Photo of a hand tapping their phone to a credit card reader, with the UI of a Thanx Urbane Cafe stored value screen shown.

New Feature: Introducing Stored Value

The dining experience just got a whole lot smarter with Thanx. In an exciting move reminiscent of Starbucks’ payment system, Thanx has unveiled its latest innovation — Thanx Stored Value. This groundbreaking offering allows consumers to preload funds for future digital and in-store purchases, all without the need for additional hardware. No More Hardware Hassles

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Self-service loyalty editor and consumer experience example

Thanx Loyalty Designer

Make changes to your loyalty program design, rewards, and branding anytime, in real-time. With Thanx’s Loyalty Designer, restaurant marketers can fully control their loyalty program design and branding directly within the Thanx dashboard. The self-service Loyalty Designer give marketers unprecedented agility and flexibility to adapt to changes in the market – whether operational, economic, or

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Thanx Points Loyalty Engine

Thanx Rewards Marketplace

When it comes to your loyalty benefits, the traditional “spend X, get Y” loyalty program just doesn’t cut it anymore. Guests expect choice and relevance. Thanx’s Rewards Marketplace allows restaurants to offer a robust menu of perks so guests can select the perks that are most appealing to them. Super fans can select limited edition

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Meta image showing UI example of Thanx's new content management system

Thanx Content Management System (CMS)

Change the look and feel of your digital ordering UX on the fly! Restaurant websites and mobile ordering apps offer precious real estate to message brand initiatives, especially now that more consumers than ever are relying on off-premise service. But the ability to customize these interfaces is usually gatekept by external vendors or developers. With

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Screenshot from Thanx Automated A/B Testing Video

Thanx A/B Testing

Automated A/B Testing allows marketers to test targeted campaigns to any audience to find the best outcome based on real results. This includes one-time campaigns as well as automated campaigns. Want to see what it takes to get your mobile app customers to come in one more time a month? Test it! Interested in learning

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Thanx Lifecycle Marketing Automation

Resource shows that roughly 70% of first-time guests never return but guest on the Thanx platform who make a third purchase have a 10x higher likelihood of returning than those who have only made one purchase! In other words, you can drive real revenue by activating customers to a third purchase.  Thanx Lifecycle Marketing Automation

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Empty restaurant photo

14 Coronavirus Survival Strategies for Restaurants

Coronavirus (COVID-19) has already had a dramatic impact on restaurants. As of the end of the day on Monday, restaurant purchase transactions had slumped more than 42% across the Thanx network. In these difficult times, restaurants must take proactive measures to not only keep establishments safe, in accordance with CDC guidelines for businesses but also

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Oath web ordering experience

Drive direct online ordering revenue with turnkey web ordering

We’re excited to announce Thanx Web Ordering, a turnkey web ordering experience that delights guests and drives direct ordering revenue. The new web ordering experience offers an exciting alternative for restaurants looking for a more modern, brand- and food-forward experience without the heavy costs and burden of developing and maintaining a custom solution. You can

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Thanx Machine Learning visualization

Thanx announces Personalized Winback powered by Machine Learning

We’re excited to announce ML-powered Personalized Winback, an enhanced automated campaign offering for intelligently identifying and winning back high-value guests at high retention risk. The new Winback program makes it even easier for restaurants and retailers to identify and retain valued at-risk guests. Once set-up, Personalized Winback runs automatically in the background, encouraging at-risk guests

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4 Experiential Marketing Ideas for Restaurants

4 Experiential Marketing Ideas for Restaurants 

Creating experiences for your customers that they will remember can strengthen the bond they feel with your restaurant and brand. According to ATN Event Staffing, “Seventy-seven percent of marketers use experiential marketing as a vital part of a brand’s advertising strategies.” Experiential marketing can lead to an increase in customer loyalty and help you better

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memorable experiences

How to Deliver Memorable Guest Experiences

While many consumers frequent restaurants and dine-in, there’s also a growing number of people turning to third-party food delivery apps to dine at home. And while on the surface third-party delivery can be an excellent complement to your business and help you acquire new customers and drive incremental revenue, the hidden threat is less obvious.

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True Food Kitchen Launches Customer Loyalty program with Thanx

True Food Kitchen’s Secret Recipe for Personalization

True Food Kitchen is a healthy, chef-driven, seasonal food restaurant with 23 locations in 10 states. True Food Kitchen focuses on serving healthy, seasonal, sustainable, and organic food with plenty of vegan, vegetarian, and gluten-free options. True Food Kitchen also stands out because they will personalize every order per the guest’s preferences. By personalizing every

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5 customer loyalty essentials

5 Essentials for Building a Loyal Customer Base

In this post, we share five essentials to building a loyal customer base. Having a customer engagement platform in place that enables you to know who your customers are, capture important customer data and send personalized campaigns is crucial to developing a successful loyalty program.

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15 Restaurant Delivery stats

15 Delivery Statistics You Need to Know

The traditional dining out experience has changed. Consumers are trading tables and waitstaff for living room couches and to-go boxes. Fueling the change is a stream of third-party delivery apps that give consumers the ability to fulfill their every craving with a few swipes on their phone. The online ordering craze is even shaping brick-and-mortar

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Fast Casual digital marketing strategies

5 Proven Fast-Casual Restaurant Marketing Strategies

Fast-casual restaurants certainly have their own unique needs when it comes to online marketing. Since your objective is to reach a certain type of audience, you may learn toward certain digital marketing strategies. If you’re a fast-casual restaurant, here are five proven marketing strategies that will help you meet your core objectives. Explore Your Options

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fast casual marketing ideas

26 Awesome Fast Casual Restaurant Marketing Ideas

Whether you’ve got one, or multiple, locations for your fast casual restaurant, you’ve got competition for the hearts, minds, and appetites of consumers seeking a fast meal. In this post, we’ve assembled 26 ways to help your fast casual restaurant thrive…not just survive. Digital Domination With so much happening outside your brick-and-mortar walls, and with

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Customer retention tactics

5 Customer Retention Tips to Use Right Now

To generate more revenue, many merchants assume they need more customers. Research shows 44% of companies focus on customer acquisition more than customer retention, but is that the right strategy for your business? Customer retention is the new acquisition. You may be able to generate more revenue by selling to your existing customers than you

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Is third-party delivery right for your restaurant

Is Third-Party Delivery Smart for Your Business?

