Fostering Long-Term Loyalty
To foster long-term loyalty amongst its current fans, Bojangles plans to continue to amplify word-of-mouth, both organic and sponsored. “People love this brand so much… They not only like telling you, they also like telling others.”
Whether it’s the brand’s mobile app, third-party delivery marketplaces and ezCater, “We’re using a combination of variables to learn as much as we can, not only about the audience, but also their consumption patterns. For example, is there a different behavior pattern during the week versus the weekend, and if so, what are the products that people are looking for? That ties to mining the data and seeing what consumers are ordering. We’re finding menu hacks, and we’re reusing these menu hacks,” he said.
Communication with people working inside the restaurant is equally valuable. “To be honest, a lot of the (new products) that we’re coming up with by talking to the employees that are working in the store and the franchisees that have been there for years and years,” Boland explained.
The Role of Personalized Offers
“We’re testing on a regular basis all sorts of individual offers. We’ve got data to get a sense of different audience segments. Either they’re loyal to a particular product or a particular offer or a particular day part.
“One of the opportunities of loyalty programs is there’s an opportunity to stop and listen to what people want. Offer broadly and then see what the response is. For example, offer 20% off this product, or take 20% off an order of X dollars. And then I can then sort the data: are more people ordering breakfast, lunch or dinner? And what percentage did a drink attachment or did they not do a drink attachment? There’s so much data out there.
“You can get lost in the data, but if you know exactly what you’re looking for, you can find it. We are building those operating segments and then we’re seeing how it responds to three different consumer segments. Rather than an individual, what if we looked at it broader: new guests, lapsed guests and current guests. They all have different needs. And then how are they responding? And then how are you coordinating your marketing against that? We are actively doing all of that and we’re learning.”
