Restaurants are struggling, according to first-quarter results in the MillerPulse survey from the Nation’s Restaurant News. As a result, CORE Restaurant Marketing Partners has teamed up with Loyal Patron to increase customer frequency and purchases at restaurants.
Joe Welsh, partner with CORE Restaurant Marketing Partners, told Loyalty 360 that due to declining customer counts at restaurants nationwide, it’s critical to build customer loyalty to boost business. Welsh has known Adam Miller, co-founder and developer of Loyal Patron, for years and said Loyal Patron offers some very effective tools.
“I’ve looked at a variety of loyalty programs in the market and what I try and do ideally is work with my clients to find the best solution for them,” Welsh said. “Many of these programs are tied to the POS systems. Loyalty programs are great in measuring sales, but the real value is to communicate with customers and keep them coming back.”
With Loyal Patron, Welsh said, he can query the database and it can identify for him all the males between certain ages who had been in the restaurant in the past 90 days. Based on that data, Welsh can go into the email template and send a customized email geared specifically at a select group. The same can be done with text messages as well, Welsh said.
With Loyal Patron, the customer self enrolls. But with a POS system, Welsh said, “you have to print cards and then have someone enter the information. There are programs out there that say they have all the bells and whistles, but this is truly the best. And so much of this process is automated.”
Rising commodity costs are “just killing” profitability of restaurant owners, Welsh said.
“That’s why I looked at this format from a standpoint of driving traffic,” he said. “It’s a good thing that deep discounts are going away, but what’s going to take their place?”
Welsh outlined five steps to that can help create a customer community through an effective loyalty building strategy.
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Implement a customer loyalty program. Studies have shown that customers engaged in a loyalty program have a check average 22% higher than non-loyalty customers. Use the restaurant servers as brand ambassadors to build the loyalty program.
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Build a customer database that captures important information such as email address, cell phone number, and birthday. Customer communication is critical to an effective program.
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Tie event marketing into your loyalty program.
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Use your loyalty program to tap into the power of the local community. Loyalty programs can be designed and implemented to support fundraising efforts of schools, teams, and charitable causes.
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Create event triggers to drive specific sales efforts on slow days. Spot marketing with messaging such as “Double Point Mondays” or “Triple Rewards for Lunch” are great ways to drive traffic.
Welsh said loyalty programs aren’t new, but they aren’t promoted well in the restaurant industry.
“People have invested in POS systems and some feel they have to make a loyalty program work through that, although the reality might be it’s not as cost effective,” he said. “The biggest issues in the restaurant industry are time and knowledge. Restaurant owners don’t have the knowledge of what’s out there and then it comes down to time. To make it work effectively, you have to be willing to put in the time. The beauty of Loyal Patron is, once it’s all set up, most of the processes area automated.”