At this year’s fifth annual Paytronix user conference, PXUX 2019, members of the Paytronix team and current customers shared their “up top” moments. These reasons to celebrate might involve achieving personal success, crushing company goals, or staying “up top” and ahead of the competition.

Everyone who joined us in Denver learned a lot over the course of the two days. But if you couldn’t attend PXUX this year, here are five ways that you can have an “up top” moment too:

1. Harness the power of one platform. Coordinating multiple vendors adds complexity to your marketing strategy. When you work with one platform rather than having to spend time and energy managing multiple relationships, you can focus on what matters most. There are also fantastic benefits of using multiple parts of the platform in tandem. Customers with loyalty cards containing stored value spend 120% more than those with loyalty only. Meanwhile, when gift cards are redeemed through online ordering, there is a 6% increase in average check size, and when loyalty is added to online ordering, there is an 18% increase in ordering frequency.
2. Create huge wins with artificial intelligence. Your customer data is incredibly powerful and can be used to not only predict behavior, but also influence it. Crafting promotions that prompt incremental visits and spend from individuals instead of segments will have a significant impact on your sales. Our data insights customers who implemented a one-to-one visit challenge achieved an impressive sales increase of 496%.
3. Make customer recovery easy. As hard as you try, sometimes things go wrong and your guests have a bad experience. But resolving the matter with a face-to-face interaction isn’t always possible. When customers respond to a post-purchase survey and indicate that they’re dissatisfied, the restaurant manager can send an automated message that addresses a common complaint like food quality or delivery time. A swift response can lessen the sting of a negative experience, and it may also pay dividends down the road. In fact, guests who rate their experience between 0 and 3 stars (out of 5) and then receive a response from the restaurant are 11% more likely to order again.
4. Engage your guests with the right messages at the right times and in the right places. Our team shared both the content and deployment of 11 campaigns that proved to be effective in reaching customers. Choosing from email, text, push/pull, and geofencing depends on the message and what’s likely to be most successful. For instance, considering a guest’s local time will help your emails land right when you want them to. You can also measure engagement on different media through multiuse coupon codes.
5. Update a successful promo. Just because something is successful doesn’t mean it can’t be improved. One way for the old to be made new again is by incorporating click-to-load offers into emails. These promotions require a click on a call to action before the offer is added to a guest’s account. They reduce cannibalization by not applying the offer to customers who may have purchased the item anyway. In one example of a brand testing click-to-load, the spending lift for the control group was 120%, but guests who were given a click-to-load offer produced a spending lift of 260%.

Next year’s event promises many more “up top” moments. Be sure to join us in Boston on September 16th and 17th for PXUX 2020! In the meantime, scroll through the slideshow below to see some of this year’s highlights.

Up Top! - Kicking off Day 1 of UpTopPXUX with a high-energy introduction from our Co-founder Matt d'Arbeloff.

For your marketing campaigns to influence loyalty program members to visit and spend more, you should keep in mind three things: format, relevance, and timeliness. How you communicate with customers impacts how customers engage with your brand. Creating a strong marketing strategy with effective messaging is vital to getting noticed. When you send your guests the right message at the right time, it cuts through the clutter and truly resonates.

Using the proper approach to convey the information you want will maximize a message’s impact. Here are some examples of the most effective marketing messages to send to your program members:

Welcome: The welcome message is an opportunity to give your guests comprehensive information about your loyalty program. If they enrolled at the POS, it’s possible that they only got a bare-bones description of what your program offers to avoid holding up the line. Now is the time to tell them all the benefits they receive by being a member. Because this message may be dense, it’s best suited for an email. If you want to welcome members by text message, referring them to an email or linking to a landing page works well.

Almost There: This is a great way to motivate customers to accelerate their visit cadence and come in sooner to earn a reward. After defining what “almost there” means for your brand, you should reach out to guests when they are only one visit away. While the message can be sent via text or through geofencing, it’s especially effective in an email that features images of the reward that will be received. The current point balance should also be included to help prevent guests from falling short of the goal.

We Miss You: When done right, sending a message to your lapsed guests can bring them back for a visit. For maximum effectiveness, you should know each guest’s individual visit cadence. Reaching out too early could result in sending an unnecessary offer, but if you wait too long, they might be gone for good. Guests who are uncertain to return to your locations can’t be relied on to still have your app downloaded on their phone. The best method for winning them back is a progression of emails with tiered offers.

To see the full list of messages that can be used to achieve a successful loyalty program, watch our on-demand webinar, “11 Effective Messages You Should Send Your Guests.”

What if most stores – and even Amazon – are getting frictionless shopping wrong? What would it mean for brands that are trying to do things differently?

Kim Otocki, a member of the Paytronix marketing team, recently had the opportunity to sit down with Gus Olympidis, the president and CEO of Family Express. His c-store brand has firmly established itself as a leader in the frictionless experience, and Olympidis had a lot of wisdom to offer other c-store owners who are trying to follow suit.

“We’re beginning to see a movement away from demographics, toward psychographics,” said Olympidis, pointing out that the cookie-cutter approach of segmenting by generations doesn’t work nearly as well as it used to. A group like the millennials, he points out, is far too large and diverse to use as a guide for consumer wants, needs, and behaviors.

The key to serving consumers best, says Olympidis, is doing everything a c-store can to understand them, independent of their demographic. In order to accomplish this, c-stores need the kind of data insights that will let them treat their customers as individuals instead of members of a broad group.

Some of these insights can be provided by digital loyalty programs and digital customer relationship management. But according to Olympidis, one of the biggest mistakes brands are making right now is assuming that technology equates to a frictionless customer experience.

In fact, he believes that “bad technology creates friction.” Anything that makes it more difficult for consumers to get what they want increases friction, and that can absolutely include technology. […]

Successful loyalty programs provide guests with multiple ways to engage and enroll. Every guest is different and each has preferred ways to interact with brands. Some of your guests may be tech fanatics who use every new feature as soon as it’s released and reject the idea of physical membership cards. Meanwhile, there may be others who don’t own smartphones and feel alienated by app-only programs. 

By offering your guests several enrollment methods, you maximize the potential of your loyalty program. Here are seven of the most effective ways to engage with guests:

1. Mobile App - Using a mobile app is easy and guests can identify themselves at the POS via QR code, barcode, or check-in code. The downside of mobile apps is that many guests will uninstall the ones that aren’t providing value. Integrating mobile ordering or stored payment to your app makes it worthwhile for guests and enhances their connection to your brand. If your mobile app stays on a guest’s phone, you can continue to spur activity with targeted promotions and geofencing campaigns.

Using a combination of these seven methods enables you to reach the most guests and make the biggest impact with your loyalty program. To learn more, watch our webinar on this topic, “7 of the Best Methods to Enroll More Guests,” or request a demo.