SpotOn Unveils First Automated, AI-Enabled Marketing Tool for Restaurants

SpotOn Marketing Assist solidifies SpotOn as the first point-of-sale provider to offer an automated restaurant marketing solution for email and social media campaigns

• Simplifies email and social media marketing for independent restaurants, saving operators an average of 3 – 5 hours per week

• Leverages the power of AI to create and send automated campaigns designed to drive revenue and increase loyalty

• Provides deep insights into campaign performance and customer behavior

SpotOn, the top-rated software and payments partner for restaurants, today announced the introduction of SpotOn Marketing Assist. Designed to streamline the restaurant marketing process, SpotOn Marketing Assist is the first product of its kind to empower restaurants to drive guest visits and boost sales while eliminating the time and resources needed for self-serve marketing tools.

“Beyond empowering operators to set up automated campaigns, SpotOn is helping to drive repeat business while providing operators with data-driven insights they need to keep the momentum going and drive revenue all year long.”

For restaurant operators, marketing often falls to the back burner when managing the daily challenges of rising labor costs, fluctuating food costs, and meeting guests’ increasing expectations. Independent restaurants can barely cover the cost of their front and back-of-house staff, let alone a dedicated marketing resource. With 90% of restaurant operators reporting their customers are more value-conscious than they used to be, restaurants need to build their brand and drive guest loyalty with value-driven incentives.

“SpotOn Marketing Assist is democratizing AI and automation technology for the independent restaurants who need it the most,” said Bryan Solar, Chief Product Officer at SpotOn. “Beyond empowering operators to set up automated campaigns, SpotOn is helping to drive repeat business while providing operators with data-driven insights they need to keep the momentum going and drive revenue all year long.”

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Customization Campaigns & Effortless Setup

For busy restaurateurs, SpotOn Marketing Assist promises simplicity and effectiveness. Operators are prompted to answer a few quick questions about their business category, marketing objectives, deal preferences, time-based deals, and brand – all with the ability to change at any time. Business categories help provide marketing campaigns especially relevant to a restaurant’s service type and guests, for instance, happy hours for Mexican restaurants.

Operators can select from multiple marketing objectives to increase online orders, in-person visits, phone calls, reservations, or all of the above. In addition, operators specify limits for discounting and specific shoulder periods to ensure they’re controlling costs. SpotOn helps operators ensure their campaign is aligned with their brand with font and color options and photo upload and selection. Operators just need to connect their restaurant’s Facebook page and add their Google Business profile.

SpotOn Marketing Assist syncs with the SpotOn Restaurant POS to generate email lists from the restaurant’s SpotOn Order and SpotOn Reserve customers. From there, SpotOn Marketing Assist takes over creating a marketing campaign tailored to that restaurant and its goals. SpotOn’s marketing campaigns focus on creating a sense of urgency and demand through discounts and promotions. Operators can view, edit, or delete scheduled campaigns in the dashboard anytime.

According to The National Restaurant Association’s State of the Industry Report, more than 8 in 10 adults would take advantage of discounted dining on slower days or off-peak times to save money. To help operators leverage this opportunity, SpotOn created a “Slow Day Boost” revenue-driving campaign that allows operators to input their slow days and meal periods for SpotOn Marketing Assist to auto-generate a campaign with a limited-time offer (LTO) for those shoulder periods the operator outlined.

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AI-Powered Content & Automated Campaigns

SpotOn Marketing Assist campaigns save time and money, shifting a manual marketing process into an automated one, with users reporting an average of 3 – 5 hours per week saved. Powered by automation, SpotOn Marketing Assist defines marketing events each month and then creates and schedules campaigns for these events. Using AI, SpotOn Marketing Assist creates the marketing campaign content, while the imagery is selected using the restaurant images uploaded or stock photography; both are generated based on the restaurant’s pre-determined category, business goals, and specific event. For example, a March Madness campaign is created for a pizza restaurant wanting to drive more online orders.

Once the campaigns are set up and approved, SpotOn Marketing Assist takes over seamlessly publishing the restaurant’s campaign across their email marketing and social media channels. SpotOn Marketing Assist significantly improved restaurant email performance by 23%, with automated emails reporting a 9.55% open rate, compared to manual emails with a 7.79% open rate.

“Without SpotOn, I was doing marketing maybe once a month, sometimes skipping it completely when we were busy or short-staffed,” says Kim Dieu of Mi ‘N Tea. “Now it takes just 15 minutes, my customers are receiving relevant emails each week, and I’ve seen a significant increase in sales in recent months.”

Data-Driven Insights

As part of the SpotOn Restaurant ecosystem, SpotOn Marketing Assist’s deep integration with SpotOn Restaurant POS and SpotOn Order facilitates a seamless experience for guest redemption in person or online and provides operators with invaluable campaign performance data and customer insight. SpotOn Marketing Assist ties campaigns directly to revenue through the connection with SpotOn Restaurant, providing operators with a better understanding of their guest’s preferences and marketing program performance.

In a review of early performance, SpotOn found that “Slow Day” deals are the top-performing redemptions, followed by “Happy Hour” deals and “Deal of the Month” campaigns, suggesting consumers are increasingly motivated and willing to change their dining times to save money.