We’ve gone on about providing you with Customer Data. But why is that important? What do you stand to gain from it? And more importantly, how do you use the data provided to you in the best manner?
It’s a no-brainer that a restaurant should own all their consumer data, however, more often than not, they struggle to retrieve this information. Believe it or not, customer data is extremely hard to come by and is in massive demand. Basic consumer information like their names, email addresses, phone numbers, order history, etc. can give you an insight into who they are along with the right ammo to retain them.
Based on this information received, you can grow and strengthen your consumer base exponentially by putting a focus on loyalty programs, reward systems, discounts, personal touches to orders and much more.
Here are 5 ways in which you can use customer data to benefit and grow your business:
1. Curate a better marketing strategy -
With enough and more information about your consumers, you can tailor marketing strategies to target specific sets of them based on their preferences, order and spending patterns, demographics and more. With Thrive’s solution, groups of consumers are segmented for you using behavioural data and targeting them with specific campaigns. You can also create custom audiences and lookalikes of these on Facebook via the Thrive dashboard, and much more. This creates a sense of personalisation, where you reach out to your regular customers with timely communication and with items or offers that they’re most likely to order again or redeem. With the other tools available on your business dashboard, like the sales performance overview, you can forecast and project what your upcoming days, weeks, and months may look like. Average order values, net sales, number of orders, count of customers, and much more. These inferences will also allow you to curate a better marketing push basis the slow and fast months.
2. Strengthen customer relationships -
When you have the purchase habits and preferences of consumers in front of you in a quantifiable form, it becomes much easier to visualise ways to enhance your relationship with them. You can use Thrive’s CRM (Customer Relationship Management) tools to hone a loyalty program, offer incentives and rewards, and allow your customers to partake in referrals as well. Encouraging off-hour visits, spontaneous as well as personalised discounts, preferences, and more can help reinforce a regular customer base for your business. Looking at ‘order density’ on your business dashboard, you can also retrieve an overview of the best performing hours of your day, days of the week, weeks within a month, and months of the entire year. This aids in critical insight into consumer behaviour, and you know exactly when to spike up promotions and offers. Additionally, you can also strengthen your relationship with customers by reposting and repurposing user general content. Apart from the obvious, aka responding to DMs and comments, you can repost customer-generated content on your social handles. Along with a sense of gratification that the customer receives, you also amplify your reach via these redirections.
3. Optimise your menu -
The end goal of understanding the average preferences of customers helps you curate and optimise your menu to reflect just that. It tells you which items and ingredients work, and the ones that don’t. This way, you can manage your inventory effectively and put focus on profitable choices that are receiving optimum traction from consumers. Using Thrive’s feedback inclusion, you can also monitor the performance of your dishes on the regular, and any new additions you make to your menu. On Thrive’s business dashboard itself, you can view an item-wise performance, which gives you a summary of the count of units of each menu item sold, the subsequent revenue generated, and how it contributes to your total sales. If changes are made to your menu, don’t miss out on communicating them with your customers. Talk about the different aspects of your menu, whether new dishes, chef’s specials, or crowd favourites. Let your customers know which dishes to try out the next time they visit your restaurant, based on their preferences and overall palette. This communication can be carried out effectively via social media, giving you instant feedback and responses from your customers.
4. Identify the most effective channels of communication -
When you’re communicating directly with consumers, it’s easier to gather which channel works best for them. This way, you can optimise your marketing channels in a way where you put more emphasis on those which work for your customer base. Through Thrive’s in-built marketing suite, you can generate campaigns using SMS, email, WhatsApp, Facebook and Instagram. Depending on the demographics of your audience, and content consumption patterns, you can place campaigns on those platforms that are most utilised by your consumers. Along with the channel, the spokesperson makes a massive impact on your customers. A sense of personalisation comes into play when the chef of a restaurant speaks directly to customers. Identify who this spokesperson is for your brand, and define a communication strategy that is inclusive of the staff at your restaurant.
5. Bring back lost customers -
What sounds like a lot of work, is not much at all. Bringing back lost customers is relatively easy when you have their data with you. Communicate to know what went wrong with their experience at your restaurant, and work on a buy-back program for the ones lost. You can do this by sharing sporadic recall messages (that may include personalised discounts and rewards), or tailor making an offer specifically for them, based on their experience. For example, if they didn’t take a liking to a certain dish on your menu, you can ask them to give you a second shot with that dish (after understanding what aspect they didn’t like about it). In addition to this, you can understand the contribution of new and returning customers to your business via Thrive’s business dashboard. This will give you an insight into new, repeat, and lost customers as well, and you can activate automated engagement to work on retention.
These are just a few ways in which you can use customer data the right way. If this content interests you, and you want to know more about the usage and optimisation of your data to serve your customers better, reach out to us and let us know! We’ll build up a more elaborate piece based on your feedback. Till then, keep Thrive-ing.