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Introducing Thanx Connex: Transforming How Restaurants Share and Use Data
Introduction In today’s fast-changing restaurant industry, data drives both innovation and growth. To stay competitive, restaurants must manage and use customer data to create more personalized experiences and convenient interactions. Today, we are excited to introduce Thanx Connex — a new solution that changes how restaurants access and use data. Thanx Connex helps unlock insights
New Feature: Infinitely Customizable Branded Apps
Fully customizable mobile apps for restaurants. Create a unique, on-brand app experience without the cost and hassle of custom development. Seamlessly integrate with Thanx’s powerful features and drive customer engagement, loyalty, and revenue.
Celebrating Diversity: How Thanx Clients Honor Pride Month
Celebrate Pride Month with innovative and inclusive campaigns from Thanx customers. From fundraising initiatives to exclusive events and menu specials, our partners are spreading love and acceptance in creative ways. We encourage out partners to leverage distinct Thanx technology, such as loyalty segments and app features, to further connect with loyal customers and drive positive change.
Choosing the Right Loyalty Program for Your Restaurant: 8 Essential Questions to Ask
Selecting the right technology to support your brand’s business goals requires careful consideration beyond just specific features. Here are 8 essential questions to ask before investing in a loyalty platform.
New Feature: Automated Cart Abandonment Campaigns Drive Digital Revenue Growth
Thanx is excited to announce the brand new Automated Cart Abandonment Campaigns to enable restaurants to effortlessly improve cart conversion.
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
What is your loyalty program actually costing you?
Introducing Thanx’s “Effective Discount Rate” Reporting – an industry-first capability to instantly measure the cost of driving engagement, activation, and retention, through your loyalty program.
Is your loyalty program actually impacting revenue?
Thanx makes it easy to measure the impact your loyalty program is actually having on customer behaviors. Learn how Thanx helps brands optimize engagement with our retention and activation rate reporting.
Capture Rate: A critical indicator of loyalty program success
Also known as the participation rate, Capture Rate is a critical metric in measuring the success of a loyalty program. This measurement represents the percentage of revenue earned from known and reachable customers. With Thanx’s new capture rate report, brands can get a clear and immediate look and how much revenue can be attributed to known customers.
Three Problems with Traditional Loyalty – And How to Combat Them
In the restaurant industry, loyalty is increasingly essential. While physical punch cards and business-card fish bowls may be relics of the past, restaurants of all sizes need to continue to modernize their programs. As brands launch new programs to capture data, drive first-party ordering, and grow customer lifetime value – loyalty becomes even more than
Why Easy-to-Use Digital Experiences Can Make or Break Your Restaurant Loyalty Program
Nearly all brands want exciting digital experiences but not enough brands emphasize making those experiences as easy to use as possible for the customer. As marketing tools like apps and loyalty programs become table stakes, brands need other competitive advantages to earn effective engagement that drives revenue. It is clear that ease of use is
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
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
Thanx Announces Completion of New Loyalty 3.0 Engine
Introducing the industry’s first self-service loyalty solution. Brands can now make changes to their loyalty program design, rewards, and branding anytime, in real time.
Introducing Access Pass: Like NFTs But Easier
Thanx announces Access Pass, a new non-discount reward for restaurants to offer the exclusivity of NFTs without crypto complexities.
Announcing Live Chat Support from Thanx
Thanx is the only loyalty and guest engagement platform that offers live chat support for restaurant brands.
Psst… We have a secret (menu)!
Thanx is excited to announce the latest release from our Loyalty 3.0 platform: Hidden Menus!
The Homestretch Effect and How it Impacts Revenue
Discover what the Homestretch Effect is and how it motivates consumers to spend more, which drives revenue for your business.
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
New Employee, Jericho Lopez on why she joined Thanx
Here’s a recent discussion with our newest employee, Jericho Lopez, about her decision to join Thanx.
The Overspend Effect and What It Means to Your Bottom Line
In this post we unpack what the overspend effect is, what it means to your bottom line, and additional metrics you can use to build relationships with your customers.
Six Non-Discount Reward Ideas to Make Your Loyalty Program Stand Out
Thanx shares 6 different branded perks that don’t discount your brand but instead offer unique engagement for customers while incentivizing desired behaviors.
Loyalty is back.
