What the 2025 Guest Engagement Report Reveals About Loyalty—and What Your Brand Should Do Now
Spoiler alert: it’s no longer just about rewards. It’s about relevance.
The numbers are in. The 2025 Guest Engagement Report reveals what’s really driving loyalty in the restaurant industry—and it’s not points, punch cards, or plastic rewards cards.
It’s personalization.
At DataDelivers, we’ve spent years helping brands turn guest behavior into actionable guest engagement strategies. And this year’s data is clear: guests crave recognition over repetition. They want offers that match their habits, messages that feel like they’re meant for them, and restaurant guest experiences that feel curated—not generic.
Loyalty Programs Aren’t Broken—But They’re Not Enough
The traditional loyalty model only captures a fraction of your guests. Most brands rely on loyalty data to guide strategy, but that gives you a skewed view—focused on a small, highly engaged segment. Meanwhile, inactive loyalty members and one-time visitors often go unnoticed.
In fact, entering 2024, 41 million of the 68 million tracked guests were already inactive—meaning they hadn’t returned in over a year.
So where’s the opportunity? In uncovering the unknown guests—the “other 80%” of your customer base—and giving them a reason to come back.
With the DataDelivers customer data platform, you can match purchases to real people—even if they’re not in your loyalty program—so you can market smarter.
Guests Want You to “Get Them”
Relevance matters. A lot. Guests who received personalized restaurant marketing returned at a rate of 34%. For everyone else? Just 8% came back. That’s a 400% increase in retention when marketing is tailored to the individual.
It’s not just about being personal—it’s about being effective. Those same guests also delivered 5x the sales compared to those reached through non-personalized campaigns.
Our AI-powered tools help you tailor your restaurant guest engagement around visit history, order preferences, time of day, and more—automatically.
Retention Beats Acquisition (Every Time)
Here’s a stat that should make every marketer stop and think: 92% of new guests who didn’t receive personalized outreach never came back. But with 1:1 marketing? That retention rate jumped to 26%.
And for lapsed guests—those who didn’t visit at all in 2023—only 2% returned without any targeted outreach. But with a personalized approach, 11% came back. That’s a 550% increase in win-back performance.
In 2025, the brands winning the loyalty game aren’t chasing new guests. They’re deepening the connection with existing ones—especially those outside the loyalty database.
Let’s Build Loyalty Beyond the Program
The guest engagement landscape is evolving. If you’re ready to:
✅ Move beyond outdated loyalty systems
✅ Find and engage your real customer base
✅ Drive ROI with smarter, AI-driven insights
Then it’s time to rethink your strategy.