4 Ways to Hyper-Personalize
the Guest Experience
The Power of Individual Customer Data
Tech companies like Google and Amazon have grown tremendously fast precisely because they use data
to determine what drives customer behavior. Amazon, for example, uses highlighted passages from a
reader’s e-book to curate a recommended next read for that person to purchase. Their algorithms also
predict exactly when someone needs to reorder paper towels based on past order timeframes.
LevelUp, Grubhub’s development shop, brings this strategy to the restaurant industry by providing
restaurants with customer data gathered from their branded channels.
For example, using behavioral data, a restaurant brand may determine that customers who transact
three times within one month go on to have a higher lifetime value. The brand can then intelligently
create a hyper-personalized onboarding offer that gets as many customers as possible to transact three
times in one month. For Customer A, this may be a free side; and for Customer B, it’s an invitation to
bring a friend.
Read on to see how three LevelUp partners – Bobby’s Burger Palace, Kung Fu Tea, and Dunn Brothers
Coffee – craft personalized digital experiences that grow sales.
Who is LevelUp?
LevelUp is Grubhub’s development
shop and represents one part of the
Grubhub Enterprise team. We design,
develop, and power branded app
and web experiences for hundreds
of enterprise restaurant brands. Our
restaurant partners can also take
advantage of all Grubhub
marketplace has to offer, including:
21+ million diners
Delivery coverage in 2,400 cities
Partnerships with 140,000+
restaurants.
www.thelevelup.com
ORDER
Bobby’s Burger
Palace Uses
Data to Inform
Decisions and
Increase ROI
The Goal
Infamous chef Bobby Flay
founded Bobby’s Burger
Palace (BBP), which serves
over a dozen kinds of
signature burgers, hand-cut
fries, bold salads, and thickand-creamy milkshakes. With
their digital engagement suite,
BBP wanted to engage loyal
fans and earn new guests with
enticing rewards.
The Solution
BBP sought to entice guests to download their newly-launched
app by providing a rich first-visit offer upon download. More
specifically, they wanted to automatically drop free fries into
each new guest’s account. LevelUp recommended a little
testing first: let’s use data to determine what offer drives BBP’s
new users to transact. To do this, BBP split their app users into
segments: transactors and non-transactors. They then split nontransacting users into groups:
•
45% received an email that said if they spent $15, BBP
would drop free fries into their account;
•
45% received an email that said if they spent $15, BBP
would drop $3.50 in credit into their account;
•
10% received no offer as a control group.
The Results
$3.50
At the end of the campaign, the LevelUp team
analyzed the data and found that 62% more new
app users redeemed the credit offer over the fries
offer. BBP used these results to intelligently inform
their first visit campaign; the brand now targets new
app users by dropping credit into their accounts,
which leads to an increase in customer acquisition.
Not only did the data from this campaign provide
actionable insights, it also drove transactions at a
low cost: BBP earned $7.50 for every $1 that they
spent to run the campaign.
Kate, BBP’s Technical Brand Manager,
helps the brand run campaigns that
accomplish their unique goals.
www.thelevelup.com
With Informed Analytics, Kung Fu
Tea Revamps their Loyalty Program
The Goal
Kung Fu Tea, a contemporary, fast-growing, 180+-location bubble tea
brand, launched their digital engagement program to drive traffic and
sales by personalizing the guest journey, rewarding loyal customers, and engaging new fans. Thanks to
their thoughtful program, their app sees nearly 175% more monthly active customers per location than
their competitors.
One year after their app launch, Kung Fu Tea decided to examine the effectiveness of their loyalty
program. They sought to revamp their visit-based program to accelerate customer progression and
engagement with their app.
The Solution
LevelUp worked with Kung Fu Tea to define their goals using data from the first year of their digital
engagement program.
First, the team analyzed guest spend to define groups of customers with the highest potential to incentivize
incremental spend. Through this process, they found the key points in the average Kung Fu Tea customer’s
journey that were pivotal to lift them to the next spending tier. For example, 71% of customers were
Dan, Kung Fu Tea’s Technical Brand
Manager, works with the brand’s marketing
team to refine their loyalty program,
implement new initiatives, and develop
effective campaigns that drive sales.
spending under $100 in their first year, so Kung
Fu Tea set their second loyalty tier to $100 to
encourage increased and quicker spend.