Learn about the past, present, and future of customer loyalty for brick and mortar businesses.
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
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
Data-driven marketing just got a whole lot easier.
If you can make personalized marketing easy, teams will be more likely to do it. That’s the simple thinking behind the latest updates to the Thanx Platform.
When change is inevitable,
make it effortless.
Learn about our new One-Click Content Management System. Merchants can now update branding or messaging within app and web digital interfaces instantly.
The 3 Types of Customers You Should Know
This blog highlights the 3 most common types of customers, provides insight into what motivates them, and gives tips on how you can connect with each type of customer in more meaningful ways.
What is customer lifetime value (LTV)?
Learn more about the single most important concept in the world of customer engagement: Customer Lifetime Value (LTV).
As DoorDash Prepares to Go Public, Restaurants Discuss Strategies to Promote Direct Ordering
Last week, DoorDash released its S-1 filing in preparation of going public. Optimistic readers saw astronomical growth in 2020 – revenues from the first three quarters of 2020 reached $1.9B, an increase of 226% from the same period of the previous year. Gross margins for the delivery giant have also improved, alleviating ongoing concerns about
Chipotle’s loyalty program grew 65% in one month during COVID-19. But how?
There is a reason why some companies are doing better than others during this crisis. Chipotle grew their loyalty membership database by 65%, adding 3 million members in the month of April alone. Chipotle Loyalty Membership And their stock price is up 45% while other Dow Jones restaurants are down 11% on average. Chipotle is
Announcing support for curbside service and banner alerts in web ordering
For customers using Olo alongside Thanx, we have recently released two important features. Support for Curbside Service Thanx web ordering now supports Olo’s curbside handoff mode. Guests can now choose “curbside” and enter information about their vehicle, to be included in their order information for staff. The feature makes it easy for staff to identify
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
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
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
Thanx and Toast Make Personalized Guest Engagement Even Better
Thanx merchants with Toast POS can use item-level data to better engage with their customers. The partnership between Toast and Thanx opens up Thanx’s robust SKU offering to our customers on Toast’s point of sale (POS) system. With this integration, restaurants can gain an even deeper understanding of their customers by integrating item and staff-specific
9 Top Strategies for Driving Restaurant Guests to Order Direct
The convenience of third-party delivery has driven massive growth (up to 40% market share expected within the next few years according to Morgan Stanley) in online ordering revenue across the restaurant industry but the delivery providers, Uber Eats, GrubHub, PostMates, and DoorDash have been the primary beneficiaries, not restaurants. High commission rates (in many cases
Thanx announces new sign-up flow to delight customers and increase data capture
We are excited to announce a new and improved sign-up flow that improves the customer experience and increases data capture rates. Drive program sign-ups With the new flow, your customers will be asked for their email first to be immediately enrolled in your program and captured in Thanx. By moving the email field front and
7 tips on search engine optimization for restaurants
If you’re like many restaurant owners, you know SEO is something you should be focused on. But it’s hard to find the time to learn this whole new set of skills while also running a busy restaurant. SEO is the process of making it easier for a search engine (like Google or Yahoo) to help
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
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.
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
How Oath Pizza Combines Online Ordering with Customer Loyalty
Meet Oath Pizza. Oath started out in 2015, in a 400-square-foot store in Nantucket, MA. In a world where pizza can be found nearly anywhere and everywhere, the founders knew they needed to stand out amidst all the other pies in town. To do so, they created a crust that’s seared in avocado oil that
How Technology Is Transforming Customer Experiences
Learn how to use technology to transform customer experiences from generic to personal.
4 Ways to Use Data to Delight and Engage Customers
Most merchants want to know how they can retain customers and drive more revenue. Back in the late 1800s, when five and dime stores were popular, owners strategically placed candy in the windows to encourage families to come in. Barbershops branded their stores with a unique spinning pole and offered a free shave with a
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.
How to Own Your Customer Data
In this post, we’ll discuss the pros of owning your customer data in order to take the customer back.
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
Drive Unlimited Subscriptions with Thanx Campaigns for Car Wash
With the Thanx Unlimited Campaigns for car washes, Thanx segments your customers based on the items they buy, including memberships and individual washes. Thanx then uses this information to identify the customers most likely to convert to unlimited membership plans and targets them with personalized messages and incentives.
