Should Your Restaurant Have a Gift Card Program? How to Get Started
To sustain profitability and growth, customer acquisition is vital. However, while marketing strategies such as paid ads, influencer marketing, and regular social media posting are as powerful as they are unavoidable, they are investment-heavy methods of customer acquisition. Therefore, given the cost barrier of these marketing strategies, restaurants need to implement additional steps.
A restaurant gift card program is one such additional way to attract new customers.
Read this blog to know how a restaurant gift card program can boost sales, increase footfall, and enhance brand loyalty. We will also strive to offer a comprehensive guide to effectively setting up gift card programs and explain the role of restaurant POS software for managing this effective tool for customer acquisition.
Why Restaurants Should Offer a Gift Card Program? Discover the Benefits of Restaurant Gift Card Programs
Here are the advantages of implementing restaurant gift card programs:
- Immediate cash flow, which need not even be redeemed later and can function as a buffer against the periodic market slowdown
- The scope of making the best word-of-mouth marketing that potentially can reach a larger audience than targeted ads and can instil more trust in new customers compared to other marketing methods
- Larger order ticket size and increased upselling opportunity, thanks to customers often treating gift cards as a cushion to explore dishes they will not otherwise try
- More return visits as guests are likely to make the best of the money spent, thereby fostering greater business loyalty and profitability
How to Start a Restaurant Gift Card Program?
The following are the key considerations for initiating a restaurant gift card program:
- Choosing Gift Card Types: Physical cards, such as traditional plastic cards with magnetic strips or barcodes, which constantly increase brand recall, and digital (e-gift) cards, which offer the benefits of the restaurant gift card program without the additional cost of issuing physical cards
- Opting for the Program Type: An open-loop program can be expensive to implement, but it offers the opportunity to attract customers from other businesses in the program and get a share of the card value even if the card is not necessarily sold at the outlet; a closed-loop program, on the other hand, helps keep all the funds in-house
- Checking for POS Compatibility: Opting for an ERP and POS Hardware that supports the restaurant gift card integration is key; for example, the software should be able to offer an interface to track gift cards redeemed and revenue gained from the program, while the hardware should be compatible with swiping magnetic stripe cards
- Variety in the Range of Gift Card Value: Ensuring that the restaurant gift card program accounts for different budgets, attracting a wide range of buyers
What Are Some Best Practices for Running a Successful Restaurant Gift Card Program?
The steps below are crucial for making sure that the benefits of the restaurant gift card program are well-utilised:
- Integrating the gift card program into a robust restaurant POS software to track the performance of the program and further optimise the other marketing strategies
- Promoting year-round gift cards for maximising cash flow
- Training staff for a smooth customer experience during the issuance and redemption of gift cards
- Incentivising the staff for gift card sales
- Promoting the benefits of the restaurant gift card program across marketing initiatives, including social media posts, targeted ads, and e-mail marketing
It is equally important to consider the ease of integration into the restaurant ERP, also known as Restaurant POS Software, and the software platform’s reporting and Analytics modules, which are integral for tracking the ROI of the gift card program.
Final Thoughts
QPOS proves to be an excellent Cloud Restaurant POS system. Our platform currently features a coupon-generation module, which allows users to print or assign vouchers to customers. These coupons can technically function as a closed-loop gift card.
Our advanced AI-powered Analytics module is key for comprehensive and customised report-making, necessary for analysing the returns based on the coupon issuance. The platform is also integration-ready for loyalty management software, thereby underscoring the importance we give to rewards when it comes to customer acquisition.
For increasing traffic to the outlet, optimising profitability, and fostering customer loyalty, get started with our advanced restaurant ERP platform! An all-in-one ERP, QPOS is equally effective in streamlining billing, inventory management, and other tasks performed or monitored through a restaurant operations management software.
Contact us to know how to drive restaurant success and implement a revenue-boosting restaurant gift card program, and one of our executives will reach out to you as soon as possible!
