Loyal customers  – or customers who visit frequently – are a cornerstone of sustainable business success. They are not only consistent revenue sources but also brand advocates who drive word-of-mouth referrals. It’s important to understand how many of your customers are loyal, so that you can develop marketing strategies to boost or nurture customer loyalty. Placer provides rich data describing customer loyalty to specific business locations.

After reading this article, you’ll able to answer the following:

1. What percentage of a location’s customers are loyal? How does loyalty compare across locations or to competitors?
2. How far are loyal customers willing to travel? How does this compare to casual customers?
3. What is a location’s total geographic reach compared to its loyal customer reach?

Get started with the following steps:

Step 1: Review the percentage of customers who visit repeatedly

a. Find your desired POIs^{Points (Locations) of Interest}, and launch a Property Report. Visit the Getting Started Guide for detailed steps on searching for or requesting a POI. You may select a single location, compare multiple locations within the same chain, or compare multiple competitive locations.  

‍b. Select your desired time period (e.g., Last 12 months, Last 6 months), using the calendar menu located under the POI name. 

‍c. From within a Property Report, navigate to Loyalty Reports in the left side bar. Under “Loyal vs. Casual”, select “% of Visitors” and from the ”Show” dropdown menu.

In the “Min. Visits” field, enter your threshold for a "Loyal" audience.  This is the minimum number of visits that each visitor has to make to your location in order to be considered Loyal. For example, if you set the minimum number of visits (Min. Visits) threshold to be 3, this means that people in your selected audience group who visited the POI 3 or more times will be counted as Loyal, while the rest will be counted as Casual.

If desired, toggle to the pie chart visualization, using the selector in the top right corner.

The example above shows two The Cheesecake Factory locations.  The location shown in purple is among the lowest ranking in the chain, while the location shown in red is among the highest ranking locations.  Over 12 percent of visitors have visited the high-ranking location more than three times in the last 12 months, while less than 4 percent of visitors frequent the low-ranking location.

Learn about Loyalty

Step 2: Identify average visit frequency and frequency distribution

a. From within a Property Report, navigate to Loyalty Reports in the left side bar. Scroll down to “Visits Frequency”, select “Visits” or “Visitors” from the ”Show” dropdown menu.  Data can be displayed in "Average Visits" or "Median Visits", by toggling the header options in the left box.

You may hover over the columns in the bar graph to see specific counts.

Step 3: Assess how far loyal vs casual customers are willing to travel

a. Navigate to Trade Area Reports in the left side bar, and scroll down to “Trade Area Coverage by Distance”.  Trade Area Coverage by Distance allows you to view and compare the distance in miles that visitors typically travel to reach the POI, from their home or work location.  You can filter by visit frequency to understand the travel patterns of loyal customers vs. casual customers. 

b. Under the ”Metrics” dropdown menu, select “% of Visits” or “% of Visitors”, depending upon your preference.  In the “Min. Visits” field, enter your threshold for a "Loyal" audience.

c. Select your preferred visualization. There are two possible ways to visualize the data: the “Cumulative” view or the “Distribution” view. The Cumulative view aggregates visits at mile intervals (e.g., 45% of visits originated from a home location that was within 5 miles). The Distribution view distributes visits across different ranges of distances (e.g., 9% of visitors live within 2-3 miles from the property).

Step 4: Analyze your total geographic reach compared to your loyal customer reach

Ad agencies may recommend several strategies to effectively target and engage loyal customers, fostering stronger brand loyalty and increasing customer retention. This might include tailored communications (perhaps promoting exclusive deals, discounts, or early access to new products or services), loyalty programs, or referral programs. Analyzing the geographic reach of a location’s loyal customers can help inform campaign geotargeting. 

a. Navigate to Trade Area Reports in the left side bar, and scroll down to “Trade Area”.

b. Under the ”Metrics” dropdown menu, select “% of Visits” or “% of Visitors”, depending upon your preference.  In the “Min. Visits” field, enter your threshold for a "Loyal" audience.

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