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Customer Loyalty

Table tent examples advertising direct delivery for restaurants

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

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Surprise and Delight Loyalty from Thanx

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

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lame customer loyalty program

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

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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

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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

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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 —

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convenience-store-loyalty

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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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fine dining

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.

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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.

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Customer loyalty for car washes

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!

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Loyalty programs and tokenization

VIP Marketing Solutions Increase Sales 40%

As we’ve covered before, there’s no better predictor of a multi-location, brick-and-mortar business’s long-term success than its best customers. “VIPs” spend more money, they refer more new customers, and they are the best brand advocates – hands down.
Due to VIPs’ importance, every businesses should have a VIP marketing strategy in place. Let’s take a look at the marketing solutions that are best suited to drive sales from VIPs and retain their business (while also being mindful that marketers want to reduce hassle as much as possible).

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Rewards program

Does My Customer Rewards Program Actually Work?

At the simplest level, customer rewards and promotions attempt to change customer purchasing behavior. Brands experiment with seeminlgy every type of promotion, whether monetary (e.g. discounts or BOGO offers) or non-monetary (e.g. exclusive access or brand-relevant experiences) to drive customers to spend more or spend more often.

“Experiment,” of course, being the operative verb. If nothing else, marketing success comes from iteration. In order to iterate, however, marketers have to know what’s actually working – and there’s only one way to do that: close the loop. Here’s what “close the loop” means and why it’s so important for loyalty and rewards programs.

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The Whole Foods Loyalty Program: 4 Key Takeaways

Whole Foods made a splash announcing a loyalty pilot in Princeton, New Jersey earlier this quarter. Should the Whole Foods loyalty program prove successful, the company plans to take it to Philadelphia in the near term and then nationwide by late 2015. As with any big move from a large brand, retention marketers should take note – particularly when that big brand strays from how it traditionally has done business. Let’s have a look at the four most important takeaways:

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Loyalty programs and tokenization

Proprietary Data for Brick-And-Mortar Businesses

The most successful retention marketing fosters mutually beneficial relationships between merchants and their best customers. To create such a high-performing program, merchants need more than generic customer insights; they need proprietary data that maps how customers experience their particular brand. Seek out those innovative providers who can deliver actionable information in order to earn a higher ROI on your loyalty investment.

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Loyalty programs and tokenization

How To Evaluate Customer Loyalty Software

There are a ton of customer loyalty software options out there; choosing correctly can seem overwhelming. Stakes are high, as loyalty programs come with switching costs. In addition to the software itself, brands also need to manage customer churn. Here’s how to ensure success during your evaluations.

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