Increase Customer Loyalty With Restaurant Loyalty Programs: 4 Tips
This article will discuss how you can increase customer loyalty with loyalty programs. Your restaurant loyalty program is one of your biggest assets. If it is viewed as just another commodity in the eyes of your diners, there is no incentive for them to pick your restaurant over any other. This is why you need to boost the number of active users in your restaurant loyalty program in a means to increase customer loyalty. But how, you might ask. Well, we have 4 tips for restaurants to create a sustainable loyalty program. This will ensure your diners remain active in the long run.
Increase Customer Loyalty By Making It Easy To Get Started
Changing consumer behaviour is challenging, particularly when the alternative is cumbersome and requires a huge amount of effort. The initial steps to sign up for your restaurant’s loyalty program need to be incredibly effortless. Habits are much easier to form if the work to get started is minimal.
Integrating customer loyalty with credit card payments is more accurate for collecting customer data than punch cards. You should enable your diners to opt-in to your loyalty program as soon as they reach the payment screen. This can seamlessly boost adoption for your restaurant’s reward program.
Ensure employees ask diners to sign up before they exit the POS. This means your restaurant will have more of a chance to solidify a new loyalty member right than and there. You should ask them to make every effort to ensure they sign up while your diner is at the register.
Increase Customer Loyalty By Including A Tiered Points System
This is a really great idea for a loyalty program. For example, Starbucks do the My Starbucks rewards. This is where members earn stars for each payment or mobile transaction they make with their Starbucks Card. This means they can redeem for custom offers and free drinks and food.
The coffee chain includes a tiered reward system. In other words, customers can earn better rewards depending on how frequently they visit the Starbucks store. Starbucks incentives its members to upgrade their membership tier to receive these exclusive rewards. However, they also create a sense of urgency. This is because they only give customers twelve months to accumulate their stars to get up to the next tier.
Using a tiered rewards system can greatly benefit your restaurant. This is because it builds a community of highly committed diners who are in it for the long haul. It is essentially a never-ending points system. One that works to reassure your customers that they will receive their rewards whenever they get around to it.
Increase Customer Loyalty By Acknowledging & Tracking Progress
This relates to customers that are members of your loyalty program already. When they visit and leave your restaurant, you can send them an email receipt. In the receipt you can tell them how much more they need to spend to unlock their next reward. This feeling of having made progress can motivate customers to visit sooner to receive their reward. The perception of progress has a big effect on our brains. If you do not acknowledge your diners’ progress, they may feel indifferent about visiting your restaurant. Alternatively, they may lose their commitment to you.
Offer Relevant & Valuable Rewards
A crucial way to incentivise diners to come back to your restaurant and gain points is to offer rewards. Offer rewards that align with their particular tastes. In short, give the people what they want! For example, you could offer rewards to the theme of your restaurant. Try to think of creative non-monetary rewards. This will work to ensure diners gain a sense of involvement with the core brand. Monetary rewards of course can be hugely effective in the short-term. However, non-monetary rewards will instill a far more authentic and lasting form of loyalty for your restaurant.
Conclusion
This article discussed how you can increase customer loyalty with loyalty programs. Diners vote with their wallets. They adore loyalty programs. However, they will soon forget about them if there is no call or incentive to become an active loyalty member. Therefore, tackle this barrier and work towards creating an inventive. Then, personalise your restaurant loyalty program so that it is easy to use and even easier to join.