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
How To Acquire a More Valuable Customer
In this post, we share how to acquire and retain valuable customers that will add to the value of the bottom line of your business by driving growth.
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
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
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
4 Customer Acquisition Ideas You May Not Have Tried
If your current priority is to reach short-term revenue goals and expand your new customer base, here are 4 strategic customer acquisition ideas to try.
Thanx Announces Best-in-Class Native Online Ordering for Restaurants
Today, we’re excited to announce the launch of native online ordering for restaurants. With this launch, restaurants can offer an intuitive, easy to use online ordering experience to their guests, while at the same time reaping the benefits of Thanx’s complete customer engagement and loyalty platform. Now, restaurants can build a highly customizable mobile ordering
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
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
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
Hot Tips to Beat Seasonal Car Wash Slumps
There are several ways you can beat the seasonality of the car wash business in order to engage your customers all year round and grow your business. In this post, we’ll share tips for how to drive traffic to your car wash during off-peak days and times.
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
Why Monthly Unlimited Plans Are Good for Your Car Wash
We explain why monthly unlimited plans are the perfect way to grow your car wash revenue, encourage repeat business, and engage your customers.
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
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
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
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
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
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
Why Brick and Mortar Businesses Must Embrace Technology
In this post, we’ll explore five different reasons why brick and mortar businesses must embrace technology now.
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
4 Eatertainment Trends That Get Customers in the Door
In this post we share four of the largest “eatertainment” trends that are taking hold of the dining industry.
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
3 Restaurant Marketing Strategies to Help Avoid the Winter Slump
As the first snowflakes of winter begin to fall outside our windows we are reminded: Winter is Coming. And we all know what that means. Winter weather can have a major impact on foot traffic and revenue. With fewer people venturing out in the cold and more people using delivery service or hunkering down to Netflix and
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,
Pinthouse Pizza Increases Revenue by Rewarding Their Best Customers
Customer loyalty is important to any business, but it’s especially essential to a restaurant, where loyal customers are the bread and butter (or in this case the dough and sauce) of the business. Pinthouse Pizza, a brewery, and pizzeria based in Austin, serves up delicious fare and rewards the customers who help them grow their
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
Use Multi-Channel Communication to Engage Customers
We explain the benefits of multichannel marketing and explain why email, text, and push notifications are the trio of channels you should rely on.
5 Customer Engagement Campaigns We Love
Smart merchants are implementing unique campaigns to increase customer engagement and build strong relationships with their best customers. Here are five customer engagement campaigns we love just in time for Valentine’s Day.
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
How to Increase the Lifetime Value of Customers
In this post, we’ll share actionable tips to increase the lifetime value of your customers.
How to Capture Real-Time Customer Satisfaction
To help you better understand the value of customer satisfaction, we discuss why it matters and explain the best way to measure it.
3 Ways to Build Profitable Customer Relationships
In this post, we’ll share three ways you can build lasting and profitable customer relationships.
Know Your Customers Better with Insights
In this post, we will explore how insights will help you move your understanding of customers from the unknown to personal relationships so you can grow your business.
The Future for Restaurants in an On-Demand World: Webinar Recap
Thanx, recaps a recent webinar about how restaurants can successfully utilize off-premise dining and marketing personalization to take share.
How to Combat Declining Restaurant Traffic
In this post, we’ll cover effective strategies to increase foot traffic to boost revenue.
5 Things to Look for in a Customer Engagement Platform
In this post, we’ll review 5 essential things you should look for when evaluating which customer engagement platform is the right one for you and your growing business.
Using Google Reviews to Drive Traffic to Your New Location
In this post, we’ll share how you can drive traffic and attract customers to your new location using reputation management and online Google reviews.
5 Digital Customer Engagement Tactics That Increase Revenue
In this post, we share five digital customer engagement tactics that every business can use to increase revenue and customer engagement.
5 Excellent Customer Engagement Examples to Emulate
In this post, we share 5 excellent customer engagement examples from real-life businesses that can help you retain customers and grow revenue.
Customer Engagement Strategies and Tips from the Pros
We’ve partnered with the experts from the Customer Success team at Thanx to share their favorite customer engagement strategies with you.
