HOW RESTAURANT LOYALTY SOFTWARE HELPS YOU UNDERSTAND AND ENGAGE CUSTOMERS

Restaurant Loyalty Software is mundanely used by the big players in the QSR segment like Burger King and Dominos. To get users to download their mobile app, [a great vehicle for all things loyalty], Burger King made users travel to McDonalds to order 1-penny Whopper Burger. Dominos opted to add bonus points when users eat ANY pizza: from competitors, or even homemade.

The global loyalty management market is set to reach $17.65 billion by 2028 at an astounding 7-year CAGR of 12.3% according to a report from ResearchAndMarkets.

In an industry with low margins and limited local demand, the competition for a customer becomes personal — and personalized. Quite naturally so. In fact, restaurant visitors frequent a place 35% more after they become part of its loyalty program. Furthermore, 49% of customers agree that they spend more after becoming a brand program member.

In this article we will look at  how restaurant loyalty management software helps businesses acquire new customers, retain old ones and drive average check up.

What is Restaurant Loyalty Software? 

Loyalty Management Software for Restaurants are on-prem or cloud-based solutions that help F&B businesses subscribe, monitor, and engage clients in order to drive brand loyalty. On the customer end, this solution usually takes the form of a mobile app, while the business-facing part can be executed as a module of restaurant management software or a standalone software system. 

Loyalty tools are often integrated with POS, CRM, marketing tools, and accounting software.

Why is a Loyalty Program so Important in the Restaurant Industry?

Loyal visitors are frequent visitors, who are wholesale buyers in the restaurant scale of things. Any business wants to deal with wholesale buyers at retail rates, right? 

The seven reasons below explain why brands spend millions in developing their loyalty programs and directing digital transformation budgets into restaurant loyalty program software.

1. Drive New Customer Acquisition Through Mobile App Downloading Campaigns

Customer acquisition is a pricey process in marketing. In the example mentioned above, Dominos passed on the opportunity to advertise during the SuperBowl in favor of encouraging customers to download their app by promising points for photographs of pizza. The SuperBowl ad campaign is a $5 million exercise for brands. And the math of Dominos promo proves that they are genius marketers!

In 2022, mobile apps are the client-facing interface of the restaurant loyalty system, while physical cards are becoming obsolete.

2. Use Loyalty Program As Retention Method

Loyal clients are 50% more likely to try new products and spend 31% more than new ones.

Once a food operator gets customer’s data, it’s easier to bring them in for a second visit. Loyalty managers can offer a personalized discount for the meal of their choice during the first visit or email them an offer for the nearest big date, like Valentine’s Day, or Father’s Day.

3. Increase Visits per Month

Some loyalty campaigns can be designed around driving more foot traffic to your doorstep in the nearest time.

Try offering a time-limited discount or coupon via your restaurant mobile app notifications center. For example, customers who usually make 2 visits a month could receive a deal with an expiration period of 10 days and those who only come once a month get a deal lasting 2 weeks. 

4. Fill Your Off-Peak Hours and Days

Happy hour is still a thing in 2022. So are happy days. And happy months. 

While happy hour practices are obvious, some locations have a very distinct seasonality, with 9 out of 12 months being low times. This is when the locals become the coveted target of marketing efforts and a special tier of loyalty can be used for those who live nearby via a loyalty app.

5. Turn Regulars Into Advocates With Personalized Offers

Brand advocates are the most eager WOM marketers and personalized offers can create that kind of bond.

In this case, the granularity of communication can boil down to individual messages from a restaurant owner, or a default booking of a favorite table by a manager with a casual reminder note in the app: “Your seaview missed you too. Fri, 7 PM, as usual.”

6. Own Those High-Budget Birthday Orders

Your birthday is the time to spoil yourself — it’s not the time to hold back.

This is why restaurant marketing experts fight fiercely for this piece of business. Sending a string of emails or in-app notifications offers with a birthday party can be scheduled as early as a month away from a special date with weekly follow ups.

7. Bond With Your Customers

Relevant and timely deals delivered in an un-spammy way and light tone of voice create loyalty and a connection with a brand. Personalization helps connect the dots in the customer journey, creating a strong bond that other brands will have a hard time breaking. Loyalty technology can enable all that and more.

Promotion Matrix for Restaurant Loyalty Software 

Dev.Pro’s veteran software engineers have been contributing to the development of multiple applications in the realm of restaurant tech for a major US client. We have designed this Promotion Matrix based on our experiences as a way of aiding loyalty and marketing professionals. 

You can mix and match types of rewards, activities, and restrictions to come up with the best deal for your clients:

Types of Rewards

• Points [single, double, triple]
• Complimentary dish or drink 
• Discount [% value or $ monetary value]
• Experience [wine tasting, private party access]
• Premium access to a favorite table 
• Privilege to jump the reservation line 
• Free parking, valet service
• Free delivery

Restrictions On Loyalty Deals

• By time [from 16 to 18, on Mondays, in winter, in the next 10 days]
• By number of people [for companies of 4+, valid for romantic dinners of 2 persons]
• By occasion [Valentine’s Day, birthday, wedding, anniversary, bachelorette party]
• By age [available for kids only, only for 18+, only for senior guests]
• By affiliation to a group [for medical servants, for students, for tourists, for locals]
• By budgets [on bills of $XXX+, for select premium alcohol]
• By frequency [every second visit, for the third visit in this month, every 10th lunch]

Activities To Encourage in Customers:

• For posting on social media
• For eating a certain dish
• For buying an item
• For taking a picture
• For leaving a review
• For referring a friend
• For personal pick up
• For eating in or out
• For downloading an app
• For signing up to loyalty program
• For scanning a code

If we missed some of the activities, rewards or restrictions in this matrix, feel free to reach out to our team and let us know. 

