The past year showed us how effective email could be during the pandemic. All marketing efforts should be evaluated by the Return On Investment (ROI). This should include your investment of time and money and what you get for it. But there are other intangibles, such as how easy it is to implement and manage and the ‘speed to marketplace.’
Despite all of the commotion surrounding social media marketing this year, email marketing can produce tremendous returns at a minimal direct cost, and it’s all based on quantifiable facts.
Why is your restaurant’s email marketing plan so important?
As with other marketing methods, the benefit is to drive traffic back to your principal online presence, which is usually a website. This is because they appear in local searches, whereas Facebook pages do not. Sending an email with a reason why they should return to your website is one of the finest strategies.
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Half of today’s restaurants do not have a website. Of those who have a website, most have not kept it current and relevant.
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Many restaurants are relying on Facebook as their only digital presence.
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Very few restaurants have a dedicated online engagement strategy with their customers outside of Facebook.
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With engagement on Facebook becoming more challenging due to declining organic reach, these restaurants could be losing connections with their customers.
Communicating with people familiar with your brand who have self-identified as interested in your offers is a valuable asset. Investing solely in social media marketing without an email strategy is a wasted opportunity and an incomplete marketing plan.
Restaurant Email Marketing Strategies
Email is one of the most effective ways to communicate with your consumers. With the increasing usage of smartphones and quicker access to email inboxes, email marketing is relevant and a critical component of today’s restaurants’ digital marketing strategy. Direct mail is effective, but email offers more alternatives and is less expensive.
Here are the email marketing strategies to assist you in improving your restaurant marketing:
1. Personalized promotions through segmentation
The most basic form of email marketing used by restaurant operators is simply offering deals. An email list is one of the most effective channels to deliver offers and promotions. Make sure people have current menus while incentivizing them to be on your list by giving them special offers beyond publicly available promotions. Any promotions will be well received by your customers, and they may even bring them in that day to take advantage of your specials.
In an age where everything costs more money, and even Facebook isn’t free anymore, it’s refreshing to know that you can still use an email marketing campaign as part of your restaurant marketing methods.
The key to effective email marketing is “segmentation” and “personalization.”
Email Segmentation:
It is essential to understand that not all restaurant customers are the same. Each group of customers will have different needs and interests. Segmentation is the key to identifying these groups to serve our customers better.
Segmenting the email list will help get better open and click rates and, ultimately, better response to the restaurant offers and promotions.
Segments may include:
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Customers who have ordered online.
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People who have responded to different offers, whether generated internally or by a Groupon.
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Those who signed up for freebies on their birthday and anniversaries.
Email Personalization:
Gone are the days of “email blasts.” They are no longer effective and primarily land in a spam folder. Personalization is simply designing your email to address the customer in a personal manner.
That is possible when you have additional information about them, such as name, age, interests, and behavioral data. Personalizing emails by addressing them with a name is a simple good start at personalization.
2. Retargeting Website Visitors
Taking control of your website visitor’s browsing habits can be as easy as catching and holding onto their attention. Keep them engaged on your site and guide them to click on opt-in either as an embedded form on the website or popup after a preset delay.
The best way is to incentivize them with a ‘lead magnet’ by providing something of value. Value can be the promise of deals and special promotions in exchange for their email address. Another incentive is to offer them a giveaway that they can immediately download by providing their email address. This giveaway could be a recipe, coupon, food tips, or a simple checklist.
Email provides an easy way to effectively build your customer list and retarget website visitors through well-designed email marketing campaigns.
3. Nurture Loyal Customers
If your restaurant offers a customer loyalty program or is considering doing so in the near future, the email list is critical to the program’s success.
Many consumers will choose to eat at a restaurant that caters to their specific needs, serves them well, and remembers who they are. A loyalty program accomplishes all of this and more and provides you with the opportunity to add another email address to your growing list.
Make sure you highlight your monthly offers and upcoming events when sending out loyalty program updates. It’s a simple method to entice your regulars to come in more frequently.
4. Feedback from Online Ordering Customers
If your restaurant offers online ordering, you most likely have the customer email addresses from orders received by the restaurant. If not, determine how to capture the email address at the end of the online order checkout process. This form of segmentation provides an excellent opportunity to rapidly build your email list and engage with customers in multiple ways.
The first step is to contact the online ordering consumer quickly after the order has been delivered to ask for feedback about their experience. This can be done within your online ordering system’s email auto-responder system.
Receiving active consumer feedback is highly beneficial to the restaurant in responding to any problems and ensuring customer pleasure. This results in recurring business as well as favorable input and evaluations.
Implementing restaurant email marketing strategies can be as simple as choosing an email service provider. Next, is implementing an email opt-in on the restaurant website and Facebook pages. Then, it is crucial to grow and nurture the email subscribers list on an ongoing basis.
Email marketing provides a very effective marketing channel and augments other marketing efforts to maximize the marketing results. With any marketing channel you use, you need to have email as your foundation to maximize your return on your marketing budget.
