Breaking Up is Hard to Do

Don't let your restaurant do it to customers.

Are you `breaking up’ with your customers?

Are you losing that connection you built through e-mail, rewards and social media?

Break ups can occur for many reasons—from over-blasting e-mail communications and newsletters--to not running enough rewards or specials or forgetting your customer’s special moments like birthdays or anniversaries.

This month, I celebrated my birthday. June is usually a great time to have a birthday thanks to the anticipation of summer, warmer weather and a more carefree attitude among those living in an urban center.

On the flip side, sometimes birthdays can be more challenging than fun. This year, having signed up for several loyalty programs and insider clubs with various restaurants, I was happy to discover a few `perks’ in my inbox to mark the day I became yet another year older.

Save $10 on your next dinner!

Have some champagne on us (not a QSR)!

Get a free ice cream cup and even a free dinner!

Loyalty rewarding is big business and possesses a certain appeal if done consistently and frequently. Recognizing that building frequency among customers is a cornerstone of success, loyalty programs should be easy to understand, constantly evolving and communicated among many loyalty channels.

Bruegger's is a good example of a QSR that effectively uses social media channels to promote specials and free inducements.

It’s crucial to acknowledge all of your `fans,’ not just the ones that walk through your doors.

With that in mind, loyalty programs can give rewards and points for increased customer frequency, to tempt members to order new products and specials and to celebrate occasions such as birthdays and anniversaries.

Rewards give customers an `insider’s’ perspective of your restaurant. In turn, you can gain valuable feedback and suggestions from them about new products, specials and how your marketing programs are succeeding.

E-mail, of course, is a great way to stay connected with your customers but it must be timely, defined and specific to work well. But beware of blasting more than a few times per week. You don’t want your customers to feel overwhelmed and tune out.

Also, abundant choices are available for managing e-mail programs depending on your size and manpower.  Self-directed e-mail and social media platforms are offered by various providers such as Fishbowl, MUrgent, and Promoterz.

Social media for QSRs is threading your brand into the daily routines of cyberspace. (See our marketing article Is Your Restaurant Customer Looking for Instant Gratification?).  With more than 400 million users, Facebook is a gem. It still offers free fan and group pages. Restaurateurs can either assign their own team to build and maintain communicating specials, hours, new menu items, events and greetings to customers or hire marketing firms, public relations companies or consultants do the job for them.

But there’s still a chance you can `break up’ from social media if you can’t keep your customers captivated. So keep your posts relevant and frequent so that your fans on Facebook and other outlets stay interested.

Foursquare and Twitter are other ways to build loyalty and communicate brand to existing and potential customers. Special discount codes can be tweeted and Foursquare provides an instant vehicle to lure customers away from competing brands with promotional location-based inducements. Foursquare also creates a competitiveness among your top customers by awarding a "mayorship" to the customers that `check in’ most often (See our article Using Foursquare to Boost Your QSR Sales).

Don’t forget: your most valuable asset is a connection with your customers. Build upon it and cherish it. Above all, don't turn your customers off and certainly don't break up!

Rick Zambrano is the founder of Kandessa Media Solutions, LLC and lives in Boston, Mass.  After nearly a decade of working at Au Bon Pain, mostly in support of the Finance, Operations, and Culinary groups, he founded Kandessa and launched qsrbuzz™. Zambrano can be reached at rickz@qsrbuzz.com.