Case Studies > Leading Restaurant Chain Capitalizes on the Power of Personalization in a Loyalty Program

Leading Restaurant Chain Capitalizes on the Power of Personalization in a Loyalty Program

Company Size

1,000+

Region

America

Country

United States

Product

Antuit Personalization Engine
Antuit Predictive Marketing Algorithms

Tech Stack

Artificial Intelligence
Data Science
Data Engineering

Implementation Scale

Enterprise-wide Deployment

Impact Metrics

Customer Satisfaction
Productivity Improvements
Revenue Growth

Technology Category

Analytics & Modeling - Machine Learning
Analytics & Modeling - Predictive Analytics

Applicable Industries

Food & Beverage
Retail

Applicable Functions

Business Operation
Sales & Marketing

Services

Data Science Services
Software Design & Engineering Services
System Integration

About The Customer

One of the best known fast casual restaurants in the U.S. has been able to leverage targeted improvements to its customer loyalty program to drive millions of dollars in additional revenue, with the promise of more to come as the company builds on its success at personalization. The restaurant chain operates close to 2,000 outlets across the country and has a loyalty card program that connects with approximately 20 million program members via email. The company sought to improve the quality and effectiveness of its email communications and better understand the best messages and timing for customers on an individual basis. By partnering with Antuit, the restaurant chain aimed to revamp its loyalty program to increase sales, improve profit, and boost customer visits.

The Challenge

The restaurant chain, with close to 2,000 outlets across the country, had a loyalty card program that executives didn’t believe was living up to its potential. The program connected with approximately 20 million program members via email, delivering a mix of company news and updates along with special recommendations and product offers. Marketers particularly wanted to improve the quality and effectiveness of those emails and better understand the best messages and timing for customers, on an individual basis. The company approached Antuit to revamp the loyalty program in line with three primary business objectives: increase sales through larger ticket values, improve profit, and boost the number of transactions or customer visits, with the ability to toggle among those objectives on a flexible basis.

The Solution

Antuit started the engagement with a limited-duration pilot program, during which all the loyalty program’s customer information was ingested and analyzed, to determine what those customers were buying, when, and where, along with relevant demographic information. The customer account records that Antuit built from this data provided a longitudinal understanding of customers and how they interacted with the restaurants, looking at variables such as: Did they visit only on weekdays? Were they consistent in the food that they ordered? How did they react to specific special offers? Antuit then coded all of the content in the messages available for emails to loyalty program members. This involved classifying the messages in terms of their emphasis on healthy eating, seasonal offerings, savory specialties, salads vs. other entrees, beverages, special offers, and several other variables. Next, Antuit built a model that blended customer data with the message variables and enabled the restaurant chain to identify the right piece of content for customers and personalize it, individually, on an ongoing basis. This approach enabled the Antuit model to track what individual customers did after they received their program emails and analyze through artificial intelligence the most effective messages in terms of driving increased loyalty customer activity.

Operational Impact

The pilot program focused on a subset of about 10 percent of the restaurant’s loyalty customers, and immediately resulted in an increased email open rate of as much as 30 percent.
Sales to those loyalty customers increased by more than 10 percent over sales to program customers who weren’t part of the pilot.
Since the improved messaging, targeting, and personalization was rolled out to all the restaurant chain’s loyalty program members, the company has seen increased sales among that customer group of $5 million to $7 million per month.
Antuit has also worked with the company to analyze store-by-store data for customers who aren’t part of the loyalty program, and has been able to help the restaurants target those customers through improved messaging and special offers on digital menu boards, for instance, and customer kiosks.
Antuit is working with the company to implement catering algorithms and analyses of the best cross-selling and up-selling recommendations.

Quantitative Benefit

Increased email open rate by as much as 30 percent.
Sales to loyalty customers increased by more than 10 percent over non-pilot customers.
Increased sales among loyalty program members by $5 million to $7 million per month.
Projected additional revenue could grow to as much as $200 million annually.