McDonald's Gets in the Loyalty Game
McDonald's yesterday launched its MyMcDonald's Rewards loyalty program nationwide. The program allows participants to unlock free food and other offers simply by enjoying their favorite menu items. MyMcDonald's Rewards is now available via the McDonald's mobile app and at participating restaurants nationwide. Participants will pocket 100 points for every $1 spent on qualifying purchases. Points can be used for free items on future visits.
New users will automatically get 1,500 points after their first order using MyMcDonald's Rewards.
The larger roll-out follows small pilots in Arizona, Nevada, and several New England states launched late last year.
Paytronix co-founder and CEO Andrew Robbins sees the program launch as a sign that "the shift to digital relationships between restaurants and their guests is accelerating."
Robbins also notes that by tying the program into its mobile app, McDonald's is "making a commitment to collecting first-party data, something that all brands will find increasingly important as the landscape changes around data usage and data privacy.
"Just as e-commerce companies like Amazon have long provided personalized experiences by getting to know their customers, McDonald's aims to do just that by understanding each customer to keep them both engaged and loyal. That is,;encouraging their guests to come back time and time again,"Robbins says
?Robbins says further that the McDonald's move is smart, pointing out that loyalty customers deliver larger checks and more frequent visits. Recent Paytronics research found that customers who belong to loyalty programs spend twice as much as non-members.
"But the true value lies in customer insights," he adds. "The real goal is in getting to know their own customers well enough to motivate guest behavior through AI-driven personalized offers."
Even McDonald's acknowledges that as a main goal of the program. "At McDonald's, we are at our best when we can anticipate who our customer is, what they might order based on the time of day or day of the week, and we can serve them in a friendly, quality, consistent way. MyMcDonald's Rewards and the broader MyMcDonald's platform allows us to do this for more customers, every day, seamlessly. I can't wait for everyone to see what we have in store," said Alycia Mason, U.S. vice president of digital customer engagement and media at McDonald's, in a statement.