Hello and welcome to this week 30 minutes
restaurant marketing, this week I will go
through some restaurant loyalty programs ideas
and apps.
Many restaurants have come up with successful
restaurant loyalty programs, and I receive
frequently questions from my clients regarding
if loyalty programs still work, and if they
should implement one at their restaurant.
In this video I share my thoughts on it, and
share some ideas and apps that may be useful
to you.
As you know loyalty programs consist on rewarding
your best customers.
The goal is to entice them to become regulars.
We do this by rewarding them when they accomplish
something in the restaurant.
Ex: if you return several times to the restaurant
during an established period of time I will
give you a free bottle of our house wine.
The core benefit is to increase the repeated
business from the best customers, but there
is another great benefit that restaurateurs
sometimes forget: when they reward a loyal
customer, they will make him happy, and when
a customer is happy he will share his happiness
with their friends.
And, as you know, people recommending your
restaurant to their friends is the best marketing
you can have.
But the loyalty program at your customer point
of view is different, and for him to advocate
it needs two things: to be easy to follow
and have actual value.
In order to be easy to follow there should
be no effort for the client to participate
or to redeem its offers.
If you make it effortless they will join.
Please don’t make something complicated
like: “13 points equals one dollar, and
if you collect 30 dollars you can get a free
meal for two during the month of July”.
It is too confusing, you should do something
as simple as if you spend a total of $50 in
our restaurant you will get a free dessert
of your choice from our menu.
Now I will share two restaurant loyalty programs
ideas according to what the customers want.
Both do not use physical loyalty cards, because
everyone has a lot of plastic cards in their
wallet and we don’t want more!
But instead the traditional loyalty card is
replaced by an app on the phone or the customer
existing credit card.
-There are a few apps like Thanx and POS systems
that allow a registered credit card to work
as a loyalty card, they are very easy for
the client because every time he pays with
his registered credit card he is participating
on the loyalty program.
As the example I gave previously, that for
every $50 spent your customer gets a free
dessert, imagine a client that goes to your
restaurant on a Monday and pays $30 with his
credit card.
On Friday he comes back and spends another
$25, as he in total has spent more than $50
in these two days, he receives a message on
his mobile saying that he just got a free
dessert at your restaurant!
-My other proposal is for you to create your
own restaurant app.
Today, to create your restaurant app is no
more a huge investment and you can easily
create yours with loyalty programs integrated
by paying a small monthly fee.
Per example you can use shoutem to create
yours, by less than $50 a month.
If it works you keep it, if not, you can stop
it anytime without additional fees.
Thank you for watching, hope it helps, and
if you want me to keep creating restaurant
marketing videos please support by liking,
commenting, or sharing below.
Thanks and Cheers
