A South African restaurant has earned a devoted following thanks to its warm hospitality. Yet despite its growing reputation, the team found themselves wrestling with a familiar dilemma for independent restaurants: how to rise above a crowded dining scene, find new customers, and turn them into regulars.
The challenge of building lasting loyalty
Despite welcoming plenty of guests, the restaurant highlighted three vital objectives:
- Build authentic connections with local food lovers
- Inspire guests to keep coming back for more than just birthdays
- Tie every rand they spend directly to trackable in-store visits
Traditional print vouchers drained budgets, offered little flexibility and no customer insights, while broad digital ads proved difficult to track and often targeted the wrong audience.
Therefore, the restaurant needed a more innovative strategy – one driven by real-time data and a pay-only-for-results billing model.
The ZapConnect approach
By tapping into live customer data, ZapConnect by Zapper adapts offers on the fly and delivers them straight to the Zapper app at the moment diners choose where to eat.
The ZapConnect campaign’s essential pillars
🎯 Precise local targeting
We zeroed in on potential customers living or working within a radius of the restaurant, delivering vouchers only to those most likely to visit at the perfect moment.
💸 Conversion-only billing
The restaurant only paid when a voucher was redeemed – no redemptions meant no cost, so every penny spent drove a real visit. Zapper carries the cost – that’s how much we believe it works!
✉️ Fully automated campaigns
Zapper handles everything – from sending vouchers and monitoring redemptions to real-time performance reporting – so the team can spend their time serving guests, not managing marketing.
Impressive percentage-based results
Within weeks of launch, Zapper’s ZapConnect campaign with the restaurant delivered outstanding lifts across every metric:
🛒 Increase in average basket size: +2.13%
This rise in spend per customer suggests that new and returning diners were adding sides, starters and beverages to their orders in greater numbers.
😊 Long-term ROI based on average CLV: +2,627.3%
For each rand spent, ZapConnect delivered a 2,627.3% return across the average customer’s lifetime – transforming every penny into long-term growth.
📈 Long-term ROI based on median CLV: +541.6%
Even under conservative lifetime value assumptions, the campaign delivered an ROI of 541.6% – demonstrating efficiency at scale.
🔁 Customer acquisition efficiency
Each customer acquired through the campaign generated over 27× their acquisition cost in projected lifetime revenue – proving the pay-for-performance model delivers sustainable, cost-effective growth.
*This is data relating to this specific restaurant only, and results could differ depending on size, location, and more.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is ZapConnect by Zapper?
ZapConnect is a pay-on-redemption voucher marketing tool by Zapper that helps businesses target local customers with personalised offers and only pay when a voucher is redeemed.
What can ZapConnect do for my business?
- Engage a highly relevant audience exactly when they are ready to choose a restaurant
- Eliminate wasted spend by paying only for actual redemptions
- Free your team from manual campaign management with full automation
How much ROI did the restaurant get from the campaign?
The campaign delivered an average ROI of 2,627.3%, with customers generating over 27× their acquisition cost in projected lifetime revenue.
Is ZapConnect only for restaurants?
No. While this case study focuses on a restaurant, ZapConnect can be used by any retail or hospitality business looking to drive real visits and trackable results.
Write your own ZapConnect success story
Let’s work together to see if you, too, can achieve results by growing with us and converting from card to Zapper transactions.
Contact Zapper today at sales@zapper.com if you’re interested in ZapConnect, or sign up as a merchant to get started.