with an online interface that would it’s a flexible tool that integrates easily with
allow customers to enroll in the program other systems. It also provides a familiar
through the company’s Web site and update interface and is easy for our employees to
their own profiles as often as they wished. learn and use,” explains Dorr.
“We wanted to build an interactive To help with the implementation, Cold Stone
relationship with ice cream lovers worldwide, Creamery teamed with Microsoft® Gold
in order to provide them with the ultimate ice Certified Partner TopLine Strategies—an IT
cream experience,” says Heather Dorr, Senior services and consulting company based in
Manager of Marketing Information Systems Scottsdale, Arizona. A team of three
at Cold Stone Creamery. developers spent less than six weeks of
development time implementing Microsoft
Cold Stone Creamery recognized that Dynamics CRM. Work included the following:
implementing a fully featured, internally

3.  Creating entities within Microsoft Dynamics Consultant for TopLine Strategies. “It ties into
CRM so that Cold Stone Creamery their workflows and their public Web site and
marketers can customize information for helps maintain the high standards of their
ice cream lovers and their children. Every brand.”
ice cream lover has a unique e-mail
address in the system, and associated Benefits
family members are tracked by first name Since implementing Microsoft Dynamics
and birthday. CRM, Cold Stone Creamery has enjoyed many
 Building custom utilities to migrate benefits. Highlights include immediate access
customer data from various legacy vendor to customer data, reduced costs associated
databases to Microsoft Dynamics CRM. with the Birthday Club, and quick adoption of
 Using Microsoft ASP.NET and Microsoft this easy-to-use system.
Visual Studio® 2005 Professional Edition
to build the customer-facing application Streamlined, Immediate Access to Customer
that is used to enroll in the Birthday Club. Data
The data that customers enter in this With Microsoft Dynamics CRM, Cold Stone
application is automatically stored in Creamery has all the information related to
Microsoft Dynamics CRM. its birthday program participants in a single,
accessible location. The company no longer
With the new system, the Birthday Club is waits for a third party to deliver this
completely automated. Ice cream lovers information, and instead has immediate
enroll—or update their preferences—by access to customer data. As a result, the
completing a registration form on the Cold company has better insight into its
Stone Creamery Web site. This data is customers, which enables Cold Stone
immediately associated with a customer Creamery to build stronger connections with
record in Microsoft Dynamics CRM and those customers.
available for reporting and analysis.
“Our objective is to build interactive
The Marketing Automation module in relationships with ice cream lovers worldwide
Microsoft Dynamics CRM enables Cold Stone and to provide them with the ultimate ice
Creamery to automatically generate and send cream experience,” says Dorr. “Microsoft
e-mail messages to participants on their Dynamics CRM provides us the ability to
birthdays, reminding customers to visit the better serve our customers by delivering
Web site to retrieve their coupon for free ice relevant communications and the innovative
cream. products they desire.”
The company created custom reports to Increased Enrollment, Lower Costs
monitor enrollment trends and to track how Before moving to Microsoft Dynamics CRM,
much free ice cream is given away in a Cold Stone Creamery had approximately
particular week or month. Reports can be 200,000 Birthday Club members who
generated for the entire company, for a enrolled in the program by mailing in an
particular region, or for a specific store. enrollment application. Today this process
has been moved online and has become
“Microsoft Dynamics CRM provided the significantly streamlined. The success of the
flexibility Cold Stone Creamery needed to program is evident by the numbers: The
build a solution that meets their exact company currently has over 1.5 million
needs,” says Scott Johnson, Senior

4. “Microsoft Dynamics Birthday Club participants and enrolls “Within an hour of receiving a simple
thousands of new members daily. overview of Microsoft Dynamics CRM, our
CRM provided the customer service representatives were
flexibility Cold Stone Moving the program online has also reduced working productively with the system,” says
the associated costs. Cold Stone Creamery Dorr.
Creamery needed to once spent an average of $0.80 printing and
build a solution that mailing each free ice cream coupon, but Moving Forward
these costs have been slashed to just Building on their success engaging with ice
meets their exact pennies. According to Dorr, “Our cream lovers through the Birthday Club, Cold
needs ... it helps implementation of Microsoft Dynamics CRM Stone Creamery plans to deploy a second
will result in multimillion dollar savings for instance of Microsoft Dynamics CRM to
maintain the high Cold Stone Creamery over the next two to manage information related to internal
standards of their three years.” business operations. Dorr expects to gain
operational efficiencies and improve the
brand.” “Using Marketing Automation in Microsoft relationships throughout the Cold Stone
Dynamics CRM, we now deliver over 5,000 Creamery community by using Microsoft
Scott Johnson, Senior Consultant, TopLine
birthday e-mails a day to participants, Dynamics CRM to maintain information on
Strategies
reminding them to celebrate their birthdays franchises and area developers, and to
with Cold Stone Creamery,” says Dorr. manage internal communications with more
than 1,400 stores and more than 30,000
Easy to Use, Minimal Training crew members.
Cold Stone Creamery currently has five
customer service representatives interacting
with Microsoft Dynamics CRM and plans to
eventually see this number increase to an
estimated 100 users throughout their
organization. Because Microsoft Dynamics
CRM is designed to work with Microsoft Office
Outlook®, which is a tool already in use
throughout Cold Stone Creamery, user
adoption and training was easy.

5. For More Information Microsoft Dynamics
For more information about Microsoft Microsoft Dynamics is a line of integrated,
products and services, call the Microsoft adaptable business management solutions
Sales Information Center at (800) that enables you and your people to make
426-9400. In Canada, call the Microsoft business decisions with greater confidence.
Canada Information Centre at (877) Microsoft Dynamics works like familiar
568-2495. Customers who are deaf or Microsoft software such as Microsoft Office,
hard-of-hearing can reach Microsoft text which means less of a learning curve for your
telephone (TTY/TDD) services at (800) people, so they can get up and running
892-5234 in the United States or (905) quickly and focus on what’s most important.
568-9641 in Canada. Outside the 50 And because it is from Microsoft, it easily
United States and Canada, please contact works with the systems that your company
your local Microsoft subsidiary. To access already has implemented. By automating and
information using the World Wide Web, go streamlining financial, customer relationship,
to: and supply chain processes, Microsoft
www.microsoft.com Dynamics brings together people, processes,
and technologies, increasing the productivity
For more information about Cold Stone and effectiveness of your business, and
Creamery products and services, call (480) helping you drive business success.
362-4800 or visit the Web site at:
www.coldstonecreamery.com For more information about Microsoft
Dynamics, go to:
For more information about TopLine www.microsoft.com/dynamics
Strategies products and services, call (480)
503-8584 or visit the Web site at:
www.toplinestrategies.com
Software and Services Partners
 Microsoft Dynamics  TopLine Strategies
− Microsoft Dynamics CRM
 Microsoft Visual Studio
− Microsoft Visual Studio 2005
Professional Edition
 Technologies
− Microsoft ASP.NET
This case study is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT
MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS
SUMMARY.
Document published June 2007