Per Diem Webinar: Proven App Launch Strategies for Restaurant & Coffee Shops

All right, well, thanks everyone for joining this week's webinar. The theme today of the webinar is launching your app. So six steps to mobile success. I'm Tomer Malovinski, CEO and co founder of Per Diem. And today we'll just be talking about all the ways you can launch your app once you do have an app, or whether you're launching an app for the first time or you're converting from another platform's app to Per Diem. But either way, the process is really simple and we're just going to walk through that today. Cool. So really quickly in terms of the agenda, we'll talk about website optimization, which is really key ways to promote your app in store. Exclusive incentives that you can offer in the app as part of that promotion to that extra nudge to get people to download, how you can create some buzz on social media. One of the direct response, you know, initiatives that works really well is also targeted email. And then how you wrap all that together with putting together like really captivating and beautiful photography. Yeah, so we'll jump right in. So most of you should probably have a website if you don't leverage whatever online property you have once you have an app to drive people to download. So I think to start, once people land on your homepage, it's important that this is for a mobile experience too. You just have a clean user experience that makes it really easy for people. If they want to just like in one or two taps, they should be able to download your app. They shouldn't have to like search for it and stuff like that. Once they know you have an app, you want to make it present. And also, even if they don't know that you have an app, you want to make it present. Because at the end of the day, what we see in, in our data and, and other data is that once people have your app, they end up spending a lot more, up to 3x more annually. So here you can see an example from Nico Nico Boba. And on their homepage they have this nice bright banner and you know that that's going to take me to the app download page. And there's a number of ways you can do this. You can use banners, you can use pop ups. We recommend putting even in the header. And so there's a number of ways that you can optimize in this way. And then once people do click, it's best practice to have an app landing page. So here you can see coffee dose. And once on your app landing page there are a few things that you're going to want to do. You're going to want to highlight key features. So obviously like the convenience of ordering ahead. You can save your favorites and you can track your loyalty points. So that's how, and obviously Coffee Dose has a very like unique, you know, marketing thing going on itself and, and but they've also used like super captivating imagery and it does promote this era of like exclusivity as well. And then just using your, your website to whether it's language or images to really give those cues that it's like, hey now you should download our app. So they've done a good, great job of this. And yeah, this is only half the battle. It's really just making sure that your website, when people come there both again on mobile and on desktop, that it's really easy to find your app. And then when it's there, having like a captivating kind of app page always helps. And then in terms of additional optimization, we recommend as I mentioned, either putting call to actions in your header. So just be like download the app. It'll take them to the app landing page. You can use your footer as well. So these are like omnipresent throughout any page that I'm on your website. So these are just best practices again that should be really easy for any web developer to do. I should add that per diem does offer, you know, complimentary app landing pages once you sign up with us and you so you can decide whether you want to add that just as a link on your website or if you want to add your own page. Either works, but just as an FYI and yeah, further optimizing you can do pop up banners and the like. But I think everyone gets the point. These types of banners, you might want to wait a little bit until someone's on your white, you know, surfing on your site and then you can pop something up with a call to action to download outdoor signage once you're going. And outdoor signage is a great way to get, you know, even those people that aren't necessarily in your shop right now, but they're just walking by. So it's like, hey, I don't want coffee now, but this place looks great. Let me download their app. Oh my God, they're, they're offering me two free drinks. That seems great. You know, so again, same deal, some sort of tagline or something that can really catch people's attention. Especially here if you're in New York City and there's a lot of distractions using QR Codes are a great way to get people to just quickly get to your app landing page. So usually you want to designate that QR code and have it go directly to the app landing page. And whether you're on Android or an iPhone, it's really easy from that app landing page to download your app. And then obviously, highlighting any deals that you have on any signage is always going to help. But some people just want it for the pure convenience, especially your regular customers that come every day. In terms of in store, we actually provide a lot of our stores with additional collateral. So once you sign up for per diem, we'll provide you with window decals. You can put them on the exterior windows of your store, or you can put them in the interior. If you have a glass counter anywhere, as you can see, Kona has done here. We'll also send you postcards, and you can also create your own assets from these. But then these postcards are something simple that you can put at your counter. So everybody that's ordering from you at the counter, all of a sudden they see this postcard. They don't necessarily have to take it again. Boom. They just, you know, scan the QR code and then your app landing page, you know, and then, you know, especially if you're doing square loyalty, showing that, you know, you can see your points, there is obviously a nice perk for especially your regular customers, but also new customers, that it's a way to acquire them, and then it's a much more sticky way to acquire them too. So these are just a few ways that you can do in store in terms of the product itself, like with the different signage. And you can see you can offer different incentives. So there's one thing to have the signage and what have you. And we'll show you a few other channels throughout the webinar. But what is the hook then? So part of the hook is just like most people today prefer to order on a mobile device because it's more convenient. And, you know, websites, especially on a phone, can be a little clunky. They're slow. It's hard to log in. I gotta add