According to the National Restaurant Association’s latest report, operators cited attracting new customers (79%) and bringing back repeat customers (56%) as significant challenges in 2023. Designed to help streamline the restaurant marketing process, SpotOn just introduced SpotOn Marketing Assist.
SpotOn Marketing Assist aims to empower restaurants to drive guest visits and boost sales while eliminating the time and resources needed for self-serve marketing tools, the company states.
“SpotOn Marketing Assist is democratizing AI and automation technology for the independent restaurants who need it the most,” said Bryan Solar, Chief Product Officer at SpotOn, in a news release. “Beyond empowering operators to set up automated campaigns, SpotOn is helping to drive repeat business while providing operators with data-driven insights they need to keep the momentum going and drive revenue all year long.”
Customized Marketing Campaigns
To get started, operators are prompted to answer a few quick questions about their business category, marketing objectives, deal preferences, time-based deals and brand – all with the ability to change at any time, according to the company. Business categories help provide marketing campaigns that are especially relevant to a restaurant’s service type and guests.
Operators can also select from multiple marketing objectives to increase online orders, in-person visits, phone calls, reservations or all of the above, the company states. In addition, business owners specify limits for discounting and specific shoulder periods to ensure they’re controlling costs.
SpotOn Marketing Assist syncs with the SpotOn Restaurant POS to generate email lists from the restaurant’s SpotOn Order and SpotOn Reserve customers, according to the company. From there, SpotOn Marketing Assist takes over creating a marketing campaign tailored to that restaurant and its goals. Operators can view, edit or delete scheduled campaigns in the dashboard anytime.
AI-Powered Content and Automated Campaigns
Powered by automation, SpotOn Marketing Assist defines marketing events each month and then creates and schedules campaigns for these events, the company states. Using AI, the program creates the marketing campaign content, while the imagery is selected using the restaurant images uploaded or stock photography; both are generated based on the restaurant’s pre-determined category, business goals, and specific event.
Once the campaigns are set up and approved, SpotOn Marketing Assist publishes the restaurant’s campaign across their email marketing and social media channels, according to the company. The program significantly improved restaurant email performance by 23%, with automated emails reporting a 9.55% open rate, compared to manual emails with a 7.79% open rate.
“Without SpotOn, I was doing marketing maybe once a month, sometimes skipping it completely when we were busy or short-staffed,” said Kim Dieu of Mi ‘N Tea in the release. “Now it takes just 15 minutes, my customers are receiving relevant emails each week, and I’ve seen a significant increase in sales in recent months.”
Data-Driven Marketing Insights
As part of the SpotOn Restaurant ecosystem, SpotOn Marketing Assist provides operators with campaign performance data and customer insigh, the company states. The program also ties campaigns directly to revenue through the connection with SpotOn Restaurant, offering a better understanding of guest’s preferences and marketing program performance.
SpotOn Marketing Assist is now available with a “three months free” special. After the special, the service will be $95/month or included in the price of software bundles.
