QR code menus… Who would have guessed they would become such a big thing?
Yet, here we are. The COVID-19 pandemic has certainly accelerated this change and rolled out the red carpet for more advanced and digital menus.
This new and advanced way brings a few benefits to it.
- You can update your menu easier and without any cost.
- Ordering food becomes faster since guests don’t need to wait for waiters.
- Your team is more efficient and there are fewer human errors.
Those benefits can help you to grow and increase profit.
Customers will probably have a better experience.
Your team will probably have more energy to provide top experience.
But it’s all probably or maybe…
What you need is something that will directly increase sales, generate more bookings and more returning guests.
And yes, you are going to discover how to use your QR code to do exactly that.
The power of a QR code menu
So let’s imagine the situation. A customer enters your restaurant.
He pulls out his smartphone, ready to choose something delicious and refreshing.
The QR code menu is scanned and instead of only a list of drinks and food… BOOM!
Before customers see your menu, a pop-up appears that asks them: Want to get a special discount?
Now, let’s stop for a moment, and go back to the beginning.
The customer is already in your establishment, ready to give you money.
So, why on earth would you want to lower the amount you should receive?
Well, it’s not that you are giving a discount for free… Instead, you are using discounts as bait to collect the phone numbers of your customers.
What’s the big deal with customers’ phone numbers
Two words…text marketing!
When customers give you their phone number, you have a green light to send them promotional messages…and that is big for bringing in more sales and more revenue to your restaurant.
Statistics show that people redeem coupons 10x more if they are sent via SMS than any other coupons.
Even customers tend to enjoy text marketing more than any other channel, which is best shown in an incredible fact: 98% open rates while email receives around 20%.
So yes, text marketing. And for text marketing, you need the phone numbers of your customers collected in a TCPA compliant way. That’s where your QR code menu steps in.
What kind of discount can you offer
As we mentioned earlier, you want to offer some kind of tempting bait so that your customers feel it’s worth the price of their private information.
The type of discount you are going to offer will mostly depend on two things.
- Your usual customer base and your restaurant
- Your goal
You are not going to offer the same type of discount if you are a small bakery on the corner, a well-known steak house or a coffee shop with high traffic.
Craft the offer so it best suits your ideal customer.
Here are few ideas to think about:
- Buy 1 get 1 free
- % coupon code
- Free dessert
- Free coffee
- Exclusive meal combo
Now, the second part of your discount will be your goal.
For example, if you have busy days – but empty tables during dinner, consider offering an attractive discount for dinners for two.
If you want to create loyal customers that visit you every morning, free coffee with pastry would be a great idea.
See where we are going with this?
The purpose of coupons and discounts is to increase sales, but we want to think a step ahead and take control over those sales and direct customers in the right places.
In the end, a half-full restaurant at dinner is better than an empty one.
If you are not a fan of discounts and you don’t offer them in your restaurant, you can always try to ask for customers’ phone numbers as mandatory to access your QR code menu. However, this method isn’t the best approach since it can get your customers upset because you are not offering anything but asking for a piece of private information. Yet, there is a solution that could possibly avoid this.
Use the QR code menu to promote events
Even if you don’t want to use discount codes in your restaurant to collect phone numbers, you can still take advantage of your QR code menu.
Instead of offering discount codes, ask your customers if they would like to be informed about special events you are holding.
Or, use the full power of an easily customizable QR code menu and frequently promote events for the current week.
For example, if you have a special event on Saturday, ask customers if they want to make a reservation; if they do, collect their name, phone number and number of people.
How to start selling and earning after you have the customer’s phone number
The customer claimed their discount. You got his/her phone number.
Now, the question is: what to send?
Since they already claimed one discount or coupon, you are expecting they will visit you again. But, that doesn’t have to stop there.
Once you collect customers’ phone numbers, you are able to reach them any time you want, which means you can use text messages to fill empty tables and push sales using text marketing.
Does that mean that you should send text messages to your customers every day?
Well, no. Look at them as your friends, but not best friends; rather, those types of friends you see once or twice a month.
So, 2 times a month? It can be a good start, but as you know, life tends to get busy. You can’t expect that someone will always respond to your invitation – in other words, it could be blown off.
Unfortunately, there are no universal guidelines that can tell you how often you should send messages to your customers. In most cases, businesses send 2 – 4 per month, while some go up to 4 – 6 messages per month. Here, your knowledge of your customers – and the experience that you will get through time – would help you to find the optimal number of text messages that work best for you.
Our recommendation is to start slow, and once you see what the response is, you can increase the number of messages, if needed.
Okay, now it’s time to break down what your text message should look like.
Each SMS should have 4 elements:
- Introduction.
- Present offer.
- Create urgency.
- Explain how to get the offer.
Let’s see this in a real example.
- We made an introduction since you don’t want to make your customers wonder who is this. Even if you have communicated with them earlier, in most cases they won’t know who is texting them if you don’t put your business name there.
- We have presented here an interesting offer.
- Specific time and date create urgency.
- A simple call to action that tells them exactly what to do if they want to order.
How to use your QR code menu to increase sales
If you don’t know how to create a pop-up, storage customers’ phone numbers, and send text campaigns from one place… Referrizer is a tool that can help you to execute this amazing strategy for your restaurant. You will get:
- Support that will create a pop-up and connect it to the QR code menu to catch customers’ phone numbers.
- Easy to use Contact management system where you can store new and old contacts.
- Text marketing feature that will allow you to send automated SMS to your customers.