How to Go from Unknown to Personal Customer Relationships
In this post, we explain how you can go from unknown, anonymous customers to personal relationships all while not breaking the bank.
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
3 Steps to Simplify Your Marketing Tech Stack
Discover how to audit your digital marketing tech stack to prove the value of the tools that increase revenue and ROI and eliminate redundant tools.
What is the Definition of Customer Engagement?
In this post, we’ll explore the definition of customer engagement, provide some compelling reasons why business leaders care about customer engagement, and how to give your customer engagement a boost.
How EVO Entertainment Uses Feedback to Engage Their Best Customers
Discover how EVO Entertainment captures guest feedback and responds in real-time to increase customer engagement and build relationships.
How Control Groups Help Measure Marketing Campaign Impact
Learn how control groups help you measure the impact of your customer engagement marketing campaigns by comparing the control group to the campaign group.
Zips Car Wash Builds Engaging Customer Relationships Using Thanx
Learn how Zips Car Wash uses email marketing and Thanx Campaigns to build engaging relationships with their most valued customers.
6 Digital Marketing Resources for Car Washes
Discover six digital marketing resources to help your car wash save time, engage, acquire, and retain customers plus, increase revenue and ROI.
Customer Engagement Done Right: Introducing Thanx Campaigns
We’re thrilled to announce the launch of Thanx Campaigns to help save you time and increase revenue for your business.
How to Use Customer Engagement to Support a New Store Opening
In this post, we explore the ways in which customer engagement can support a successful new store opening or move.
Customer Engagement Metrics 101
In this post, we explain why measuring customer engagement can be a challenge, the difference between engagement metrics and vanity metrics, and give you a solution to access engagement metrics that prove your ROI.
How Customer Engagement and Retention Go Hand in Hand
In this post, we’ll discuss how customer engagement relates to retention and different ways you can make sure your customers stay loyal to your business.
4 Customer Engagement Strategies You Need to Know
In this post, we’ll introduce customer engagement strategies that work to engage customers, increase revenue, and keep your business top of mind with your best customers.
How to Increase Average Check Size Using Birthday Rewards
Engaging your customers with birthday rewards is a great way to increase average check size and drive incremental revenue and ROI. Learn how.
How More Satisfied Employees Lead to Better Customer Engagement
In this post, we discuss five different ways you can increase employee satisfaction to engage and retain customers.
4 Ways to Use Data to Understand Your Customers
Hw you can capture and use customer data easily? Great question. Here are four ways you can use data to understand your customers better.
8 Digital Marketing Resources for Convenience Stores
In this post, we’ll review 8 digital marketing resources and tools every convenience store can use to enhance their digital marketing strategies.
3 Ways to Leverage POS and Customer Data to Drive Loyalty
In this post, we examine three ways you can leverage item-level data to drive engagement and loyalty to impact your bottom line.
5 Ways C-Stores Can Go from Transactions to Customer Engagement
C-stores struggle to get consumers from the pump to the store. In this post, we share 5 customer engagement tips to go from transactions to meaningful revenue for your c-store.
31 Customer Engagement Statistics for Every Business Owner
In this post, we share 31 eye-opening statistics that show the importance and effectiveness of customer engagement.
Boost Customer Engagement and Retention with Loyalty Tiers
We’re excited to announce Loyalty Tiers to engage your best customers with tiered rewards. Read all about it.
How to Measure the Impact of Your Email Marketing in Revenue, Not Opens and Clicks
In this post, we’ll examine the difference between vanity and engagement metrics and why measuring revenue impact is the holy grail.
How to Use Data to Get More Customers During Slow Times
In this post, we share how you can use customer data to get more customers in the door during off-peak, or slower times and generate revenue.
How Wawa Gets Customers from the Pump to the C-Store
Here’s a look at four things Wawa C-stores do to engage their customers and get them from the pump into the store driving incremental revenue and loyalty.
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
4 Ways Customer Engagement Can Fuel C-Store Growth
In this action-packed post, we’ll explore four ways c-stores can fuel growth through effective customer engagement.
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
The ROI Impact of Winback Campaigns
In this post, we share how Winback campaigns engage lost customers, deliver impactful ROI, and create abiding customer relationships.
Four Challenges of Convenience Store Customer Engagement and Loyalty
In this post, we explore four challenges that convenience stores face when it comes to customer engagement and loyalty.
