8 Marketing Incentives for Customers in Hospitality & Retail

Marketing incentives work by presenting your guests with an additional offer beyond the standard products or services. It promotes customer engagement as you encourage guests to take a particular action to receive the incentive award. Long-term, these efforts lead to enhanced customer satisfaction, engagement, and revenue.  

For companies in hospitality and retail, customer satisfaction is key. You’re always looking for ways to stand out from competitors, creating a truly unique and memorable experience for your guests. Marketing incentives help make this a reality.  

This article discusses impactful tips for implementing marketing incentives that lead to increased customer loyalty and revenue. Let’s begin. 

What Are Marketing Incentives? 

Marketing incentives are rewards or exclusive deals that businesses offer to their customers to encourage guest loyalty and drive revenue. A successful incentive campaign fits within your digital marketing strategy.  

Incentive marketing gives your business a competitive edge. You can leverage these rewards to promote customer engagement, creating memorable experiences that help customers build an emotional connection with your brand. As a result, you may witness increased customer and brand loyalty.  

Pro Tip: Your customers are top of mind when building a marketing incentive strategy, but don’t forget about incentivizing your employees. Offer rewards or sales incentives to your team to reward great customer service, performance, and impact.  

6 Key Marketing Incentives That Drive Customer Loyalty 

When the same guest returns to your business, they display customer loyalty and satisfaction. Here are seven impactful marketing incentives that have proven to drive loyalty: 

1. Free Samples, Shipping, or Trials: Grant your most loyal customers free shipping, samples, and trials so they can explore other parts of your business. 
2. Special Promotions: For a limited time, customers can buy one item and get another free, earn a gift card, or another exclusive reward. 
3. Exclusive Discounts: Offer customers a percentage or dollar amount off a menu item or service’s list price. 
4. Giveaways: Engage customers with your business by having them enter their information and potentially win items in a giveaway. 
5. Loyalty Programs: Drive long-term engagement and growth by continuously rewarding customers for their interactions with your business.  
6. Membership or Subscription Benefits: Customers gain exclusive and tangible benefits from your business for a monthly or annual fee.  
7. Social Media Contests: Organize friendly contests on social media to get customers engaging with each other and your brand.  

Successful marketing incentive programs are tailored to the customer. For example, say a customer paid their first visit to your restaurant. They enjoyed their experience, so they signed up for your monthly email newsletter. Their action shows guest satisfaction and an interest in the happenings of your business.  

After a couple of weeks, you may send them a coupon for a free appetizer the next time they visit your restaurant. This incentive leverages existing customer intent to encourage a certain action. It’s an early step toward gaining a repeat customer. 

5 Secrets to Creating Effective Loyalty Programs 

A survey from early 2024 discovered that 22% of customers believe loyalty programs to be very important when deciding where to shop or which brands to purchase from. Additionally, 46% of respondents said loyalty programs are somewhat important.  

With such a large portion of customers reporting that loyalty programs are at least partially considered when engaging with brands, creating one for your business is worthwhile. Here are five tips to design a loyalty program that resonates with your target audience: 

1. Understand Your Audience: Successful loyalty programs provide guests with their desired experience and rewards, so it’s important to know your audience. 
2. Offer Compelling Rewards: Create rewards that feel valuable and enticing to guests, so they’ll feel compelled to enroll. 
3. Decide on a Loyalty Program Model: Tiers, subscriptions, and memberships are options for loyalty program structures.  
4. Refresh Offerings Periodically: To keep your reward program fresh and interesting, revamp its offers periodically.  
5. Create an App: Mobile apps create an easy and effective way for customers to engage with your brand and take advantage of your loyalty program benefits.  

Let’s take 7-Eleven’s reward program as an example. Patrons earn points for each dollar spent at a 7-Eleven location. They can redeem these points for snacks, beverages, or other in-store items. 

7-Eleven’s program differentiates itself from competitors by offering customers a digital wallet and contactless check out. Guests can make purchases with their phone, earning 3x the number of points as they would using traditional payment methods.  

Additionally, guests can use their phone to shop, scan, and pay for items within the store. All these benefits and services can be accessed within the mobile app, making it a key part of 7-Eleven’s convenience store marketing strategy.  

Mobile devices make it easier than ever for guests to make purchases and engage with businesses. It’s critical to establish an app store optimization (ASO) marketing strategy that aligns with your incentive program.  

Leveraging Referral Programs to Boost Acquisition 

A referral program incentivizes your customers to send their friends and family to your business—and it offers rewards to both parties. It’s a powerful strategy that leverages existing customer satisfaction. Use these three tips when structuring your referral rewards program: 

1. Choose Rewards to Entice Current Customers: Determine how you’ll incentivize current customers to refer new guests to your brand. 
2. Decide on a Reward for the New Customer: Offer a compelling reward to make it worthwhile for the new customer to engage with your brand. 
3. Promote the Program: For a referral program to increase customer acquisition, you must create impactful ways to advertise and promote the offer.  

Referral programs leverage word-of-mouth marketing. Most consumers trust recommendations from friends and family more than listening to a company talk about its benefits. A referral is proof of a happy customer. 

