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Payment technology provider SpotOn Transact LLC looks to expand its footprint in the highly competitive business of restaurant payments with the introduction of SpotOn Marketing Assist, an app that automates email and social-media marketing campaigns for restaurants.
The app—which integrates with Spot On’s SpotOn Restaurant POS, SpotOn Order, and SpotOn Reserve apps—uses artificial intelligence to create marketing content intended to drive customer traffic through promotions, discounts, and tie-ins to events, such as March Madness, the NCAA’s post-season basketball tournament. Restaurants can also upload preselected or stock images to illustrate the campaign.
Once a campaign has been created, Marketing Assist automatically publishes it across the restaurant’s email-marketing and social-media channels. During trials, the app improved restaurant email performance, SpotOn says, with automated emails reporting a 9.55% open rate, compared to a 7.79% open rate for manually created email campaigns, the company says.
Restaurants can track revenue generated from a campaign through SpotOn Restaurant to understand campaign performance and customer preferences, the company says. For example, SpotOn found during the testing phase that slow-day deals, which are offered on non-peak days, are a top-performing campaign measured by redemptions, followed by happy-hour deals and deal-of-the month campaigns.
The data suggest consumers will change their dining times to save money, especially when it comes to slow-day promotions, says SpotOn, which sold its stadium-payments business in 2023 to Shift4 Payments Inc. to focus solely on the restaurant market. The National Restaurant Association’s “State of the Industry Report” revealed that eight in 10 adults would take advantage of discounted dining on slower days or off-peak times to save money.
To help restaurants drive traffic during slow times, Spot On says it created a slow-day campaign feature. Restaurants input their slow days into Marketing Assist, which then auto-generates a campaign with a limited-time offer for those periods.
“SpotOn Marketing Assist is democratizing [artificial intelligence] and automation technology for the independent restaurants who need it the most,” Bryan Solar, chief product officer for SpotOn, says in a statement.
SpotOn says Marketing Assist is available free for the first three months, after which restaurants are charged $95 a month for the app. Restaurants can also include the app as part of a larger software bundle for an undisclosed fee.
In related news, IHG Hotels & Resorts has partnered with digital-tipping platform eTip. Guests at IHG’s more than 6,000 franchises, managed properties, restaurants, and bars will be able to digitally tip IHG staff. Digital tipping increases tip income by an average of $2 per hour and increases tipping frequency fivefold, according to eTip.
To initiate a tip through eTip, consumers scan a QR code using the camera on their mobile phone, tap the banner on their screen, and then enter a tip amount using their preferred payment method. The company also offers a tap-to-tip feature, which allows guests to pay through an NFC-enabled QR code. Tips are automatically deposited in employees’ bank accounts through Visa Direct.
