Our Philadelphia digital marketing agency has been using Wifi to drive customers back to local restaurants for over 8 years. At this point it’s an essential part of any restaurant’s marketing mix. This article will show my views on Zenreach and Yelp Wifi.
How do wifi loyalty programs work? There’s a LOT of new features that some of these companies offer but in their most simple form they all work like this:
- A customer comes into your restaurant
- A little prompt comes up on their phone to connect to wifi
- They click on the network with your restaurant name and generally the word “free”in it. For example ApplebeesFREEwifi
- They enter their name, email, birthday or connect through Facebook.
- You now have that persons email in a database that you can use to market to them.
Zenreach has become by far the most popular for restaurants. Starting under the name Wifast the company quickly proved that they would be able to drive repeat customers using wifi access as a marketing tool. They employed a heavy social media re-marketing advertising campaign paired with a large sales department to try and hit every restaurant owner in the country with constant ads and sales conversions. It worked! Now about 10 years later their platform as grossly expanded into a feature packed fully automated re-marketing tool. However the price has also increased significantly which has lead me to seek other options for my restaurant customers that don’t want another $400/month bill.
This is where I discovered the various alternatives that have now popped up around the market. The one that I’ve come to like the most is actually Yelp Wifi. It’s cheap starting at only $50 per month and slimmed down on the features, which makes it easy to operate. Yes, most restaurant owners loath Yelp which has made it hard for me to even mention to some owners however I still feel like it’s a great option and absolutely worth looking into.
I’ll be testing a few more newer options over the next few weeks, please keep checking back for updates.
Zenreach features infographic:
