• Restaurant Marketing

7 Ways to Manage Restaurant Data Wisely

by: Allen Graves
3 min read

Data allows restaurant professionals to reach customers, translating into managerial improvements, increased sales, successful marketing, and better insights. 

In 2021, data acquisition is an opportunity for agile restaurants. However, it is a threat for restaurants that are slow to change. Many restaurant professionals appreciate data analytics but have difficulties acquiring data. The data acquisition difficulties are ironic, considering the available wealth of data for restaurants.

Data acquisition is essential to capitalize on:

• Loyalty programs

• Online reviews

• Customer feedback

• Promotions

 

Restaurant professionals need to manage data wisely by:

 

  1. Taking customer data seriously. Research and keep up with the latest data laws and trends. More than 60 jurisdictions across the world have enacted or proposed new data and privacy protection laws. “Privacy-first products are likely to follow this trend,” says Bart Willemsen, Vice President Analyst, Gartner. “To increase customer trust, executive leaders need to build a holistic and adaptive privacy program across the organization, and be proactive instead of responding to each jurisdictional challenge.”
  2. Ethically gather information. Educate customers on how you plan on using their data. “The more information a buyer has, the better able they are to make a good choice for themselves,” explained Alice Stevens, senior content strategist at BestCompany.com. But consumer education doesn’t mean only providing biased information for self-promotion. “It’s essential that marketers provide consumers with accurate and objective information. If you don’t, you run the risk of dealing with an unsatisfied customer who may leave a bad review.”
  3. Deciding what you really need. Only collect customer data that you deem as mutually beneficial. Of course, at the very least, restaurants should focus on collecting names and email addresses. They can also collect additional information like birth dates, ZIP codes, and phone numbers for more targeted messaging. However, if a restaurant does not plan on doing anything with the data they acquire, it has little benefit to the customer. Restaurants should only collect the data that they plan on using for mutually beneficial promotions.
  4. Investing in a CRM. Combine your WiFi marketing and CRM in one place with Bloom Intelligence. A survey of Toast customers found that off-premise dining experiences, which were at 15% before the pandemic, are up to 70% now. Restaurants are able to achieve more data about their customers than ever before. A restaurant CRM like Bloom Intelligence helps restaurants keep their data safe, organized, and accessible.
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  5. Making sure your data is clean and organized. Work with data providers that keep data clean and organized. When customers request to receive all of the data that a restaurant has acquired from them, it should be easy to provide. Providing data upon request is essential in many different data laws.
  6. Training your team. Make sure that your team understands how to handle customer data. If a customer requests access to their data, team members should also understand how to provide it to the guest. 
  7. Thinking about access. Provide customer access to their data if they request to do so. Restaurant CRMs like Bloom Intelligence make customer data easy-to-access, which is essential for data compliance.

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Restaurant Marketing FAQs

What is Restaurant Marketing?

Restaurant marketing is the process of getting people to visit your restaurants. Restaurant marketing creates loyalty, provides data to research, analytics, and allows restaurants to gain a better understanding of their ideal customer profile. It utilizes all customer channels: guest WiFi, website, social, rating sites, mobile apps, email, text, and advertising.

Learn More About Restaurant Marketing Here

What is WiFi Marketing?

WiFi marketing is a marketing technique that uses guest WiFi to collect & clean customer data such as names, emails, phone numbers, customer behavior, and demographics. This data is used to personalize marketing campaigns to increase customer loyalty, build online reviews, and save at-risk customers. The performance of every campaign can be tracked down to the tangible ROI of a customer walking back in your door.

Learn More About WiFi Marketing Here

What is Restaurant Reputation Management?

Restaurant reputation management is the process for restaurants to manage customer feedback and creating systems to improve customer experiences, passively build positive online reviews, and save at-risk customers. It is a very important aspect of running a successful restaurant business.

Learn More About Restaurant Reputation Management Here

How Does Bloom Identify and Bring Back Lost Customers?

Bloom Intelligence uses machine learning to identify at-risk customers. When one is recognized, the system will send them a message with an incentive to get them to return and re-establish their visit pattern. Bloom users are seeing up to 37% of churning customers return.

Learn More About Saving At-Risk Customers Here

SAVE TIME, INCREASE CUSTOMER LIFETIME VALUES, CREATE NEW CUSTOMERS

What our happy customers
are saying

“SaaS that covered so many bases for us instead of having to use multiple software products. Bloom Intelligence has simplified our responses to reviews, customer feedback, and more. I highly recommend Bloom Intelligence.”

Robert Sanderson

“Bloom Intelligence really is a step ahead in terms of marketing software and metrics. Their product is reliable, fast and innovative and has helped the company I work for really grow.”

John Marchetti

“Working with Bloom Intelligence has been amazing. They assist you every step of the way and work with you hand in hand to make sure you are optimizing your advertising potential. We are excited to use this tool to help learn more about our customers so that we can personally engage with them and understand our strengths/weaknesses.”

Ariel Ramirez

“In these challenging times, it has been a pleasure working with Bloom Intelligence to help facilitate our service offering to our clients. They were extremely responsive and provided support to mitigate risk and minimize revenue loss. Great partner!”

Stefan Kim

“We’re extremely pleased with the wealth of customer data that we’re able to gather, at a very attractive price.  In addition, we’re able to communicate our new product promotions by using  the landing page as a digital billboard.  A “no-brainer” for anyone working with limited Marketing $$.”

Bob Cross, Vice President of Operations

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