12 July 2010

Restaurants: Best Practices for Email Marketing Campaigns

Posted by Crystal under: Restaurant Business .

Email marketing is an effective marketing strategy that is especially attractive for restaurant owners due to its affordability, capability to deliver measurable results, and relative ease of implementation. Acquiring email addresses of customers allows restaurants to do marketing in an easy and consistent way. Because email is becoming the predominant way of communication, acquiring your customers’ emails is an extremely effective marketing strategy.

Once a customer has shared his/her email address with you, your objective as a restaurant owner is to take a full advantage of this valuable contact information and stay fresh in a customer’s mind without being irrelevant or overbearing. Here are some of the best practices for effective email marketing campaigns:

Set the Objectives. Before you start your email marketing campaign, it is important to plan in advance what kind of email communication you will have with your customers. As a business owner, you need to establish the objectives you want to reach through email campaigns. Such objectives may range from promotion of special events, promotion of your wine list, cuisine, or motivating more repeat business, to name just a few. Knowing the “why’s” of your marketing campaign will help you not only plan, it will make your campaign have a tangible impact on the bottom line.

Use Email Marketing Providers. Using a regular email function to send out emails to multiple customers is not the best way to communicate because, if used improperly, it may expose customers’ email addresses for others to see. Also, sending numerous emails this way will often result in your email ending up in a customer’s spam box. Sending a large number of emails might also cause the search engines to blacklist your IP address. While you can get your IP address reestablished and “white-listed”, this process often takes a long time. Using professional email marketing providers is cheap and the best way to send out “blast” emails. These companies will manage the large email lists for you, will make sure that customers can opt out if they don’t want to receive emails from you, and that your emails look sharp and professional.

Determine Frequency. Many businesses struggle with determining the frequency of the emails sent to customers. Frequency depends on your restaurant’s concept, the occurrence of special events, etc. The ideal frequency range is from weekly emails to 1 or 2 emails per month. You don’t want to go any less frequently as it will look like there is not much going on at you restaurant or that your email campaign is not managed effectively. Another great strategy is to offer diners an opportunity to set the frequency options regarding how often they want to receive the emails from you: weekly, bi-weekly, monthly, etc.

Analyze the Data. Email marketing campaigns will do you no good if you don’t keep track of the results and don’t analyze how the campaign performs. Analyzing the results allows you to make necessary changes along the way based on what works best for you and the customers. Looking regularly at your tracking data allows you to see whether your emails get opened, if customers are clicking through to your promotions or coupons. You can monitor customer response and see which promotions, coupons or specials are effective, and which are not. Analyzing your email campaigns also teaches you more about your customers.

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