Challenge

Tillster’s restaurant clients wanted to increase order frequency without sacrificing margins—but doing so required a smarter approach than the broad, discount-heavy promotions commonly used across the industry.

While traditional offers can spark short-term activity, they rarely influence new behavior and often erode margin, making them unsustainable long-term. 

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Solutions

Tillster designed a gamified “frequency challenge” that motivated incremental purchases while protecting promotional spend:

• Segmented guests into low-, mid-, and high-frequency tiers, using Tillster’s integrated customer data platform, to deliver tailored order goals.
• Leveraged Tillster’s couponing service to deliver in-app rewards when customers met their personalized goals.
• Activated the automated campaign across three brands, three countries, and 40,000+ users 

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Results

• +1.7 additional orders per challenge completer—compared to those who did not complete the challenge—driving meaningful incremental revenue and higher LTV.‍
• 75% of challenge completers ordered above their average (generating 6,000+ new orders)‍
• Challenge completers were 2.3x more likely to increase frequency than non-participants‍
• 10% coupon redemption rate, ensuring promotional dollars rewarded only incremental orders and maintained strong ROI.

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Designing a frequency campaign that drives real behavior change

Increasing order frequency was a top priority for Tillster’s clients, but traditional discounting wasn’t the answer. Broad discounts commonly used across the industry can generate quick ordering spikes, but often reward purchases that would have happened anyway, putting pressure on margins and reducing long-term impact.

In response, Tillster conceived and led the development of a large-scale “frequency challenge” campaign—partnering with three major quick-service restaurant brands to motivate repeat purchases through personalization rather than broad, one-size-fits-all discounts.

The resulting initiative engaged more than 40,000 users across three countries.

The concept of the campaign was simple: encourage guests to complete personalized order goals based on their typical behavior and reward them when they did.  Participants had one week to complete their personalized order goals and unlock a reward, which they could redeem through the end of the month.

This two-step structure—complete the goal early, redeem the reward later—kept guests engaged across the entire promotional period and sustained lift throughout the month.

“We wanted to design a promotion that rewarded true behavior change, not purchases that were already going to happen,” said Adam Morse, Sr. Director of Marketing at Tillster. “That meant using data to set personalized goals and target rewards that would motivate incremental orders.”

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Targeting the right guests with the right goals

Leveraging data from Tillster’s integrated customer data platform (CDP), guests were grouped into low-, mid-, and high-frequency tiers based on historical ordering patterns. Each cohort received a tailored challenge calibrated to its typical behavior, ensuring every guest received a goal that felt both achievable and motivating.

“Personalization needs to feel natural,” Morse said. “By setting goals that aligned with each guest’s habits, the challenge came across as intuitive and achievable rather than heavy-handed.”

The experience was fully integrated into each brand’s mobile app. Guests were invited to participate in the challenge through push notifications and emails. Rewards were delivered through Tillster’s couponing service, ensuring ease of redemption and tight control over incentive exposure. 

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Long-term impact: more orders with a positive ROI

By combining strategic audience segmentation with gamified personalization, Tillster helped the brands drive repeat orders, deepen loyalty, and grow revenue—all without increasing promotional costs.

The impact was clear across all three participating brands:

• +1.7 additional orders per challenge completer—compared to those who did not complete the challenge—driving meaningful incremental revenue and higher LTV.
• 75% of challenge completers ordered above their average (generating 6,000+ new orders)
• Challenge completers were 2.3x more likely to increase their order frequency than non-participants.
• 10% coupon redemption rate among challenge completers, proving strong ROI and minimal promotional cost exposure.

“This is one of the clearest examples of how data-driven personalization can outperform traditional discounting,” Morse said. “We believe coupons should be used to incentivize specific behaviors in a way that delivers positive ROI, and this is another successful campaign that shows the impact of that approach.”

This proven, repeatable formula for boosting order frequency can now be deployed reliably across regions and promotional cycles.