Hamburger giant, McDonald’s, has begun its next course of digital transformation having rolled out WiFi analytics across its sites in Belgium as part of a three-year contract with Purple, Cisco Meraki and Socialspot.
McDonald’s Belgium is using intelligent, hyper-targeted marketing features in the Purple platform to deliver radically new digital strategies in personalized communication, promotions and micro-surveys to improve their diners’ experience.
Purple’s cloud based solution has been gradually rolled out across 80 restaurants over the last three-months, coinciding with McDonald’s Belgium new mobile application which was also launched last year. Almost 400,000 people logged on to the WiFi network since installation via Facebook social media authentication and short form who are then redirected to a multilingual survey page, encouraging diners to provide valuable, real-time feedback.
Commenting on the installation of Purple’s marketing and analytics software, Carlo Dei Cont, IT Infrastructure Lead for McDonald’s Belgium, said: “We chose Purple’s WiFi and analytics solution because it is all about personalized interaction and engagement with our customers. The API integration is seamless with our systems and each onboarding experience can be customized to complement our brand to the most recent or relevant McDonald’s Belgium campaign.
“When customers log into McDonald’s Belgium WiFi, we are also able to redirect to our new mobile application. This has demonstrated a significant increase in mobile uptake compared to previous methods. The metrics in Purple’s dashboard allow us to measure the impact of each campaign in real-time, tailoring every communication to our customers to ensure their experience improves,” said Dei Cont.
McDonald’s Belgium have experienced a substantial decrease in technical calls for the WiFi following the Purple platform installation by Socialspot, including an enormous increase in positive feedback from the internal McDonald’s support team, as well as diners.
Purple’s enterprise content filtering system automatically blocks URLs on the IWF watchlist to safeguard young customers from inappropriate material. This was an important feature for the global brand which ensures their new transformation in digital services and engagement is through safe, secure and family friendly WiFi.
“The McDonald’s Belgium brand prides itself on bringing families together in our restaurants, so content filtering and being GDPR [General Data Protection Regulation] compliant was another key reason we chose Purple. With Purple and their stand-out Profile Portal, any information gathered is secure and protecting our young diners from inappropriate content,” said Kristof Vanonckelen IT & Digital Director for McDonald’s Belgium.
Commenting on the deployment of Purple across McDonald’s Belgium sites, Jonas Dekkers, Co-founder of Socialspot, said: “I love working with Purple. It’s a fantastic product and I know that McDonald’s will see great results from using the analytics solution to further transform their restaurants. I’m looking forward to helping McDonald’s optimize their customer experience and drive loyalty through the platform.”
By utilising multiple methods of data capture it allows the QSR chain to distinguish who their customers truly are and start distributing more segmented campaigns that will improve engagement, drive footfall, increase loyalty and deliver ROI across the entire region. The information gathered through guest WiFi will also enable the brand to make more informed business decisions and improve customer interactions eventually with more personalised offers.
Gavin Wheeldon, CEO of Purple, said: “It’s fantastic that we’ll be working with Socialspot to ensure that McDonald’s Belgium maximizes return on investment from the WiFi network and analytics. Purple gives the global brand an advantage over competitors, helping them to better inform business decisions and communications to the mutual benefit of their brand and consumers.”