February 22, 2023 | Posted in Analytics, Apps, Branding, Digital, Email Marketing, Loyalty, Rewards, Strategy | By

You’ve set up a loyalty program for your restaurant and your customers are excited about earning points and unlocking unique rewards. But as you soon realize, there’s a lot more to running a successful loyalty program than just enabling your app or software and setting up reward codes.

A rewards programs takes research, strategy, implementation tactics, and much more to make sure you have the best chance of driving customer engagement with your loyalty program.

Read on for insights into how you can drive engagement by using data and analytics in your restaurant loyalty programs.

Set Goals and Objectives for Your Restaurant Loyalty Program

Your goal for a restaurant loyalty program is to make it easy for your customers to earn points, redeem points for rewards, and stay engaged with your brand and for you to collect and use the data from your program to be smarter with your business decisions.

This goal will inform your strategy and tactics, so you know what to prioritize and what to avoid. Your objective for your restaurant loyalty program should be to create a long-term relationship with your customers while setting up your program with the right incentives and rewards to make sure that your customers stay engaged with your brand for the long haul.

When setting goals for your program, you’ll want to think about the following:

  • What are your current customers’ demographics?
  • How much value are they getting from your program?
  • What are their retention rates?
  • What are their overall engagement rates?
  • What is your market share? Do these numbers align with what you expected?

Use Data to Understand Who You Want to Engage With

Data is crucial to kicking off your loyalty program, but it will only get you so far. As you begin to use data to understand more about who you want to engage with, you’ll want to think about the following:

  • What data and analytics do you need?
  • How can you set up a program that allows you to track and measure engagement?
  • What data and analytics should you track?
  • Why should you care?

First, you’ll want to identify who your ideal customer is, who they are, and what they do. Once you have an idea of who you want to engage with, it’s time to think about how you can use data and analytics to track them. How can you set up a program that allows you to track and measure engagement?

Track how your customers engage with your program. You’ll want to track things like:

  • How many times customers click on your rewards or sign up for your app
  • How many visits they take to your app
  • What time of day they visit
  • What other apps they use
  • What keywords they search for
  • What other marketing campaigns they engage with
  • How often your customers open your emails
  • Do they become new customers?

Develop Strategies for Driving Engagement

Now that you have data and strategies in place for engaging with customers, you can put those strategies to use. With engagement strategies in place, you can begin to think about the following:

  • What tactics do you use to drive engagement?
  • What channels are you using to drive engagement?
  • What content do you publish and share?
  • How can you make your content engaging?

There are a few different engagement strategies you can use, and they will vary depending on the type of customer you want to engage with. Some strategies you can use include:

  • Campaigns that include loyalty program offers
  • Campaigns that include social media contests
  • Campaigns that include online sweepstakes
  • Campaigns that include in-app or mobile games
  • Campaigns that include e-commerce or online shopping
  • Campaigns that include in-restaurant offers
  • Campaigns that include in-restaurant events
  • Campaigns that include in-restaurant specials
  • Campaigns that include in-restaurant events
  • Campaigns that include in-store promotions
  • Campaigns that include coupons
  • Campaigns that include location-based offers
  • Campaigns that include in-store marketing campaigns

Consider How Technology Can Help You Drive Engagement

With so many engagement strategies you can use, you may be wondering how technology can help you drive engagement. There are a few ways that technology can help you drive engagement, and they include:

  • Mobile app integrations
  • In-app or mobile games
  • QR codes
  • E-commerce integrations
  • Online sweepstakes
  • Online contests
  • Mobile coupons
  • Online shopping
  • Loyalty program analytics
  • Customer relationship management (CRM) software
  • Loyalty management software
  • Marketing automation software
  • Customer insights software
  • Email marketing

Bottom line

As you can see, setting up a restaurant loyalty program is a lot more than just enabling your app or software and setting up reward codes. It takes research, strategy, implementation tactics, and much more to make sure you have the best chance of driving customer engagement with your program. With this in mind, it’s important to know what data and analytics you’ll need, who you’ll engage with, and how you’ll drive engagement.

More about Bernie…

Senior Director, Consumer Media Group at Confluent Health – Growth marketing focus on brand awareness, interest and new patient acquisition to our 44+ partner brands and 530+ locations across the US. Accountable for driving yearly business results supported by our consumer strategy and direct-to-consumer roadmaps. The Media team is responsible for owned and paid media as it relates to performance marketing, campaign management, partnerships, website development & support, search engine optimization, relationship marketing, Yext (Google My Business) support, recruiting, email marketing and supporting our partners at the local level.

Chief Cheese – Strategy & Engagement at B2The7 – Helping brands Reach, Retain & Regain customers with Omni-Channel data-driven strategies and tactics that focus on increasing sales, transactions, comps and customer engagement.

B2The7 Photography – Sharing experiences with photography: nature, landscapes, sunsets, flowers, animals and more.

Helping job seekers & recruiters daily…Founder of Careerbarn.com – Bringing jobseekers and employers together since 2000.