Trends
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.
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
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
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,
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Solving The Car Wash Industry’s 5 Biggest Challenges
The car wash Industry is like no other. There are unique challenges that exist in operating a carwash successfully. Thanx shares ways to solve them.
Apple Pay and Loyalty
Apple has re-branded Passbook and is adding new features in hopes of one day replacing people’s wallets. If it proves a success this time round, Apple Pay and Wallet will be a permanent fixture in the pockets of every consumer and installed in businesses around the world. That’s a huge jump from where we are now, so when will it actually happen?
The convenience culture is the major driving force behind the cashless revolution. From apps that deliver food in under 15 minutes to one-click shopping on Amazon, “quick and easy” is winning the war. Looking ahead, today’s hyper-involoved payment process (e.g. pennies are still a thing) will ultimately be simplified by mobile devices. So, let’s take a look at:
- The future for Apple Pay
- Current gaps and issues with the technology
How You Can Win with the Sharing Economy
You’ve seen them all in the news: Uber, Lyft, Instacart, Task Rabbit, AirBnB. Clearly, the sharing economy is booming. Consumer adoption is high, which means merchants – all merchants (especially brick-and-mortar) – must follow suit in order to stay relevant.
In essence, the sharing economy has changed the way customers and businesses interact with one another – consumers now expect instantaneous and personalized encounters each time they buy. Because customers’ buying experiences have changed, traditional marketing campaigns don’t have the same bite they once did.
However, the sharing economy does lack a few selling points that are integral to human nature (one example: familiar interactions)! While there are incredible benefits (which I will outline below), knowing more about what the sharing economy lacks presents the ideal business opportunity. Let’s take a look at how to capitalize on the sharing economy to our advantage (despite customers being more fickle than ever!).
The Recipe for Marketing Gluten-Free Foods
Back in 2012, Domino’s first announced that customers could purchase gluten-free pizza crust. At that time, people took notice, but the reality is that “gluten-free” has taken on new meaning since then.
To that end, let’s take a look at the current state of gluten-free products, their growth trajectory going forward, and what these insights mean for pizza operators looking to grow their business.