How To Build An Effective Restaurant Customer Loyalty Program

It is a long-standing truth in the business world that retaining a customer is far less expensive than acquiring new customers – and this is especially true in the restaurant industry.

Alongside advertising designed to draw in new business, every restaurant needs to focus effort on getting patrons to continue coming back in the future.

An easy method to obtain more return business is to run a customer loyalty program that rewards customers and incentivizes them to come back. However, this program needs to be set up and managed properly to reap the benefits of increased sales.

And while there are many obstacles to creating an effective restaurant customer loyalty program, there are a few steps you can take to improve your chance of success.

Use Your Point-Of-Sale System To Simplify Signup

Most cloud-based POS systems like Toast and Mobilebytes make it easy to enroll and track customer loyalty programs.

Tableside and countertop tablets allow guests to quickly and easily register for programs when they pay their bill. The native loyalty programs also make it easy for guests to access their loyalty account to keep up with unlocked rewards.

Customize your program to offer points that have a specific dollar value, create unique reward milestones, offer specific menu items at discounted prices and more! The integrated loyalty programs in cloud POS systems make it simple to set up and manage a custom restaurant loyalty program.

Make It Easy To Get Rewarded

One of the quickest ways to turn consumers off to the idea of enrolling or utilizing a loyalty program is to create unnecessary barriers. Be sure your offers are enough to encourage people to pick your restaurant over competitors.

While it may be counter-intuitive that you will earn more by giving stuff away, customers with rewards to burn will typically spend 10-15 percent more per transaction. Additionally, they are far more likely to return to spend more in the future.

Don’t let the idea of freebies impacting your bottom line get in the way; you’d be surprised what the effect of increased traffic can be.

Promote The Customer Loyalty Perks

You can have the most incredible loyalty program in the world, but it won’t do you any good if your customers don’t know about it. Exclusivity isn’t your goal here; you want as many people as possible participating.

Make sure your servers bring up the benefits when guests are checking out, include signage in your restaurant that highlight rewards, use social media to promote your loyalty program, offer additional incentives for opting-in, etc.

The more people you can get signed up, the more business your program will generate. Get creative when it comes to marketing your rewards.

Creating an effective customer loyalty program is a simple solution to improving customer retention in the restaurant industry. Setting up and managing an effective restaurant loyalty program has never been easier; find out more about intuitive cloud POS Solutions today.

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