Inside Facebook

Last week, we looked at a range of large and small businesses that have been running Thanksgiving-themed marketing efforts on their Facebook pages. Pizza chain Domino’s is another one: It has integrated its page with ordering information and a fundraiser during Thanksgiving’s Eve, one of the company’s busiest days of the year.

Anyone who checks out the company’s 325,000-fan strong Facebook Page will first be directed to a page about the “Thanks and Giving” fundraiser that the company is a part of; it and a wide range of businesses, celebrities and other organizations are raising money for St. Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital. If you order through Domino’s and donate to St. Jude’s via the company, it will match your donation.

On the left-hand column in the Page’s home Wall tab, there’s a link to ordering information, with the Thanks and Giving promotion. However, the company hasn’t done what rivals like Papa John’s and Pizza Hut have, which is make it possible for people to order from within Facebook. Domino’s has you go to its home site to complete the purchase.

There are some redeeming aspects to the page, though. It lets users post their own items, which means random people who have delivery problems are leaving complaints for all to see; the long-suffering Domino’s page admin is dutifully apologizing to each of them, from what we can tell, and telling the at-fault Domino’s franchise managers about the problem.

Anyway, fundraising isn’t all that Domino’s is doing for Thanksgiving – the evening before is one of the company’s busiest of the year, apparently because people don’t want to spend any time cooking ahead of massive turkey preparation. So, the company polled Facebook users, and discovered some unusual-sounding holiday pizza topping preferences:

With more than 1,000 responses, 40 percent opted in for Pumpkin Pie while 30 percent said, “What else? Turkey and Gravy of course!” About 20 percent even got creative and thought Domino’s should use existing toppings like Italian Sausage to make Domino’s own version of Thanksgiving stuffing.

We think we’ll keep our pizza and Thanksgiving dishes separate, thanks, but it’s nice that Domino’s is doing a fundraiser in during a period where it expects big sales, anyway.