Customer Success Resources

How the TouchBistro Loyalty and Marketing Integration Works

By Katherine Pendrill

Shot of a young couple using a cellphone while sitting in a coffee shop.

Did you know that just a 5% increase in customer retention can increase revenue by 25%? The tricky part is, staying atop customers’ minds can sometimes feel like a full time job. 

The good news is, TouchBistro’s Loyalty and Marketing integration is specifically designed to help you save those precious hours by putting your customer retention strategies and marketing efforts on autopilot. These powerful tools integrate seamlessly to bring your diners’ transaction data, marketing campaigns, and insights together for a 360-degree guest engagement solution – all on one platform.

Curious about this dynamic duo? Keep reading to learn:

  • What TouchBistro Loyalty is
  • What TouchBistro Marketing is
  • How the TouchBistro Loyalty and Marketing integration works
  • The benefits of using TouchBistro Loyalty and Marketing together

What is TouchBistro Loyalty?

TouchBistro Loyalty is an integrated rewards and Customer Relationship Management (CRM) platform that helps restaurants drive repeat business. In fact, in just the first three months of implementing TouchBistro Loyalty, venues see a 12-13% increase in monthly transactions.1 Think of it as a digitized, supercharged reward platform that helps you learn more about your customers. And when you know what keeps your customers coming back for more, you can tempt them with rewards they’ll be more likely to pursue.

The solution offers a range of functionality, including:

  • Customizable loyalty programs: Set up spend and item-based loyalty programs for customers to earn ongoing rewards.
  • Flexible rewards: Keep customers coming back for more with check discounts, item discounts, and buy x get y rewards.
  • Branded Customer Web App: Customers can track their points and earn rewards from the device of their choice.
  • CRM: Create detailed guest profiles and use customers’ personal, behavioral, and engagement data to deliver an exceptional experience every time.
An image of a latte on a table and then a graphic that shows a reward meter with the text "Order 5 Coffees, get the 6th Free."

What is TouchBistro Marketing?

TouchBistro Marketing is a POS-integrated marketing platform that connects restaurants with their guests and drives repeat visits. This solution lets you put your marketing efforts on autopilot. All you have to do is set it, forget it, and reap the benefits!

TouchBistro Marketing comes with powerful features, such as:

  • Custom promotions: Create enticing promotions that turn first-time guests into regulars.
  • Automated marketing campaigns: Send targeted emails and in-app messages in just a few clicks to keep diners continuously engaged.
  • CRM: Segment diner data to create more effective promotions.
  • Customer Web App: Guests can subscribe to emails, leave feedback, receive messages, view promotions, and more – all in one place.
  • Emails: Design eye-catching emails that let your brand shine with drag-and-drop email templates and easy-to-use design tools.
  • Analytics: Easily track promotion redemptions and email click-through rates to figure out what works and make more informed business decisions.
A woman holding a takeout coffee while looking at her phone and a screenshot showing an email that says "Happy Birthday! Enjoy a dessert on us when you visit us during your birthday month!"

How the TouchBistro Loyalty and Marketing Integration Works

While powerful solutions individually, TouchBistro Loyalty and Marketing are even more effective when paired together. The two products integrate with one another so you can collect transaction and personal data from diners in your CRM (via TouchBistro Loyalty) and then use that information to create targeted marketing campaigns (via TouchBistro Marketing) that drive repeat visits. These tools help you capture guest details like orders placed, average spend, last visit, and birthdays to create custom diner segments for dedicated promotions that are tailored to your guests’ exact interests

For example, you can set up an automated email campaign that targets big spenders who haven’t visited your restaurant in the past 60 days and lure them back with a tempting limited-time offer, like a 10% off promotion, to get them back in the door. And that’s just one of the endless promotion opportunities available to you when you use these two powerful solutions together.

The Benefits of Using TouchBistro Loyalty and Marketing Together

With the TouchBistro Loyalty and Marketing integration, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. In other words, using both tools together unlocks even more benefits for your business, including:

1. Drive Repeat Visits

With TouchBistro Loyalty, you can create spend and item-based loyalty programs that drive long-term engagement and increase the frequency of spend. With an item-based loyalty program, diners earn rewards based on items purchased. An example of an item-based program is offering customers a free coffee after they purchase six.

In contrast, a spend-based loyalty program involves giving diners points based on the amount they spend at your restaurant. A great example would be giving customers 1 point for every $10 they spend, and giving them $5 off after they earn 50 points.

Once these programs are set up, TouchBistro Marketing allows you to push repeat visits into overdrive with irresistible marketing promotions delivered at just the right time. For example, you could send your loyalty program members an offer to earn double the points between 3 and 5 p.m. every Tuesday, encouraging your customers to come in even more frequently.

In other words, the integration helps you drive more visits, more effectively. Data can help you segment customers who would be most receptive to your promotions, and then automatically target them via email or in-app messages. 

