Franchise Update Magazine Issue III, 2013 | Page 41

Involve everyone When making decisions on a new loyalty program, you should have all the key players on your staff in the room to talk about how this new program may affect their part of the business. 1) Operations: Will it work on the current POS? 2) Marketing: Will it achieve the desired results? Can you validate them? 3) Sales: Will it enhance your brand image and thus make closing deals for new locations easier? How much easier would it be to close a deal on a To drive customers in, you can make an offer that is time-sensitive, such as a text campaign when business is slow. When is the last time you received a text and did not read it right away? location if you already knew you had 2,000 loyal customers in that market driving to another of your locations farther away? Even better, start identifying markets by using loyalty data to determine where you should be focusing your growth efforts. 4) Finance: Cost is important, but does the program have a measurable ROI? In summary, a loyalty program can do wonders for your business, but do your homework and think it all the way through to what your real goal is: ROI! n Grow Market Lead It is my belief that your email marketing, text marketing, online ordering, orders coming in from smartphone apps, and regular transactions at the POS should all be integrated in the same loyalty host. This way, when you do campaigns you can track the results of email versus text marketing, for example, and get a handle on what is actually driving your business. Tom Epstein is CEO and founder of Franchise Payments Network, an electronic payments processing company dedicated to helping franchisors and their franchisees improve system performance, increase revenue, and reduce expenses. Contact him at [email protected] or 866-4204613 x1103. Franchiseupdate I s s u e I I I , 2013  39