YOU DONE MESSED UP A-A-RON!

That’s what’s been ringing in my head for the past month.  With our company acquiring Repeat Returns Loyalty Platform this year, I thought I had it all figured out.  

It seemed pretty simple: I’d connect our industry-leading restaurant customer acquisition program, which we’ve been running since 2016, to the Repeat Returns system.  For years, I’d been talking about how restaurants’ loyalty programs were Ferraris with empty gas tanks.  The biggest problem I’d run into over the years was that restaurants love their loyalty programs. But they simply didn’t have enough members, and the acquisition of new members was damn near impossible since it required their staff to get opt-ins inside the restaurant.  Hence, they had a Ferrari with NO GAS!

At the same time, we had no issue gaining thousands of new customers for our client’s VIP programs.  Our program was easy.  We’d run paid ads and organic social campaigns, gain MASSIVE ATTENTION, get customers to engage, and instantly build a GIGANTIC database.  A database that would see 30-40% of these customers walk through the doors and spend their hard-earned money at our client’s restaurants.  

So, it only made sense to take our Restaurant Acquisition Program and throw those customers into the Repeat Returns Loyalty program.

Well, that was my thought, and over the Summer, as this merger of programs was happening, we also launched the new company name, DRYVER!

Why DRYVER?  Because our goal is to DRIVE Your sales.  So, DRYVER felt like the perfect new name.  

BUT

In all of my excitement, I failed to realize what I’d known all along: only a fraction of the customers we acquire through our programs are interested in a restaurant’s loyalty program.  Over the years, we’ve found that around 15-20% of a restaurant’s customers will participate in a loyalty program, but 100% of the customers we see through our VIP programs will participate.

WHY?  Because 8 out of 10 customers ARE NOT LOYAL!  And there’s something about putting their contact info in for a loyalty program that doesn’t sit right with them.  

But, if you give them a few AWESOME promos to start or reignite the relationship, they are all in.   

So, with that, we are making some changes.  We are working on what it looks like to have those two programs running simultaneously and slowly drip the right customers into the loyalty program.  

The GREAT news is that we have the two programs running for hundreds of restaurants nationwide and a combined 25 years of proof for both; now it’s just to fine-tune that “middle ground.”

CLICK BELOW or HERE to get an audio perspective by listening to episode 829 of my podcast, Restaurant Marketing Secrets.