Gathering the right data for your restaurant marketing

The data your restaurant already walks past every day, and how to put it to work.

Restaurant marketing works better when it is aimed at people you actually know. Buying data is one way to find them, but there is a better option: collect your own data, from the guests who already walk through your door.

At first glance, collecting and using data can look harder for an offline business than it is. The simplest capture point is the Wi-Fi. With Stampede captive Wi-Fi guests log on through a splash page you design, and the portal keeps you on the right side of the Information Commissioner when it comes to GDPR.

One of the big strengths of Wi-Fi marketing is that it is a safe, compliant way to gather customer data. You can use it to build customer profiles, group guests into audiences, and target your marketing at the people most likely to respond. It gives you an edge on service too. The questions new customers ask most often are the same ones this post answers: what data can you collect, and what is it worth?

With Stampede Wi-Fi you design the splash page, so you choose the questions. There is a lot of potential data a hospitality business can ask for, and different details hold different value depending on your goals. The portal does more than collect data: it lets you gather information at different stages of the customer relationship and, most importantly, add context. On your sign-in page you can collect facts about the customer and context about the visit. Here is how to work through it.

Start with the basics

Name, date of birth, gender and address or postcode are the common starting points. Your diner's name is the first thing you need to begin building their customer profile.

Date of birth lets you group guests by age and tells you when their birthday is, which is handy when it comes to inviting them to celebrate with you. Gender is another variable that widens your audiences. Collect these four details from everyone who signs onto your Wi-Fi and you have a solid foundation for simple, effective campaigns.

This data can also fuel ideas for events, menu changes or even a rebrand that fits your customer base better. You might work out that a lot of young mums pop in during the day, and change your daytime offers to bring them in more often. Or you might discover single professionals visiting for coffee, who you can target with offers for after-work drinks and nibbles.

Keeping in touch

Marketing to previous customers earns a higher return than chasing new ones, so data that helps you stay in touch is the most valuable kind. Because guests tick to opt in at the login page, the emails and texts you send afterwards are messages they asked for.

Captive Wi-Fi is a cost-effective way to grow your email and SMS lists. You can check submitted email addresses as they come in, and use them straight away: a thank-you email after the visit that invites a review, or an incentive in the same message, like money off or a free item code, to encourage the next one.

Context and customisation

They say content is king, but in the data world context is what puts meaning behind your data. Ask the diner who they are with and what the visit is for. A date night? A quick family tea? A special celebration? What is their favourite drink or pizza?

Context tells you why people visit, so you can attract more visitors with the same reasons, and it lets you customise service and offers for the guest sitting in front of you right now.

Knowing how a customer found out about your venue, offer or event is valuable for a different reason: it shows how your marketing is performing. You can work out the return on your digital spend with reporting and see which campaigns actually convert. When customers are moved to book, it is not always by the activities we expect.

Context keeps budget and time pointed at the right activities. Combine it with the basic customer information and you have the makings of proper customer personas to inform your strategy, your campaigns and your individual ads.

In-venue patterns

Some of the most valuable data from your Stampede Wi-Fi does not come from asking guests anything at all. It is the simple connection data behind each login, and it helps you plan staffing, spot the problem times when you need to generate more covers, and keep customer satisfaction consistent.

Bookings do not always match the number of covers in a service, and they do not tell you how quickly a table turns. Reporting on connections to your Wi-Fi portal shows at a glance how many people were in your restaurant, which reveals your peak and slow periods and gives an indication of how long guests stayed.

Because a guest's device is associated with their login, the portal recognises them when they visit again, at the same venue or another of your businesses. Patterns emerge that fill in the picture of what your customers want. You might find a regular who always dines late on Wednesdays, or that families turn up in numbers every Friday.

That is the point where you might introduce a loyalty scheme to turn a fortnightly visitor into a weekly one, and keep building a fuller view of each customer's lifetime value. And if a customer first found you through a campaign you know about, you can track their value against the original cost of acquiring them.

All of this can be gathered without the customer downloading an app, and with minimal data physically typed in.

If you have a firmer idea of which data would be useful for your restaurant or bar, the next step is to see the capture working. Book a Stampede demo and we will walk through the specific ways your Wi-Fi can feed your marketing.