• Restaurant Marketing

5 Ways to Segment Restaurant Customers for Better Marketing

by: Robin Johnston
3 min read

Choosing to segment your restaurant customers is one of the best tactics for your digital marketing strategy. Email segmentation, or the process of divvying up your list into more specific categories to offer more relevant content to your subscribers, is extremely powerful for building relationships, generating loyal customers, and growing your revenue. Restaurant customer segmentation matters!

According to Hubspot, segmented and targeted emails generate 58% of all revenue. By personalizing your restaurant’s message to speak precisely to the recipient by using restaurant customer segmentation, you’ll be better effective at driving your email content engagement.

In fact, in addition to increasing sales for your restaurant, here are the top benefits of segmenting your restaurant customers and how it can help improve your overall digital results.

Using Customer Profiles for Customer Segmentation

Benefits of Segmenting Restaurant Customers

Increases Open-Rates

Numerous studies and reports prove that segmenting increases email open rates. If you feel your messages are getting lost in the inbox, sending personalized content will yield better responses.

Increases Click-throughs

Because your message speaks directly to the user, they’re more likely to click on your call-to-action or accept your offer. MailChimp shares that brands receive 100.95% higher clicks than non-segmented campaigns! Segment and get patrons clicking on your links.

Better Marketing ROI with Segmentation

Encourages Future Engagement

Your recipients will get used to you sharing valuable content that relates to their needs and desires. Therefore, they’ll keep opening up your messages and continue engaging with your restaurant brand.

Separates You from Competitors

Hubspot also shares that 42% of marketers do not send targeted email messages. By embracing email segmentation, you give your restaurant marketing the slight edge by personalizing your content and giving your customers more of what they want!

Customer Segmentation with WiFi Marketing

5 Interesting Tips for Restaurant Market Segmentation

Now that we’ve convinced you of the advantages of segmenting restaurant customers, here are five category ideas to actively employ this strategy to better your marketing:

#1 Preferred/Loyal Customers

Loyal customers are valuable to your business. It’s easier to sell to an existing customer than to market and sell to a new one. Therefore, reward your repeat customers by establishing a preferred customer program. Let them know that they’re on an exclusive list where they’ll receive specials and offers just for them!

#2 By Location or Neighborhood

Get super-specific in your customer segmentation by targeting local neighborhoods or individual business districts in your area. You can promote specials that drive these communities through your doors and brings them together. Imagine offering a promotion for a specific school, for example. It’s the perfect plan to get people together as a meet and greet.

#3 Purchase Decision

Each of your customers has a food preference that they gravitate towards, whether it’s your gluten-free choices, meat lovers, or unique dishes. By collecting data from either your Wi-Fi or customer analytics, you can use this information to upsell and keep them coming back.

Surprise your patrons by offering a discount on the foods they love and highlighting an item that perfectly complements their choice.

#4 Customers Who Haven’t Reviewed

Customer reviews are incredibly important and can make or break your business (Source: Inc.). In fact, the majority of people embrace reviews just as much as they would a personal recommendation. Creating ways to get customers to give reviews should be an ongoing tactic in your restaurant marketing.

With that said, use your email marketing software to segment your list by customers who have not left a review. Offer a small percentage off their next order as a thank you when they post a review.

#5 Use Your Wi-Fi Analytics

Your Wi-Fi analytics tool provides invaluable data about your customers including their visit frequencies, first-time customer data, and how long they spend at your store. By having guests offer their email to use your Wi-Fi services, you create the perfect opportunity to segment your customers, especially new ones.

You see, how you market to a first-time customer should be completely different than how you would an existing or frequent customer. So, your Wi-Fi analytics can bolster your email marketing strategy while helping you create a personalized experience with your restaurant brand…in-store and digitally.

Begin Your Restaurant Customer Segmentation Today

With these ideas, begin to make changes to your email marketing by executing restaurant customer segmentation and crafting triggered campaigns. Your patrons will appreciate the personalization and feel as if you’re speaking directly to them. It will make your digital marketing highly effective.

Customer Segmentation Improves Marketing

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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