Freshers Week Unlocked - How SaaS Products can improve your offering!

Written by Katie Turner & Alex Dunn, Customer Success Consultants at Zonal

August 5th 2024

Summer is here, we're not wishing it away, but wanting to make sure our customers are in the strongest position and prepared….

That being said, Freshers week is fast approaching, a new term time is pending, so what better time to start thinking about using Zonal’s technology to promote and engage students within a university district. Not only are these products being used within the campus' but at venues within the local area.

Loyalty

Loyalty platforms help not only encourage repeat custom, but also collect data in order to promote new products and even venues. Multiple loyalty programmes can be created within our platform to benefit students, staff members, as well as standard customers. More importantly, it helps drive sales and footfall in to venues. Each program can be configured with different offers and rules providing a tailored approach to each target audience.

Actions and Rewards can be set up to work across the whole estate, alternatively, they can be limited to specific sites within the university areas as well as drive sales towards an area of the business that is struggling.

We've recommended below just two example programmes that could be set up:

Student Loyalty Program

Multiple tiers could be set up to target specific societies within a university. By having unique rewards for a society, they can help build a great affiliation. This could help target specific days when they train and in return help drive trade for quieter periods - typically midweek.

An attractive sign-up offer can really go a long way to a successful launch of a loyalty program. This can either be a free item for registration or additional currency/points. Points and Currency rewards can be delayed to the following day after sign-up. Aswell as delaying the reward, an expiry can be set. This helps target return footfall and spend in a short period.

A ‘points for spend’ would be a fantastic way to encourage spending in the venue. These points could be then exchanged for items or converted into currency to spend across the venue. This would give the students something tangible to aim for. Double points can be offered at specific times to drive sales in quieter times. Double point offers could also be applied to specific sites at specific times. For example, food venues on a Tuesday evening could be made available when the venue might usually be quieter.

Due to the very nature of the sales being very term time led, this can lead to items (specifically food) perishing and lead to food waste. If there is a lot of specific items left that is going out of date after the term, rewards can be created specific to these items to help sell them.

Staff Program

The hospitality sector can be prone to high staff turnover. City or university-based venues that typically hire students will no doubt be used to this, therefore, having a staff loyalty program can help retain as well prevent any abuse of discounts.

All staff discounts can be hidden from a till user and only be allocated to a bill when a staff loyalty card is scanned. If using a “White Label App”, the discount could be redeemed via the available ordering channels, such as Order & Pay.

Staff loyalty schemes encourages their spending to be done within the estate rather than with competitors. Loyalty rewards such a buy 5 coffee and get a 6th coffee free can help encourage this.

Voucher Manager

Loyalty Programs rely on students signing up to receive rewards or discount. Voucher Manager however can provide an alternative solution to push students to your venues over a competitor.

Social media campaigns can contain a voucher code with a discount or promotion. This code created via our Voucher Manager solution and can be used by multiple customers (students). In order to redeem this, they simply scan it on POS (point of sale) to receive a discount or promotion. They are therefore not reliant on emails or sign up. Voucher Codes can also be printed on flyers and posters. They are trackable, easy to distribute to students and helps businesses remain competitive. Using the redemption data, code groups and folders, you can identify which distribution method works best for your customer demographic which in return assists with future marketing campaigns.

Voucher Manager can also feed into a CRM platform, if capturing data you are then able to distribute unique codes to existing customers within the database. This will provide a unique identity on redemption and therefore improving understanding of customers spending habits (this also applies to Loyalty).

Within Voucher Manager, restrictions can be made on redemption date and time. For example, 2-4-1 cocktails before 9pm on Friday.

As well as creating codes, Voucher Manager can be uploaded with pre-defined codes and add the discount or promotion to them. A successful example of this is to upload Student IDs (any unique identifier) into Voucher Manager and configure a 10% off discount to these IDs (codes). The student can then simply provide the site with their unique ID and receive their discounts. The discount can be configured to be a one off usage or allow for multiple redemptions.

Aztec

Let's not forget about Aztec!

Promotions and Discount

To remain competitive, promotions and discounts can be set up on POS without the need for a Loyalty Card or Voucher Code. This is popular for sites that are within a competitive region. Multiple promotions and discounts can be set up and tracked within your Aztec environment. Though these offers don't provide a unique identifier linking to a customer, when promoted correctly within venue and via other marketing tools, can increase footfall ideal for Freshers Week.

Event Pricing

Event Pricing in Aztec allows POS users (which can be restricted to Managers) to change the pricing of products. This is typically used to increase prices during busy periods for example a Freshers Event or after a specified time. Overall, this can help maximise profit on busiest periods.

WLA & Web Ordering

Students are a perfect demographic for Order & Pay, Click & Collect or Pay My Bill. These ordering channels, when used within the right environment, can hugely assist with operational processes in sites. Within Web Ordering and the White Label App is also possible to redeem loyalty, voucher manager and Aztec discounts & promotions.