A self-service restaurant chain with 75 restaurants in Belgium. Lunch Garden is a Belgian self-service restaurant chain, which was founded in 1966 and operates 75 restaurants around the country. The Lunch Garden concept is unique: a fast service, balanced meals and seasonal dishes at affordable prices. The restaurants are open seven days a week, and also offer take-away options. Lunch Garden is a family-friendly restaurant, as well as a meeting place for senior citizens and business customers.

get to know each customer and gain better insight into ROI. Let’s turn back time at Lunch Garden to 2013. Despite the appeal of their traditional marketing – which consisted at the time of a combination of poster ads on bus shelters, a customer loyalty card with stamps, local promotions and vouchers – the restaurant chain realized that they did not know its customers and whether their campaigns were effective. Automated agile marketing automation platform seemed the most appropriate tool to make both more insightful and measurable. The chain had to able to continuously learn from the tool.

a results-oriented one-to-one dialogue, across different channels. Thanks to excellent client-supplier collaboration and a continuous improvement process – with AB testing, the analysis of various dashboards and customer satisfaction surveys – Lunch Garden has succeeded in establishing a results-oriented dialogue with its customers. It has achieved this by striking the right balance between seasonal mass marketing (push) and automated personalized messages (pull). In addition, the company also paid extensive attention to sociodemographic segmentation. For Lunch Garden the following customer segments were identified: Spitsers (25-45 without children during peak times), Families (25-45 with children), High Gears (46-69 years), Time Rich Seniors (70 and older) and to a lesser extent, i-Consumers (18-25). Each segment has its own dynamics, requiring specific visuals and a different customer activation approach.

doubling of the opening rate, high conversion rate and halved cost of promotions. There are approx. 1.2 million digital loyalty cards in circulation to date, accounting for 52% of the turnover. They have a dual strategic goal: establishing a dialogue with customers on the one hand, and ‘activating’ these customers according to their individual situation and preferences, on the other hand.

To date, fifteen scenarios have been developed, with 56 different versions of the newsletter, culminating in an opening rate of 40% on average.

Using personalized automated emails, the conversion rate has increased from 3 to 25%. In addition, the cost of promotions has been halved, with significant discounts at certain times.

The birthday email is a good example. Customers receive an email 15 days before their birthday, with an invitation to celebrate it in one of the restaurants and redeem a gift which changes every year. If the customer visits a restaurant, then the chain sends him a friendly ‘congratulations’ message, by email or text message. If the customer did not visit a restaurant, he is sent a reminder ‘happy birthday, don’t forget your gift’. The opening rate for this email is 41%, the purchase conversion rate 88%.

Clear dashboards promote better insights in the results as well as revealing opportunities and points for improvement at a glance. They are also shared during monthly briefings of the board of directors.

The next step? Omnichannel integration such as Facebook, client reactivation – by continuously devising new, relevant messages – and even more customized content. Lunch Garden is also focusing on rejuvenating its customer base.