Start a Loyalty Program for Your Restaurant

The Knapp-Track Index is the major economic indicator for the restaurant industry. Even though stocks have rebounded from the economic recession, and unemployment is finally starting to fall, the sales in casual restaurants fell in every month of the first quarter of this year. To combat restrictions on consumer spending, a loyalty card program is a great way to generate interest in your diner or restaurant.

1. Rewards Must Be Significant

A staggering 58% of people prefer to eat at restaurants that have some form of rewards program. This data proves that restaurants can get more members to enroll in their loyalty programs simply by improving their offerings. However there are often obstacles to enrolling in a loyalty program. If the rewards are not significant enough, though, it will not be worth the trouble for customers to jump through all the hoops they need to in order to get enrolled in the program.

2. Make It Social

Another way to increase engagement in your loyalty program and also compile a lot of valuable data regarding your customers buying behaviors. For instance, many businesses are now allowing customers to enroll in their rewards program through their Facebook or other social media profiles. Not only does this allow easy enrollment from a smartphone, it also allows a convenient platform for dialogue between you and your customers. By connecting with your prospects through Facebook also allows for local advertising.

3. Don’t Aggravate, Aggregate

While compelling rewards are critical to the success of your program, it is also important that your process for earning points rewards is streamlined and efficient. Most companies accomplish this by allowing their customers to accumulate points that can later be redeemed for prizes and rewards. Your programs ‘currency’ needs to be easy enough for even a child to understand how it works and points accrue.

To learn how you can plan for and execute a loyalty card program to drive business to your restaurant, click here now!

Looking for Long-term Growth? Start a Loyalty Rewards Program

It is a well-known tenet of the business world that it costs more money to acquire new customers than it does to maintain existing customers. Any company that hopes to grow their business steadily into the future would do well to ponder this fact for a moment, and analyze how it applies to their current operations and marketing strategies. If your marketing department is not actively focused on building and growing relationships with your prospects and customers, you might benefit from implementing a loyalty reward program in your business.

According to recent surveys, three out of four American consumers hold at least one loyalty card to a business that they frequent. This data indicates that customers are eager to get a deal on goods and services, even if it means making bigger and more frequent purchases. Even though the customer spends more money, the fact that they are being rewarded for their purchase makes them feel better about it, and helps reduce buyer’s remorse.

In turn, this makes customers much more likely to make future purchases or recommend your products or services to their friends, family and colleagues. According to Fred Reichheld in his book, “The Ultimate Question”, this is exactly what businesses should be most concerned about when it comes to their long-term growth strategies. Every business should know or have a vested interest in finding out how likely it is that a customer will recommend the company, their products or services, to a friend.

Enter the promotional program. The value of a loyalty reward program is that they increase your customer retention rate by generating positive feelings in the customer’s mind about their purchase with your company. Promotional program data indicates that even a 5% increase in customer retention can yield a 25-100% profit increase.

To implement your own customer loyalty program, go to Vpromos.com today and get all the information you need to turn your best customers into your biggest promoters.