In today’s delivery-driven environment, your restaurant can offer delivery without having to do it on your own.  And in a fast-paced industry where offering such conveniences is essential, third-party delivery systems provide a huge relief for restaurants. The only caveat is that these services can come at a high price, especially when margins are already

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Targeted offers for Restaurants

How Targeted Offers Can Be Effective for Your Restaurant

Using targeted offers in your marketing strategy is a no-brainer. They allow you to create campaigns based on specific customer data that can increase customer engagement and create a customer who is likely to visit and spend more resulting in a higher customer lifetime value and increases to your bottom line. Think about it. Rather

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7 ingredients for pizza marketing success

The 7 Ingredients to Pizza Marketing Success

While pizzerias are wildly popular around the world, they face a myriad of challenges decreased foot traffic, to hits to margin due to third-party delivery dependencies. But you can face these challenges head-on and use them to get a bigger slice of the revenue pie as the more you know who your customers are, the

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Food waste

How Restaurants Can Combat Food Waste With Time-Sensitive Offers

It’s a global problem with an impact that makes waves far beyond your bottom line: food waste. And today, where consumers want to align themselves with socially-conscious businesses across the board that embrace their own values, along with the access to insights and information about the impact of industry waste, simply turning a blind eye

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Restaurant Marketing Tech Stack

The Power of Consolidating Your Restaurant Marketing Tech Stack

Are the average of ten to fourteen marketing systems, each with their own unique, perhaps niche, function becoming too much to handle in your restaurant marketing tech stack? While many restaurant marketing roles have become ‘all about the stack’, the truth is, your marketing stack might be hurting your customer experience. Consolidating a marketing tech

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Use segmentation to drive customer engagement

How to Use Segmentation to Engage Restaurant Customers

Targeted and segmented campaigns can drive or change customer behavior. For example, if you are opening a new pizzeria, you can build a segmented list of customers who live within a 10-mile radius from the new location and send them a personalized campaign with information and a discount during the grand opening. The more data

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The high cost of labor for restaurants

The High Cost of Labor in the Restaurant Industry

It’s no secret that the labor market can put pressure on brick and mortars. Unfortunately, the pinch isn’t letting up just yet. CNBC reports that some 20 states are forecasted to raise their minimum wages in 2019. The raise will surely put added pressure on restaurants’ bottom lines in an already competitive industry. Additionally, it’s

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How to have consistent restaurant customer experiences

Combat Inconsistent Customer Experiences In Your Restaurants

Having more than one restaurant location presents its own unique challenges. One of the greatest is maintaining consistency across every location. The best way to ensure that your various restaurant locations maintain a regular output is to set clear benchmarks within an umbrella standard that they can adhere to. If not, online ratings and reviews

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Restaurant stats you need to know

Restaurant Stats You Need Right Now

Knowledge is power. And, so is data. Staying on top of everything from industry trends to insights means empowering yourself to chart your course forward and grow your restaurant business in 2019 and beyond. In this post, we’ve captured relevant industry stats that we think every restaurant operator will find worth knowing. Industry Trends Want

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Reputation

A Restaurant Guide to Surviving the Reputation Economy

It only takes one. One customer with one negative experience who sends out one Tweet, post, Snap, or story to tarnish a reputation. Or, take down a business completely. From resorts whose reputation tanked in the wake of one disgruntled guest, to restaurants who can’t seem to grow their client base because of a couple

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The state of online ordering

The State of Online Ordering for Restaurants

The stats for restaurant online ordering certainly aren’t slowing down, in fact, 86% of consumers are using off-premise services at least monthly and companies are finding new, unique ways to re-shape the food ordering process. Because of this, third-party food ordering companies and start-ups have emerged in recent years, fighting for their share of the

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Customer referral program tips

How a Referral Program Can Benefit Your Restaurant

Word-of-mouth marketing is the most influential form of marketing to date. If a friend or family member raves about a particular restaurant, bar, or eatery, you’re most likely to respond with “I’ll have to try it!” That being said, sparking word of mouth marketing for your restaurant and reaping its benefits relies heavily on creating

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Surprise and Delight Loyalty from Thanx; photo of a spearmint gift with gold ribbon on a light pink backdrop, top aerial viewpoint

Surprise and Delight Loyalty Brings Flexibility to Rewarding Customers

Today we’re excited to announce a new addition to the Thanx suite of customer engagement and marketing automation tools. This time around we have a huge surprise (pun intended). Our latest enterprise-level program, called Surprise and Delight, helps you create stronger relationships with your customers by offering delightful, unexpected rewards. The Surprise and Delight feature

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Reimagine customer relationships

Reimagining Customer Relationships

Advances in social media, technology, and customer relationship management and software have conditioned consumers to expect personal and individualized experiences from their favorite merchants and brands. In fact, 80% of consumers say they are more likely to do business with a company if it offers personalized experiences. Also, 91% of consumers said they would be

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Credit card linkage for restaurant consumers

Credit Card Linkage: Why It’s Popular for Restaurants

Just about everything we do these days is online, from mobile banking to purchasing to signing contracts. Sharing sensitive information, such as your credit card data to a trustworthy, online entity can be safe, efficient, and convenient. With the emergence of encryption and other cyber-security measures, the information we give to a myriad of technology

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Day part and week part campaigns from Thanx

How Day-Part and Week-Part Offers Help Drive Foot Traffic

Targeted offers are the perfect way to reach the right customer at the right time, especially when it comes to driving traffic. Each customer has their own behavioral patterns and merchants can use customer data to send targeted offers that directly increase foot traffic during a specific time or part of the week. Day-part and week-part offers

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Restaurant ROI

An ROI Model for Restaurant Foot Traffic

  Restaurants have long struggled with the wax and wane of discretionary consumer spending which directly impacts how often people eat out. What if you had a predictable ROI model for foot traffic that would enable you to shorten the time between consumer visits and bring your very best customers back again and again? Data

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Q42018 restaurant sales growth increase

Does Strong Holiday Revenue Signal a Restaurant Rebound?

