Customer lifetime value (CLV) is a metric used by businesses to measure the financial value of a customer over the entire period of their relationship with the company.
CLV considers not just how much a customer spends in a given period, but also how likely they are to return and spend more in the future. This information can be used to make decisions about how best to allocate resources, such as marketing dollars, in order to increase profits.
In today’s competitive restaurant space, it is more important than ever to create customer loyalty and keep them coming back.
Loyal customers boost your overall customer lifetime values and help lower marketing and customer acquisition costs. The more loyal guests you have, the less money and time you need to spend finding new customers.
There are several factors that go into calculating CLV, including the guest’s average purchase amount, the frequency of purchases, and the length of time they have visited your restaurant.
In order to optimize and increase CLV, businesses often employ retention marketing techniques such as loyalty programs and WiFi marketing, which incentivize guests to continue their relationship with your restaurant.
Captive Portals and WiFi Marketing
In a world that’s constantly connected, WiFi marketing is becoming an increasingly important way to reach restaurant guests.
By using a WiFi captive portal to collect customer data, restaurant owners and operators can learn more about their customers and target them with relevant ads and offers.
Also, by providing free WiFi access, businesses can attract customers and keep them engaged while they’re visiting.
Here is how your WiFi captive portal can help improve your restaurant’s CLV.
How Captive Portals Help Improve CLV
When a guest logs into your free WiFi, a captive portal page will appear. A captive portal is a page that asks the guest to enter information, such as their name and email address, in order to access the internet.
Once the user logs in, it will create a customer profile for that guest. The customer profile contains all previous and future behavior data, such as dwell times or popular visit days and times.
Over time, you can ask for other information each time the guest returns and logs back in. You can collect demographic data this way, such as birthdate, gender, postal code, and more.
As you passively build a large list of customer data, you can begin segmenting guests into smaller individual lists. This is customer segmentation.
Then, you can send out different messages to each list that they will be more likely to engage with.
Customer Segmentation to Improve Loyalty
Segmented, targeted marketing is much more effective in terms of engagement and ROI. Here are some examples:
- An article from CMO.com stated that targeted advertisements are, on average, almost twice as effective as non-targeted ads.
- eConsultancy.com reported that 74% of marketers say targeted personalization increases guest engagement.
- In a study by The Direct Marketing Association, segmented and targeted emails generated 58% of all marketing revenue. And 77% of ROI comes from segmented, targeted, and triggered campaigns.
The major benefit of executing targeted personalized marketing campaigns is that you are sending your message to guests who are more likely to engage and respond.
With the ability to collect guest data like contact information, demographics, physical behavior, guest ratings, purchasing habits, and other targeted information, you can deliver this type of highly effective advertising to help your business grow.
By implementing customer segmentation and executing well-thought-out targeted marketing campaigns, your guests will notice that you are communicating with them on a more personal level.
Today’s customers expect personalization when it comes to advertising, marketing, and personalized messaging. And when they see it, they engage, and you build stronger brand loyalty.
As they realize the personalization of your message and begin to engage with it, the chances of them coming back into your store increase dramatically.
The Value of Restaurant CLV
Retaining loyal customers is much less expensive than acquiring new ones. According to the Harvard Business Review, acquiring a new customer can be anywhere from 5-25 times more expensive than retaining a current one.
Add to that the time between losing one customer and gaining another, and you can quickly see that an out-of-control churn rate can be devastating for any business.
Worse, if you do not recognize it, it will only continue to climb. Unfortunately, many restaurateurs do not know what their churn rate is, or which way it is trending.
Using a WiFi customer intelligence platform like Bloom Intelligence can offer another very powerful way to improve your restaurant’s CLV.
Get Back Lost Guests
Bloom uses machine learning to identify guests who are at risk of churning.
When it identifies a potentially churning guest, the system will send a message to the guest. Some restaurateurs will also include an incentive to help restore loyalty.
Bloom users are seeing up to 35%+ of their churning guests come back through their doors. This, of course, can have a huge impact on maintaining and growing your CLV.
Using your captive portal and WiFi analytics to monitor and report on your customer churn rate, you’ll be saving money compared to hiring a third-party to do this for you.
Plus, with Bloom, it is entirely passive. You don’t have to lift a finger to see your customer churn rate, which receives real-time updates.
Plus, you’ll be collecting data from a considerable sample size of your customer base. This gives you the ability to spot trends quickly.
Focus on Customer Service
Another powerful way to improve customer lifetime values is to focus on providing excellent customer service.
Make sure that your team is well-trained in providing top-notch service. And be sure to respond to customer inquiries and complaints quickly and effectively.
You may also want to consider offering loyalty programs or other incentives to encourage customers to keep coming back.
By focusing on providing great customer service, you can improve customer lifetime values and boost your bottom line.
Using a WiFi marketing and analytics platform to collect a large volume of the right data, personalizing your marketing campaigns has never been easier.
You’ll feel confident as you make solid data-driven decisions. You’ll drive more company growth and build a much larger base of loyal customers.
To learn more about what you can do with data captured by your captive portal, and how to save time while increasing customer lifetime values, call us today for a free demo at 727-877-8181, or click here to schedule your free demo online.
.svg)