QSR International has decided to take its brands’ loyalty programs to the next level with a  mobile platform that will allow consumers to earn rewards at each of the five chains.

QSR International operates KFC, Quiznos, Smashburger, Cinnabon and Teriyaki locations in fifteen countries in Latin America and the Caribbean, and the mobile platform will work across the different brands. The franchisee is leveraging Punchh’s mobile CRM suite for its platform.

“We’ve been wanting to get into a loyalty program for quite some time,” said Richard Eisenberg, CEO of QSR International, San Jose, Costa Rica. “We hesitated, and I’m glad we did because the market in the Carribean and Latin America has really grown dramatically, tenfold in the last three to five years in cell phone, social, everything is just wonderful the way it’s grown here.

“Had we launched a program sooner we would have had something that was more basic, a card, and it would have been a very basic program that wouldn’t have allowed us to take advantage of where the world is today, with Facebook and Twitter,” he said.

“The goal is not just loyalty but to make you a loyalty member for life.”

Eat, enjoy, earn
The new mobile loyalty program will encourage consumers to frequent the different quick-service restaurants in order to earn rewards. The platform will be in Spanish and work across each of the five brands.

QSR International plans to roll out the program in the second quarter of 2014.

Not only will consumers be able to earn rewards from making purchases in-store, but they will also be able to earn from playing games in or out of stores. This can extend the consumer engagement beyond the bricks-and-mortar location.

Additionally, while parents are ordering in-store, their children can be occupied by playing the games, while at the same time earning their parents points.

The mobile app will also provide personalized offers for consumers, mobile ordering, gift cards, consumer reviews, payments and surveys.

The Punchh platform integrates with the quick-service restaurants POS system to track customer purchasing data and brand-relevant social media activity. QSR International brands can leverage this data to deliver more personalized offers for consumers.

Mobile loyalty
Mobile offers lots of opportunity for brands to engage with consumers and increase loyalty.

According to Punchh, operators that leverage their platform see a ten percent increase in store sales, three- to four-times higher participation rates, more than 50 percent repeat rates and new customer referrals. They also tend to see 25 percent-plus redemption rates for marketing campaigns through the platform.

Mobile loyalty programs make it easy for consumers to earn rewards and it provides added incentive to make frequent repeat visits. They also help brands provide more personalized deals by leveraging all available data.

“From a QSR stand point, one of their goals is about driving frequency and to do that mobile presents a big opportunity,” said Sastry Penumarthy, co-founder of Punchh, Sunnyvale, CA. “At the core of a loyalty program is not just traditional loyalty its customized after we work with the brands to understand what their different customer segments are and how can the reward program help them engage users.

“Loyal customers also make the best brand advocate,” he said. “If you make it easy for them to share reviews and they can share them with their friends and set up rewards for them to not only come back but bring their friends. That’s a more effective way of inviting new customers.

“The average customer tends to have as many as 300 Facebook friends, so that network is a very crucial piece of the marketing.”

Final Take
Rebecca Borison is editorial assistant on Mobile Commerce Daily, New York