Voices from the Drive-Thru: Our Research on Quick Service Restaurant Loyalty Programs

Constrained budgets and disruptive technologies are raising the stakes for quick service restaurant loyalty programs. Customers expect innovative perks, personalized discounts, creative ways to earn points, and more from today's leading restaurant brands.

In this report, our experts in product research, quick service restaurants (QSRs), and loyalty share strategies and tactics to increase customer engagement, drive value for new and loyal customers, and foster brand affinity across audience segments in the US and Canada.

What We’ll Cover in This Study on Quick Service Restaurant Loyalty Programs

Although sophisticated digital experiences power loyalty programs, little public research is available regarding the specific digital features and experiences that support QSR customer loyalty. WillowTree's study offers unique insights into how your brand can increase overall customer lifetime value, answering questions such as:

  • When do customers choose to use rewards?
  • Why do customers visit quick service restaurants?
  • Do customers want more choices or a limited set of benefits from loyalty programs?

Use this research to explore how your brand's loyalty program can drive business value by:

  • Building rewards awareness throughout the customer journey
  • Using personalization to minimize complexity for customers
  • Optimizing for efficiency and convenience through ongoing user analysis

Our recommendations serve as guiding principles to support your brand’s future innovation. They are starting points for further investigation into what elements of your loyalty program incentivize your fan base to keep coming back for more.

Part 1

In Part One of this report, "Building Emotional Loyalty through Digital Experiences," you'll learn:

  • How to define "emotional loyalty" and why it's essential for QSRs
  • The most consistent predictor of emotional loyalty
  • Digital feature development and elements of customer experience to prioritize when building emotional customer loyalty
  • Additional strategies to increase emotional loyalty overall and within four customer segments (age, country of residence [US or Canada], visit regularity, and loyalty program tenure) 
Download Part 1
Part 2

In Part Two of this report, "Building Loyalty & Digital Experiences for QSRs," you'll learn:

  • Key insights into QSR loyalty program member behaviors, including visit frequency and motivations
  • The digital features customers value most in loyalty programs, categorized as transactional, experiential, and emotional
  • Differences in loyalty program engagement across customer segments (age, country, visit frequency, and program tenure)
  • Strategies to increase customer commitment to loyalty programs based on relationship investment, satisfaction, and quality of alternatives
Download Part 2

More Insights

Case Studies

Delighting the world’s most devoted fans.

WillowTree teamed up with American Dairy Queen Corporation to recreate the DQ® brand’s flagship digital products and eCommerce capabilities. Together, we’ve executed a multi-year digital roadmap that re-envisions the Dairy Queen® brand’s native mobile ordering and pickup processes, DairyQueen.com and DQ® Cakes websites, and MarTech infrastructure.

Delighting the world’s most devoted fans.

WillowTree teamed up with American Dairy Queen Corporation to recreate the DQ® brand’s flagship digital products and eCommerce capabilities. Together, we’ve executed a multi-year digital roadmap that re-envisions the Dairy Queen® brand’s native mobile ordering and pickup processes, DairyQueen.com and DQ® Cakes websites, and MarTech infrastructure.

Modernizing a global in-store ordering system.

We helped Domino’s — the world’s largest pizza chain — redesign the company’s custom point-of-sale system, Domino's Pulse™. Order taking, preparation, dispatch and delivery were reimagined from the ground up, further cementing Domino’s position as the digital leader in its space.

Modernizing a global in-store ordering system.

We helped Domino’s — the world’s largest pizza chain — redesign the company’s custom point-of-sale system, Domino's Pulse™. Order taking, preparation, dispatch and delivery were reimagined from the ground up, further cementing Domino’s position as the digital leader in its space.

55%
Reduction in clicks when placing an order
12%
Increase in retention of order details when fulfilling an order
400k
Global team members use Pulse™ everyday
Enhanced segmentation leads to 67% increase in unique clicks YoY.

With a year’s worth of testing knowledge, expanding personalized content to 91% of email customers, and establishing new best practices around audience segmentation, we were able to increase unique email clicks from 43.7k to 73.1k YoY.

Enhanced segmentation leads to 67% increase in unique clicks YoY.

With a year’s worth of testing knowledge, expanding personalized content to 91% of email customers, and establishing new best practices around audience segmentation, we were able to increase unique email clicks from 43.7k to 73.1k YoY.

Let’s talk.

Wherever you are on your journey, we can help. Let’s have a conversation.