Getting ready to reopen?

Posted on , updated on by Kate Brook

Here’s your checklist for a successful reopening.

1. Plan your communications
There is a great deal of information to communicate to your customers before and after you reopen. It’s a good idea to plan your communications to ensure you cover it all.

Need help? Download our communications planner.

2. Review and connect additional data sources to TalkBox
Did you add or update your online ordering, WiFi, table reservations or EPOS during lockdown?

Check out our partners, and let’s get you connected.

3. Connect VisitSafe to TalkBox
If your business is using our free tool VisitSafe, to record and store customer visits for COVID-19 contact tracing connect it to your TalkBox account. This means customers who opt-in for marketing will be automatically added to your contact list.

4. Reactivate birthday communications
If your birthday message was paused during lockdown, check your offer and reactivate the communication when you reopen. Get in touch if you need help reactivating.

For customers whose birthday occurred during lockdown, it might be a good idea to let them know you didn’t forget. Use the filters in TalkBox to send a ‘Happy birthday’ communication to anyone who had a birthday during the lockdown period.

5 . Tell customers you are open
A ‘We are back’ SMS, with a link to book, is a great way to re-engage with customers.

Read more about why you need to be using SMS.

An exciting new partnership between Impact Data and Mr Yum

Posted on , updated on by Kate Brook

Coming together to help hospitality businesses recover and thrive

Digital marketing and customer data experts Impact Data have joined forces with emerging hospitality technology heavyweights Mr Yum to help businesses take control of their customer data and grow shared venues’ bottom lines

Kim Teo, founder and CEO of Mr Yum said: “Working with Impact Data to help our clients get marketing value from our technology makes complete sense. Mr Yum is all about creating great experiences for our clients and their customers and giving them the tools to have more meaningful interactions. Impact Data is all about that ethos as well.”

Impact Data quickly recognised the opportunity for existing and new clients to use data from  Mr Yum mobile menus, online ordering, pickup and delivery to grow their businesses.  This partnership gives businesses the ability to understand the behaviour of their customers, such as top items ordered, and the tools to use this data to market to their own customers more effectively, and get them back spending at the venue.

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When it comes to data, you’ve got to be in the game to win

Posted on , updated on by Kate Brook

The Great Data Game – Webinar

To celebrate the new partnership between QikServe and Impact Data will be presenting ‘The Great Data Game’ in a webinar on Thursday 11th March at 11am UK GMT

Data played well, will benefit a business by driving revenue and provide a window into customer behaviour.

While most of brands do collect data through our technology solutions, not all assertively apply it to their marketing and operations. It can be all too easy to let it languish, making use of only the most basic of the information given to us.   

Join experts David Bird (Impact Data) and Steven Hawkins (QikServe) for an insightful webinar about data tactics and start to form a new game plan for optimising your use of customer data.

Book your spot.

The webinar will cover:

  • What can you really learn about your customers from data?
  • Is anyone piece of data more valuable than another?
  • How do you generate ‘more’ with data?
  • What are the best tactics to apply to data in order to win?
  • Does it work?
  • Hear industry examples and success stories.

About the Impact Data and QikServe partnership

QikServe is the enterprise platform for guest self-service in hospitality. With its range of digital ordering and payment applications, hospitality operators can provide powerful in-store and off-premise solutions from ordering to payment, giving guests the convenience to order and pay for their food and drinks whenever and however they want.

The Impact Data QikServe connection enables TalkBox to analyse each customer’s behaviour and then automatically reach out with one-to-one marketing campaigns to drive more visits. TalkBox will even predict when each customer is likely to make their next purchase and send an offer in case they miss their visit.

Want to get connected to QikServe? Talk to us today!

Webinar: how to use hospitality tech and marketing to trailblaze in 2021

Posted on , updated on by Kate Brook

While the circumstances around travel have drastically shifted, guest expectations and property operating goals remain the same; we just have to take a slightly different approach in order to reach them.

In an event co-hosted by Peter Ferris, Chief Sales & Marketing Officer and Mitchell Nunis, Head of Global Marketing Strategy from RMS Cloud, discover how to use hospitality tech and marketing to trailblaze in 2021.

