You Don’t Have To Be An Award-Winning Novelist To Write An Effective Restaurant Newsletter
I once sat down with a relative of mine over coffee to talk about restaurant marketing. We talked about a lot of things, but mainly about her restaurant newsletters. She said she’s had great success as a restaurant owner thanks to her newsletters, which brought her more clients and patrons than she could ever imagine.
Here’s a brief excerpt of our conversation.
Q: Where did you get the idea to start a newsletter?
A: I’m a restaurant owner. I’m a business woman, you could say that, but I also love to write. I guess it’s this love of writing that urged me to sit down and write an “experimental” newsletter for my restaurant. Before I knew it, I was getting calls out of nowhere—take-outs, events, etc.—mostly from people who’ve read the newsletter and had become interested in my restaurant.I said to myself,I might be on to something good here…
Q: I told you there was something special about newsletters. When done right, of course. How many years has it been?
A: Yeah. When I realized newsletters were actually effective in marketing my restaurant, I remembered your advice about them when I was first starting out. I’ve been writing newsletters for about three years now.Q: I remember you sending me an email one time about how you were shocked when you stopped sending them for a month or two?
A: I did. I remember that. I think it was about a year ago, when something suddenly came up in my life that I needed to fix, and I couldn’t find the time to write newsletters. So I stopped sending them out for about two months. You wouldn’t believe how much business we lost during those two months. I didn’t expect my newsletters had this much impact on our sales until that time.I guess you really need to try it out and see things for yourself before you jump to conclusions, especially when it comes to newsletters.
Q: What’s your style in getting more subscribers?
A: I’ve tried lots of approaches. But a really effective one is to tempt them with a promo—say, free wine for three. If they come in and make a reservation for three people, they get to sign up for our in-house wine event and receive the free wine. Right now I have 1,500 subscribers, give or take a few.Q: Did you think about what I wrote you about putting ads in your newsletters to cut down on costs?
A: There was a time when I did consider the option. But I didn’t follow through. You see, I was too busy managing the restaurant and I simply didn’t have the time to shop around for advertisers trying to pick out the best deal. I could hire someone to do that job, but that would just defeat the purpose, don’t you think?I guess it depends on how much attention you’re willing to put into your restaurant newsletter. Hiring that sales person could still offset the cost of having to shoulder the entire thing yourself. All you need is time to balance the figures out. Anyway, successful as I’ve been with my restaurant newsletters, I’m not spending too much on them, so in my case I didn’t think it was worth the hassle.
Check back on Restaurant Marketing Zone next week for more restaurant marketing tips.