Is that the sound of happy restaurant owners dancing on the tables we hear? For the first time since August 2015, restaurants posted a 2% increase in sales store sales growth according to NRN.com. In this post, we’ll examine some of the factors that influenced the increase and how restaurants can keep that growth going

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4 Eatertainment Trends to Drive Foot Traffic

4 Eatertainment Trends That Get Customers in the Door

The technology era has allowed information sharing to sky-rocket. More than ever, people are sharing details about their social lives including where they are, who they’re with, and what they’re doing. Today’s connected consumers want to have an emotional connection with the places they eat, drink, and work and many of them want to share

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Is delivery costing fast casual its customers and margins

Is Delivery Costing Fast Casual Its Customers and Margins?

Food delivery is in high demand. Eighty-six percent of consumers are now using delivery services on a regular basis, according to research from Technomic. Customers can order almost anything with just a few taps on their smartphones. It’s fast and convenient, but is it costing restaurants their customers? Delivery has a dark side. There are additional expenses

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Dewey's Pizza Customer engagement

How Dewey’s Pizza Increased Revenue 20% by Engaging Customers

Dewey’s Pizza has been the place to go for pizza in Cincinnati, OH since 1998.  The popular pizza joint has been growing ever since and now has 25 locations in Dayton, Cleveland, Columbus, St. Louis, and Kansas City. Dewey’s fans love the open kitchen where they can watch their hand-tossed pizza being made with gourmet ingredients,

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How to combat declines in restaurant foot traffic

How to Combat Declining Restaurant Traffic

Is your restaurant losing customers? Well, you’re not the only one experiencing the pain. According to research by TDn2K, October restaurant traffic declined 2.2%, an 80-basis-point drop from the previous month. Interestingly enough, the same report states same-store sales increased by 0.8 percent. However, this rise in sales is largely due to restaurants rising prices, not from

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Customer reviews and feedback in Thanx

Yelp is Dead: How Customer Feedback Has Changed

Every business wants glowing reviews from customers, but that’s not always reality. These days’ customers make their feelings known on public review sites like Yelp. Merchants feel like they have two options: spend countless hours trying to manage their reputation online or ignore the site altogether, hoping it’s a passing trend like slap bracelets or

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Use Google Reviews to drive traffic to new location

Using Google Reviews to Drive Traffic to Your New Location

As most businesses grow they reach the stage of adding new locations. Opening a new location is exciting and comes with a myriad of to-dos and logistics to handle. Often, business owners forgot that they need to engage their existing customers and attract new customers when they open a new location. In this post, we’ll share

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top 10 Pizza marketing Strategies

Top 10 Pizza Marketing Strategies You’re Not Using

Pizza marketing is full of unique challenges and obstacles for pizza restaurant operators. Options for pizza have gone through the roof, from crusts to styles, ingredients, and oven types. Add in delivery, take-out, eat-in, food trucks, robot made pizza and nearly every other option and you begin to understand why you need a solid pizza

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Pizza Marketing Strategies

5 Pizza Marketing Strategies You Need to Know

The pizza market continues to grow, and the big players continue to innovate: From Pizza Hut doubling down on mobile ordering growth, to Dominos going to “zero-click” ordering, everyone is trying to leverage technology to better serve their customers while standing out from the crowd. To succeed in this environment, Here are the top five pizza marketing strategies

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Restaurant trends

Seven Themes Across the Global Restaurant Landscape

At the recent Citi Emerging Restaurant Forum in NYC, Citi Managing Director Brian Anton kicked things off with a review of some of the major trends the bank has observed across the industry. First and foremost, is a major shift in the drivers of restaurant valuations — traffic is King. Gone are the days of

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9 ways to increase foot traffic

9 Ways to Increase Restaurant Foot Traffic

¨When choosing a favorite restaurant, customers look for an inviting atmosphere, delicious food, and excellent service. While having these qualities at your restaurant is crucial to maintaining a steady flow of customers, data is a must when it comes to increasing foot traffic and ROI. How can you make sure “off hours” still draw customers in, and

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4 ingredients to increase revenue for full service restaurants

4 Ingredients to Increase Full-Service Restaurant Revenue

Customers expect great food, excellent service, and affordable prices from full-service restaurants — but even if you have all three of these things, there’s no guarantee that your restaurant will be successful and that you will drive revenue growth. Customer loyalty and engagement is crucial when it comes to increasing your revenue — the more

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Digital marketing tools for table service restaurants

15 Digital Marketing Tools for Full Service Restaurants

Full-service restaurant marketing is evolving by the minute. Today’s restaurants need sophisticated, data-backed channels to connect with guests, keep them returning, and get new faces coming in the door. Digital marketing is a fantastic way to get more out of your marketing spend and capture data-driven insights about your guests. Restaurant guests are increasingly using

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5 ways to increase same store sales

5 Effective Methods to Increase Same-Store-Sales

Same-store sales (SSS) reveal how an existing location is performing and helps business owners and investors measure sales performance over time. Same-store sales are directly connected to customer satisfaction and it’s important for operators to increase SSS over time. In this post, we’ll review what same-store sales are and explain five ways that you can

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Target customers based on location with Thanx

