Australian Venue Co have developed a new loyalty app, The Pass, which was developed in-house.
The new app has been rolled out to customers of its more than 190 venues Australia wide, and replaces the former Australian Venue Co app.
The Pass allows customers to order via mobile and earn and redeem points. It offers a 10 per cent rebate on spend, which is redeemed as App Credit and can be used for F&B purchases.
Chief Experience Officer Marianne Mewett led the app development in partnership with payment and loyalty developers EonX, loyalty consultants, Loyalty & Reward Co and integration partners Mr Yum, H&L, Tyro and Sprout.
Data from the original Australian Venue Co app showed that app users spent more and visited venues more frequently than those without the app, and Mewitt and the team wanted to build on this with an even more responsive app built in house.
“We could see in the data that our loyalty customers were worth about double in lifetime spend compared to non-loyalty, and they were visiting up to five times more frequently. So that was the big driver for us to say ‘Ok let’s look at the current product, which was the old Australian Venue Co app, let’s do a bit of a deep-dive and have a look at what we’re missing and how we can make it better,” she told Australian Hotelier.
“Another big driver for us was that we really wanted to own the product development and really be able to at speed get feedback from customers and launch new features and functionality as quickly as possible.”
The Pass will allow customers to:
• Order from their table or over the bar
• Earn points on every dollar spent, the 10 per cent of spend returned to customers as food & beverage credit
• Redeem gift vouchers
• View what’s on at their local pub
• Make bookings
• View opening hours
• View function spaces
Mewitt also expects the app will encourage visitation at more than one AVC venue, with its Venue Discovery feature.
“One of the key things that we really wanted to develop is a much better venue discovery experience. There’s a great map, you can see your favourite venues, and you can see what’s nearby at any point in time with location services switched on.
“We do monitor that cross-shop data piece very closely so we know that loyalty customers are more likely to visit more than one AVC venue. We’re going to be monitoring that very closely as we hope that that new venue discovery piece will really help solidify and help cross-promote all of our wonderful venues wherever you are in Australia.”
Additional new features are slated to launch in late 2022, with Australian Hotelier being told these will focus on personalised offers and experiences.
“We focus pretty heavily on personalisation based on the fact that between 20-30 per cent of our customers use Order At Table, so we know what they order, when they order and what they enjoy,” explained Mewitt.
“So we have that base level now, but phase two is really about amplifying that. What appears in the app for you might be very different to what appears in the app for myself, for example. It’s really exciting.”
Australian Venue Co app users can switch to The Pass by updating their app and creating a new password. New users can download The Pass from the App Store or Google Play.