Why VIPs Matter To Your Business
Every merchant wants loyal, repeat customers. Every business has a group of VIP customers, and odds are they contribute to your success more than you know.
Customer Engagement and Loyalty Dos and Don’ts
To help you understand some of the common dos and don’ts of customer engagement, we created this helpful infographic.
How to Power Customer Referrals for Your Business
Discover how to identify your most loyal customers and get more like them.
Cross-Channel Customer Engagement for Offline Businesses
Consumers today move seamlessly between channels, platforms and devices. Learn how a customer engagement platform can help you crush the cross-channel game.
5 Ways to Win Back Lost Customers
In this post how you can identify when you’re about to lose a customer and five actionable ways to win them back.
Why One-Size-Fits-All Customer Engagement Fits None
One-size-fits-all messages are a thing of the past for merchants trying to engage their customers. Discover why you need to use personalization and segmentation.
How Sgt. Clean’s Washes up Customer Loyalty
Learn how a multi-location car wash based in Ohio keeps their most loyal customers engaged and coming back using data-based customer loyalty insights from Thanx.
How to Break Free from Your POS System and Get Robust Customer Data
In this post, we’ll review why data is important, what you should be measuring and how you can begin to break free from your POS system.
Integrated Loyalty and Email Powers Robust Customer Engagement
Thanx has made sending targeted emails to customers (with no requirement of an offer or discount) a snap. Read all about it.
App-less Consumer Loyalty is Now a Thing
We’re thrilled to introduce an app-less version of Thanx that enables consumers to join our merchants’ customer loyalty programs and receive and redeem rewards via SMS/text messages.
Is Delivery Costing You Your Customers and Margins?
In this post, we explain the dark side of delivery for your restaurant. From loss to margins to controlling the customer experience, it could be costing you more than you think.
Targeted Campaigns Move Marketing from Generic to Personalized Effortlessly
Today, we’re excited to announce a new customer segmentation engine that helps group consumers into logical, personalized categories and allows our merchants to engage customers personally based on over 40 attributes.
How Garcia’s Loyal Customers Are Driving Business Forward
Learn how Garcia’s tapped their incredibly loyal customers and staff, to help them build a wildly successful customer loyalty program in just a few months.
The Beginner’s Guide to Customer Engagement and Loyalty
In this guide, we’ll discuss what customer engagement and loyalty are, why they are important, and how you can grow your business by knowing and understanding who your best customers are.
Why Mobile Payments Are on the Rise
Mobile payments will drive $930B US dollars this year. Thanx outlines five reasons why brick-and-mortar businesses benefit from using mobile payments.
How to Stop Blasting Your Customers and Start Marketing Smarter
Email blasts are so 1999. In this post, we share 7 smart marketing to help your business increase revenue and drive stronger customer loyalty.
3 Things You Can Learn From Customer Sentiment
In this post, we’ll review three things customer sentiment can teach you, and what actions you can take to increase satisfaction, retention, and customer loyalty.
5 Things You Didn’t Know You Could Do with Thanx
Not every customer engagement and loyalty program is created equal. Discover five things that Thanx can do to help you grow your business.
How to Communicate Customer Loyalty Program Changes
Making changes to your customer loyalty program doesn’t have to be risky. In this post, we share how to successfully communicate changes to your customers.
5 Ways to Acquire New Customer Loyalty Program Members
Struggling with acquiring new members for your customer loyalty program? Thanx shares 5 actionable tips to get new members and scale your program quickly.
How to Bounce Back from Customer Loyalty Program Buyer’s Remorse
Have customer loyalty program remorse? Have no fear, Thanx shares tips on how to bounce back and have a customer loyalty program that rocks.
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
5 Customer Loyalty Trends You Need to Know
Brand loyalty is alive and well, but the trends that shape brand loyalty are shifting. To stay ahead of the curve, here are five customer loyalty trends you need to know:
The ABCs of Customer Loyalty
By rewarding your best customers you can increase revenue and have a positive ROI. In this post, we discover the ABCs of customer loyalty and engagement for your business.
How to Successfully Launch a Customer Loyalty Program: A Timeline
Launching a customer loyalty program is a big step for your business. In this post, we share a six-month timeline to take you from launch to optimization.
