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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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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

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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,

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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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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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SMS join customer loyalty

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.

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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.

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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.

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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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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.

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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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Loyalty programs and tokenization

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.

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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.

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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.

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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
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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!).

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Starbucks Name? A Brand Loyalty Program at Its Finest!

Starbucks name? We all think we’re unique when we tell our friends or post that picture to Instagram of an entirely fabricated name. Yeah, you know what I’m talking about. Fed up with the Barista’s constant, “And how do you spell that?,” you’ve adopted a new, more witty title.

But, sorry to tell you, you’re not alone and, maybe, you’re not as funny and as you think. You’ve actually been participating in Starbucks own brand loyalty program. Essentially, you’re working for them, and for free!

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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.

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5 Keys to Building Awesome Apps

Ever wondered what it takes to build an app that tons of people download AND use? Welcome to a not-so-exclusive club. Statista predicts that app downloads will hit ~270 billion in 2017.

So, let’s take a look at the numbers behind consumers’ use of apps to figure out exactly what’s working, what’s not, and what to do if you want to build an app your customers will love.

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Customer Retention Strategies

How To Get Better Email Marketing Results

Email marketing serves one purpose: customer retention – essentially, existing customers subscribe to receive email updates and subsequently should visit more often. Prior to the mobile explosion, email served as a solid way to reach customers.

Now, with mobile overtaking email as customers’ preferred method of digital contact, personalization, relevance, and timeliness have become mandatory tactics for effective communication. As a result, email marketing on its own cannot change customer behavior. Fortunately, by complementing email with other data sources, email marketing has the potential to be even more effective than it was before.

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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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Customer Retention Strategies

Branded App For Customer Loyalty – Good Idea or Bad Idea?

Picture it – you unlock your smartphone, scroll to your favorite screen, and click on your own brand’s logo. It’s enough to get any merchant excited about the prospect of having a branded app for customer loyalty, purchases, ordering, games, and whatever else. However, is a branded app something that customers actually want? Here’s how to make the best decision for your business.

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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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