Crafting Creative and Values-driven Loyalty Programs
In a competitive landscape, there’s little doubt that loyalty programs are a powerful tool for restaurants, ghost kitchens, and delivery services. Any additional motivation you can provide consumers can give your brand an edge.
Discount-based rewards programs can help your food business in the short term, and memorable loyalty programs can bring in freshly loyal customers. To achieve this, a creative or values-driven loyalty program is an excellent addition to your brand’s rewards or discounts.
Take an Intentional Approach
Part of the attraction of discount-based programs is that they’re easy to implement. This can make them highly effective for restaurant owners or food service entrepreneurs who need to get new customers in the door. Offering additional, exclusive rewards as part of a loyalty program gives your customers a reason to stick with your brand instead of another restaurant down the street with no loyalty rewards.
If you’re going to be creative — and potentially successful — with your loyalty program, you must be intentional about its design and impact. You’ll tend to find this approach is more conducive to cultivating a system that better represents your unique value proposition in the local market.
You must:
Set aside some time to strategize your route forward. Gather quality data on your customers and what they value about your company and loyalty programs. Utilizing a delivery or rewards digital app that collects user data may provide you with some insights here.
Develop a solid creative brief that establishes a clear vision for the aims of the loyalty program and who it’s targeting. Outline the problem you’re trying to solve with creative solutions and the timeline for implementation, and clarify the scope to avoid it becoming muddied with additional ideas and needs. Ensure there is information in the brief about how the program should creatively represent the brand, meet consumers’ needs, and stand out from the competition. You can then provide this to your marketing team and other contributors.
Involve members of staff from all levels of the organization to contribute ideas. Every member has their own experiences and perspectives of your business’s relationship with consumers. Utilize these to shape your program.
Dedicate a decent budget to the process and the outcomes. This doesn’t have to be a debilitating amount. However, you may find that committing substantial capital to this project both enhances the quality of your scheme and provides motivation for quality outcomes.
Experiment with Experiences
Discounts, merchandise, and prizes are all good parts of loyalty programs. However, they’re not the only elements of a creative system that can make an impact. One option to consider as well is exclusive experiences for your loyal patrons. This can be particularly resonant with specific demographics, particularly millennials, who have a reputation for valuing experiences above material possessions.
So, how can experiences fit into your food services business loyalty program? You could consider:
VIP treatment: Your scheme could include tiers of enhanced service during meals. Those who reach specified thresholds could enjoy priority booking, premium house seating, and earlier delivery, among other options.
Access to tastings: It’It’srt of the lifecycle of any restaurant to change up the menu occasionally. One of your loyalty experience options could include inviting patrons to exclusive tasting sessions. Have them meet with your chef to check out samples of dishes and give their feedback. This is a great reward and can help customers feel like thethey’ventributed to your brand.
Exclusive menu extras: Access to additional items can help loyal customers feel special or part of a club. Consider offering gourmet desserts or starters only available to those who have reached certain loyalty program levels. Advertising these on your menu can also be a great way to entice customers to engage with the program.
Lean Into Shared Values
TheThere’sttle that helps customers feel more connected to a company and a willingness to build a relationship than shared values. Indeed, this component can drive spending behavior. An excellent example of this is Generation Z’sZ’sndency to make purchasing decisions based on the sustainability standards of businesses. Tying your loyalty program to your brand values can incentivize consumers to engage in more meaningful ways.
Some approaches you can take to this could include:
Making donations: Each month, your restaurant could pick a selection of charities to feature in your loyalty program. You can then utilize a points-based system in which customers who reach a certain threshold trigger a donation to one of these charities. This can be an excellent way to focus your giving and encourage consumers to be active in helping to achieve donation goals.
Sustainable activity rewards: Your program can encourage environmentally conscious activity and engagement by offering rewards linked to behavior. For instance, carpooling is good for the environment as it reduces the number of vehicles on the road and is cheaper and a more social way for customers to travel. Your program could offer discounts for carpooling parties or fast-track carpooling drive-thru orders. If you have a delivery app, you could provide additional points for customers willing to wait a little longer so that delivery drivers can take multiple orders out at once, reducing fuel emissions.
Community initiative engagement: Your loyalty program could include a separate reward or additional points for consumers involved with specific community programs. You could tie rewards to evidence of engaging in coastal cleanups or food drives. If you spearhead some qualifying initiatives, this may have an additional impact (and make it slightly easier to implement).
Conclusion
A practical, forward-thinking loyalty program is also a fantastic way to keep customers engaged. Give your marketing and program development team the creative brief, data, and resources to improve your loyalty game. Consider what rewards could impact the most: cash back, exclusive experiences, or benefits tied to values.
Remember, though, that this is unlikely to be something you get right the first time out of the gate. Take the time to thoroughly assess your rewards program, utilizing data from your delivery and rewards apps and surveys you issue to customers. Keep finding ways to make improvements that keep your restaurant a creative player in your part of the sector.