Loyalty Software Features: Evergreen and Novel Approaches

As software development companies employ more cutting edge technology to make things scalable, secure and fun to use, expect more gamification, AI and big data to be used across the board, including in restaurant customer loyalty software.

Member Portal

A user-friendly intuitive module to register an account, overview history, available promotions and redeem points.

Administrative Portal

This application allows users to create promotions, register loyalty cards, assign values to points, create redemptions mechanisms, check out campaign stats and everyday status quo in dashboards, and assign roles to different corporate users. 

Customer data is subject to strict regulations like GDPR, while financial data is protected by PCI rules, and corporate data is of high value as intelligence for marketing strategies. That’s why authentication and security are critical features.

Loyalty Cards

Some customers still prefer physical loyalty cards to the digital ones, so a software solution may have a feature that deals with ordering, assignment, shipping, tracking, and upgrading. 

Loyalty Program

Loyalty program features can be designed to contain a number of categories, like points and coupon management, digital punch card, referral bonuses, and description of tiers for the client.

Activity Tracking

Activity tracking features can be used to trace, monitor, analyze and even direct the customer journey across multiple channels, including websites, mobile apps, by physical scanning of the QR codes, or even use of RFID beacons in a restaurant.

This wealth of data is the hard currency in the marketing and loyalty realm, which boosts average check, visits and brand loyalty.

Promotional Engine

This loyalty application module may take different shapes and include all or some of these below features: coupon, rewards, gift card management, as well as referral tracking and rewards catalogs.

Gift Card Management

Gift cards can be created, purchased, or redeemed for accumulated points in loyalty management systems. The benefit of digital gift cards is that they can be issued for any amount convenient to the buyer or even a certain experience, like a romantic candlelit dinner for two.

Coupon Management

Coupons can appear in a user’s profile as they earn them by doing specific activities or if there is some kind of marketing promotion, like a welcome or birthday coupon.

Membership Management

Membership management feature is useful for multi-tier loyalty schemes. With this feature, different promotions and deals can be given to users at different tiers. Administrators can overview member profiles by specific segments, tags, and locations for analytical and targeting purposes.

Customizable Rewards Management

Rewards offered by a loyalty program can take different forms, including redeemable monetary equivalents, points, and even personalized perks like access to private dinners. Customizability of the features allows loyalty professionals to get the most personalized and timely offer in front of a client.

Referral Tracking

Referral programs have made many companies popular overnight. Specifically if your product is good enough to be recommended for free, it can definitely be recommended for some benefit too. This is the best promotional method – Word on Mouth on digital rails.

On the administrative side, corporate users should be able to assign values for 1 referral, see statistics, and get double points to the best performer. Customers, on the other hand, should be able to create a personal referral link, send it and watch their referral bonuses grow.

Rewards Catalog

Rewards catalogs will usually be displayed on the home screen of the user interface of the restaurant loyalty management tool, offering all accessible perks with limitations and restrictions clearly marked.

There can be coupons or points for sharing a deal on Facebook or Pinterest, for bringing a friend, or purchasing a dessert during the dinner.

Recommendation Engine

One of the advanced features that can be implemented if you develop a loyalty software system for restaurants from scratch is the recommendation engine. AI can help admins connect the dots by monitoring trends.

If a person orders a tiramisu on weekends, a discount offer for this item for weekdays may help drive average check. 

Or if data shows that males aged 40-50 are 70% more likely to order steak as their main meal for dinner, a complimentary parmesan gratin to go with it may attract more people on lower-traffic weekday nights.

RFM Analysis

The RFM analysis [Recency Frequency and Monetary Value] embedded in the loyalty management solution helps drive data-based promotional decisions for the company.

Reporting and Analytics

Data visualization techniques in 2022 make the most complex information comprehensive and clear at a quick glance to a newbie. All roles with access to specific data sets can spot the biggest successes and budget flops, single out the most promising segments, and ultimately provide the most relevant deals.

Integrating Your Restaurant Loyalty System

If your solution is a self-functioning standalone piece, or just a module embedded as part of a restaurant management system, you will need to further integrate it with other tools for the best ROI.

• Website 
• Mobile application
• POS
• CRM
• Restaurant management solution
• Email marketing automation system
• Marketing software
• Payroll solution [if you use the system for employee loyalty management too]
• Accounting system
• IoT devices & peripherals
• Business intelligence & reporting
• Cloud infrastructure

The type of integration will depend on your existing deployment, cloud providers, current IT infrastructure, and architecture. However, two-way sync via API is most commonly used in modern system integration projects.

Custom Loyalty Software Development vs. Vendor Solutions

Getting a ready-made SaaS loyalty tool at a monthly subscription is quick and cheap. Nonetheless, market leaders who value customer insights and keep reinventing the industry, may opt to develop a loyalty management solution from scratch. This approach gives them flexibility to customize any feature the way they want, offer out-of-the-box rewards, customize design, and integrate loyalty nurturing tactics as early in the customer journey as possible.

Naturally, there’s plenty of advancements to enter the realm sooner rather than later in the shape of technologies like AI, AR, VR, big data, and IoT. Gamification and personalization trends will drive the evolution of loyalty management going forward fuelled with that tech.

Dev.Pro has been catering to a number of US clients with leading positions in their industries, including the software products for hospitality and restaurant industry. Check out our portfolio to get a glimpse at our expertise or reach out to speak to our sales team.