Shhh, it’s a secret (menu)...

Bite-Size Loyalty Newsletter

ISSUE 006

Hi Reader,

This week, I have an exciting announcement about our latest release of Loyalty 3.0 as well as five tips on how to make your loyalty data actionable. I’ll also share my thoughts on Shake Shack’s latest bitcoin rewards announcement.

Thanx for reading!

Emily

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Announcing Hidden Menu

Discounts are fleeting. Customer joy is eternal. That’s the thinking behind today’s official launch of Hidden Menu, the latest release on our new Loyalty 3.0 platform. The idea of a hidden or secret menu isn’t new. You have probably ordered Animal Style fries from In-N-Out or at least heard of the Pink, Orange, Blue, and Purple Drinks at Starbucks. But secret menus of the past are limited:

Guests can only access them in-store
Any guest can learn about and then take advantage of the secret menu
You can’t turn them off and on (at least not easily)

So what’s really cool about the new Thanx Hidden Menu feature? You can offer your hidden menu in-store OR online, you can limit menu availability to whomever you choose and you limit access to the menu to a specific period of time.

This flexibility opens up a ton of use cases and as marketers, should inspire a huge amount of creativity. Think about Chipotle’s “Guac mode”. For a limited time, guests who sign up for the the loyalty program and get “Guac mode verified” get access to surprise guac rewards throughout the year. Now that’s a sign-up offer that drives engagement!

By the way, if you are looking for ideas, we will soon be releasing a much anticipated “Non-Discount Reward Cookbook”. It’s a massive list of non-discount reward ideas dreamed up by our Thanx team of marketing and design experts. More on this in my next newsletter.

Making loyalty data actionable

This week, Thanx CEO, Zach Goldstein along with Ben Rabner, CMO of Costa Vida and Nicolas Nieto, VP Marketing and Brand of Roti joined me to talk about how to Make Loyalty Data Actionable. In the webinar, we talked a lot about data challenges and trends and how to get started with more targeted marketing.

Here are the top five takeaways:

More data: By 2025, 54% of dining occasions will take place online. If you have your ordering experience optimized for data capture (think: no guest checkout and a compelling intro reward), then most of those digital consumers can be enrolled into your marketing database. You are about to be swimming in data.
More accountability: Data availability fundamentally changes the role of the restaurant marketer. Now, marketers have the ability (and burden) of delivering the right message, to the right person, at the right time. And when you CAN trace marketing outcomes to actual revenue, there is an expectation that you do.
More curiosity: Start with the business insight you are looking to understand, not with the the work of organizing and perfecting the dataset. This can help drive incremental value from data, rather than analysis paralysis. Thanks Ben Rabner for this insight!
More focus: Customers who make 3 purchases are 10x more likely to come back than customers who only make one purchase. That’s why, I recommend looking at your customer activation funnel (customers in your database, customers with an account, customers with 1 purchase, 2 purchases and 3 purchases) and setting up a nurture series to drive conversion between each stage. These lifecycle campaigns drive 4.5% conversion and $25 per conversion on average on our platform.
More experimentation: Test, test, test. Test the hell out of everything. A, B, C, and even D test everything you do. And make decisions based on what drive incremental revenue. It’s hard to argue with ROI.

Watch the Webinar

Non-Discount Reward of the Week?

Shake Shack tests Bitcoin rewards

Shake Shack is offering loyalty rewards in the form of Bitcoin. I’m obsessed with this initiative for exactly one reason (and it has nothing to do with Bitcoin)…it’s because Shake Shack is experimenting. And while they may find out that very few of their customers actually cash in, the point is that they are testing new ways to engage their guests (and hopefully measuring the outcome based on incremental revenue).