A screenshot of a customer relationship management (CRM) platform showing a guest's name, their total number of visits, and the amount they've spent.

2. Learn More About Your Customers

When you use TouchBistro Loyalty, you can capture key customer details, like guests’ personal, behavioral, and transactional data, in your CRM. For example, you can record information such as customers’ birthdays, average spend, order preferences, and much more.

And then when you have TouchBistro Marketing as well, you can learn what types of promotions resonate with your customers by collecting data on open rates, click through rates, and redemptions.

When you combine all of this information together, you’ll have a treasure trove of information on what your customers like (and don’t like), their dining habits, and their behaviors.

And with more information, you can create even more effective promotions. For instance, let’s say you want to entice dine-in customers to order takeout via your TouchBistro Online Ordering platform. You can filter your CRM to quickly identify customers who have never ordered takeout from you, and send them a 15% off promotion to use on their first online order. After a week, you can see which customers haven’t yet redeemed this offer and then send them a reminder to take advantage of the deal.

By learning about your customers, you can send them promotions they won’t be able to resist and increase the likelihood that they’ll visit or order from your restaurant again.

3. Save Time

Instead of manually keeping track of diner rewards, like with an old-school punch card program, TouchBistro Loyalty digitizes the progress, so there’s no manual tracking needed on your end. You can quickly see how often diners are engaging with your program, how often they’re earning rewards, and what they’re redeeming rewards for.

In turn, TouchBistro Marketing saves you countless hours by helping you automate your promotions – and the emails and in-app messages associated with them – so you can put your marketing efforts on autopilot. Rather than sending each promotional email manually, you can set up automated email campaigns and in-app messages that are triggered by diner milestones. For example, customers can automatically receive a free treat on their birthday, get a tempting offer to come back if they haven’t visited in a while, or earn a reward after hitting a total spend milestone.

And with all the time you save by using both products together, you’ll have even more time to dedicate to other aspects of your business.

A woman sitting in a cafe and using her mobile phone, alongside a screenshot of a phone showing a loyalty program app.

4. Deliver a Better Customer Experience

With TouchBistro Loyalty, guests can use the browser-based Customer Web App (CWA) to redeem offers through their digital loyalty accounts with the simple scan of a QR code – a process that’s much quicker and easier than having to visit an app store, download an app, and wait for it to download. As a result, the CWA reduces friction and saves customers time and space on their smartphones.

Something else that takes up consumers’ time and (mental) space is the thousands of marketing messages they’re exposed to each day. Customers are tired of receiving offers they’re not interested in. With TouchBistro Marketing, your customers will feel seen when they receive personalized offers based on past behavior and information they’ve shared with you. For example, you can surprise and delight customers by sending an aptly timed offer for a free dessert right before they celebrate their birthday.

And when you have both products, you can send guests targeted promotions directly through the Customer Web App as well, so customers can interact with your brand in a variety of ways from one central location on their device. For example, you can configure the TouchBistro Loyalty and Marketing integration to send customers 30% off their next veggie burger via the CWA after they buy three veggie burgers.

5. Identify New Business Opportunities

As a restaurateur, data is your secret weapon. And with TouchBistro Loyalty, you can access detailed reporting on your rewards program to help you leverage data in making profit-driven decisions. For example, if you see that only a small percentage of loyalty program participants end up accruing enough points to redeem a reward, you might decide to reconfigure your program so that customers can earn rewards more quickly.

Meanwhile, TouchBistro Marketing allows you to gain valuable insights from diners by collecting feedback. Automated post-dining surveys help you learn what you did well and how you can improve. If, for example, you find out that customers love your seasonal frosé, you might decide to make it a permanent fixture of your menu.

Together, TouchBistro Marketing and Loyalty help you understand where your business excels and how you can grow. For example, you can unlock data about how many customers redeem your free birthday rewards to offer a more tempting treat. Let’s say you offer customers who have a birthday in April a free coffee, and customers who have a birthday in May a free cupcake. If you see that only 25% of those guests redeem a free coffee, while 75% of redeem a free cupcake, then you can attract new loyalty program sign ups with the promise of a birthday cupcake instead of a coffee.

While TouchBistro Loyalty and TouchBistro Marketing are effective individually, together they create a complete customer engagement solution. Combine these tools today to save time, delight customers, and earn more revenue.

1All growth rates are calculated on a same-store sales basis for the applicable period of time.

Photo of Katherine Pendrill
by Katherine Pendrill

Katherine is the Content Marketing Manager at TouchBistro, where she writes about trending topics in food and restaurants. The opposite of a picky eater, she’ll try (almost) anything at least once. Whether it’s chowing down on camel burgers in Morocco or snacking on octopus dumplings in Japan, she’s always up for new food experiences.

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