Blooms Restaurant Loyalty Program Saves Time & Increases Guest Lifetime Values

Building a restaurant loyalty program is vital to increase your customer lifetime values.

On average about 80% of your sales come from the top 20% of your customers.

In addition, it costs about 5 times as much to attract a new customer as it does to retain an existing one.  The better you are at retaining your best customers, the more profitable your business will be.

So your primary goal as a marketer should be to nurture. Build long-term relationships with your current and prospective customers.

Restaurant loyalty programs can be one of the most powerful catalysts for attracting and retaining loyal, spending customers.

Effective Customer Loyalty Programs Increase Revenues

These lucrative programs are increasingly pervasive for one simple reason—they work.

They work because consumers like them.  Consider for example these metrics from CMO:

• More than 75% of consumers currently participate in at least one loyalty program
• Almost half of consumers have joined a hotel program
• About 40% of consumers are part of an airline program
• Loyalty marketers on average receive about $12.00 in earned media for every dollar they spend
• Loyal customers on average spend about 70% more than first-time customers

If you’re thinking about a restaurant loyalty program, understand that you need to put in the effort to see returns.

The most successful programs are built on a foundation of sound marketing practices.

1. Don’t concentrate on discounts alone

People like getting discounts, but there’s a big difference between a discount strategy and a comprehensive restaurant loyalty program.

Offering a discount might induce a prospective customer to make an initial purchase or to join your program. But it’s much more important to engage with that customer effectively over time to gain their long-term loyalty.

For example, surveys to measure customer behavior in real-time allow you to get ahead of any negative customer sentiment by immediately addressing the issue.

Demonstrating that you care about their individual needs and nurturing them goes much farther than simply being less expensive.

And, of course, some of the customers who take advantage of discounts would have purchased your products or visited your establishment regardless of the discount.

2. Make your customers feel special

Gaining your customers’ long-term business is all about showing that you know and care about who they are on an individual level.

That means you need to provide the kinds of experiential rewards (as opposed to purely monetary ones) that resonate with them on an emotional level.

This could include giving your loyal customers exclusive access to certain rewards, like special product offers and events.

3. Make it personal

Increasingly, the most successful programs are leveraging customer intelligence, including WiFi analytics, to personalize the loyalty experience.

If, for example, you see that a customer is at risk because your Wifi analytics have not detected them at your locations for a month you could send exclusive offers or a survey to those customers and either let them know you miss them and entice them to return with an offer or ask for feedback why they have not visited in a while.

4. Align the extent of rewards with customer engagement

You shouldn’t aim to create a one-size-fits-all solution.

To build increasing loyalty over time, you need to increase the rewards you offer based on customer frequency, positive ratings, purchases or even visiting at slow times of the week.

For example, you could use a hierarchical system in which increased buying or store visits create access to tiered levels (say, silver, gold, and platinum loyalty levels), each of which offers more valuable rewards than the one beneath it.

5. Continually measure results.

Not every restaurant loyalty program initiative works or works as well as you would like it to.

That means you should constantly be monitoring results, preferably by associating your messaging with measurable presence analytics.

Among the metrics you need to consider are those associated with measuring if a customer returned to your location, what they purchased, and how much they purchased.

Said differently, you need to measure the effectiveness of each campaign, all the way down to the ROI and engagement of each campaign

If using Wifi analytics data, you discover that a particular initiative is generating revenue, double down on it.

On the other hand, if a strategy isn’t panning out, optimize or eliminate it and try something different.

Successful restaurant loyalty programs depend on access to accurate and comprehensive customer data.

You need a platform that on-boards users automatically.

And one that builds customer profiles to personalize your messaging, and mechanisms such as presence analytics to trigger campaigns, and measure your ROI of each campaign.

So, to learn more about the ways the Bloom Intelligence WiFi marketing & intelligence growth tools can help you create your own customer loyalty program or supercharge your existing loyalty program that will drive more sales, measure customer sentiment and grow your business, schedule a demo today.