While most of the restaurant owners have made restaurant loyalty program as an important marketing strategy, still many hesitate to initiate it. Why?
Loyalty programs have already succeeded in other industries like banking, travel, and E-commerce, but is it beneficial for Restaurants too?
Do you have the same question whether to start a loyalty program in a restaurant or not? You’ll get your answer here (if you read the complete article)

A successful loyalty program helps to win back lost and disappointed customers. It actually boosts business growth by getting repeat customers.

Loyalty programs are actually not expensive to initiate nor uneasy to maintain unlike most of the restaurant owners believe. It actually helps in increasing customer retention in restaurants with the help of Purchasing Rewards.

Also Read: 7 Last-Minute Black Friday Restaurant Promotion Ideas for 2019

Let me explain with an Example –

Here I am giving a real-life example of a loyalty Program – Zomato Gold.
Zomato gold rules are applicable to the members only. To those who are a member of their loyalty program get special benefits and attractive discounts.

Another one is Piggybank by zomato – which is a point-based loyalty program for loyal users of their food delivery service. According to a statement by Zomato, every time a user orders food online on Zomato’s food delivery platform, 10% of her order value is credited back as Z Coins into her Zomato Piggybank. These credits are later redeemed against food ordered from exclusive Piggybank restaurants.
And the impressive results Zomato got is –

More users, More order and more loyal customers. That’s the benefit of implementing a loyalty program for restaurants.

Loyalty program influence purchasing decision, According to a study, 73% of people more likely to recommend a brand with a good customer loyalty program, and 74% of loyalty programs participants agree that they are likely to do business with a brand that offers a customer loyalty program.

Another advantage of having a customer loyalty program is it turns your loyal customer into your brand advocates. A Cloud-based integrated CRM System can help you capitalise your loyalty program. Today’s AI-Enabled marketing automation software allows big data analytics which simply helps restaurant with segregation of customer.

You can actually identify customers preferences by knowing their personal details, order amount, preferences, spending capacity, you can segment customers on the basis of these details. This information helps you to create and run personalised marketing campaigns in the restaurant.

When you succeed in making loyal customers for your business, make them act as your brand ambassadors, a restaurant referral program tangled with a loyalty program can do wonder in acquiring new customers. According to a study by AMA, Referral marketing creates higher lifetime value customers, that are more loyal and contribute to a higher margin than other customers.

The biggest benefit of having a loyalty program is you can create a long-term relationship with customers. Building personal relationships increase high-value customers for a long time, Auto-greetings, birthday/anniversary wishes, discounts, rewards programs are the best way to heighten it.

There are no doubts that loyalty programs are trending way to create engagement and interaction between restaurant and customers, which directly derive higher business growth.