my credit card, where an app is just easy. You're texted your code to log in, you're right in. You do Apple pay on checkout. It's like, no hassle. It's right there on your. On your home screen. But one of the hooks, I think Panera is most popular at this, the Panera sip club. It's like, hey, if you download our app, you can then have this $15 a month or so club where you can get free coffee multiple times a day. And what they've seen is people that actually download the app and subscribe. And today it's hundreds of thousands of people, they actually spend 70% more than non members. So obviously, if you're giving people free coffee every day through the app and additional perks, then that helps to incentivize people. So Per Diem, we've created the same type of feature where you can say, hey, you get twice a day, you get a free espresso drink and you get 15% off all our pastries. And it's a great, a great hook again to get people to download the app. So that's one example right there in terms of just implementing a loyalty program. So Square Loyalty is great and Per Diem integrates directly with Square Loyalty so people can easily from the app, you know, and, and it's a great incentive for me if, especially if you're already doing Square Loyalty, hey, you can view and pay with points now directly from our app. And so once people open the app, they can see their points. They can see if you're having a tiered reward system, what you're giving away. So you can make this a part of your, part of your promotion. If we're going based on here, then I know, you know, maybe it's that there's a perk that you can give where it's like, hey, once you download the app, you get X amount of free points, and those free points can lead to a free item or something like that. So in this case, we could give people 26 points and then get a big ziti or, you know, you can do the same for a cup of coffee, for, for a croissant, whatever you want. But it's a really great way again to incentivize people and then use the app as a way to give people extra points either right when they download the app or after they make an initial purchase. And obviously, like with Square Loyalty, there's a big uptick in usage and just people coming to your store. And then once you have Square Loyalty and the app together, that even compiles even more. And, and that's where you really, you know, build that customer loyalty. Promo codes and discounts are another great way, another hook to get people to download your app. You can promote these in store, you can promote these on social media. You can send out emails on given days promoting this. So it's, it's important to note though, that promo codes in square and promo codes in per diem are going to be separate. So if you're running a promotion in square, like let's say a birthday promotion, those actually are only available in store or if you do square online, but you can create custom promo codes for the app. Hey, $5 when you download the app, get $5 off your first purchase. And then it can just be an evergreen promotion where people who download the app, they get an extra $5, they can use a coupon and great. And now they have your app, they're logged in, and it's a great incentive. So Chip Cities run a few of these campaigns. Not evergreen, but they've actually given away a free cookie on national Chocolate Chip Cookie Day, and it's netted them tens of thousands of app downloads and then subsequent a lot of, subsequently a lot of engagement. So once you have people in the app, then you can start leveraging other features in the app, like sending them push notifications when you're having a special deal or when you're offering new flavors or really anything that's going on when you're opening a new store. But initially the idea is like, again, what's the hook to get them into the app? And so Chip City has done this to a very successful tune. Using, using per diem, you can do the same thing with category discounts in square. So you can same thing. Chip City, they have a buy five get one free. So again, that's something that you could set up in square and then you could leverage that promo. Hey, when you download the app, anytime you buy five, you get one free. So that's another one that, that you can initiate double point days. So obviously Starbucks made this kind of, you know, famous. And, and, and basically the data says that on these days they see up to a 20 increase in their users in the app. So clearly it's very successful. You can set this up. If you are running square loyalty, you can set this up within square loyalty. So it's like, hey, today's Wednesday. It's a little sluggish out there. Let's do our Double point Wednesday promo. So you set that up in square, you can say, hey, every day, maybe it's like a happy hour deal every day between two and six, you know, you get double points whenever you order. So that's set up in square. And then it's respected in the app. And then from the app you can send people again push notifications. Hey, it's Double Point Wednesday. Come in between two to six to get your, your extra points. So these, these campaigns are really successful. The other thing you can do outside of double points is just again, incentivize people once they download your app to. And you can, through the app you can just give them extra points. So in on top of whatever points I get, that's just an extra, like additional perk when I download the app and or after I make my first purchase. So those are other incentives that you can easily leverage and then you can use this as part of your promotion for the app and then paying with points. So obviously like, once you are doing loyalty and you're promoting all this, obviously making this a slick and easy user experience is going to be key. So on checkout, people should be able to easily just select what item they want and boom, you're, you're through. So again, it's, it's kind of a seamless process. This really does build up the brand loyalty. Once people can pay with points and they get that kind of special feeling that you only get when you kind of get something for free. And that's why, that's a big part of why Starbucks app users end up spending 3x more than anyone who's not in their rewards program. And then obviously social media is a great vehicle for everyone to use. There's a number of good ways to promote your app and so here's just a few. You can do stories, different app challenges, coffee, art challenges. You can showcase different features from the app, Use influencers to promote your app. And one thing that's been pretty popular for people to do and to really raise the awareness are these app sneak peeks. So I'll show you real quickly. Oh, let's. Oh, no, let's try that again. I thought I had a. Thought I had a video tied up here, but let's try this. There we go. So here we can see. This is the cupcake and espresso bar. Any coffee? Hey, how are you? I'm good.

