Email marketing in restaurants

Gastronomy and restoration are not at odds with technology, perhaps they are more complementary than we imagine

At this point, there are few who do not know what email marketing is, and the advantages that the practice entails if you have your own business.

Typically we associate email marketing with purely online businesses, such as blog monetization channels, for example, or for marketing tasks for online and / or physical stores, but it can be applied to all types of businesses.

A study in the United States states that 1 in 6 customers who receive an email from your restaurant, makes a reservation at it. That means that, if you manage to have 1.000 subscribers in your business, and assuming that half opened your emails, your emails would be about 80 potential customers.

Interesting, right?

The keys to success in restaurant email marketing are many, as for any business.

We help you and we will comment on some of them. Before you know, it is essential to have a well-designed web page that meets all the basic parameters, and that it is useful, not just a showcase with static information.

Choosing the right email marketing software

Before you think about getting subscribers, forms, and strategies to attract people to your network, you must think about how you will reach them.

There are general tools like GetResponse, MailChimp, Aweber or Mailrelay that can help you; but that you have to analyze carefully.

Some allow you to have up to a certain number of free subscribers; But that is not always the best option, since depending on your objectives it may deserve you to go directly to a payment tool.

Not only are these options on the market, there are countless platforms that help you manage email campaigns intuitively and very easily.

The first thing we have to do is not only choose and assess which is the one that best suits our needs, but also get down to work to get the fundamental data so that the recruitment, loyalty or souvenir campaigns can be developed, The EMAILS of our clients!

Later we will give you some advice to also get emails from potential customers of our restaurant.

Create a good thank you message for the gastronomic marketing campaign

The first thing a subscriber should receive is a thank you message, how can it be otherwise.

The challenge for you, as the owner of the restaurant, is that this email is useful, that it works as a complaint and not just another email that goes to the spam folder.

Seeks to include:

• A message where you briefly introduce your establishment
• A message of thanks or welcome to the virtual community around your business
• Your company logo, and / or photograph of your business or the food you serve
• Discount coupon for your next visit to your restaurant
• Links to social networks, your menu page, or to the page for online booking
• Some advise giving away a free and virtual cookbook, book or product as a welcome and claim

Thus, you turn the welcome page into an opportunity to obtain a customer, without selling anything.

Get subscribers, potential customers of your restaurant

Without subscribers, nothing you do is useless, of course.

The challenge is to grow the number of community members, taking advantage of visits to your page, but also to your restaurant.

Here are some ideas for you to get subscribers:

• In a personal way, in your restaurant, when the client is at the table, they can be asked to fill out a paper form where their email is requested in order to send them offers. Keep these forms as they are proof of the customer’s consent.
• If it is not an offer, why not fill out a survey? Satisfaction, opinion of the dishes, improvement of services, any content is good for the place, and if in the end we ask for the email, ideal.
• Organize a competition in which the requirement is the subscription to your newsletter, you can raffle a family dinner, for example
• Offer a free resource on your website, such as a recipe, guide for, for example, eating a vegetarian diet

Plan, plan …, and be constant doing gastronomic marketing

The key to success in email marketing is consistency, but based on planning.

The first thing you should be clear about is what you want to communicate based on the knowledge you have about who your average customer is.

For example: if your restaurant is vegan, perhaps you should plan advice for people who are switching to this type of diet, and those who are already on it, and clearly, omit meat issues.

Prepare an agenda, along with the topic you will send: news, recognitions, important events, menu changes, promotions, etc.

And if you decide to send your newsletter every Thursday … don’t stop doing it.

Segment and personalize your database of real and potential clients of your restaurant

Try to distinguish the type of customer that has signed up. Some advise doing it based on age, gender, geographical area, but it may even be as simple as distinguishing the subscribers you obtained in your restaurant, and which one on the website.

In this way you can know what to offer or not to each one … it depends on you and what you want to obtain.

Also, make sure that your software allows you to personalize the messages, and add the name of the people who have subscribed to your newsletter, so you can write with the client’s name: “Hello (name), I offer you this discount for your next visit to (restaurant) ”.

Measure and experiment, analysis is essential

Finally, and depending on the software you have chosen, you have to measure how many emails are sent, how many are opened, how much your number of subscribers grows, etc.

Based on this, experiment what to send, whether to send more or less emails, more or fewer images, etc.

The key is the first point: if your software does not offer you deep and useful statistics, there is little you can improve because you will practically go blind.

There are also marketing tools focused on catering, such as ZenChef or FishBowl, which include software for your email marketing campaigns.

It can be an option to consider if you want to go further and become a true professional in gastronomic marketing.