The importance of proper restaurant marketing goes without mention. In today’s era, digital communication is continually evolving. Hence it becomes imperative for you to stay on top of your competition. While you must constantly innovate with new marketing trends and channels, one traditional channel remains unparalleled and is the key to every successful digital marketing strategy: email marketing.
Living in the tech-savvy world, you know how important it is to keep your restaurant deals in the spotlight. That is the reason why you have already taken steps to get daily, weekly or monthly email promotions into your customer’s inboxes. The benefits of email marketing for restaurants are numerous in today’s world. A data from global consulting firm McKinsey shows that email remains nearly 40 times more effective than social media at acquiring customers.
How to Make the Best of Email Marketing for Your Restaurant
Try these best practices for email marketing that are sure to attract and engage customers.
(i) Email Personalization
The key to running a successful email marketing campaign is customization. Promotional emails that don’t really speak to your customers are more than likely to be marked spam and also get unsubscribed from. You can avoid this by including as much personal data as possible. Don’t just send a generic email to your customers. Include their name in the subject line, and in the email body.
Next, sort your database into segments. Based on the customer ordering history and demography, you can send custom emails. For instance, you can send pictures of your popular pizza along with a discount offer to the customers who tend to order Italian food the most. Learn more about how you can send personalized emails to your customers here.
(ii) Use Visuals to Attract Customers
Try and include large, mouth-watering photos of whatever you are trying to promote, without making it too spammy. Since you run a restaurant, your emails should consist of beautiful images of your best or most popular dishes and drinks. Visual treats tend to attract customers. Take advantage of this in every email.
(iii) Employ A/B Testing
Restaurant marketing is all about trying different techniques and channels and then deciding the best way based on the results. Email marketing is no different. Since email marketing is more data-driven, you can try A/B testing to figure out what engages your customers more. A/B testing is a great way of determining the benefits of email marketing for restaurants and what works for you.
A/B testing is primary trying out variations of the same content for a sample data set and then employing the better one for the rest of the data. You can use this to send emails at the right time of the day and with the right subject line. Most email marketing tools provide this feature that allows you to test between multiple subject lines and sender’s name.
(iv) Get the Mails Delivered in Primary Inbox
The major challenge most marketers face while running email marketing is getting the mail delivered to the primary inbox of subscribers. Emails with multiple images and too many links tend to land in the promotional tab of the Gmail inbox. Try to lend a personal touch to your emails and keep them conversational.
(v) Track Replies and Respond
Email marketing can be a two-way communication if you do it right. Always include a call-to-action that gives customers an easy way to ask about your restaurant deals. Either set up your mailing address to accept replies or add a method of communication. It is also essential to monitor the responses and reply to them proactively.
How to Employ Email Restaurant Marketing to Publicize Your Deals
There are several ways by which email restaurant marketing can help you to promote the deals and offers. Email is a powerful way to cultivate even stronger loyalty amongst your current and future employees. The methods which you can fully use your email restaurant marketing are:
1. Email Newsletter
A newsletter is one of the best ways to inform people about awards and honors, menu changes and new offerings, restaurant events, deals, and discounts. The scope of a proper newsletter is enormous; it will also be a great vehicle for a customer loyalty program. Hence, if you have not started using email marketing as a potential technique to attract further customers then, you might be losing on a lot of business. What are you waiting for? Start sending newsletters religiously and see how it augments your restaurant business.
2. Offer Coupon Codes
You can send special codes that your subscribers can avail on specific deals and offers that your restaurants will be providing. Coupon codes can be used in many ways. For example, for new menu items, attending a special event, signing up for the newsletter, celebrating a subscriber’s birthday and the like you can offer a special code for all the email subscribers. Your main motive behind providing these coupons is to entice the customer to make another visit your restaurant that will, in turn, help you to publicize your deals through email marketing for restaurants.
3. Publicize Deals through Invitation-Only Events for the Subscribers
Invitation-only events for the subscribers are a great way by which you can attract the customers. Try keeping these events shortly. This will make it easier for you to manage and create a more intimate feel for guests. You can even make it better if you have specific themes for your emails.
If subscriber-only events require too much investment, you can always give them special perks for attending non-exclusive events. For example, if you have a new chef on board, you can invite subscribers to an exclusive after-dinner dessert with the chef. There are a lot of ways to give your subscribers a little something extra that will help you to cultivate a more intimate bond with your subscribers- even at events open to all of your customers.
Restaurant email marketing is a great way to engage with customers and cultivate a long-term relationship. Since people tend to forget things easily, email marketing will help you to be in sight and in mind of your customers. Try and tempt your customers with your offers and deals and be sure to see them back in your restaurant soon.
