How to set up your Marketing Campaign Strategy in Thanx

Targeted vs. Automated Campaigns: How They Work Together

Every guest in your loyalty program is at a different stage of their relationship with your brand. A guest who just enrolled this morning needs a different message than one who hasn't visited in 45 days and neither needs the same thing as a loyal regular approaching their next reward milestone.

Thanx gives operators two distinct campaign tools to reach each guest at exactly the right moment: targeted campaigns and automated campaigns. Targeted campaigns deliver one-time messages to a defined guest segment at a scheduled time. This is ideal for seasonal promotions, strategic offers, and promotional pushes. Automated campaigns run continuously in the background, triggering personalized messages whenever a guest meets a specific condition  with no manual effort required after setup.

Used together, they form a complete engagement system: automated campaigns handle the always-on guest lifecycle work; targeted campaigns layer in your marketing calendar. This guide walks through both types, how to build them, and how to combine them into a strategy that compounds over time.

How It Works: Building and Running Both Campaign Types

Targeted Campaigns: Strategic, Scheduled, Segment-Specific

A targeted campaign is a one-time message sent to a defined guest segment at a specific date and time you choose. It's the right tool when you have a timely, specific message like a seasonal offer, a re-engagement push for a particular guest cohort, or a new product announcement for your most loyal members.

How to build a targeted campaign in four steps:

Step 1: Select your audience. Thanx offers pre-built segments ready to use immediately like lapsed guests, frequent visitors, guests approaching a reward milestone, or first-time buyers who haven't returned. These cover the most common marketing scenarios and require no setup time.

For more specific targeting like guests who visit on weekdays but have never tried the new dinner menu, or members enrolled more than 90 days ago with fewer than three purchases,   custom segments can be configured. Because segments in Thanx are dynamic filters rather than static lists, your audience is always current at the moment the campaign sends.

Step 2: Design your message across channels. Each channel has a distinct role in a loyalty campaign:

• Email is best for relationship content, program education, progress summaries, and longer-form offers where context adds value
• Push notifications are optimized for urgency like a reward approaching expiration, a points proximity nudge, or a time-sensitive offer
• SMS, if you’re using a partner integration, carries the highest open rate of any channel; reserve it for your highest-priority moments only: a critical win-back attempt, a reward just unlocked, or a same-day limited offer

For new member campaigns, send via push and email simultaneously, then use open and redemption data to learn which channel each segment responds to and default to that channel going forward.

Step 3: Add a reward (if applicable) with time restrictions. Not every campaign needs a discount. Recognition messages, milestone celebrations, and program education campaigns often outperform discount-heavy campaigns with high-value segments. When you do include a reward, set an expiration window like 7 or 14 days to create urgency and measure campaign impact within a defined window.

Step 4: Review and schedule. Send immediately or schedule for a future date and time. Consider day-of-week and time-of-day patterns in your guest base. When do your guests typically open email? When are they most likely to act on a push notification?

Automated Campaigns: Always-On, Behavior-Triggered Engagement

Automated campaigns are configured once and run indefinitely, sending personalized messages to guests whenever they meet a defined behavioral condition. Think of them as standing rules: if a guest does this (or stops doing this), send them that.

The power of automation is precision at scale. Every new member who enrolls but doesn't return within 14 days gets the same well-timed activation message automatically, regardless of whether your team is monitoring that segment. Every guest who hits their fifth purchase gets a milestone acknowledgment without anyone manually checking purchase counts.

Core automated campaigns every program should have running:

• New member activation: Guest enrolls → no purchase in 7 days → send a reminder of their welcome offer and a points-proximity nudge toward their first reward
• Second-visit trigger: First purchase made → no return in 14 days → send a time-limited incentive toward visit two
• Win-back flow: Guest active for 30+ days → 60 days of no visits → automated win-back message with a meaningful offer
• Milestone recognition: Guest reaches fifth or tenth purchase → automated thank-you message (no offer required; recognition alone drives engagement)
• Points proximity alert: Guest within 200 points of a reward → push notification: "You're this close — come in this week"

Unlike targeted campaigns, automated campaigns don't require scheduling decisions. They require design decisions: what trigger, what message and what channel.

Real-World Examples: Campaigns That Drive Measurable Results

Example 1: Activating New Members Before They Go Cold (Fast Casual)

A fast-casual brand found that nearly 40% of new loyalty enrollees made a first purchase and never returned. They built a three-message automated activation sequence:

• Day 1 after enrollment: Welcome email + push — program introduction, welcome offer reminder, points balance display
• Day 7, no return: Push notification — "Your welcome reward expires in 7 days. Come back and use it."
• Day 14, still no return: SMS — "We haven't seen you in a while. Here's what you're missing." + points-proximity message

The sequence required no ongoing management. Second-visit conversion among members who entered the flow improved substantially within 60 days of launch because the timing was tied to actual enrollment behavior, not a calendar date.

