5 killer strategies to increase loyalty in the New Year, using data you collected over the Christmas period

As the busiest period of the year passes, it’s time to cash in on the data generated from bookings, orders, events, merchandise and deliveries. Doing so can not only boost your revenue in the New Year, but reward those big spenders and encourage repeat visits. Here’s 5 ways to do just that:

1. Reward your big spenders

Make your big spenders feel valued with personalised rewards and discounts. Utilise information collected at the point of sale to determine what they ordered in your store and give them exactly that. Use your new data to drive your reward decision-making. For example, if they ordered a glass of bubbles when they first arrived, perhaps send them the exact bottle they enjoyed, to make a well-timed reminder of the joyous season. Simple, personalised and thoughtful.

2. Invest time in meeting your new, first-time customers.

Welcome new customers from the festive period and thank them for booking with your restaurant. Think about how you can better showcase your brand to new customers. Perhaps you can organise a one-off event for all first-time customers in January. The event could be a brand showcase with drinks and small nibbles showing off your menu. It could be positioned as an after-work event with friends to look at the New Year together, make fun plans to look forward to and most importantly, don’t let January get you down!

3. Encourage Group Bookings

Segment your corporate data and identify who the booker was: offer a January reward to the main contact, and offer all attendees a unique ’team’ January offer. Encourage new user groups to return using detailed data captured at the point of booking.

If you used a sophisticated event booking system during the festive season, you’ll not only have captured the bookers details, but all attendee contact information. Talk personally to these groups using their names, and company name encouraging them to visit together, again in January.

According to MailerLite, personalised welcome emails can lead to 12x higher transaction rates.

4. Gain customer feedback

This is imperative to gain and regularly forgotten amongst the recovery of the Christmas season. Make this as important as reviewing your digital data mix, and always review your customer’s experience and make positive changes for the future.

Asking your customers the right questions based on how they enjoyed your restaurant will give you invaluable feedback on how to improve for next year. Corporate bookings, friends meeting for dinner, families visiting on the weekend; we all have a varied customer-base, but are we gaining feedback from each group in the best way?

5. What’s cooking in January?

Don’t forget the basics. With so much data to play with, try to streamline your marketing efforts with segmentation that allows you to target each individual customer group.

Adapt your messaging and delivery for corporate parties, advance bookers, event lovers and even encourage users to experience other ways to touch your brand; perhaps frequent visitors will love to take your brand home with bespoke merchandise, and Christmas-gifters may want to treat themselves too.

The possibilities are endless and so is your opportunity to plan, test, analyse and adjust.