Join our Sales and Marketing Director Sarah Franklyn alongside industry experts Michael De Jongh (Avvio), and Tracey Patterson (AI Chatbot for Hotels by Book Me Bob) as they share their insights.

What you’ll learn:

• The impact that guest behaviour has had on the adoption of technology in hospitality

• How to reposition your marketing to achieve higher consumer traction and drive more bookings

• Insights and takeaways into marketing and technology implementation to help boost your business

If you can’t make the live event, you can still register your interest and we’ll send you the recording via email to watch on-demand.Time

Register here.

Feb 23, 2021 10:00 AM in Canberra, Melbourne, Sydney

Kick start 2021 with the Impact Data email health check

Posted on , updated on by Kate Brook
Think email marketing is dead? Think again! 

Let’s be honest, it’s not a new headline as the demise of email marketing has been anticipated by a few for some time. 2020 proved that it’s hardly dead, but rather a vital tool that helped many businesses survive, and some even flourish, during the turbulent period brought on by COVID-19.  Engaging with your customers and members proved to be critical, especially when you need to keep them up to date with what’s happening in your business. 

With more data available than ever before and customers expecting you to acknowledge their relationship in a positive (not creepy) way, it might be time to rethink your approach. Emails are no longer just a digital megaphone for your business. With the clever use of information your customers volunteered to you, it’s easy to create engaging communications they actually want to read.

Nearly 30% of small businesses surveyed in the recent Smart Company Small Business Trends research indicated they were planning to spend more on email marketing in 2021.

If you want to keep pace with your competitors and drive your business, you need a plan that will continually improve your customer engagement. Your customers will demand to see more relevant, targeted and personalised communications.

Why not start the new year with an email marketing health check? 

1. Check your levels of engagement
  • Are your open rates improving or decreasing?
  • What are the types of emails that get opened most?
2. Update your branding
  • If your communications and branding have been looking the same for a while, chances are your audience are taking a little less notice. Update your communications and branding to reflect and feature the season, new products or events that are happening in your business.
  • Use animated gifs to capture attention
  • Most customers interact with email on their phone, so make sure you preview your communication in the smartphone view to ensure valuable content is still front and centre.
3. Get personal
  • Are you using the right level of personalisation? Use ‘merge fields’ such as ‘First name’ in subject lines and body of an email
  • Are you using recent behaviour to trigger communications, such as sending an offer to entice a lost customer or asking for a review from a recent guest?
4. Get to know your customers
  • When was the last time you checked their details or asked something else to get to know them better?
  • Would knowing they are a vegan or vegetarian, a local or a visitor be meaningful in your communications?

TIP: An ‘Update details’ campaign is a great way to enrich your customer data.

5. Avoid email blasting
  • We are all a little guilty of hitting the ‘send to all contacts’ button when pressure is up. Stop, think and plan for segmented communications that are relevant to the recipients.

Want more? Talk to us today about ways to improve the success of your email marketing.

Read our 2020 report to the secrets to successful communications here.

How to start a loyalty program or update your current one

Posted on , updated on by Kate Brook

Loyalty programs can add to the overall brand experience and keep customers coming back.

Whether you are starting a new from scratch or giving your current one a makeover. Here are our top tips to see real return on your loyalty program.

1. Clearly define your value proposition for members

Points, visits, mystery rewards…all have their place, so determine what is going to work for your business at the core of the loyalty program offering.

PRO TIP: can your staff articulate the key benefits of membership in a few seconds? E.g. One point for every visit and a free burger on your birthday. If they can’t, chances are customers will struggle to easily understand the value too.

2. Your staff are your most important asset

Make signing up to your membership program part of your staff onboarding. This will help them understand how it works and what the current offers are as they receive the same promotions and offers as customers and know what to expect. The other benefit is that they might see opportunities and operational issues that you haven’t seen, setting up an internal feedback channel for staff to send ideas about the loyalty program is a great way to understand and overcome problems that may arise.

