There is a science to running effective customer-retention programs. Do it right and loyalty results. Do it wrong and apathy results. Yet many operators don’t have the time or training to do it well. Li-ran Navon, the CEO and founder of Sauce, known for its white-label, first-party delivery platform, has a message for them: don’t sweat it.
Li-ran Navon, CEO and founder of Sauce
“Give us your menu. Give us your bank account so you get the money. We’ll do everything,” he said.
Sauce’s platform now includes a new AI-powered customer-retention module, which it launched last month as an add-on to its service. The tool produces personalized emails, special promotions, and customized order suggestions for existing customers. It’s been designed to be plug and play.
“We know how busy operators are, doing hundreds of things in the front and back of house. We make it simple for them to onboard with us,” he said.
The platform uses AI models to analyze ordering habits and optimize communications. It answers all the pertinent questions a good operator should ask before an email is sent.
“Operators who want to retain customers need to know who the customer is, when is the best time to reach out, and what should they speak about,” he said. “Instead of going one by one, we optimize everything. We apply AI to each of the pieces: the restaurant, the customer, the message, the items. We are leveraging new technologies to create something that segments better and personalizes better.”
Sauce has rolled out the fully automated platform to existing clients on the East Coast. In this trial run, operators have reported a 20 percent lift in sales, according to Navon. He expects it to perform even better once in wide use. “I think we can get that up to 30 to 50 percent,” he said.
Focusing on existing customers in one’s database should be a priority for operators since 80 percent of orders come from the same customers ordering the same food from the same restaurant, he said. Offering these customers first-party delivery is good business. So is sending them messages that pay attention to things like order frequency and preferences. Sauce offers both. And at no extra work for operators.
“They don’t have to manage the promotions,” he said. “Once diners enter the platform, they are entered into a workflow designed to keep them coming back. Operators no longer have to think about what’s the best message for each consumer and when is the best time to send it. So many operators don’t have the time for this and decide to just create an automated campaign every Tuesday. But that doesn’t make sense.”
Now that the beta test is complete, the retention module will be part of Sauce’s offerings going forward. To Navon it’s all part of the company’s desire to take stress out of the nervous systems of operators.
“If you want to do retention you need data, optimization, segmentation, personalization, you need so many things. It can be overwhelming,” he said. “Now that we’ve built a scale for our platform and it’s working, we’re opening it for everybody.”