How are you?

Good, good. I placed a mobile order for Joe. Thank you. Appreciate it. Cool. So you can see that's a nice, you know, with a little production value. But, you know, if you have a creative barista that wants to be, you know, movie director one day, then maybe you can put them to work. But, but clearly it's a great way people can showcase. You can show the use case, show how it works, show the cool features and then from there it just makes it a little easier for people to digest, obviously. So again, social media is great for that. Social media, I would consider more around awareness and then the way to really leverage in addition to your website is, is through email. A lot of you who use Square email marketing and you're collecting all these email addresses for all the years you've been open. And you know, I know we've met with people who have tens of thousands of emails. You're already emailing people on a pretty regular basis. And now you can, in all those promotional emails, you know, whether it's on the footer, hey, we have a new app. Download it. It can just be like a separate part of your emails and then you can do very focused emails around the app itself. So you're doing an app launch promo around the holidays. Different things that you're doing, you know, there are different opportunities, maybe with an incentive to promote the app. But direct response really works, you know, in terms of ordering and in terms of just I think engagement from users from any place from a coffee shop to a restaurant to a bakery, you know, you all know best. But, but it's a really effective way to continuously get app downloads and to engage people, get them to download the app and people that already have your app knowing that they can do special things in the app now. So it's a great way to, to keep in touch and then you can even do, for people that download the app, you can do your own welcome series. So maybe it's like an email that you're creating with like all the different ways that you can leverage the app and what you get and stuff like that, that's not a must have, but it's definitely a nice way to, to get your new users adopted and start ordering and then finally wrapping all this up. Like the app is obviously going to do a lot of the work, but you guys are the ones creating like the amazing products and, and, and whether again, whether it's coffee, whether it's baked goods or whether it's food items, really captivating that in, in, in imagery is important, especially in today's world. So you can see Panera noted a 15% increase in app conversion when they updated the quality of their images today. You know, there's a lot of ways to do this. You can hire a photographer, that's one option. Square has a lot of tools where just anybody can really, from their iPhone, take really nice pictures and use Square's tools to upload those photos. And then today you can actually use a lot of AI tools as well. So you can get some pretty clear, you know, if, if they are coffee drinks and you want to have like a consistent background, there are plenty of AI tools that you can use to basically generate images of products that you might not have a product shot of. I think the key is, you know, with your photos, try to be consistent, try to be product focused. You can see here from Nico Nico, having your branding there front and center is very nice. Showing the different drinks, you know, whether it's like more of a bird's eye view here, like Coffee Dose does, or kind of like the side view, like Kino's Coffee does. But you can see that consistency, the quality kind of comes through in the images, and that really does help. So this is just something that as you are launching your app, you'll just want to like. If images were important to you before for your website and stuff like that, I think with an app, they become even like, doubly important, if that's a word. So that's it. That's our six, six tips, six pro tips for launching your own app. I'll be quiet for a second in case anybody has any questions or specific to this. And then we can jump into some other, like, product demo stuff.

