How to Use Omnichannel Loyalty Programs to Drive Brand Engagement

The Power of Omnichannel Loyalty Campaigns

Now more than ever customers are digitally engaging with your brand. You have the ideal opportunity to extend your outreach through omnichannel campaigns that will attract new guests and drive repeat business with your loyal customers in this new environment. 

Many brands are beginning the reopening process for dine-in, which may look slightly different for every restaurant. Creating customer trust will be paramount to delivering a successful guest experience. Brands need to focus their marketing efforts on developing messages that clearly describe operational changes and provide transparent communication that highlights new dine-in procedures designed for their safety.  

You don’t want your customers to be caught off guard so set expectations through digital marketing such as text and email campaigns, social media and your company website to help customers prepare for a new dine-in experience. Here are five key strategies for making the most of your digital communications for your restaurant loyalty programs:

 Modify Ongoing Campaigns & Messaging

• Restart any notification templates you may have delayed or stopped during the pandemic. Remind your customers they have loyalty points to redeem and more to earn with the reopening of your dine-in service. It’s also a good idea to highlight a special offer or new menu items to create further awareness around your reopening
• Revise your messaging to communicate new safety procedures and operations that are creating an streamlined customer experience

Promote Digital Ordering

Digital ordering became an essential way for customers to get food from you during the pandemic. It’s important to continue emphasizing this capability across channels. 

• Run campaigns that promote trending menu items such as family meal deals, meal kits and take-and-bake meals 
• Provide a special offer, for example, get $5 off digital orders or Double Points to your loyalty members, to encourage business and to help maintain a steady flow of customers

Highlight Contactless Features 

Minimizing contact during different points of engagement, including ordering, payment, delivery, marketing and loyalty, is part of meeting customers’ new and higher expectations. Highlight any and all parts of the process that you provide in a contactless manner. Market your ability to deliver seamless interactions that take into account your customers’ safety concerns. 

Run Social Marketing Campaigns

• Use social media broadcast posts to update customers on your dine-in reopening and new hours
• Continue to provide branded content that is reflective of your voice, even if it’s more lighthearted and playful on social media to further build your following. For example, share how-to or recipes using your menu items or remind customers in a fun way about contactless ordering and delivery
• Add additional keywords related to your reopening such as #dinelocal, #reopening, and #welcomeback

Encourage Feedback

Reward guests for providing feedback to analyze customer sentiment and help you gauge the impact of your operations and marketing. Based on your findings, realign campaign messaging on how to better approach customer needs. Also, monitor social sentiment by location to understand on a regional basis how customers are reacting to evolving changes and then modify messaging appropriately for local store marketing. 

Building customer trust comes from continually demonstrating and communicating what you’re doing to keep your customers safe and to create a contactless and meaningful experience for pick-up, dine-in or delivery. 

Learn More

You can learn more from our co-founder Sastry Penamurthy in his recent podcast with Foodable: Save Your Restaurant from Failure with Technology Tactics.

Also, check out our recent blog, Top 7 Customer Marketing Loyalty Tactics for Recovery and Reentry.