How to Use Your POS Data for Marketing Your Restaurant

Point-of-Sale (POS) systems are a great resource to measure your growth and understand your customers. But for many pizzerias, they serve as an expensive cash register and the mines of valuable customer data remain untouched. While it may feel daunting, there are simple steps that you can take to start understanding and leveraging this data today.

Capturing Customer Data

Before you can leverage your POS database, you need to have systems in place to collect information from your customers. The good news is if you’ve been capturing delivery and email addresses, you probably have a great database in place already. Pizzerias have an advantage for gathering customer information through fulfilling delivery and takeout orders, which has only amplified over the course of the pandemic.

Every time a customer places an order, your POS system tracks the recency, frequency and monetary spend of their orders. Here are ways you can start capturing customer data:

• Track carryout and delivery customers by email, phone and address
  • Ensure that your online ordering software can safely collect customer information and integrate it into your POS
  • Train your staff to enter customer addresses, phone numbers and email addresses carefully and completely for all walk-in and phone orders
• Integrate your loyalty program to collect contact information and track dining habits of dine-in customers
• Offer an immediate reward (such as a free appetizer or dessert) to dine-in customers that provide their contact information
• If you offer free Wi-Fi, work with your internet service provider to collect customer information when they use it

These capabilities vary by each unique system. Check with your POS system provider to learn more about the capabilities provided by your system.

Learning About Your Customers

As data is captured, there should be a variety of reports available in your system to access and sort the information. While reporting capabilities may vary by provider, there should be guest behavior reports available to view customer information including average check, days since the last visit and most frequently ordered items. Use aggregated customer reports to segment your customers and communicate with them accordingly:

• New Customers have the potential to become your biggest fans. Follow up with them to see how their experience was or thank them with a bounce back offer that will entice them to order again. Encourage them to sign up for your loyalty program or mailing list to stay engaged with your restaurant.
• Frequent Visitors are your best customers. Roughly 6 in 10 dollars spent in the fast-casual and quickservice segments come from repeat customers, according to operators.¹ Keep them engaged with loyalty programs, rewards and recognition of special events such as their birthday or VIP events.
• Lazy Customers already know who you are but haven’t visited in a while and need encouragement to come back. Create different messaging based on how long it’s been since their last visit, with increasingly generous offers as time progresses, to welcome them back to your pizzeria. Determine how long you want to consider someone a lazy customer before deciding that they are lost (e.g. 90 days).

Communicating with Your Customers

Now that you have collected contact information for your customers and identified which segment they fall in, share the relevant messages identified above through these communication channels:

• Social Media: You can integrate your POS with social media to be notified when a customer tweets, posts or checks in at your location. This gives you the opportunity to share, like or comment on their posts. The content that you create on your business page is just as important. Posting quality content on a consistent basis is the best thing you can do to build your social reach. Share updates such as temporary hours, new menu items and limited time offers on your social channels to keep customers engaged. Click here to learn more in our social media playbook.
• Email Marketing: You can generate an email list from your POS system that you can leverage in a third-party email program to communicate regularly with your customers. Many email programs allow you to personalize messages and easily design the content to match your brand, increasing engagement with your emails.
• Text Message Marketing: Increasing in popularity, text messages are reported to have a 90% open rate with 86% of texts being read in the first 60 seconds.² This can provide a great opportunity to create exclusive offers for your customer segments and get an immediate response. Note that texting is highly regulated and requires customers to opt-in with written consent. If you explore this opportunity, be sure to work with a credible service and be aware of laws and restrictions.
• Direct Mail: Direct mail programs are still highly effective, especially when you use personalized messages. Up to 90% of direct mail gets opened, compared to only 20-30% of emails, and at least half of recipients say they find postcards useful.³ Grande’s Solutions @ Work team offers a database mailing program, available to all Grande 100-Percenters. This service includes a one-on-one consultation with our team of marketing experts to help you analyze your POS customer data report and identify opportunities to effectively reach your marketing goals. Pizzerias that use Grande’s Solution @ Work marketing program see a 4-5% response rate on targeted mailings.

Work with Grande’s Solutions@Work team to leverage your data in targeted mailings and special offers with your customers. Our team of experts can work with you to identify areas of opportunity and effectively reach your marketing goals.

Learn more about the capabilities available in your POS system by working with your POS provider directly.