Gathering the Right Data for Your Restaurant Marketing

You might have heard that data is the new currency; it’s the key that unlocks ultra-targeted marketing that drives customers through your doors. But how do you gather the data you need for your restaurant? And what kind of data is useful for your marketing, and why?

If you’d like to make better use of your marketing budget you might have considered buying data to help you target potential customers. But why buy data when you can generate an own your own data?

At first glance, it can seem trickier for an offline business to collect data and put it to use. But the answer is likely simpler than you think. You can generate data for restaurant marketing using Stampede captive WiFi. And our portal service keeps you on the right side of the Information Commissioner when it comes to GDPR.

One of the biggest pros of this kind of WiFi marketing is that it is a safe and compliant way to gather customer data. You can use it to build customer profiles, segment and target your restaurant marketing. It can give you an edge when it comes to providing superior customer service too. But where should you start? New customers often ask us what data they can collect and how to use it.

With Stampede WiFi, you can design your very own splash page to ask the questions you want to know the answers to. There’s a lot of potential data hospitality businesses can seek out. But of course, details and data hold different value depending on your business and marketing goals. Our captive WiFi portal does more than just gather data. It allows you to seek out information at different stages in the customer relationship and most importantly, add context. On your WiFi sign-in page, you can collect data directly about your customer and also gather context about their visit. Here’s how to do it.

Start with the basics

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

Date of birth helps you to segment them and lets you know when their birthday is too, which is handy when it comes to inviting them to celebrate with you. Gender is another variant that helps grow your segmentation options. Collect these four details from everyone who signs onto your WiFi and you’ll have a great foundation for planning simple and effective marketing campaigns.

This data can also fuel inspiration for events, menu changes or even rebranding to better fit your customer base. For example, you may work out that you have a lot of young mums popping into your establishment. You could encourage them to visit more frequently by changing your daytime offers. Or you might discover that you have a lot of single professionals visiting you for coffee. Individuals you could also target with offers for after-work drinks and nibbles.

Keeping in touch

Marketing to previous customers will generate a higher return on investment. So data that helps you to keep in touch with diners is very valuable. One survey from OnDeviceResearch found that 74% of people would be happy for a retailer to send a text or email with promotions while they’re using in-store WiFi.

Captive WiFi is a cost-effective way to grow email and SMS marketing lists. You can check submitted email addresses and encourage reviews by sending guests an email thanking them for their visit. Asking them to leave feedback. Another option is to include an incentive such as money off or free item code within the email to encourage a return visit.

In some cases, your diners may not even need to fill out their contact details; you might choose to give them the option to login using their social profiles instead. According to information from CMO Council, 56% of social network users stated they would use their social profiles to login in return for a customised experience. You gain valuable data associated with their social profiles. Helping you to build out their customer profile and allowing marketing segmentation. The customer benefits from a speedy sign in and the potential of tailored content and offers from their very first interaction.

Context and customisation opportunities

They say content is king. But in the data world, context adds an extra layer of value that puts meaning behind your data. For example, you might ask your diner who they are dining with and the purpose of their visit. Is it a date night? Are they having a quick family tea? Is it a special celebration? What’s their favourite drink or pizza?

This context helps you to understand why people are visiting, to try and attract more visitors aiming to do the same. It also allows you to customise your service and offers for them immediately. Providing them with a great eating out or entertainment experience.

Knowing how your customer found out about your venue, offer or event is also super valuable information to have. This lets you know how your marketing is performing and can help you to calculate your return on investment of digital marketing. Also allows you to see how specific campaigns are performing. When customers are converted by marketing, it’s not always by the activities we expect.

Data context really helps to ensure budget and time are being directed to the right activities to attract target customers. And when you combine this context and customisation with basic customer information, you have the makings of some great customer personas to inform your overall marketing strategy, campaigns and individual ads.

In-store patterns

Some of the most valuable data you can collect from your Stampede WiFi doesn’t come from asking your guests questions. It can help you to better plan your staffing, identify problem times when you need to generate more customers. It can also help you achieve consistently better customer satisfaction levels. What is this data? It’s the simple connection data relating to each login.

Bookings don’t always match up with the numbers of covers in a service or the numbers of guests on the table. Nor do they tell you how quickly a table is turned. Reporting on your connections to your WiFi portal lets you see at a glance how many people were using WiFi in your restaurant. This means you can identify peak or slow periods and you also get an indication of how guests stayed.

As a customer’s device is associated with their login, it’s recognised by your captive WiFi portal whenever they visit. When those guests return to your venue or another one of your businesses, you can see patterns emerge that will help you build a fuller picture of your customer’s wants and needs. You might find that a regular customer always dines out late on Wednesdays. Or that you have lots of families visiting on Fridays.

You might even decide to introduce a loyalty scheme to encourage those fortnightly visitors to come and see you every week instead. This way, you can continually work towards building a better picture of the lifetime value of your customer. And if the customer is someone who found you due to marketing and you know that, you can track against the original cost for acquisition

All of this information can be gathered without the need for your customer to download an app. With minimal data physically entered by them.

Do you have a firmer idea of what type of data might be useful for your restaurant or bar marketing and why? Set up a Stampede demo. To talk about the details of the very useful ways your WiFi can contribute to your restaurant marketing.

Restaurant, Pub, Bar