All right, I had one question.

Sure, go ahead.

Just about the, like, Square Loyalty integration. So for a business that doesn't use, like, Square Loyalty, is there like a loyalty program, like, built into per diem that's separate?

Yeah, so that's a great question. And we do have a number of things. So you do not have to use Square Loyalty. It is a great, you know, it works great with the app, I should say. But so there are a number of things. There's first and foremost, you can do subscriptions like you see here. So that's not a part of Square Loyalty. And then it would be like, hey, you can get, you know, if it's some free coffee promotion or maybe like, you know, if it is around donuts, maybe there's some package you can get every week as part of this or. But we also. Let me see if I can find the proper screenshot here. We'll have to go back to the home page. So one of the big things that you can also do, and it's a great way to incentivize folks as well, is by offering incentivized store credit. So that's kind of like the Starbucks app where you get. They combine it with the points. But basically what you. What, you know, customers are able to do, you can set up something like a pay 45, get $50 and spend or even more. You don't have to give a discount, but that's like an extra perk there. And then basically, I'M going to be adding $45 into the app and I get $50 in spend, and every purchase that I make from the app will default to that store credit. So that's a great way without using Square Loyalty. And it's been really popular even for our places that do use Square Loyalty. A lot of them will incentivize the store credit, and then they. It works like square gift cards. So it's just a really advantageous thing. And people can even use them in store and what have you. So I would say that's probably the most popular thing to do if you're not using Square Loyalty. Do you guys sell, like, gift cards today and stuff like that?

Yes.

Yeah, yeah. So the other benefit is people can upload. If they have existing gift cards with you, they can upload those into the app and then they'll appear a store credit as well.

Oh, like if they have like a gift card, like through square.

Yep. Or.

Oh, wow.

They purchase from you. They can go to, like, there's a section of the app where you just say, redeem a gift card, and then they can enter their square gift card number and then. Great. They have their store credit there, too.

Oh, that's so cool. I know that.

Yeah. So that's. That's a nice feature that we've added as well. So I would say those are definitely outside of Square Loyalty. Those would be the two, you know, subscriptions and using the incentivized store credit are probably the most popular. The other thing you can do are, like, app exclusives. So you guys have, like, you know, you know, maybe there's like a really, like, you know, a type of donut that you guys have that's just super popular. So I tell this story a lot about McDonald's. They have this Szechuan sauce that I never heard, but it's really popular. It has, like, a cult following. So they basically made the Szechuan sauce only available in the app, and it's only available at certain times of the year. And so then when it's available, it becomes obviously this. This big viral moment too, because they have all these followers. I think it's like there's a big thing on Reddit or what have you. So there's a way to do, like, app exclusives as well and showcase certain items that you can say, hey, this is only available in the app. And that's a great way to drive, you know, usage as well and user acquisition. Well, if there aren't any more questions specific to the launch, I can jump into some of those other things, like the build a box feature. Does that sound good? Yeah.

Thank you.

Awesome. And I am going to stop.