Customer loyalty is a major issue for all businesses, especially those in the restaurant industry. A good loyalty strategy allows a store toincrease its turnover, reduce its expenses related to the acquisition of new customers andensure its sustainability.
Customer loyalty in the restaurant industry is intimately linked to the performance of a business and must therefore be at the heart of any marketing strategy. There are many marketing levers that can be easily implemented to keep and retain customers.
How to keep your customers in the restaurant business? Our 5 tips!
1. Knowing your customer, the basis of a sustainable loyalty strategy
The first step in a loyalty strategy is to put in place tools that allow you to better know and understand your restaurant customers, especially through an omnichannel buying journey.
With these new shopping paths, your customers can:
- Order online, in theatres, or on kiosks
- Read the menu and pay for items with a QR code
- Have an online loyalty account and use your points directly in store/restaurant
This omnichannel shopping path collects data that allows you to better know and understand your customers. Each step of the sales process can be analyzed to help youidentify the strengths or weaknesses of your store.
The more information you have about your consumers' buying journey and habits, the more you can personalize your offer.
2. Personalize your offer, an essential lever for customer loyalty
The digitalization of commercial transactions pushes many consumers to look for more customized interactions in their purchases. The personalization of your offers becomes an essential lever for customer loyalty.
With the data collected in the omnichannel sales journey, you will be able to personalize your offers according to the tastes and needs of your consumers, such as:
- Offer a discount on their favorite products
- Send a gift certificate for their birthday
- Send a notification to thank them for their visit to the restaurant...
The possibilities of personalizing offers or brand messages are numerous and have a real added value in terms of customer loyalty in restaurants.
3. Build brand loyalty, not product loyalty
Building consumer loyalty in the restaurant industry is not only about personalizing the shopping experience, but also about personalizing the brand message. Customers are looking for more than just products, they want to adhere to a brand with a message and values that correspond to them.
Examples are numerous, from the traditional 100% made-in-France burger to the large Italian restaurant chain and its quality delicatessen products... Your brand message becomes a key element for loyalty.
COVID 19 has also had a real impact on consumers' desire to adhere to positive, benevolent and supportive brand messages: help for associations, short supply chain, disadvantaged labor...It's time to highlight your good deeds!
Knowing your customer, personalizing your offer and purchase path, and creating a clear and positive vision of your brand are among the essential levers for customer loyalty in the restaurant industry, but there are many others, including the most well-known: the loyalty club.
We talk about it right after 👇
4. Implementing a loyalty program, a formidable tool
The loyalty program, with its famous membership cards or vouchers, is one of the oldest tools available for customer loyalty. The more regular a customer is in your restaurant, the more benefits they will receive such as discounts, a free drink after 10 visits or other purchase rewards.
But just like the other customer loyalty tools mentioned above, it is necessary to evolve the classic loyalty program to make it more modern and especially more effective.
For example, you can digitize loyalty cards to integrate them into the shopping experience, or create a "premium club", which includes many other benefits for the best customers.
5. Integrate customer loyalty levers into your CRM
Now that you have all the tools you need for modern and sustainable customer loyalty, you need to integrate them into your management tool for intuitive and efficient use, knowing that most classic CRM software does not integrate cashiering functionalities.
Innovorder CRM meets this demand and allows you to manage all your loyalty programs in a single central database in a simple and efficient way. It generates all the necessary reports to create a loyalty program adapted to your customers.
The back office of Innovorder's CRM allows you to create your own loyalty program, tailored to your needs. You can thus set up :
- A kitty, to reward your customers for their orders
- A pre-payment solution to generate cash flow in exchange for unprecedented benefits
- Promotions, to build loyalty and acquire new customers
- A loyalty card, dematerialized or not
- Smooth communication with your customers, before and after ordering
- Precise management of your customers' orders
Go further with Splio
Splio's integration to Innovorder
Innovorder allows you to integrate Splio, a neo-retention marketing platform, on your order and checkout terminals. It's a complementary offer to our CRM that allows you to personalize your customer relationship, one of our primary loyalty levers!
As a brand, you can :
- Increase your in-store frequency
- Send location-based mobile notifications
- Automate various marketing levers, such as your email, sms, retargeting, coupon or promo code campaigns
Together, they are the turnkey solution for the implementation of all the necessary levers for your loyalty strategy. Maintaining customer experience and loyalty will no longer hold any secrets for you!
The example of Big Fernand
Big Fernand is a fast-food chain specializing in high-end burgers 100% made in France.
From its headquarters in Paris, Big Fernand manages its entire business, including its loyalty program, thanks to Innovorder.
Via its centralized back office, a few clicks are enough to set up loyalty offers and promotions on specific menus or products, either in a specific restaurant or in all the equipped restaurants.
Being able to access all the data collected on a single tool allows management to pilot its network more efficiently and to be more relevant in its decision-making.
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Would you like support in developing customer loyalty in your establishment? Contact an Innovorder consultant!
