How I Set Up My Restaurant Email Marketing Campaign In Record Time

I’ve been doing some thinking. I’m trying to come up with a cheap yet effective way to market to both old and new customers. Take note, it costs about five times more to win a new diner over than to keep an old one glued to your tables.

Thing is, I can’t think of anything other than to market your stuff through your very own restaurant email marketing program. It’s cheap and it’s effective too. Take it from me.

So I’ll leave the thinking at a later time. For now I’m going to talk about how I set up my own restaurant email marketing campaign in three easy steps.

1.    Building your list
The list of customer addresses is the bread-and-butter of your restaurant email marketing campaign. Sadly a terrific website isn’t going to be enough. I recommend you do this:

On your homepage, create a sign-in button or box under a single paragraph that explains why the visitor should subscribe to your list. The button leads to a more in-depth form that gathers important information about the visitor. Offer free coupons to be sent by postal mail as a small reward for signing up.

Read this article for tips on what makes a quality restaurant website.

2.    Deliver the message in correct amounts
Add some padding to your restaurant emails.

Promotional messages by themselves are boring and considered as spam. But a promotional email written with information useful to the customer, such as changes in the menu or operating hours, that’s something else.

Make your messages relevant to the customer, and you’ll easily achieve success in this department. Consider these tips when writing your promotional email message.

3.    Achieve a high “email open rate”, and track your successes
The “from” and “subject” textboxes are the keys to achieving a high “open rate”. It’s important to make it clear to the customer that the email came from you, a trusted source of information. The subject line is very important in that it serves as hook that baits the customer into opening the rest of the message.

Avoid spam by including your restaurant’s name and address in the body of the email and, as an act of goodwill, an unsubscribe option at the bottom of the page.

Go over the second pointer in this article for tips on why you should monitor your success.

That’s it for the most part, my own three easy steps to creating a successful restaurant email marketing campaign. I wish you all the luck.

Start sending those restaurant emails!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 16th, 2009 at 11:30 pm and is filed under Online Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.