It’s no secret that your loyal customers are the lifeblood of your business. So when a customer changes their habit of visiting your establishment, do you have a way of knowing? More importantly, can you entice them to come back?
There is an enormous amount of competition in the restaurant industry, and it doesn't take much to shift a customer’s routine.
That change in routine can result in a customer who is at-risk of churning shifting into a fully-churned customer.
When it comes down to it, if your customer isn't dining at your establishment, they are dining somewhere else.
Fortunately, there are solutions to help restaurateurs know when a customer is at-risk of churning. With these solutions, you can reconnect with your customer before their loyalty shifts to your competition. Perhaps the best way to understand customer behavior is by utilizing a WiFi marketing customer experience platform.
Automation is a tool that can make our marketing efforts efficient and more productive. It will send pre-written marketing messages to customers when they meet specific criteria set by the marketer.
Using triggers or scheduled automation, you can make marketing tasks easier.
Automation helps with tasks that may slip through if we had to rely on our memory, or when we simply do not have the time to do it manually.
When it comes to utilizing automated marketing to engage at-risk customers, Wi-Fi intelligence can provide powerful insight.
Imagine being able to identify a churning customer and send a message without having to lift a finger:
"We haven't seen you in a while and we miss you. We hope everything is well with you and look forward to seeing you soon! We'd like to offer you a free appetizer with your next meal. Hope to see you soon! Your friends at...."
More importantly than what your message says - and content does matter - is letting your customers know they are valued on a personal level.
It is also a great way to stay top-of-mind. There is absolute truth in the proverb that states, "out of sight, out of mind."
When you realize this means you must keep tabs on all of your customers to the best of your ability, the need for automation begins to take on more clarity.
When it comes to retaining customers, automation can help us with doing things better than we could without automation - at least realistically speaking.
With WiFi marketing systems, we have the ability to see whether our customer has been to our location recently, regardless of whether they log in or not.
So, when it comes to recognizing and retaining at-risk customers, those employing a WiFi marketing and analytics platform have a distinct advantage.
We only need to examine a real-case scenario to see how this applies.
Even if you manage a single-location family owned diner, you may believe you are "small enough" and have the volume to recognize and manage your at-risk patrons.
But if you consider the lost revenue from one loyal customer, not recognizing all of them can be significant.
What is the lifetime value of a customer? How many meals will they purchase over the course of time and what does that mean to your establishment?
If you are the owner or marketing director of a multi-unit franchise, you have multiple locations and losing customers can result in substantial revenue loss.
You simply do not have the luxury of being unaware of customer behavior when your competition is becoming more aware and proactive at enticing your customers to be loyal to them.
Regardless of the customer metrics you choose to track, from spending to engagement activity, recognizing pattern changes and trends is the concept that demands attention. Therein lies the needle in the haystack.
If your store serves 1,000 weekly customers alone, that's 4,000 customers a month for whom you must study behavior data, locate trends, omissions and other behavioral benchmarks.
Having a dashboard to view exactly what is happening within a specific time period is vital. You’ll be able to see frequency of visits, customer repeat rates, dwell times, individual potentially churning customers and overall churn rates.
And, most importantly, you’ll have the ability to shape customer behavior resulting in fewer churns and positive business trends.
Realistically there is no way to accurately and feasibly employ the manpower to manage such data quantities.
This is the beauty and the magic of WiFi marketing, analytics and automation.
Building an automated marketing campaign tailored to your customer behavior and your operational practices can be a huge safety net for your business.
There will always be some customers that just can't be saved – that’s just the nature of the business. But consider the many who can be saved.
This safety net will help you retain those who can be saved and that is worth every penny.
The financial and business sense (and cents) of WiFi marketing, analytics and automation is evident.
Used effectively, you will foster relationships, promote trust and benefit both your restaurant and your customers.
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