Marketing

How can Online Restaurant Reservation & Food Delivery companies use WhatsApp to increase customer engagement?

April 27, 2023

7 min

Amardeep Singh

Dining at a restaurant has become popular again. In the post-Covid era, revenge dining is a rising trend, especially amongst millennials. They are willing to spend more on their food bill dining at their favourite restaurants or for an exclusive experience. Reports suggest that 79% of millennials are likely to pay four times more for a good dining experience. Food delivery apps also saw a surge in their business, especially during the 2nd and the 3rd waves. The pace of their business has not slowed down ever since.

This increase in demand has seen the rise of online restaurant reservations and food delivery platforms. People can reserve tables at their preferred restaurants, order food online, and pay using these platforms.

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It has become a highly competitive space with multiple players striving to gain market share. You must have a high brand recall value amongst customers and achieve brand loyalty to become the go-to company in this space. For this, you will have to connect with customers through a medium they use the most, which they are incredibly comfortable with and can access at any time. It has to be a medium that is a part of their daily life.

WhatsApp can be that medium.

Meta understands the potential of WhatsApp as a marketing channel and has recently taken steps to monetize it by launching WhatsApp Business API. We have compiled a guide on WhatsApp Business and its potential as a marketing medium.

However, it is not enough to send a generic message on WhatsApp. All marketers know from experience that generic messaging doesn’t perform well and has a limited impact. More so on a personal and intimate platform like WhatsApp.

A McKinsey report suggests that 71% of consumers expect companies to deliver personalized interactions, and 76% get frustrated when companies don’t do so. It also says that faster-growing companies drive 40% more revenue from personalization.

The same holds true for WhatsApp too. If you adopt personalization on WhatsApp, you can achieve better growth and meet customer expectations.

Personalization on WhatsApp

When companies look to personalize their messaging, irrespective of medium, they think of personalizing the text by adding attributes like {first name} and {last name} of the customer. It has been there for ages and is a tactic used by almost all the industry players. However, industry leaders are looking beyond just text-based personalization.

They want to not only meet their customers’ expectations but go beyond them, and hence are experimenting with the next level of personalization to gain a competitive edge.

The Next Level of Personalization

Industry-leading marketers are sharing personalized rich media. It is a sophisticated and the most advanced level of personalization. Imagine personalizing the image or a video per each customer daily for thousands of customers. It is a humongous task and not possible manually. It requires automation capabilities to achieve this level of customization at scale.

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We, at Vizard, enable businesses to personalize 1000s of images in minutes. Brands can customize multiple attributes like customer details, exclusive discounts, product details, and transactional details in the image or a video and deliver tailor-made messages to each customer through multiple customer engagement platforms in just a few clicks.

What’s the benefit of it? According to Vizard’s analysis, visual personalization shows a 80% higher click-through rate than non-visual personalization.

We have compiled a list of scenarios from an online restaurant reservation and food delivery business point of view, wherein you can use personalized media to connect with customers on WhatsApp.

Leveraging personalized media to connect with customers on WhatsApp.

1. New Restaurant Onboarding Communication

Online hotel reservation and food delivery apps continuously look to partner with and onboard hotels on their platform. Whenever they associate with a new restaurant, they can inform their customers about it. It also helps the hotel attract new customers, especially if it has just launched its business.

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Food Dining & Delivery Platform - Image Personalization Use Case: New Restaurant Onboarding

2. Welcome a New Customer

You can send a welcome message to a new customer. Once a customer opt-in, and agrees to connect with you on WhatsApp, you can send them a special offer as a welcome gift.

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Food Dining & Deliver Platform - Image Personalization Use Case: Welcome Customer

3. Booking Confirmation

You can send a booking confirmation message to a customer on WhatsApp whenever they reserve a table through your app.

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Food Dining & Deliver Platform - Image Personalization Use Case: Booking Confirmation

4. Booking Reminder

In the above case, if the customer has booked a table for a future date, you can send them a reminder on WhatsApp on that particular day. It will also help the hotel allocate the table to others if the customer cancels the reservation.

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Food Dining & Deliver Platform - Image Personalization Use Case: Booking Reminder

5. Money Saved on Food Bills in Restaurants

Many apps allow customers to reserve a table and also pay the bill through their platform. You can send a message about the money they saved, reserving the table and transacting through your platform.

Food Dining & Deliver Platform - Image Personalization Use Case: Monies Saved on Food Bill

6. After Food Delivery

After the food is delivered to the customer, you can send a personalized message to them on WhatsApp.

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Food Dining & Deliver Platform - Image Personalization Use Case: Post Food Delivery Message

7. Money saved on Food Ordered

You can send a WhatsApp to the customer about the money they saved ordering food through your platform.

Food Dining & Deliver Platform - Image Personalization Use Case: Monies Saved on Food Ordered

8. Request for Customer Reviews

Customer reviews are great. We all check reviews on Google and other websites about the new restaurant in the neighbourhood and their signature dishes. As a platform, you can help your partner hotels garner reviews by sending a message to customers on WhatsApp requesting them to review their experience dining at a restaurant. You can send a similar message to review their experience booking a table or ordering food through your app.

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Food Dining & Deliver Platform - Image Personalization Use Case: Customer Feedback and Review

9. Cart Abandonment

Customers may sometimes add a food item to their cart but not complete the purchase. Send them a special offer as an incentive to place an order.

Food Dining & Deliver Platform - Image Personalization Use Case: Cart Abandonment

10. Re-order a favourite dish

A customer might be ordering a particular dish regularly through your platform. If they haven’t done so for some time now, you can send them a message inviting them to place an order for their favourite dish.

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Food Dining & Deliver Platform - Image Personalization Use Case: Re-order a Favourite Dish

‍11. Discounts on Special Occasions

Nowadays, people prefer visiting a restaurant or ordering food online during special occasions like festivals or weekends. You can send the customers a special offer on festive occasions like Diwali to nudge them to use your app for reservations or ordering food.

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Food Dining & Deliver Platform - Image Personalization Use Case: Special Occasion Discounts

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There can be numerous use cases for an online restaurant reservation and food delivery business to use visual personalization and engage with customers over WhatsApp.

If you want to explore visual personalization for your business, you can register for a 7-day free trial of Vizard. Alternatively, you can connect with our personalization expert to schedule a customized demo for your business.

How can Online Restaurant Reservation & Food Delivery companies use WhatsApp to increase customer engagement?

Generate personalized images at scale

Our recent thoughts

How can Online Restaurant Reservation & Food Delivery companies use WhatsApp to increase customer engagement?

Generate personalized images at scale

Our recent thoughts

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