Target Customers with Location-Based Campaigns

Location data is a powerful tool allowing you to create highly targeted campaigns based on where customers live, work or shop to increase the relevancy of your messages. We’re excited to announce a new suite of location-based campaigns powered by location data. Boost traffic at an underperforming location It’s only natural that some locations perform

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lame customer loyalty program

5 Signs You Have a Lame Customer Loyalty Program

With an estimated 3.8 billion consumers enrolled in loyalty programs, there’s a lot of “loyalty love” going around. Merchants and consumers alike are embracing customer loyalty programs because when done well they can grow your business, reward and retain your best customers and generate incremental revenue and positive ROI for your business. While many are

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Customer engagement best practices

5 Customer Engagement Best Practices That Drive Results

Customer engagement is about building an emotional connection with your customers. More than half of merchants (54%) said that customer experience is their most important area of focus, according to Adobe. The more engaged a customer feels, the more likely they will spend more, visit more, and refer your business to their friends. In this

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The Ultimate Guide to Customer Engagement

3 Ways to Re-Engage Your Customers

When a customer breaks up with you, it’s the worst. One minute they’re happy, repeat customers and then they disappear. But, you have the power to do something about it. You can use re-engagement to bring them back and often get them spending and visiting more frequently. Bringing customers back is worth your time. Research

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Thanx v2.0: Enabling Offline Merchants to Become Data-Driven

Learn more about Thanx 2.0 here Since launching in 2011, Thanx has existed to support a lofty goal: to help offline businesses gain access to customer data, resulting in deeper relationships with their top customers and accelerated revenue growth. Now, in 2017, the need for more holistic, more actionable data has never been clearer — Brands

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social media for small business

5 Tips to Extend Your Customer Service on Social Media

This article has been reposted, with permission, as part of a content collaboration with Main Street Hub. You know how important it is to show your guests excellent customer service when they come into your business, but did you know that consumers have high expectations for business’ online customer service too? In fact, 67% of consumers now utilize networks like Twitter

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customer-data-small-business

The Power of Customer Data for a Small Business

In the middle of 2016, a Hotze Health & Wellness Center employee came back to work after breakfast at Kolache Factory and told the staff that she had just experienced the coolest, most effortless loyalty program. She thought that it was a perfect solution for their center, a collection of three wellness businesses under one

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Thanx Launches v2.0 — Loyalty Reimagined

Thanx Launches v2.0, Enabling Offline Merchants to Close the Loop on the Value of a Loyal Customer and Measure the Efficacy of Every Marketing Dollar Spent Learn more about Thanx 2.0 here October 23, 2017 – Since launching in 2011, Thanx has helped brick-and-mortar businesses build deeper, data-driven relationships with their top customers to accelerate

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Building Customer Loyalty

Building Customer Loyalty It used to be that walking into a retail establishment and being given some form of a discount, special offer, or free sample was a unique and appreciated moment. Merchants saw this as a legitimate method for building customer loyalty. Now, as customers, we expect a reward in return for our consistent

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Restaurants are suffering. Data can save them.

How restaurants can use data to stay competitive We’ve seen the same ominous headlines for the last few years — restaurant sales continue to slump as consumers shift their buying habits away from dining out.  This past July, restaurant brands reported same-store sales decreases of 2.8% according to data from TDn2K, which represents a continuous and

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Consumer Loyalty: 2017 Survey Results

Consumer loyalty matters for businesses of all sizes— industry stats indicate that increasing customer retention by 5% can increase profits by up to 95% (source: Harvard Business Review). When you think about how much more likely you are to visit places you already love than to take a risk on trying out a new business,

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Buffalo Wild Wings customer loyalty program

Buffalo Wild Wings’ Customer Loyalty Program: 3 Key Takeaways

Blazin’ Rewards loyalty program: hit or miss? Buffalo Wild Wings, known affectionately as “B-Dubs,” rolled out a pilot loyalty program in select markets across the US. “Blazin’ Rewards” awards points to customers for anything from eating at Buffalo Wild Wings to checking in with their friends. From their website:  “[the program] exists to reward you for doing what you already

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How to Win New Customers with Your Loyalty Program

Problem Solved: Referral Programs, Made Effortless with Thanxgiving By Margaret Link Thanxgiving changes the game for mobile referral programs Have you tried launching a referral program before? Was it successful? How do you know? Most referral programs lack any type of data visibility, so you can’t be confident that you’re generating any ROI. Even when you get

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customer loyalty program mistakes

How to Avoid the 3 Most Expensive Customer Loyalty Program Mistakes

Businesses love their regulars — and with good reason: research shows that 25% of customers generate almost 70% of revenue! Even with money on the line, business owners still make these 3 critical loyalty program mistakes when it comes to creating a loyalty program that actually retains customers. Avoid Common Loyalty Program Mistakes Investing in customer loyalty isn’t just the

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Revenue Weighted Net Promoter Score

Today’s guest blog covers a topic we love at Thanx — Net Promoter Score! Mickey from QuestionPro breaks down the math behind identifying your high-value customers and addressing their feedback. Net Promoter Score is only one piece of the customer data puzzle. Here’s why companies should be linking NPS results to customer transaction data —

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convenience-store-loyalty

Choosing a Loyalty Program: Why Customer Loyalty Matters for C-Stores

As convenience stores become more data-driven, the challenge of understanding and influencing customer behavior has been the toughest to crack: from the pump, to the carwash, to the convenience store, it becomes imperative to weave a common thread between many discrete transactions that happen within the same property. For this reason, most loyalty programs fail when it comes to driving real value for c-stores.

Thanx closes the data loop for convenience stores, seamlessly linking cross-property transactions and making it easy for c-store operators to track and influence customer behavior. Read on for a few key takeaways from one of our convenience store merchants on why they selected Thanx as their loyalty provider.