3. Loading your data from another system

If you have an existing loyalty program or customer database that you are migrating to a new platform, you need to make sure:

  • You have a plan for the points transition – are they sunsetted, transferred in the same or a different currency/conversion?
  • Know who is subscribed to receive communications. If your database is in a platform, make sure you also extract unsubscribed customers or member contact status and import that into your new platform
  • Build a communication and customer engagement strategy to inform customers about the change and prepare your customer-facing staff. It’s also a good idea to have an FAQs section that you can add to as other customer challenges or queries come up.
4. Build the program into your everyday operations

If you want a successful program it needs to be part of every staff members’ role and they need to know how it impacts the overall business. 

The best way to achieve this:

  • Ask every customer if they are a member
  • If not, encourage sign up. Refer to the earlier point that the value of the membership needs to be able to be clearly stated
  • Create a scoreboard across your stores so everyone knows the targets and how they are tracking
  • Report on how the loyalty program is impacting your business – sales to members, average transaction value, repeat visits, engagement with promotions etc
5. Make Signup easy

Can you use Guest WiFi to create an easy signup process? QR codes have become part of our everyday behaviour, so why not include a sign up on your menu, on tables and on your digital signage that links straight to your signup from. Having a digital self signing up process means no paper forms and your front of house staff aren’t held up keying in new member data.

6. Ask the right questions

Consider what you need to engage properly with your members during the sign-up process. For example mobile and email, DOB (perhaps day and month if the audience may be sensitive), favourite store. Consider asking them some key questions eg are you Vegan or Vegetarian, chilli lover, favourite flavour etc to drive a more personalised experience.

7. Build your ongoing engagement program

Loyalty programs need to stay top of mind to be successful so make sure you have a schedule of promotions, new menu, updates etc to keep customers engaged. Using a digital marketing platform like TalkBox can help you stay engaged with customers and drive them back to the venue or online for more visits.

8. Automate your ‘always on’ communications

Communications can use customer behaviour and information as a trigger a message. These are a great way to keep engaging with your customers, optimising their visits while you and your staff focus on running the business. Automated communications can be easily set up and include an offer that entices customers back such as:

Welcome
Sends after a new member joins your loyalty program. Read how one business uses this communication to get a second visit, automatically.

Birthday
Send a happy birthday message to help them celebrate with you.

Late
Send a message after a period of absence and recover customers who may have forgotten about your business or been attracted to a competitor.

If you don’t have the internal resources to analyse your data daily and are looking to understand customer behaviour then talk to us at Impact Data for assistance.

Impact Data Holiday Hours

Posted on , updated on by Kate Brook

From the whole team at Impact Data we wish you a happy holidays!

Impact Data will be closed on public holidays over the festive period.

14–24 December
Open

25–28 December
Closed

29–31 December
Open

1 January
Closed

4 January
Office re-opens; normal business hours resume.

We are here to help – any urgent technical matters will be responded to as a priority. All other requests will be handled promptly when we re-open.

You can visit our support centre which is open 24/7 to find informative articles, easy to follow how-to guides and marketing advice, to help you get the most out of TalkBox. Visit the support centre here.

New team member?
You can follow our step-by-step guide on how to add a new user to your TalkBox account. Each new user is automatically sent training videos so they can get started with TalkBox.

Need some TalkBox training?
Become a TalkBox pro with our short and informative training videos. Visit our Youtube channel or sign up for additional training.

The anatomy of a successful customer engagement strategy

Posted on , updated on by Kate Brook

Did you know up to 80% of customers don’t return to a business, even if they have joined a database?


Whether your business has a customer database or a full-blown loyalty program, the key is to define your customer engagement strategy and execute it well for every customer.

There are four parts to a successful customer journey:

  • Welcome and onboard
  • Surprise and delight
  • Engage
  • Retain


Each of these stages is relevant to the individual behaviour of customers. The timing in which you react to those behaviours can be the difference between an engaged, inactive or even confused customer.

We created a guide designed to help you plan for the different stages. Download it now and learn how to engage with your customers across their life cycle with your business.

Download the guide.

Ready to change that stat and get more loyal customers?

Talk to us today about you can engage with your customers automatically with TalkBox.

How to stay busy all year long with Impact Data

Posted on , updated on by Kate Brook

You are busy now, that is great! But what if you could use the traffic you have during this time to give a quieter period a boost?  Imagine in six months time if you could drive sales on a slow day when you need it most? 

Well, here’s how; Capture every customer. 