30 Customer Loyalty Stats You Need to Know
Customer loyalty is more important than ever. Thanx shares 30 customer loyalty stats you want to know for this year and beyond.
The Art of the Reward
Learn how to reward your best customers that drive revenue and grow your business.
4 Ways to Reward Your Ideal Restaurant Goers Based on Data
Thanx provides four actionable ways to identify your ideal customers and reward them for their loyalty to your business.
Why Data-Driven Relationships are Key to Happy Customers
Did you know the average person is exposed to more than 5,000 ads every single day? How can your business stand out amongst all that racket? The key to attracting and retaining happy customers in our noisy digital age is data. By using a customer engagement platform that collects customer information, you can get a better
Replying to Customer Feedback Grows Revenue +22%
Feedback from your customers is priceless. We show you how responding to customer feedback can help you increase revenue up to 22%.
Solving the Challenges of Data-Driven Marketing
Using smart data to engage your customers and keep them coming back for more is what data-driven marketing is all about. Many marketers struggle to get data. Thanx has the data problem solved.
An ROI Model for Restaurant Foot Traffic
Discover an ROI model for foot traffic that will enable you to identify your best customers and shorten the time between visits.
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
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
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
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
Customer Loyalty Buyers Guide
Thankx provides advice and tips for choosing a customer loyalty program for your business that helps it grow.
The Race for Customer Loyalty
Loyal customers spend and visit more frequently and are the number one source of new referrals. Thanx provides practical tips for customer loyalty.
The Ultimate Guide to Customer Loyalty in 2017
Thanx has always worked with Apple Pay automatically— no additional integrations required. Here’s why we believe that customers should be given options for how to pay when it comes to loyalty programs — and why successful loyalty programs MUST work flawlessly with Apple Pay.
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
Building Loyalty for Car Washes
Customer loyalty can be challenging for car washes. In this post, Thanx shares how you can build relationships and grow customer loyalty for your car wash.
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
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,
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
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
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
VIP Programs with Thanx: Reward your top customers automatically
Your top customers are responsible for a huge chunk of your revenue. Thanx’s VIP programs automatically identify and engage those top spenders, keeping them happy and loyal long-term. Here’s what makes our VIP so effective (and how we’ve improved it recently). One of the major draws of a loyalty program is having the tools to
Here’s Why All Salons Need a Customer Loyalty Program
Salons have one goal in mind; to fill their chairs and appointment books. Customer loyalty programs can help them reach that goal. Client booking software is great… but it falls short in a few critical ways. To make booking more convenient for clients, many salons have started using appointment booking software, like DemandForce, Millennium,
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 —
Thanx Exclusive Deals: Sell goods and services from within your loyalty app
Thanx Exclusive Deals turns your loyalty app into another revenue stream for your business by giving you the tools you need to sell goods and services from within Thanx. Thanx Launches In-App Purchasing to Tie Hard ROI to Loyalty Restaurants and retailers use Thanx Exclusive Deals to drive targeted revenue from loyalty program members. Loyalty
3 Reasons Happy First-Time Visitors Don’t Become Repeat Customers
From collecting better data to speaking to your customers in ways that resonate, there are many different steps businesses can take to build loyalty among their customer base and turn first-timers into repeat customers Why don’t satisfied customers turn into repeat visitors? And how do you get more of them to come back another
Building Customer Loyalty in 5 Simple Steps: Presentation Recap
Thanx teamed up with Main Street Hub to bring merchants more information on ways they can build customer loyalty — combining our expertise in loyalty, data, and social media, we covered a ton of ground in the 45-minute webinar. Here’s a recap for those of you who missed it.
Apple Pay + Thanx: Seamless Customer Experience
Thanx has always worked with Apple Pay automatically— no additional integrations required. Here’s why we believe that customers should be given options for how to pay when it comes to loyalty programs — and why successful loyalty programs MUST work flawlessly with Apple Pay.
Thanx Poised for Growth With New Office in Denver
Thanx, which empowers merchants to grow their business through deeper customer loyalty, today announced the opening of a new office in downtown Denver to accommodate a rapidly growing sales team and leverage the area’s growing high-technology talent pool.