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Interview with Thanx at National Restaurant Association

With NRA 2017 ending today, we wanted to provide a glimpse into some of the conversations that our staff is having in the booth with restaurateurs. The beauty of Thanx is that it works for all types of restaurants, from QSR to Fine Dining. Unlike other loyalty programs, it doesn’t require additional hardware or require staff involvement. Customers simply pay as usual and the magic happens in the background.

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SMS join customer loyalty

Push Notifications vs. Email: What’s better for reaching customers?

Merchants leverage technology to communicate with their customers in myriad ways — email, text, and social media are typical approaches for a digital-savvy marketer. However, as consumers become desensitized to brand outreach, there’s one method that continues to cut through the noise and drive transactions and engagement: push notifications. Sending relevant push notifications is a great way to drive engagement and delight with your customers. Read on to learn exactly how to use this highly lucrative communication channel.

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Restaurant Loyalty

Guide to Choosing a Customer Loyalty Platform for Your Restaurant

Loyalty programs can operate as the central nervous system for your brand — collecting data, automating marketing, and gauging customer satisfaction. With so many different types of loyalty programs out there, how do you decide which platform is right for your brand? Consider these four points as you narrow down your restaurant’s loyalty technology search. …

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Dining in Is Dying Because Delivery Is Killing It

Food delivery represents a $210b market, and restaurants are scrambling to be a part of it — often to their own detriment. Facing eroding margins, food quality issues, and high fees, restaurants are fighting the shortcomings of delivery to stay profitable. To compete with delivery, restaurant brands must effectively incentivize customers to stay loyalty to the restaurant themselves — not the ordering platform. Here’s why restaurants are turning to modern loyalty programs to help them achieve that goal while driving incremental revenue.

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How C-Stores Can Fight Competition

True to the category name, everything about C-Stores is designed for convenience. They are easy to access, easy to navigate, and are typically open around the clock. But savvy owners and marketers are realizing that relying on location and convenience alone isn’t enough when you’re looking to drive revenue.

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4 Ways Convenience Stores Are Failing at Customer Loyalty

When it comes to customer loyalty, a few business verticals are known for their heroic efforts — airlines, grocery stores, and even coffee shops (with Starbucks as the shining example). However, convenience stores haven’t done a good job of building customer loyalty, even though they could benefit immensely from customer retention.

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Fine dining

How Fine Dining Can Beat Fast & Cheap

Fast & Cheap is gaining ground over Fine Dining In the age of instant gratification, “Fast Casual” is the hottest restaurant genre: just last year, Fast Casual dining grew 10.4% (a staggering $3.4 billion increase), making it the fastest-growing segment of the entire restaurant industry. These fast casual brands invest heavily in savvy digital marketing techniques to keep

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Announcing: Net Promoter Score Upgrade!

For restaurants and retailers, Net Promoter Score is the most valuable way to survey for customer satisfaction and feedback data. Unlike traditional feedback, NPS allows merchants to track customer satisfaction over time, granting them performance data across their entire brand, and all the way down to the individual store level.

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Loyalty programs and tokenization

The 2017 Thanx Awards

It’s that time of the year again — In this blog post, we turn our attention to the customers who have shown loyalty to their favorite shops and restaurants in extraordinary ways. Since everyone loves an end of year wrap-up, we present to you: The 2017 Thanx Customer Awards.

We always knew our users were the best… and our data holds the proof! As we head into 2017, we wanted to give Thanx to our super users from 2016. For the third year in a row, we’re acknowledging our outstanding Thanx-ers in our annual Thanx awards (basically the Oscars of loyalty). All of our merchants have extraordinary VIP customers, but these customers in particular really stood out. From frequency to advocacy to feedback, you’ll be amazed at how these VIPs engaged with their favorite merchant

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Loyalty programs and tokenization

How Consumers Actually Use Customer Loyalty Programs

New Survata survey data reveals how consumers interact with brands’ loyalty programs — the answers might surprise you. We broke down the most interesting stats to help merchants avoid the pitfalls of traditional loyalty programs and instead, create a program their guests actually want to use.
Most loyalty programs fail. Here’s why:

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The past, present, and future of loyalty marketing

The state of loyalty marketing today Loyalty marketing seems to be having a resurgence and it’s all being driven by an increased focus on customer lifetime value and data-driven business decisions. As a result, we’re seeing overhauls of long-standing loyalty programs to be geared more toward high-LTV customers (e.g. Starbucks and American Airlines) and we’re

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Checklist: Is your customer loyalty program working?

You’re a retention marketing superstar — which is why you’ve invested part of your marketing budget towards keeping your loyal customers happy with rewards, personalized communication, and VIP treatment. But it doesn’t stop there — not even close. Here are three ways great businesses keep their finger on the pulse of their customer loyalty program.

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driving-loyalty-program-signups

How to Supercharge Your Loyalty Program Sign-ups

A loyalty program is only as good its engaged users. At Thanx, our merchant success team focuses on maximizing three components of loyalty program success: 1) user sign-ups, 2) user retention, and 3) customer engagement. In this article, we’ll show you how we keep the sign-ups rolling in at impressive rates, even in years-old programs.

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Mobile Loyalty Programs + The Silent Guest

Thanx Merchant Partner David Igel from Dewey’s Pizza has named the problem that plagues all restaurant operators: the elusive “Silent Guest”. Read on to learn how to identify and retain this high-value group of customers before they take their business elsewhere.

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How a loyalty program can double as viral marketing campaign

On the surface, Thanx is an effortless experience for both merchants and their customers. However, behind that magic is a whole lot of math. We work tirelessly to scientifically prove that our incentive programs are generating real ROI for all Thanx merchants. Read on to see how we optimized our industry-first viral marketing campaign, maximizing social sharing and invite conversion and, most importantly, revenue.

