Rita's Italian Ice Drives Repeat Customers with Social Rewards
Rita’s Italian Ice, with more than 625 outlets in 19 states has announced a partnership with Punchh the first social loyalty platform designed exclusively for restaurants.
Punchh’s patent-pending technology will be integrated into Rita’s smart phone application and deployed at all Rita’s Italian Ice locations enabling customers to earn rewards for their purchases, write reviews and receive additional awards when they refer their friends. With Punchh, Rita’s Italian Ice will also have the tools to directly engage with its customers through personalized push notifications and email, as well as the ability to create targeted marketing campaigns to drive business.
Because deploying Punchh does not require the purchase of hardware or software, Rita’s Italian Ice will launch their new rewards program before the end of 2012. Customers earn “punches” when they make a purchase, and will earn extra “punches” when they recommend Rita’s Italian Ice to their friends who purchase as well.
Rita’s Italian Ice will use Punchh to drive business by sending direct, personalized offers through push notifications. The new Rita’s mobile application will have a location-aware store finder feature and will incorporate many of Rita’s existing marketing programs such as Cool Alerts, Birthday Club and Ringtones.
Based on the belief that a one-size-fits-all approach to loyalty does not work, Punchh was designed for restaurants to engage customers. Restaurants can drive social dynamics with Punchh’s easy-to-use dashboard to define rewards, execute social campaigns and track results in real-time. Punchh operators own their customer data, which can be added to existing analytics and third-party marketing programs. Customers can communicate easily with restaurants as well as their friends. And, Punchh supports multiple approaches for validating customer purchases – POS integration, secure QR code, code-based validation, and credit card transactions – thus eliminating fraud.