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Customers demand targeted, relevant marketing messages

When blended, data on purchases, frequency, preferences, social media activity forms a 360-degree customer profile that can be used to build a long-term relationship with your customers.

July 7, 2015 by Vic Mahadevan — CEO, Punchh

I was reminded recently of how poorly targeted some marketing campaigns are when I received a special offer for Mother’s Day. Me, the father. It would seem that this brand’s first clue that its offer might be mistargeted to a male should have been my name, as likely no woman goes by Vic. (Even worse, the company did not send me a special offer for Father’s Day.)

Few companies can afford to make such marketing blunders, and in this age of automated data gathering, there’s no need to do so when companies can gather highly detailed and actionable customer information. The time required to convert that data into usable insights about our customers is shorter than ever, and gives companies the ability to produce and execute laser-targeted and effective campaigns quickly.

But here’s the best news: Customers actually want to receive such messages because they’re truly relevant. They reflect what they want from each brand, not what each brand blindly wants to sell them.

So how does this happen? As all good marketing does - through word of mouth. Nothing works better than a, “You’ve got to eat there!” friend-to-friend endorsement of a restaurant. And in 2015, nothing spreads that endorsement faster than social networks and our ever-present smartphones.

That restaurant customers will communicate their great experiences instantly through social media is fascinating. There’s something about finding great food and drinks that leads them to share their excitement with friends and family in real time and with photos and words. (Clothing stores, supermarkets, car repair shops … for some reason they don’t get the same “You’ve got to get this!” love as restaurants. People are so passionate about their food!)

A restaurant company’s ability to glean information from those endorsements is vital to bringing customers back and ensuring they tell many others about those experiences.

It begins by ensuring such customers are part of your restaurant’s loyalty program, one that captures all their transactional data. Without knowing what they like to eat and drink, you have little chance of personalizing future marketing messages.

Your loyalty program must not only reward them for consistent purchases (whether by frequency of visits or dollars spent), it should reward them for inviting others to join them at your restaurant. And to ensure they’re actually great brand evangelists, your program must use mobile platform technology that tracks their invitations to others through social media or a smartphone app.

When blended, that data on purchases, frequency, preferences, social media activity forms a 360-degree customer profile that can be used to build a long-term relationship with your customers.

Even more important is the right platform that can calculate the return on your marketing investment in each and every loyalty customer. You’ll know the deals and freebies and rewards you’ve given them back, and you’ll also know how much they’ve spent and their referred friends have spent. Knowing that your messaging is creating topline growth proves your marketing is on target.

Unlike that Mother’s Day promotion I received.

About Vic Mahadevan

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