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Dewey’s Pizza: Building a Rewards Program with Thanx

Thanx CEO, Zach Goldstein, and Dewey’s Pizza Managing Partner, David Igel, discussed how winning loyalty progams differ from the status quo. In order to retain and engage customers long-term, a loyalty program must add value — not additional steps and confusion — to the customer experience. Here’s how Dewey’s developed a restaurant marketing strategy bold enough to fuel growth, while staying consistent with their focus on hospitality and experience.

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Zip Code Marketing Research Makes Money for Small Businesses

Zip Code Marketing Research is hugely lucrative, not hard to do… yet puzzlingly underutilized. Businesses looking to understand how their customers vary across different locations can use this valuable data for anything from planning targeted marketing campaigns to buying real estate for a new storefront. While it might seem obvious that more affluent zip codes would spend more money, the results are actually way more interesting (and sometimes shocking). Like everything in marketing, personalization matters (and data is your friend).

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Car Wash Customer Engagement with Jimmy Starnes, Wash Me Fast

Figuring out how to improve customer engagement can make or break a multi-location car wash’s future. With more engaged customers, car washes see more frequent visits, higher average spend, and significantly improved lifetime value — i.e. everything required for long-term success
In this video interview, Wash Me Fast Chief Strategic Officer Jimmy Starnes explains exactly how he uses new technology to drive higher levels of customer engagement. Watch to learn specific ways that car washes can use tools like 2-way feedback and winback marketing to increase sales and maximize profit.

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Where Customer Loyalty Stands Today

Whether it’s a restaurant buying better meat to improve quality, or a car washpurchasing top-of-the-line equipment to improve satisfaction — every business decision is motivated by making customers more loyal. However,

  • If you polled 100 business owners and asked, “Do you care about loyalty?”, only 95%+ would agree, “Yes.” We should see 100% consensus.
  • If you asked these same business owners, “Do you care about retention marketing?”, maybe 60% would agree “Yes.” Should be 100% consensus.
  • If you further narrowed the question to, “Do you care about loyalty programs?”, you might see 30% in agreement. And yes, consensus here should also be 100%.

There’s only one conclusion we can draw from the above — “customer loyalty” suffers from an identity crisis.

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New Year’s Resolution — Let’s Fix Acquisition Marketing

Frequent readers of the Thanx Blog will know inside and out the benefits of customer retention marketing versus customer acquisition marketing. Essentially, paying money to attract new customers does not make sense unless you can earn repeat visits.

However, merchants continue to be misled about how the economics of acquisition affects their business. Case in point — a recent analysis of customer acquisition from ex Groupon CEO Andrew Mason, and a single reply from an ex-Groupon customer. Let’s take a look, as we unpack our second new year’s resolution about how to solve marketing in 2016 and beyond.

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The 2016 Thanx Awards

As the new year starts, it’s that time again — to appreciate what brought us joy in 2015. Our annual custom says to have a glass of something nice in one hand, and a cookie in the other, so arm yourself accordingly.

Here at Thanx we don’t miss out on any opportunity to honor our esteemed users. As we usher in the 2016 New Year, it’s time to celebrate the previous one with the 2nd Annual Thanx Awards. This year’s winners exemplify why engaging with your best customers creates a meaningful impact on your business. Without further ado, we’d like to call special attention to some extraordinary Thanx VIPs!
Commence drumroll….

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fine dining

Fine Dining Strategies for the New Year

Make no mistake — fine dining restaurants’ success comes down to building proprietary data and developing personalized marketing campaigns to drive consistent repeat business.
Of course, the execution of such a straight forward goal requires implementing several best practices relevant specifically for fine dining marketers. In no particular order, here are this year’s three most important new year’s resolutions for fine dining marketers.

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Job Shadow Shows Why Culture Matters For Silicon Valley Companies

Sometimes, it’s nice when other people validate the hard work you put in to making sure your company has a culture that puts silicon valley companies on a path toward success.
Read below to see how four Dartmouth students described the Thanx culture during a one-day visit for Dartmouth’s annual “job shadow” event. We’re proud of what we’ve built and certainly excited to see other people feel the same way.

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Improving Customer Satisfaction — Maura Feingold

Figuring out how to improve customer satisfaction can make or break the future for restaurants and retailers. With more satisfied customers, brands see more referrals, more frequent visits, higher average check sizes — everything required for long-term success.

In this video interview, Wednesday Seven owner Maura Feingold explains exactly how she uses feedback to delight customers and ensure a top-notch experience at every visit. Watch to learn specific ways that leading brands like Tomatina have transformed feedback and VIP marketing into sales-creating assets.

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Restaurants Win With Net Promoter: Bain Study

For a restaurant executive, success generally comes down to one capital “T” Truth — provide excellent customer service and customers will continue to return. Generally, the last mile after top-quality food and atmosphere remains the same — add a personal touch to guests’ experience, often by visiting them at the table as they dine.

Unfortunately, executives managing multiple locations simply cannot be in more than one place at the same time. That’s the challenge tackled in a podcast from Rob Markey, partner at Bain & Company, Co-author of “The Ultimate Question 2.0,” and host of the Net Promoter System Podcast

Click here to find out how restaurant chains are discovering the special sauce of Net Promoter feedback. You can see a summary of the conversation below.

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Loyalty programs and tokenization

Tokenization – Your Credit Card’s Best Friend

When Apple Pay came out last year, one technology stood out from the rest during Eddy Cue’s presentation on Apple Pay’s security: tokenization. In one fell swoop, Apple had a solution to solve the challenge of getting consumers to register their credit cards with Apple Pay.

Today, with the rise of card-linked offers technology, the use of tokens has started popping up in more and more consumer apps and experiences. Let’s take a look at exactly what these developments mean and how this technology protects consumers and their credit cards.

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Apple Wallet & Loyalty

In what’s quickly become one of the nation’s favorite Fall events, this year’s Apple Dog and Pony Show had all eyes and ears on the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium in downtown San Francisco. With upgrades to the iPhone, iPad, and Apple TV headlining, we were of course extremely excited to dive into what Tim and Co. had *ahem* cooked up, especially any and all “one more things.”

