You love your best customers, and you hope they love you back. But what are the signs that the most loyal diners are starting to fall out of love with you?
Most successful restaurants have a well-designed loyalty programme is essential for any brand’s engagement strategy. But it’s true that any programme can get a little tired from time to time – and revamping your loyalty programme with the latest best practices shows your commitment to customers and can result in increased visits, spend and retention.
So how do you know it’s time to revamp your loyalty programme? Here are the 4 signs:
- Your hit-rate for enrolment is dropping
- Discounts are being over-used.
- You’re not offering more than discounts
- Your scheme is conflicting with your corporate objectives
1. Your hit-rate for enrolment is dropping
Does this sound familiar? You’re just not enrolling as many loyalty members as you once did, and the share of transactions are dropping it may indicate that members are no longer motivated to visit. low enrolment could mean new customers aren’t interested, or promotion efforts have decreased. Your programme should aim for a minimum of 15% penetration.
2. Discounts are being over-used.
Generic one-size-fits-all marketing campaigns are no longer effective. Customers want personalised rewards that show a brand understands their needs. Over using discounts can also hurt your bottom line and damage customer relations. Segmenting your audience is key to delivering relevant rewards and maximising revenue.
3. You’re not offering more than discounts.
Your loyalty programme should provide a compelling return on investment and enable targeted promotions to drive sales and solidify your brand identity. If it’s not doing so, it may need to be revised.
4. Your scheme is conflicting with your corporate objectives
.As products, concepts, and priorities change, it’s vital that your loyalty programme aligns with corporate goals. If your programme isn’t rewarding the behaviour you’re trying to encourage, it may require modifications.
If you notice these symptoms, you need to review your programme design to make sure it’s fit for purpose and can do the job you want it to do.
The ideal situation is to combine your epos software system with a customer experience platform to enable a deeper knowledge about your guests and their behaviours. This enables your restaurant to encourage them to join your community and reward them for loyalty, and helps you enhance a customer’s lifetime value.
Using restaurant technology to encourage loyalty
With the latest restaurant epos software and a customer experience platform at your fingertips, you can combine data and marketing automation to provide the satisfying personalised journey for your guests that drives up repeat business and ambassadorship.
It means you can tailor your digital marketing to the customer’s behaviour and spend, and omnichannel marketing campaigns that will reach them effectively can be devised and implemented quickly.
Combining the power of epos and customer experience is powerful, and makes loyalty an enticing prospect for customers, giving them more ways to enrol with more promotion types. Many restaurants who do this say their guest participation is an impressive 50 – 70%.
In addition, your restaurant epos software will be hard at work enhancing your customer service with tableside ordering and payment, kitchen automation integration and better stock and labour control. It all adds up to a superb customer experience – and makes sure they love you back.
