Burger King UK (BKUK) is focused on driving non-transactional engagement through its app, and delivering the next phase of its loyalty programme, according to director of digital Tim Love.
Speaking at MCA’s Hostech conference, Love provided an overview of the rollout of Your Burger King – the brand’s rewards scheme launched last year – and the results it has achieved so far as well as future plans for the programme.
“We’re trying to move Your Burger King from the tiered scheme it currently is, to one that’s part of a platform mixing transactional and non-transactional benefits,” Love told Hostech delegates. “There’s much more we can do with the scheme in its current iteration…so that it will be aligned with a strategy to provide value for money and a more personalised experience.”
In improving Your Burger King, the goal is to prepare for what comes next by anticipating how consumer needs and behaviour might change in the future. Love citied research by Lumina Intelligence that showed consumers are increasingly using loyalty schemes, as they look to stretch their money further in the current economic climate.
With research also indicating customers increasingly expect personalised communications, Love said BKUK needs a clear personalisation plan to concentrate its efforts where needed.
“It’s important we make sure our communications stand out from the crowd, but don’t over-personalise and give a sense of intrusion or personalisation fatigue,” he added. “We need a strong tech stack to tailor our communications and provide genuine one-to-one content.”
BKUK has further introduced games and exclusive experiences to its scheme to drive engagement and produce more non-transactional benefits. Interactive features and content have received considerable engagement so far.
“Giving people reasons to use our digital platform will require a behavioural shift…from not just opening the app at the point of purchase.”
The brand will rely extensively on its own data to achieve its targets as it tests new ways to gather consumer data, with or without incentives, in a similar process to the research that went into producing the scheme.
Your Burger King was trialled in Scotland for six months prior to its national launch. With disparate IT systems across a large estate, some restaurants were able to offer the loyalty programme across channels while others could only use it through mobile ordering. This, however, provided the brand with control groups.
“The challenge was that we designed different customer journeys and communications to customers, who expected to be able to use the app in every channel,” Love said. “We managed to overcomplicate the customer UX at times.”
Nevertheless, a free cheeseburger upon sign-up brought a spike in both new customers and also an existing base that begun using the app. Those customers proactively redeeming rewards were more frequent visitors, while loyalty stores outperformed others in terms of sales and growth.
BKUK also saw an overall increase of 5% in conversion in comparison to communications that were not loyalty-based, with customers in loyalty-based journeys 39% more willing to complete a purchase.
“There’s been a 30% rise in new sign-ups since the launch of the scheme. We weren’t expecting to have an impact on new customers so quickly.”
The business is still building awareness around the app – billed as ‘the smart way to Burger King,’ as Love said – while looking into what other brands are doing in the metaverse. He pointed to the launch of Taiwanese restaurant group Bao’s interactive Baoverse app, the Nikeland game on Roblox, and Starbucks rewarding customers with NFTs.
“We’re looking into how we can deliver virtual experiences in a Burger King way,” he said. “The focus this year is delivering the next phase of Your Burger King and figuring out what wider engagement with the brand looks like.”