Example 2: Layering a Targeted Campaign on an Automated Foundation (Regional Coffee Brand)

A regional coffee chain had their automated lifecycle campaigns running smoothly including a new member activation, win-back at 45 days, and milestone recognition at visit five. They then layered in a targeted campaign for a new seasonal LTO, using a pre-built segment of active members who had redeemed at least one reward in the past 90 days.

They A/B tested two subject lines: one featuring the product name, one featuring a points-earning angle. The points-earning version drove 22% higher open rates, a signal they carried into future targeted campaigns for similar launches.

Because frequency capping was set to exclude guests who'd received a campaign in the past 14 days, no member received both the win-back automated message and the LTO targeted campaign in the same window. The operational separation between campaign types made this automatic.

Example 3: Win-Back Before the Point of No Return (Casual Dining Group)

A casual dining group built a win-back automated campaign triggered at 45 days of inactivity — catching lapsed guests two weeks before the 60-day threshold where re-engagement becomes significantly harder. The campaign used email because the goal was relationship repair, not urgency.

The message included a meaningful offer scaled to the guest's prior spend tier, which was guests who had previously spent over $200 per year received a higher-value incentive than casual visitors.

Win-back conversion from this flow consistently outperformed any prior broadcast re-engagement push because the timing, channel, and offer value were all calibrated to the specific guest behavior that triggered it.

Best Practices: What Separates Effective Campaigns from Expensive Noise

Build your automated foundation first, then layer in targeted campaigns. Automated campaigns handle the highest-leverage moments in the guest lifecycle  including activation, milestone recognition, lapse prevention, and win-back,  continuously and at scale. Targeted campaigns amplify and extend, but they can't substitute for always-on behavioral engagement. Get your three or four core automated campaigns running before building your promotional calendar.

Implement a frequency cap. Most guests in a healthy loyalty program should receive no more than two to three messages per month. Exclude any guest who received a campaign in the past 14 days from new targeted campaigns. This single rule prevents message fatigue and keeps your communications feeling valuable rather than intrusive.

Treat A/B testing as a systematic practice, not a one-time tactic. Test one variable at a time  like a subject line, offer value, send day, or channel sequence and let each test run long enough to reach statistical confidence. The signal from a clean A/B test compounds: subject line learnings from one campaign directly improve the next.

Measure incrementality, not just engagement. Open rates and click rates are leading indicators. The metric that validates campaign ROI is whether guests who received the campaign visited more, spent more, or churned less than comparable guests who didn't. Build control holdouts into your highest-investment campaigns.

Getting Started: Your First Three Campaigns

Rather than building a full marketing calendar on day one, start with the three campaigns that address the most common and highest-cost drop-off points in the guest lifecycle:

Campaign 1 — New Member Activation (Automated): Trigger at 7 days post-enrollment with no purchase. Send via push + email. Include a welcome offer reminder

Campaign 2 — Second-Visit Trigger (Automated): Trigger at 14 days after first purchase with no return. Send via push for urgency. Include a time-limited offer (7–14 day expiry) calibrated for a guest still in the activation window.

Campaign 3 — Win-Back (Automated): Trigger at 45 days of inactivity for guests with at least two prior purchases. Send via email with a meaningful offer scaled to prior spend.

Set all three live, monitor for 30 days, then optimize based on purchase rates and incremental visit frequency before adding complexity. With Thanx, all three can be configured in a single session using pre-built segments, existing reward templates, and the automated campaign builder.

Ready to see Thanx campaigns in action for your brand? Request a demo.

Frequently Asked Questions About Loyalty Marketing Campaigns

What is the difference between a targeted and automated marketing campaign?

‍A targeted campaign is a one-time message sent to a specific guest segment at a scheduled time,  ideal for seasonal promotions, strategic offers, and marketing calendar initiatives. An automated campaign runs continuously in the background, triggering messages automatically whenever a guest meets a defined behavioral condition. Both types work together: automated campaigns handle ongoing lifecycle engagement; targeted campaigns layer in promotional and seasonal messaging.

How do you prevent over-messaging loyalty program members?

‍Implement frequency caps that exclude guests from new targeted campaigns if they received a message within the past 14 days.

What automated campaigns should every restaurant loyalty program have running?

‍Every loyalty program should have at minimum: a new member activation campaign (triggered at 7–14 days post-enrollment with no purchase), a second-visit trigger (14 days after first purchase with no return), and a win-back flow (triggered at 45 days of inactivity for guests with prior purchase history). These three campaigns address the highest-cost drop-off points in the guest lifecycle and can be set up once and run continuously with minimal management.

How do you measure the success of a loyalty marketing campaign?

‍Track both engagement metrics (open rates, click rates, redemption rates) and behavioral outcomes (incremental visit frequency, average check lift, churn reduction). The most reliable measure is incrementality: whether guests who received the campaign visited more or spent more than comparable guests who didn't. Build control holdouts into high-investment campaigns to isolate true campaign impact from background behavior.

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