Once LevelUp determined the ideal spendbased tiers, the team calculated the ROI
of a wide variety of rewards (free $5 drink
versus a free $7 drink versus fun swag) to
better understand how Kung Fu Tea could
reward loyal customers while still meeting
revenue goals.
The Results
This analysis led to the launch of Kung
Fu Tea’s existing spend-based loyalty
program. LevelUp helped the brand develop
consistent and clear messaging for existing
customers to describe how their loyalty
points would transition between the old visitand new spend-based programs, as well as
messaging to use for new users coming into
the program for the first time.
Kung Fu Tea Creates Loyal Customers with
National Bubble Tea Day
The marketing team at Kung Fu Tea invented National Bubble
Tea Day, a one-day campaign during which the brand promoted
a FREE $4 beverage for guests who downloaded the app. With
a massive promotional effort on their website, blog, social media,
in-store signage and more, Kung Fu Tea made National Bubble
Tea Day a buzzworthy country-wide holiday.
Repeat Customers and First-Time Customers
Repeat Customer Orders
First-Time Customer Orders
# of Orders
12K
8K
4K
0
Apr 24, 2018
Date
Apr 29, 2018
2,346% increase in new customer acquisition as compared to an average day in April.
Number of orders was 333% higher than an average day in April.
Customers that registered for the event have since transacted 21% more than other app
registrants… translating to long-term revenue.
www.thelevelup.com
Dunn Brothers
Engages
Guests on
Earth Day...
and Every Day
The Solution
Around Earth Day
2018, Dunn Brothers
sent out a trivia
question to all app
users via email. Every
guest who answered
the question
The Goal
automatically received
Dunn Brothers, a 90-location
coffee brand, boasts a
robust digital engagement
program that includes an app
with order ahead, in-store
payment, rewards, menus,
and more.
$0.50 in credit in
Dunn Brothers came to
LevelUp with a goal: they
wanted a cost-effective,
brand-centric way to engage
more customers and increase
transactions using their digital
engagement platform.
$0.50 in credit.
Dunn Brothers seeks to be
the coffee shop that keeps
their guests energized
during key holidays: Black
Friday, Daylight Savings,
and other “fatigue-inducing”
days. Dunn Brothers and
LevelUp designed a customer
engagement campaign that
would take advantage of this.
their accounts to go
towards their next
purchase. Every guest
that answered the
question correctly
received another
The Results
50% of customers who answered the question
correctly redeemed their reward in-store.
Dunn Brothers earned $12.50 for every $1
spent on the campaign.
Dunn Brothers’ consistent trivia campaigns turn participants
into loyal customers. Since introducing trivia, the percentage
of total app orders by repeat customers has increased 12% as
compared to the previous 6 months.
Caitlin, Dunn Brothers’ Technical Brand
Manager, helps the coffee chain run
creative campaigns that align with their
goals and unique brand.
www.thelevelup.com
Moving forward…
Restaurant brands with LevelUp-powered branded channels can get creative with promotions, use
data to their advantage, and ultimately garner more loyal customers.
The Grubhub Enterprise team, including LevelUp, can help your restaurant brand create a holistic
digital engagement program that includes a branded app and web ordering experience, creative
marketing campaigns, an industry-leading, custom loyalty and rewards program, POS-integrated and
incremental delivery orders, and more -- all informed and strengthened by guest data pulled into our
restaurant Dashboard. Every restaurant brand that works with us has a dedicated account manager to
help them strategize and best take advantage of our technology suite.
Vice President of Agency Strategy
Theresa Dold, Grubhub’s Vice President of Agency Strategy,
is a former Director of Product and Director of Marketing at
sweetgreen, where she built the brand’s LevelUp-powered
app, loyalty program, and website. Now, she assists
Grubhub’s restaurant partners in building digital strategies
that grow their business.
Interested in working with us? Contact hello@thelevelup.com
or visit www.thelevelup.com