Consumer fanfare aside, Apple also faces tremendous pressure to deliver innovation for merchants — especially this year. Make no mistake — Passbook seemed interesting as a concept, but failed as a product. Apple Pay received praise as a concept and product, but it’s still early. With Google Wallet, Samsung Pay, and other major players grappling to carve out market share, Apple needs to continue pushing merchant innovations forward.

And that’s where loyalty comes in. To overcome the chicken and egg paradox inherent in launching a mobile payments platform, consumers and merchants both need strong incentives to adopt a new technology. Let’s look at where Apple stands, and what we can expect from the company going forward.

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Customer loyalty for car washes

Top Car Wash Tips To Get Customers’ Engines Revving

Making mobile marketing work at a car wash is now within reach. Here are the top marketing car wash tips to improve customer relations and drive sales results.

For any car wash business operator, one of the biggest frustrations is how building personal relationships with a handful of customers seems imminently possible, but buildilng similar connections with all customers seems near impossible.

The reality is that customer relationships are complicated. It’s not like the old days, when heading to the car wash was somewhat of a fun outing with the kids or a laugh with friends. Nowadays, car wash owners are vying for the attention of their customers in a much different world — a mobile world. And though it might seem like an intimidating world of technology out there, with customers spending 24 hours a day, 7 days a week on their phones, a better strategy is to embrance new tech for the amazing opportunity it can be. Let’s look at how to make the car wash experience fun and engaging again, but through the medium that has everyone glued — mobile!

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Card-Linked Offers Technology: Growing with Momentum

When a new technology emerges, a few early-adopters dabble but the vast majority stays on the sideline, naturally dubious. Inevitably, if that technology solves a real, painful problem with the status quo, others quickly jump in to give it a try – they view it as a risk worth taking. It is with the success of these first waves of experimenters that the technology becomes mainstream and the average consumer or business recognizes the obvious advantages of making a switch. This is the story of Geoffrey Moore’s Crossing the Chasm.

In the real world, of course, it can be hard to identify where an innovation sits in this technology hype cycle. One important indicator of forward progress is the commencement of analyst coverage – simply put, industry analysts don’t waste their time speculating. They spend their research resources on truly game-changing innovations that have begun to blossom.

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Customer Relationship Marketing Fuels Shenaniganz Growth

Shenaniganz, a Dallas-based family entertainment center with bowling, laser tag, miniature golf, go-karts, and other attractions, was accustomed to seeing huge spikes in customer traffic during vacation breaks and holidays. The company’s marketing team suspected that these spikes occurred because most customers only visited on special occasions, and thus sought a solution for garnering more regular visits and visitors.

Rather than working off of speculation alone, Shenaniganz commissioned an in-depth analysis of customer behavior. Their results were remarkable: 52% of customers had only visited one time and over 86% of customers had not returned in 4 months. Armed with this staggering insight, Shenaniganz implemented a data-driven customer relationship marketing and rewards program with the goal of increasing sales and customer satisfaction.

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Talking Loyalty Apps at MobileBeat

At this year’s MobileBeat, the exclusive mobile conference from leading tech publication VentureBeat, Thanx CEO Zach Goldstein took the stage to discuss the future of apps, and how Thanx fits in to the big picture.

During his presentation, Zach hit on a crucially important development in the world of app usage and consumer mobile marketing: people are lazy and “no app, apps” are the future. Companies ignoring this fact will be left behind. Let’s take a look at why.

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Go Inside The App Design Mind: Thanx v3.0 Is Here

Ever wondered what it’s like to be someone who designs mobile apps? Me too.

That’s why I thought our own Jason Li’s post to the tech blog Medium,”Designing the new Thanx App,” was so cool. Reading through, you’ll get an exclusive, first-hand perspective at mobile app designers and their fascinating process.

Plus, Jason also details several of the choices our team made that led to Thanx v3.0 – an immensely proud achievement for everyone here at our company.

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Apple Pay and Loyalty

Apple has re-branded Passbook and is adding new features in hopes of one day replacing people’s wallets. If it proves a success this time round, Apple Pay and Wallet will be a permanent fixture in the pockets of every consumer and installed in businesses around the world. That’s a huge jump from where we are now, so when will it actually happen?

The convenience culture is the major driving force behind the cashless revolution. From apps that deliver food in under 15 minutes to one-click shopping on Amazon, “quick and easy” is winning the war. Looking ahead, today’s hyper-involoved payment process (e.g. pennies are still a thing) will ultimately be simplified by mobile devices. So, let’s take a look at:

  • The future for Apple Pay
  • Current gaps and issues with the technology
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How You Can Win with the Sharing Economy

You’ve seen them all in the news: Uber, Lyft, Instacart, Task Rabbit, AirBnB. Clearly, the sharing economy is booming. Consumer adoption is high, which means merchants – all merchants (especially brick-and-mortar) – must follow suit in order to stay relevant.

In essence, the sharing economy has changed the way customers and businesses interact with one another – consumers now expect instantaneous and personalized encounters each time they buy. Because customers’ buying experiences have changed, traditional marketing campaigns don’t have the same bite they once did.

However, the sharing economy does lack a few selling points that are integral to human nature (one example: familiar interactions)! While there are incredible benefits (which I will outline below), knowing more about what the sharing economy lacks presents the ideal business opportunity. Let’s take a look at how to capitalize on the sharing economy to our advantage (despite customers being more fickle than ever!).

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Starbucks Name? A Brand Loyalty Program at Its Finest!

Starbucks name? We all think we’re unique when we tell our friends or post that picture to Instagram of an entirely fabricated name. Yeah, you know what I’m talking about. Fed up with the Barista’s constant, “And how do you spell that?,” you’ve adopted a new, more witty title.

