Automatic Restaurant Customer Data Collection
Automatic restaurant customer data collection is a way of automatically gathering information about your restaurant customers.
This could be contact data from online/mobile ordering for pickup and/or delivery customers, or newsletter subscribers who find your website or social media posts…
… or the HOME RUN…
… your dine-in restaurant customer data.
It’s like having an invisible sales and marketing assistant who takes down important details from each restaurant customer.
Customer Data and Restaurant CRM Strategy
Restaurant customer data collection increases sales by 25% when done with an effective Restaurant CRM strategy.
The ROI (Return on Investment) on email marketing is 36x your investment. This means spend $1 collecting your restaurant customer data, get $36 back when you use it for email, text, or push notification marketing through a good restaurant CRM.
What’s great about taking online and mobile orders is your customers willingly give you their contact data. Do your menu and ordering data collection right and you could have an 80% opt-in rate for online/mobile order data.
Name, mobile phone numbers, email address, and even address in the case of delivery orders – it’s all for the taking when you do online orders with a system you control the data.
That’s basically customer data for FREE and it all happens AUTOMATICALLY!
It’s not just online orders. It can be reservations, check-in and walk-up order data and if you have the right Restaurant CRM working for you, dine-in customer data as well.
Customers data collection is becoming standard procedure in the restaurant industry for the most profitable restaurants.
Value of Automatic Restaurant Data Collection
Creatively and automatically collecting your customer dine-in restaurant data is what to we refer to as the home run as even small restaurants can easily generate a database of 3000 people within 3 to 6 months with the right system.
We mentioned earlier the ROI on email marketing is spend $1 collecting your restaurant customer data, get $36 back when you use it for email, text, or push notification marketing through a good restaurant CRM.
DBC Technologies Ltd.’s research further shows 1 piece of restaurant data used properly in automated promotions is worth $26.65/year in additional revenue annually for the life of the customer.
A 3000 person database would mean 3000 x $26.65 = $79,950/year increase in sales for your restaurant.
More Fun Facts on Customer Data Collection.
You get a higher response rate on email marketing from restaurant data collected from actual customers than email list subscribers who have never eaten your food, or Facebook or Instagram followers.
For example, a small test DBC Technologies Ltd. did for a restaurant customer found 11 responses out of 142 people who had actually placed an online or walk up order, or came to dine-in and had their customer data automatically collected vs. ZERO response out of 1386 never ate the restaurants food newsletter subscribers.
Wow!
Want an Exceptionally Efficient Way to Collect Dine-in Customer Data?
First, you will need a CRM software. This is a customer relationship management software.
If you want to maximize your auto-collection of data methods across pickup/delivery/dine-in and newsletter subscribers, find an actual Restaurant Specific CRM (Like DBC Technologies Ltd.) , one including an online/mobile ordering platform, or at least able to integrate to one.
This Automated Collection Method Starts with a “Table Talker”
- 1/2 page simple brochure corners rounded and laminated to put on each table
- A special Offer for a Bite, super small portion of food you can serve quickly when they join your newsletter or download your app if they have one. (you can skip the bite offer but it will reduce data collection by about 72%)
- QR Code to take them to a page on your website allowing them to join your newsletter online from their mobile phone, or download your mobile app if you have one.
- URL to the page on your website with a “Short URL” so it is easy to type for customers who do not know how to use a QR Code.
You will Need a Few More Website components:
- Mobile App – If you have one or if your chosen Restaurant CRM includes one (DBC Tech’s does, and it is branded to your restaurant)
- Web page where people can choose to join your mailing list by web or mobile app download, if you have Online Ordering you could include that option on this page as well.
- Webpage your customers fill in the form to Opt-In to your mailing list (often part of the CRM if you don’t have these capabilities in your own website)
- Web page that comes up AFTER your restaurant customer subscribes to your newsletter from the page above making it clear they subscribed. This allows your wait staff to easily confirm and bring them their free Bite.
- Restaurant CRM to set up automated promotions to use this data to drive sales.
Once you have your Restaurant Auto Data Collection System Setup
From here it gets pretty simple.
Train your staff
- On first touch with the customer, if the customers are not alread looking and signing up, mention the free food for joining your newsletter offer.
- How to verify a newsletter subscriber
- Get the “Bite” from the kitchen where they are prepared for grab and go and get to the table as fast as possible. The bite is meant to be there to nibble and ponder while they think about placing an order. It is ok for it to arrive before beverages.
What Happens Next?
At this point you start to collect data, depending on the quality and perceived value of your bite, you can expect in the early days to see more than 1/2 your dine-in customers join your mailing list.
Once you get to 100 opted in mailing list subscribers, we suggest you start email/sms/ and push notification marketing. (make sure your chosen CRM has all these abilities so you can communicate multi-channel, it makes a MASSIVE difference to your sales growth results)
Here are our top 4 email automation ideas for restaurant owners with a Restaurant CRM.
- Email One Food Category on your Menu to your Customers Monthly
- Email your Happy Hour Menu to your Customers Weekly
- Email one item on your menu out as a “Featured Item” Monthly
- Holiday greetings like Christmas, New Years, Halloween, Easter, Thanksgiving, Valentine’s Day, Summer is Here, Fall is Here, Spring is Near, Winter is upon us- repeat each annually.
This list of 4 could mean 7 emails per month to each customer which make sense and are not annoying.
Fully automated from the time they join your list.
DBC Technologies Ltd. and their restaurant consultants are experts in increasing restaurant sales. They offer a Restaurant CRM platform with your own branded Mobile App all built to facilitate this automatic restaurant customer data collection method.
Turn Key.
Find out how you can rapidly grow your restaurant business at https://deliverybizconnect.com