Restaurant Best Practices for Email Marketing Engagement

When you consider that 91% of all U.S. consumers use email every single day, and that emails prompt purchases 3 to 1 over social media, there’s no doubt that email marketing remains a powerful tool for restaurant businesses. That said, there’s an art to sending emails that your restaurant customers will actually open. Here are a few tips for creating engagement with your consumers through your email marketing campaign.

Tailor Restaurant Emails to the Individual Customer

The first and most important aspect of a successfully engaging email campaign is making your messages custom-tailored to the specific individual you are messaging. This is more than just including his or her name in the subject line. This customization also includes different messages and layouts based on factors such as age, gender, purchase history, click-through behavior and location. A recent survey reports that segmenting emails increases open rate as much as 39% and decreases unsubscribes by an average of 27%. Today’s email programs make it easy to segment your marketing messages, and given the advantages of doing so, there’s no reason not to include this level of targeted marketing in your email campaign.

Design Your Emails for Mobile & Social Compatibility

A second major factor that makes or breaks customer engagement in terms of emails is whether or not the email is mobile-friendly, easy to use and easy to share on social channels. Avoid large graphics that don’t render well on smartphones—especially if those graphics contain key details of your advertisement. Make your content clear and to the point. If there is action that can be taken (getting the customer to click-through somewhere) ensure that the bugs are worked out, the process you’re asking them to do is seamless and simple and that your message is easy to share with their friends. Even better—offer an additional incentive for sharing the offer with their own contacts.

Analyze Your Metrics to Fine-Tune Your Restaurant’s Email Marketing Campaign

You’ll hear it everywhere you look in the business world: analyze your metrics. Email marketing is no different. The only way you’re going to be able to tell which messages are working for you is to analyze your data. Use the information that you garner to fashion even better, exclusively targeted messages to your customers. Find ways to alter your approach to those segments that aren’t performing as well. Remember that open rates are just the beginning of understanding your numbers. Technology now enables us to follow the effectiveness of our email offers all the way to restaurant visits.

There’s no doubt email marketing can be a great way to drive revenue and customer engagement while having a high return on investment. Ensure that the emails you send are relevant to the consumer and sent at a frequency that makes sense for what you’re offering. Remember that being inundated or bored are the top reasons people leave mailing lists. Keep your messages targeted, timely and valuable to the consumer. Engagement is key to email marketing success.

Essential Email Metrics for Effective Marketing Campaigns

One of the factors that make email marketing campaigns so valuable is the fact that it is one of the easiest forms of marketing to get clear, concise measurements on whether or not your campaign is working. The more concise your measurements, the more able you are to fine tune your marketing efforts, which increases the return on your investment. Here are the essential email metrics you need to pay attention to in order to determine how well your email campaign is serving its intended purpose.

How Deliverable are Your Emails? Are They Getting Bounced or Junked?

The first essential email metric to examine is your deliverability. If a good percentage of your messages are getting blocked, bounced, or worse, thrown in the spam folder, it’s time to change your tactics. There are a variety of reasons that this could be happening, and the first place to look is the email service providers that your email contacts are using. (Email service providers are companies like Google Mail, Yahoo Mail, Hotmail, MSN, etc.)

An easy way to check to see if there is a problem with a particular email service provider is to create ‘seed’ email address accounts at each of them. Then, the next time you send out a newsletter, include your seeds to each of the email service providers and log in after the send out to see if your message made it safely to the inbox.

If your message was blocked or bounced, it’s not a bad idea to contact that email service provider to ask why. In some instances, you can even get a ‘Certified Sender’ status directly from the email service provider which will guarantee that your messages get safely through. If your newsletter is getting thrown in the spam folder, it might have more to do with your content than the email provider. We’ll talk more about that in the spam section.

How Often Are Your Emails Getting Opened? How Many People Unsubscribe?

The next two telling metrics are your open rate and your unsubscribe rate. Now, the fact that someone opened your email doesn’t necessarily guarantee that they actually read it, but it does give you other valuable insights. How well your subject line is working is one such example, and it can be very helpful to compare open rates between different versions of the same newsletter to see which converts more customers.

The type of people who are unsubscribing from your list can provide you with valuable insight as well and it’s important to pay attention to who is removing themselves from your list. Is it your most valuable subscribers? All women? Are they all from one demographic? Try to pinpoint trends and see if you can shift your email marketing campaigns accordingly.

Help! I’m Getting Spam Complaints and My Emails Are Getting Junked!

If your emails are ending up in the spam folder more often than not, there are a variety of factors that could be coming into play. The first no-no is buying purchased email lists – this is almost a surefire way to land in the spam folder AND lose your money. Emails also get junked if they contain too many risky words like ‘buy’, ‘free’, ‘purchase’, ‘order’, etc., which trigger the spam filter. Emails that contain only one image often land in spam country, as do emails with too many exclamation points in the title.

Bottom line: keep your emails small in size and rich with content, and don’t go overboard with the gimmicks. Using a trusted email service provider to send out messages goes a long way as well.

All in all, the metrics you get out of running email campaigns can provide you with really valuable insight about how to best make your next move. Keeping an eye on these essential statistics will give you a clear picture of your revenue and profitability, as well as a better understanding of what is truly affecting your bottom line.

Why You Should Insist on Email Marketing for Your Restaurants

If a restaurant you own, operate, or own-in-part isn’t using email marketing, then you’re missing out on a lot of money. A lot of easy money.  Let me tell you why – and show you how you can correct this.

 

Why Email Marketing is Efficient

 

A 2009 study by the Direct Marketing Association showed that, on average, email marketing returned $43.62 in profit for every dollar spent! We’d challenge you to find a better ROI with any other medium. In fact, according to the DMA, no other medium outclassed email at all – including catalogs and postcards.

 

One big reason for the high return on investment is that email marketing is quite simply dirt-cheap. Using services like Constant Contact or AWeber, you can manage your prospect list and market to them as often as you want, all for a fraction of the cost of even the cheapest bulk mail.

 

How to Get Your Guests to Want Your Email

 

If you’ve spent much time marketing your business at all, you may’ve already guess everyone’s favorite way to get customers on their email list: offer periodic discounts in their inbox, so that they’ll actually want to open every email you send.

 

For most restaurants, it’s not a good idea to send email with a new special every day. But a printable “e-coupon” sent out once a month or even every week can bring in business that you otherwise wouldn’t have had.

 

Don’t Forget Your Patrons’ Birthdays

 

A simple card with every meal that invites your patrons to leave their birthday and email address is often all it takes to get them on your mailing list. Most restaurants offer free birthday dessert on the guest’s birthday, but we recommend a free meal.  Why is that?

 

That free meal will pay for itself 99% of the time. This is due to the simple fact that hardly anyone eats their birthday dinner alone!

 

Your birthday boy or girl will be bringing in at least a couple of other patrons; often, they will bring in several. This is a good chance for drink sales, if your establishment offers alcohol. And given the choice between a free dinner at a restaurant you own, versus only a free dessert somewhere else, which do you think your patron will choose?

 

If you’re a single operator, you can easily implement email marketing strategies for your restaurant. If you’re a stakeholder or board member, you can increase earnings on your investment by urging your establishment to adopt these email marketing procedures.