How Your Loyalty Program is Hurting Your VIP customers
Your loyalty program should do more than track and accrue your customer’s loyalty points… modern, data-driven loyalty programs are the future of business intelligence for brick-and-mortar businesses. Here’s why punch cards fall short when it comes to identifying and rewarding your best customers.
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.
Choosing a Loyalty Program: How Home Run Inn Found Perfect Fit
With so many different types of loyalty programs out there, how do you choose the right loyalty platform for your brand? Learn about how Home Run Inn made the decision to implement an automated, data-driven loyalty program through Thanx.
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.
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.
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. …
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.
What a Great Loyalty Program Can Teach You About Your Customers
Customer loyalty isn’t just about punch cards — more sophisticated programs are taking their place. Read on to see how modern loyalty programs are driving a deeper understanding of customers and their behavior for previously underserved industries.
Top Ways to Get More Customers In Your Loyalty Program
The success of any customer loyalty program is based on getting your customers to sign up for it. Thanx provides actionable tips to help.
How Offline Retailers Can Fight Amazon
Amazon Won the Retail Battle — But Brick-and-Mortar Stores Can Use Data to Win the War — In this post, we share 5 best practices for offline retailers to compete in Amazon’s world.
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.
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.
The Franchise Marketing Challenge
Running and marketing a franchise business comes with its own set of unique challenges. Make sure that you’re equipped with the tools to maximize profit and minimize hassle.
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
Why Customer Satisfaction Surveys are the Pulse of Your Business
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.
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.
How to Choose a Customer Loyalty Program
There are so many different types of loyalty programs out there. Consider these four points as you narrow down your company’s loyalty search.
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
Building a Restaurant Culture Around Loyalty
Building customer loyalty is about more than your loyalty program… it’s about creating a company culture that celebrates customers. Here’s how brands have put their customers at the heart of their brand mission.
5 Steps to Building a Customer Loyalty Program That Drives Revenue
Your loyalty program can be the backbone of your data collection, your customer outreach, and your marketing efforts. When executed well, it can also be an enormous profit-driver for your restaurant. Below are five loyalty program best practices that drive revenue by delighting your customers.
Thanx Announces $17.1 million in Series B Funding
See below for the complete press release:
The Seven Deadly Sins of Loyalty Marketing
Investing in customer loyalty isn’t just a “check the box” initiative. It can be a businesses’ most powerful marketing channel, as it’s 7x more expensive to acquire a new customer than to encourage an additional visit from an existing customer.
How to Build True Customer Loyalty
How do businesses build truly loyal customers? It’s not just about installing a loyalty program — it’s how you use it. Here’s how to optimize the experience for your loyal customers so that they stay loyal for life.
Why Mobile is Not a “Check-the-Box” Initiative — FSTEC 2016
Thanx CEO Zach Goldstein spoke to the theme of “Untangling Tech” at FSTEC 2016 — presenting to restaurant owners and operators, he made a case for why a brand’s mobile presence cannot be a “check-the-box” initiative.
What Brick and Mortar Business Can Learn from SaaS Success
I worked my way through college as a hostess, waitress, and bartender in a college town restaurant. After graduation, I moved to Silicon Valley just in time for the dot com era. I began working for technology companies, but never lost my love for the restaurant industry.
Loyalty program best practices: Take a hint from behavioral psychology
Opt-out, not opt-in, is a loyalty program best practice. Read on to see how you can use this consumer psychology hack to keep more customers enrolled.
Why 5 million people signed up for DD Perks loyalty program
Dunkin’ Donuts shares rose nearly 2% last week after they announced that their loyalty program had enrolled over 5 million people. Here’s why a healthy customer loyalty program is cause for investor optimism.
The Popularity Problem: How to Handle Increased Store Traffic
The croissant in your tiny bakery and café was just named the best in the country by Bon Appetit Magazine. Amazing news, right? Yes… Unless your heart is with your loyal customers who stop by every morning for a coffee and pastry on their way to work.
How great customer loyalty programs stand out from the rest
While all brands realize how valuable their loyal customers are, few brands are hitting it out of the park with their loyalty programs — just ask their customers: most consumers actively use less than half of the loyalty programs they’re enrolled in (via Survata).
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:
Two ways to maximize ROI from your customer loyalty program
Want to give your loyalty program an extra boost? Pay attention to these critical metrics in order to supercharge your loyalty program success.
