The main point of building this funnel is to know how customers interact with your campaign, including how long it takes them to go from point a to point b. Setting up customer stages and checkpoints helps us do that.
We are going to mark each customer in their stage as they pass through our marketing flows. The way we are going to do that is with something called tags.
You can think of tags as stickers in a retail store. When something is on sale, they tag it with a big red “sale” sign. If something is running out of stock, you will see a tag that says “Last One!”
That is basically what we are doing with each person that enters our funnel. We are tagging them with information so that we can know more about them and give them the best personalized experience.
In order to create these tags, go into your Settings > Tags. Then click on +New Tag to open up a popup box that will ask you to name your tag:
You should name your tags exactly how I mentioned them before, but with your offer names.
If you don’t know what you offers are going to be yet, you can name them Offer 1 Viewed, Offer 2 Viewed, Offer 3 Viewed, etc.
For each offer, create a tag for each stage. So for Offer 1, you need to create:
- Offer 1 Viewed
The very first stage that a customer is in is when they view the offer. This marks the beginning of their journey towards becoming a paid customer for your restaurant.
- Offer 1 Claimed
The second stage is when the person opts-in or signs up for the offer. This means that they have expressed interest in the coupon by moving forward with claiming the coupon. The requirement for claiming can be as simple as clicking on a button after they first view the coupon or getting the person’s email/phone/contact to send them the coupon there.
We highly recommend that you get the email/phone/additional contact so that you have a way to communicate with the potential customer even if they end up not visiting or ordering from your restaurant. (more on this later)
- Offer 1 Validated
The third stage is when the customer actually visits your restaurant and uses the coupon or they use the coupon to order online.
It is important that your servers and staff know what this validation stage looks like because customers will show them the coupon. Your servers and staff will need to recognize the coupon and know what steps need to be taken so that coupon is marked as used.
- Offer 1 Expired
This stage can only happen if the customer signs up for the coupon but doesn’t end up using the coupon before the expiration date.
It is important to put an expiration date on your coupon so that you can stress the urgency of using the coupon to your customer.
Most coupon validations/uses happen within 3 days of receiving the coupon and within the last 3 days before coupon expiration. Data shows that these two periods of time (beginning and end) are when the customer feels excited and has fear of missing out on the benefits of the coupon.
- Offer 1 SMS Reminders
- Offer 1 Email Reminders
- Offer 1 Facebook Reminders
Customers will be in the reminder stage if they specifically asked to be reminded about the coupon. Reminders are very key to getting customers to use coupons. Usually customers get really excited about using a coupon that they see. However, because of their busy lives they usually forget… except if they have reminders!
Reminders have increase my offer usage rate by x%
- Offer 1 Online Order Started
If you offer online ordering and want to enable the coupon with your online ordering platform. If you feel it is much better and easier for your restaurant to take orders via your online ordering platform (usually it saves a lot of labor time and also increases average check because customers sell themselves), then you should enable it. This tag will help tell you when someone has started an online order on your online ordering platform.
- Offer 1 Online Order Completed
If we want to know when someone started an online order, we definitely want to know when they finished an online order too.
This tag will help let us know when they completed an online order, and it will automatically be tagged once they complete the order on your online ordering website.
- Offer 1 Continue
- Offer 1 Stopped
We are going to use these two tags to help determine if the customer has moved forward in the coupon usage process or if they are stuck somewhere. This is important because if your customer is stuck, then your business’s revenue is technically stuck too.
All of this data is going to be in your CRM and reporting and will give you very good insight as to how people interact with your coupon, ultimately letting you know if the coupon is profitable for your business and how you can tweak it to make it even more profitable.
If you need a quick reference to how this will connect to your CRM, see the columns that I included in my CRM template:
Those will all be filled with valuable data!
Once you’re done setting all the customer stages, let’s go ahead and determine what type of features we need for this coupon system that will automatically bring in restaurant guests on autopilot… 5 times over!