But, sorry to tell you, you’re not alone and, maybe, you’re not as funny and as you think. You’ve actually been participating in Starbucks own brand loyalty program. Essentially, you’re working for them, and for free!

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The Recipe for Marketing Gluten-Free Foods

Back in 2012, Domino’s first announced that customers could purchase gluten-free pizza crust. At that time, people took notice, but the reality is that “gluten-free” has taken on new meaning since then.

To that end, let’s take a look at the current state of gluten-free products, their growth trajectory going forward, and what these insights mean for pizza operators looking to grow their business.

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5 Keys to Building Awesome Apps

Ever wondered what it takes to build an app that tons of people download AND use? Welcome to a not-so-exclusive club. Statista predicts that app downloads will hit ~270 billion in 2017.

So, let’s take a look at the numbers behind consumers’ use of apps to figure out exactly what’s working, what’s not, and what to do if you want to build an app your customers will love.

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Loyalty programs and tokenization

VIP Marketing Solutions Increase Sales 40%

As we’ve covered before, there’s no better predictor of a multi-location, brick-and-mortar business’s long-term success than its best customers. “VIPs” spend more money, they refer more new customers, and they are the best brand advocates – hands down.
Due to VIPs’ importance, every businesses should have a VIP marketing strategy in place. Let’s take a look at the marketing solutions that are best suited to drive sales from VIPs and retain their business (while also being mindful that marketers want to reduce hassle as much as possible).

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Customer Engagement Strategies: A Recap

The COLLOQUY Loyalty Census sets out to deliver insights and trends on customer engagement strategies – specifically everything related to loyalty, retention, and rewards. Key topics include: the number of loyalty memberships in the U.S., what types of campaigns companies have in place, what’s working, and what’s not. The following are direct quotes from the online conversation and what they mean for businesses and merchants looking to improve their consumer engagement.

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Customer Retention Strategies

How To Get Better Email Marketing Results

Email marketing serves one purpose: customer retention – essentially, existing customers subscribe to receive email updates and subsequently should visit more often. Prior to the mobile explosion, email served as a solid way to reach customers.

Now, with mobile overtaking email as customers’ preferred method of digital contact, personalization, relevance, and timeliness have become mandatory tactics for effective communication. As a result, email marketing on its own cannot change customer behavior. Fortunately, by complementing email with other data sources, email marketing has the potential to be even more effective than it was before.

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Customer Retention Strategies

What is a Good Net Promoter Score?

It’s one thing to look in the mirror – another to grasp how you look compared to others. Though Net Promoter Score (“NPS”) provides a crystal clear mirror, it takes a few smart marketing decisions to understand what is a good NPS and what scores could benefit from improvement.

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The Current State Of Customer Engagement Strategies

Discover how Pickleman’s Cafe used customer engagement strategies to slower times and days and generate 30% more revenue for their business.

At the other end of the spectrum, Wednesday traffic tends to register far below other days. So, Pickleman’s marketing team put together its collective heads to figure out what to do. The result? Double Progress Wednesdays – which ended up transforming the entire identity of a Wednesday.

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Rewards program

Does My Customer Rewards Program Actually Work?

At the simplest level, customer rewards and promotions attempt to change customer purchasing behavior. Brands experiment with seeminlgy every type of promotion, whether monetary (e.g. discounts or BOGO offers) or non-monetary (e.g. exclusive access or brand-relevant experiences) to drive customers to spend more or spend more often.

“Experiment,” of course, being the operative verb. If nothing else, marketing success comes from iteration. In order to iterate, however, marketers have to know what’s actually working – and there’s only one way to do that: close the loop. Here’s what “close the loop” means and why it’s so important for loyalty and rewards programs.

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Winback. It’s What’s for Customer Retention

~72%. In a recent data study we did at Thanx across more than 15 million transactions and 15 industries (more specifics to come at the end of this month), that’s the percent of loyal customers that visit a business only once in a 6-month period. To me, that number is mind-blowing. Think of the revenue gains a company could earn from reducing that number just 5%. And that’s the whole idea behind what we’ve built. Here’s how it came to be.

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Customer Retention Strategies

Branded App For Customer Loyalty – Good Idea or Bad Idea?

Picture it – you unlock your smartphone, scroll to your favorite screen, and click on your own brand’s logo. It’s enough to get any merchant excited about the prospect of having a branded app for customer loyalty, purchases, ordering, games, and whatever else. However, is a branded app something that customers actually want? Here’s how to make the best decision for your business.

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The Whole Foods Loyalty Program: 4 Key Takeaways

Whole Foods made a splash announcing a loyalty pilot in Princeton, New Jersey earlier this quarter. Should the Whole Foods loyalty program prove successful, the company plans to take it to Philadelphia in the near term and then nationwide by late 2015. As with any big move from a large brand, retention marketers should take note – particularly when that big brand strays from how it traditionally has done business. Let’s have a look at the four most important takeaways:

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Loyalty programs and tokenization

Proprietary Data for Brick-And-Mortar Businesses

The most successful retention marketing fosters mutually beneficial relationships between merchants and their best customers. To create such a high-performing program, merchants need more than generic customer insights; they need proprietary data that maps how customers experience their particular brand. Seek out those innovative providers who can deliver actionable information in order to earn a higher ROI on your loyalty investment.

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How Brick-and-Mortar Stores Can Win

With the rapid rise of online commerce, retailers have asked themselves how brick-and-mortar stores can win. To be clear, brick-and-mortar stores aren’t going anywhere. Smart marketers know that in this case “how” isn’t a question; it’s an opportunity to establish a competitive advantage.

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Loyalty programs and tokenization

How To Evaluate Customer Loyalty Software

There are a ton of customer loyalty software options out there; choosing correctly can seem overwhelming. Stakes are high, as loyalty programs come with switching costs. In addition to the software itself, brands also need to manage customer churn. Here’s how to ensure success during your evaluations.

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