4 Discount Strategies That Work 

All customers enjoy a good deal.  Significant discounts can motivate customers to make purchases they might not otherwise. In fact, customers are 2x more likely to purchase a product with a 20% discount. Here are the four top discount strategies: 

1. Take a Percentage Off: Offer customers a percentage off select items or your entire stock. Consider granting loyalty program members an additional discount. 
2. Buy-One-Get-One-Free (BOGO): BOGO sales give customers two items for the price of one, providing added value to their purchase.  
3. Limited-Time Discounts: Add an expiration date to your offers to help create a sense of urgency, encouraging customers to act quickly.  
4. Seasonal Sales: Take advantage of holidays, Black Friday, or other seasonal events that may attract customers to your business. 

Most customers experience excitement and urgency when they encounter a discounted item. The promotion works because it gives your guests an additional reason to visit your business and increases the odds of them spending more. 

Personalized Incentives Based on Customer Data 

Data pulls back the curtain on customer behavior—use these insights to cater your marketing incentives to your loyal customers. In doing so, you not only give customers the incentives they want, but you also connect with them on a personal level. Use these four tips for how to collect customer data: 

1. Consult Existing Customers: Ask the customers most familiar with your brand what they want to see from your company. 
2. Aggregate Buying Habit Data: Collect and analyze customer purchasing data to identify trends you can leverage. 
3. Website and Social Media Analytics: Data from your website and social media illuminate how customers currently interact with your business.  
4. Conduct A/B Testing: Compare different communication styles to determine which resonates most with your audience.  

Once you’ve aggregated the data, it’s time to analyze it. Customer segmentation, the practice of clustering together groups of customers based on shared habits or characteristics, will prove to be helpful during this step. You can create personalized incentives for each group based on their unique purchasing behavior. 

4 Incentives for Improving Brand Awareness 

Incentive strategies go beyond customer retention. When done well, they can spread the word about your business and bolster brand awareness. These are four incentive strategies you can use to improve brand perception: 

1. Increase Your Brand’s Social Media Presence: Social media channels allow you to reach audiences that may not currently be aware of your business.  
2. Roll Out a Referral Program: A referral program entices current customers to spread the word about your company.  
3. Host Local Events with Prizes: Offer compelling prizes when customers engage in events, giveaways, or sweepstakes you organize.  
4. Work with Influencers: Partner with influencers to promote your brand to their audiences, connecting you with new potential customers.  

Key Takeaway: When boosting brand awareness, you shape the public’s perception of your business with each touch point, crafting a positive reputation.   

4 Tips for Communicating Incentives Well 

Once you’ve determined which incentives resonate most with your intended audience, it’s time to make your current and potential customers aware. Use these four best practices when communicating your incentives: 

1. Use Email Marketing: Develop email marketing campaigns that advertise your company’s incentives and send them to customers based on their engagement with your business. 
2. Be Active on Social Media: Use social media channels to promote your marketing incentives and build brand awareness.  
3. Leverage Word-of-Mouth Marketing: Referral programs and influencer partnerships enhance word-of-mouth marketing.  
4. Advertise on Your Website: Mention your incentives on your website so guests are aware of your brand when engaging with it online.  

When communicating with your audience, it’s important to choose the right channels and messaging. For example, if data reveals that your audience tends to be more engaged with social media content than emails, redirect some of your marketing efforts from email to social channels.   

Pro Tip: Use our messaging guide to successfully communicate your incentives to customers and drive guest engagement.  

Evaluating the Success of Your Marketing Incentives 

Your marketing incentive strategy is agile. Based on metrics you gather throughout campaigns, you’ll continue to iterate on the strategy to ensure its success continues These are six helpful metrics to start tracking today: 

1. Loyalty Program Enrollment: This is the number of customers who sign up for or cancel their enrollment in your loyalty program.  
2. Social Media and Website Engagement: When and how customers are most likely to engage with your business on social media and your restaurant website. Social media engagement is also a way to measure brand awareness.  
3. Email Click-Through Rate (CTR): How frequently email recipients follow email CTAs to engage with other parts of your business.  
4. Customer Acquisition Costs: The amount of money spent to gain a new customer. 
5. Customer Lifetime Value (CLV): How much each patron spends throughout their entire time as your customer. 
6. Net Promoter Score (NPS): The likelihood of a customer recommending your business to someone else.  

In addition to the numbers, customer feedback is a valuable metric when analyzing the success of your marketing incentive strategy.  

Pro Tip: If you have an existing loyalty program that needs a refresh, we can help. Check out our comprehensive guide to revamping your loyalty program.  

Frequently Asked Questions About Customer Marketing Incentives 

Below we’ve answered some of the most asked questions about customer marketing incentives. Use them to inspire your campaigns.  

What are good pricing incentives for new customers? 

Discounts, BOGO, free shipping, coupons, and referral bonuses are all examples of adequate incentives to attract new customers. Consider the markup on your products and services before making special offers. 

What’s a good marketing strategy for convenience store products? 

A good marketing strategy for convenience store products may include loyalty programs, local partnerships, in-store promotions, or holiday sales. Each one will work differently for various business types with different needs.  

How would you make customers feel special in a restaurant? 

Excellent customer service, a welcoming atmosphere, delicious menu items, personalized recommendations, and rewards for loyal guests are all impactful strategies to make customers feel special when visiting your restaurant. So, make sure you thoroughly train your staff on these matters.  

Moving Forward with Fresh Incentives 

The hospitality and retail industries are constantly changing, which means your marketing incentive techniques must also evolve. To remain competitive and profitable, your business needs to offer unique incentives that encourage your guests to visit again and again. 

Now that you’re feeling inspired to craft fresh and innovative incentives for your guests, take the next step and book a demo with Paytronix. We will equip your business with our tools and resources to build a successful incentive marketing strategy.