Rewards programs are popular with fast food restaurants and with customers alike. And why not? For customers, it’s a way of getting free food at their favorite restaurants. For the restaurants, it’s a way of gently encouraging loyalty, nudging customers to eat with them instead of the competition.
The loyalty card was once a ubiquitous feature of these programs, found in wallets everywhere. Get ten hole punches, or ten stamps, and your next meal would be free. These days, when a cell phone is as likely to be found in a customer’s pocket as a wallet, loyalty programs are increasingly being handled through apps. Instead of digging a dog-eared card out of the recesses of your wallet, you open the app on your phone, which keeps track of your rewards for you.
The current champion, in terms of the fastest-growing fast-food loyalty app, is Zaxby’s. The Georgia-based chain, known for its zesty, made-to-order chicken fingers, experienced an astonishing 317% growth in mobile app engagement in 2022. How did this chain more than quadruple its app engagement in a single year?
In large part, the Zaxby’s mobile app grew so fast because of the company’s alluring sign-up bonus: one free Big Zax Snak meal for every new subscriber.
The Big Zax Snak meal is one of the most popular meals at Zaxby’s, including three of the restaurant’s trademark Chicken Fingerz, Zax Sauce, and Texas Toast, with a side of Crinkle Fries and a small Coca-Cola Freestyle drink. After that, regular users earn 10 points for every dollar they spend at the restaurant and can redeem these points for discounts and free menu items.
While the rewards program is generous, the offer of a free meal just for signing up is clearly a large part of the draw that gets customers to sign up in the first place. Seeking continued growth, Zaxby’s has announced that this incentive, which was originally offered for a limited time only, will be extended indefinitely. Like this page on Facebook, for additional information.
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