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
Gotta Catch ‘Em All: Businesses can profit from Pokémon GO traffic long-term
Savvy businesses are using Pokémon GO to drive massive traffic increases to their physical locations, but without a retention strategy in place, those customers might not come back. Here’s how evolve one-time visitors into loyal customer and ensure these temporary promotions create long-term value.
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.
Why Chipotle’s rewards program won’t fix their customer loyalty problem
Chipotle just released the details of Chiptopia, their customer rewards program. While it’s laudable that Chipotle is venturing into the world of customer retention, this program is more “mild” than “hot” when it comes to creating long-term loyalty.
How businesses can fix bad Yelp reviews
There’s nothing worse than receiving a negative Yelp review — especially when it could have been prevented by some simple communication. Here’s how smart businesses address unhappy customers before they go on a Yelp rampage.
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.
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.
4 Car Wash Marketing Strategies That Work
The Car Wash Show is the biggest event of the year for the car wash industry. Speaking to a packed house in Nashville, Thanx CEO Zach Goldstein shared the top ways car wash operators can develop marketing strategies that drive revenue.
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.
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.
Restaurant Leadership Conference Key Takeaways
This year, the theme of the Restaurant Leadership Conference was “Disruption” (images from Restaurant Business). Certainly “disruption” is a term that gets batted around by business executives everywhere, so here’s where we felt that the dialogue found its mark.
Branded Apps by Thanx: Revolutionizing the Loyalty Card App
The Thanx Branded App gives multi-location businesses all the sophisticated mobile and retention marketing capabilities of a massive scale enterprise — at a fraction of the cost. Here’s why we developed the best loyalty card app on the market.
Starbucks’ Loyalty Program Makes Huge Changes
Starbucks has been met with vitriol and rage following the announcement of updates to their popular rewards program. Despite this, Starbucks’ bold move towards a spend-based program is the right move for the coffee giant.
Why the Strongest Brands Have Great Customer Retention Programs
What do Starbucks, Nordstrom, and Amazon all have in common? They invest in innovative, delightful loyalty programs— and they have the loyal customers to show for it.
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).
Why The Chipotle Loyalty Program Isn’t Working
Huge brands like Starbucks, Marriott, and Southwest have all acknowledged the power and value of a having kicka$$ loyalty program (I should know; I’m a member of all three). However, as someone who enjoys more than just the occasional Chipotle burrito bowl, I’ve often wondered why Chipotle has lost touch with its customers in the loyalty department.
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.
The Car Wash Project Management Triangle
Car Wash Project Management Triangle (PMT) explains how to balance operational efficiency and customer service to earn max profits.
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.
5 Ways to Get More Customers Into Your Loyalty Program
Prioritizing customer signups is the number one way to drive ROI and reap the full value of retention and loyalty marketing. With more customers enrolled, you get more data to execute personalized marketing, which drastically increases overall engagement and sales.
Below are the five easiest, most powerful ways to get more customers and drastically increase your subscriber base.
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.
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….
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.
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.
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.
Improving Customer Loyalty — CEO Leslie Silverglide
CEO Leslie Silverglide explains exactly how Mixt Greens has improved customer loyalty. Watch to learn the strategies she’s put in place to grow Mixt Greens into one of the most successful eateries in California.
The Future Of Mobile App Marketing — Keynote Speech
In this Keynote presentation, titled “Apps, the Sequel — Get Effortless, or Get Out,” learn how Apple Pay, Beacons, and “No App, Apps” are changing the very nature of the way customers shop at their favorite stores. View video below or at Apps, The Sequel — Get Effortless, or Get Out.
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.
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.
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.
Why Mobile Slays Traditional Marketing Channels
We recently pulled the numbers examining the results companies achieve when they use traditional versus new forms of marketing.
Car Wash Signs Work Well — But Only When Done Right
Is your car wash signage attracting quality customers? Thanx provides actionable car wash marketing tips for your signage to attract great customers.
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!
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.
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.
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.
6 Ways to Get Millennials to Your Car Wash
Millennials can be a confusing bunch. Reaching them can be a challenge. Thanx shares 6 ways to get millennials to your car wash.
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.
Fine Dining Marketing Requires Good Data
When it comes to marketing data, some restaurants have the wine. Some have the opener. But having one without the other simply does not work.