Segmenting your guests means you can personalize their experiences the next time they interact with you. Be that when they call to make a reservation, visit your restaurant, or even respond to your email or SMS.

Creating guest profiles in your restaurant CRM is the first step. But what then?

How do you create memorable, personalized experiences for your guests?

The answer is using auto-tagging.

Auto-tagging is a revolutionary feature, designed to help restaurants and F&B concepts create hyper-personalized guest experiences.

In this article, we’ll explain what SerVme’s auto-tagging feature is, how it works, and why you should be using it. We’ll also list several examples of how restaurants can use auto-tagging to increase retention and drive revenue. 

What is auto-tagging? 

Auto-tagging, short for automated tagging, allows you to set up predefined rules, conditions, and attributes that are automatically added to your guest profiles. 

Put simply, this new feature gets rid of old, traditional methods of manually adding tags to guest profiles. Instead of spending time and effort adding tags, you can focus on creating delightful dining experiences for your guests.

So, the first step is to create conditions for new tags. When the parameters or the pre-set rules or conditions are achieved, the tags will be assigned to the guest profiles. 

Let’s say you create a new tag called ‘Frequent Visitor’. This tag applies to any guest that visits your venue or branches 3 times or more per month. 

With auto-tags, if any guest reaches or passes this threshold, they’ll have the ‘Frequent Visitor’ tag automatically added to their guest profile on SerVme.

So, why is auto-tagging so exciting for restaurant and marketing managers and business owners?

Auto-tagging makes it very easy to organize and categorize your guest information without manual work. Using attributes and conditions, you can hyper-segment your guests, manage the guest journey, and improve guest experience management across your branches and venues.

How does auto-tagging work?

When guests come to a restaurant, they don’t want to just have a great meal. A sumptuous meal is a given. But to keep coming back, they must feel appreciated and cared for. They need to feel like the restaurant servers know them.

Auto-tagging does that. It helps restaurant managers and servers know guests the moment they place a call, make a booking, or enter through the door.

You can create auto tags across several verticals. These include:

• Reservation date

• How many times a guest visited your restaurant, venue, or branch

• Number of covers

• Number of times a guest cancelled their reservation

• Number of times a guest was a no-show

• Total spent

• Average spend per person

• Average spend per table or visit

• When was their last visit

Auto-tagging features and perks

Now, let’s look at what makes auto-tagging so special. Here are the benefits of using this feature in your restaurant. 

Use AND/OR feature 

One of the most important benefits of using auto-tagging is the AND/OR feature.

You can choose guests who visit your restaurant 3 or more times in a month. Or who paid US $1,000 in 3 months. Or you can use the and/or feature to combine the number of visits with the value spent per visit or individual or both.  

Use multiple auto-tags

One benefit of using SerVme’s auto-tagging feature is being able to create any number of auto-tags. This helps you create smaller, highly segmented lists for ultra-personalized guest and marketing experiences. 

For example, you can create segments for your frequent, high-spenders. You can choose guests who visited your venues or branches 15 times or more and who spent over US $1,500 in the past 3 months. 

Use new auto-tags for previous visits

Although auto-tagging is a new feature from SerVme, you can add tags to older guest visits.

Use the information to improve engagement and personalization in future visits.  

To start using auto-tags, you need to log in to your SerVme account. Not using SerVme yet? Sign up for a free demo.

5 use cases and ideas to experiment with auto-tagging

In this section, we’ll look at ways to use SerVme’s auto-tagging to segment guests and benefit from this segmentation.

You can name auto-tags as you wish and then select the name of this guest tag as it will appear on the guest profile.

Uncover your frequent visitors 

Use the auto-tagging feature to identify your most frequent guests. Especially new regulars.

Decide what it means to be a ‘frequent visitor.’ Is it a guest who comes to your restaurant 2-3 times per month? Once a guest qualifies for this criterion, they’ll be automatically tagged as a frequent guest.

To identify your frequent guests, you’ll need to use the ‘number of arrivals’ tag. Then, add your condition type.

If you manage multiple locations or venues, decide if you want the auto-tag to apply across venues or branches or not at all.

Identify your high-spenders for better future experiences 

Create an auto tag for your top spenders. These can be those who spend US $300 per individual check or US $1000 per visit. 

Make sure your hosts deliver an exquisite experience in their future visit.

Learn more about their dining-out behaviour by creating a short survey for guests who fall under this auto-tag. You can ask about when they prefer to dine out if they celebrate holidays at home or by dining out, other restaurants they frequently visit within the same brand,…etc.

You can even ask them for ideas or ways to make their experience better and then use these ideas to increase your revenues. 

Remember: You may have some guests who overlap with your VIP tag. 

Retain your VIPs with auto tags and email marketing

Identify what VIP means to your restaurant. This could be a frequent visitor, a top spender, a big tipper, or all of those. 

Use the and/or feature to list the conditions that make up your VIP tag. Here’s an example:

• Guests who visit your restaurant 3 or more times per month

• Guests who spend US $300 or more per visit/individual check

• Guests who have an average spend per month of US $1,000 

Once you have 30 or more guests under this tag, create an email campaign offering them a free dessert or a special rate for their next major event (a gathering or birthday celebration).

Reduce bookings or include a reservation fee for no-shows 

As mentioned, one of the criteria for auto-tagging is identifying guests who cancel often or who don’t show up.

You can create a tag for these guests and next time they call or make a booking, they’ll be required to pay a reservation fee.

Let them know that this fee will be deducted from their final bill. This helps reduce cancellations and no-shows.

Use auto-tagging to re-engage inactive guests

You can create a tag called ‘Inactive Guests’ for guests who have not come to your restaurant in 3 months. Once a guest reaches this threshold, the ‘Inactive Guest’ tag will be added to their profile.

Using SerVme’s restaurant marketing automation features, email or SMS, you can re-engage these guests and entice them back to your restaurant.  

Create and automate an email or SMS campaign for this tag. One of the best ways to encourage inactive guests is to give them a limited-time offer.  

Want to uncover more ways to increase revenues and guest retention in your restaurant or chain using auto-tags? Book a quick free demo with SerVme.