Do you have a way to capture all these new customers who are visiting your business and want to hear from you, and come back?

  1. The systems in your business could be a great source of data and a way to grow your contact list
    Check out your booking platform, Guest WiFi, Loyalty program or, if you added new systems during lockdown such as online ordering, pay at table or even a customer check-in tool for COVID-19 contact tracing such as VisitSafe, talk to us today about connecting them with your TalkBox account.
  1. Add a sign-up form to your website
    You can use the form builder in TalkBox to ask website visitors for their details such as name, email and birthday.  Learn more about TalkBox forms here.
  1. Give your customers a reason to sign up
    A voucher or promotion such as a free drink is a great way to incentivise another visit. Include this offer in your welcome message and get that second visit automatically. Learn how to create welcome communications here.
  2. Take your contact list sign-ups offline
    With everyone busy celebrating there are a few ‘old school’ ways that can help to capture all the new customers who might be part of a large function, or too busy socialising to log on and sign up. A bowl at the end of the bar where customers can leave a business card for a chance to win a voucher for your business, signage in your premise to promote customers to sign up, or encourage staff to tell customers to join the mailing list to win a prize and receive exclusive discounts.
  3. Get connected
    We have recently added a range of new data partners if you recognise any on our list get in touch and let’s get you connected. Set yourself up for success in 2021 today.
    Check out our full list of Data Partners here.

Want to get in touch? Contact us at hello@impactdata.com.au

How to reconnect with your members after the COVID-19 lockdown

Posted on , updated on by Kate Brook

2020 has been challenging for businesses on many fronts. With more time spent out of your venue than in it, how do you reconnect with members, ensure they stay members and keep coming back to your venue.

If you have made the decision to extend your membership term, reset points or give members more time to hit a hurdle or tier, you need to inform them of the change in conditions.

Your TalkBox account has a number of features that can assist you and help you improve the contactability of your database.

Here’s some of the tools that can help you:

1. Non-marketing communications

Sending a non-marketing communication is a feature that you can use to connect with all members even if they are not currently subscribed.  This is because critical membership updates are not marketing so you can use our feature to communicate with your whole member base.  Remember the primary purpose of the communication cannot be marketing but you should include an invitation to customers to update their details online or in-venue so they aren’t missing out on member benefits. If you have a large portion of your database that’s unsubscribed this is your best way to connect with your members. 


2. Get attention with SMS. 

Did you know that on average people check their phones 96 times a day, that’s once every 10 minutes!  This means that SMS is your best chance at getting your members attention.  An SMS sent from TalkBox is much more than 160 characters,  you can attach a beautifully designed and enticing email that showcases all the best parts of your venue and menu.  Need help?  Reach out to support@impactdata.com.au

3. Turn on automated messages. 

Whether it’s welcome, birthday, lost or a scheduled function reminder, always-on type communications mean your TalkBox account is always working for you.  Need inspiration? See how you can use automated communications here. 

4. New fields in your account

If you are an Impact Data Package client you might have some new fields in your account.  Over the last few months we have been upgrading accounts and adding new calculations such as weekdays visited and visit frequency.  These fields give you a chance to prioritise customers that haven’t come back since you re-opened and send them your best offer. Learn more about what these fields can do here.

5. Use vouchers to bring customers back

If you haven’t tried vouchers to drive customers and members back, now might be the time.  We have a selected number of partners that have a TalkBox voucher integration including SwiftPOS, Bepoz, Senpos and H&L/Zen.  If you have another provider you can use TalkBox vouchers which are simple to set up and even have ‘happy hour’ functionality

6. Get connected with our partners

If your member database is a bit stale it might be time to give it a boost.  Have you added new partners to your business such as a reservation booking platform, online ordering partner or even order at table?  Chances are that there are a number of potential new members hidden in those databases.  Talk to us about how to connect these additional partners and grow your database and membership.

7. Add all your marketing Opt-ins from VisitSafe

The pathway to reopening meant many businesses used a ‘track and trace tool’. If you have used VisitSafe by Impact Data we can add those recent visitors who have opted in for marketing to your database.

The Impact Data team are here to help you reconnect with your members and grow your business so connect with us at hello@impactdata.com.au and we will work through a plan with you.