Popeyes UK Uses Offline Data to Power Online Loyalty Program With Bloomreach Engagement

Story Behind the Brand

Popeyes UK is the home of the Chicken Sandwich that broke the internet. Fresh chicken is marinated for 12 hours hand-breaded and battered to deliver Popeyes’ signature shatter crunch. With over 35 restaurants across the United Kingdom, Popeyes now spans from Louisiana to London and Popeyes UK is shaking up the UK chicken game. The master franchisee of Popeyes UK is part-owned by Ring Holding, who also own fellow Bloomreach Engagement user Burger King Scandinavia.

the amount of in-restaurant purchase data Popeyes UK can now tie to a customer and use to power online loyalty programs using Bloomreach

more likely to make a repeat visit to Popeyes UK after playing “Winner, Winner, Chicken Spinner” within 30 days

Challenge

Creating loyalty programs has proven to be an effective strategy for quick-service restaurants in retaining their clientele, increasing their in-restaurant visits, and ensuring their satisfaction. Upon registering for such a program, patrons find themselves incentivised to return and increase their expenditure.

The frequency of their visits, or the extent of their spending, results in a range of enticing benefits. These may include complimentary appetizers or beverages, discount vouchers, or even branded merchandise.

For Popeyes UK, the fastest growing quick-service restaurant in the UK, the goal was no different. But using separate systems for data management and customer communication and not being able to integrate offline data from kiosks, tills, and surveys into the loyalty program presented a challenge.

Solution

The all-in-one data management, single customer view, and marketing automation capabilities of Bloomreach Engagement proved to be exactly what Popeyes UK needed to power its customer loyalty program with both online and offline customer data.

The “Winner, Winner, Chicken Spinner” loyalty program was offered by Popeyes UK to all customers who ordered via kiosk or till (via scanning the QR code on their receipt) as well as those who ordered online. After purchase, each customer was able to “spin the wheel” on Popeyes’ mobile website. Prizes included a Chicken Sandwich, a meal giveaway, and got as grandiose as free Chicken Sandwiches for a year.

The offline data generated from customer participation in the loyalty program flows into Bloomreach Engagement, which updates each customer’s unique profile with the power of Loomi, Bloomreach’s AI. This resulted in Popeyes UK giving out over 300,000 rewards to loyal customers since July 2023. Popeyes UK is also getting offline customer data from guest WIFI in restaurants, and even from post-purchase surveys to help power Bloomreach Engagement.

“In our restaurants, about 75% of the orders come through the kiosks,” Carey said. “Previously, we weren’t able to get any data around the people that were using them. Now we’re able to get the data from 20% of those people, which is a significant amount of data.

“No one is rewarding loyalty in this way at the moment and it’s working very well for us from our point of view.”

In setting up the “Winner, Winner, Chicken Spinner” loyalty program, Popeyes UK worked directly with the Bloomreach Help Center when it needed help solving certain problems.

The Bloomreach Help Center exists to help customers find a solution to product issues and answers to product-related questions as fast as possible. With a 9.4 “quality of support” rating on G2, the Bloomreach support team is trained to assist customers with technical issues, the identification of bugs, and general questions about Engagement and its use.

Carey worked directly with a representative in Bloomreach’s live chat and was able to solve problems nearly instantly rather than having to wait for a response via email.

“It’s the best support I’ve ever seen at a SaaS platform anywhere by a country mile,” said Carey, who also worked with Bloomreach Engagement at The Restaurant Group and Wagamama. “There’s nothing like having access to a live chat to help you. I’ve used most of the providers out there over the years but there’s just nothing like Bloomreach’s live chat support.

“It’s not just about helping with issues — but when you’re up against a deadline in peak trading and need consultative guidance on a use case or a snippet of code to personalize a campaign, Bloomreach provides it in minutes.”

Bloomreach Engagement is so easy to work with, even from an integration point of view. We’ve integrated a number of data sources into the platform with no issues at all. IT teams are sometimes afraid to do this, but with the way the platform is set up with the API, it’s so straightforward to do that it hasn’t caused any concern.

David Carey

Chief Technology Officer, Popeyes UK

Results

While Popeyes UK has improved its in-restaurant customer experience, it also has seen positive financial results from using Bloomreach Engagement to power its loyalty program.

In total, Popeyes UK can now get 20% of its offline customer data into Engagement to help inform rewards, discounts, and other loyalty items. That has resulted in guests who participate in the “Winner, Winner, Chicken Spinner” loyalty program being three times more likely to make a repeat in-restaurant visit within 30 days than guests who do not.

The loyalty program has helped Popeyes UK achieve a higher customer retention rate and the all-in-one capabilities of Bloomreach Engagement helped power those successes.

“One of the main reasons we moved to Bloomreach is because of how difficult it is to work when you have your single customer view separated from your marketing platform,” Carey said. “It is hard to work like that. It is significantly easier to work when everything is contained in the same CDP.”