Friday, October 9, 2009

How to Do E-mail Restaurant Marketing Right

There are a lot of restaurant marketing tactics that you can employ, but one of those that you should not miss out is e-mail marketing. You want to know why? Well, get this figure. Based on a survey done by Direct Marketing Association in 2007, e-mail restaurant marketing strategies can generate more than $57 of return for every dollar that the businessperson spends. That's more than 100 percent for you.Justify Full
However, you should also know that you'll never be able to get that number if you're not going to do e-mail restaurant marketing right. To avoid mistakes, take note of the following tips:

1. Follow drip marketing.

What is drip marketing? It's actually a marketing strategy based on plant irrigation. Crops are not "fed" with so much water; otherwise, they will drown. It's the same thing with e-mail marketing. Too much of something is going to be bad. It's therefore not ideal to send promotional materials every day. You'll be too annoying. Learn how to evenly spaced your e-mail marketing campaigns. Usually, twice a month is already enough.

2. Be more personal with your e-mail.

Never make your subscribers feel as if they are just part of one huge database. Starting your e-mail with "Dear, Sir/Madam," doesn't work anymore these days. Instead, use their personal names in the subject and salutation. Of course, it's going to be such a huge challenge if you have hundreds to thousands of names. What you can do is to use an autoresponder that you can modify to send out e-mails reflecting the names of your respondents. Some autoresponders are free or very cheap. Aweber, one of the best systems out there, can be yours for just a dollar.

3. Avoid selling constantly.

Again, this boils down to the fact that customers and prospects don't want to feel like commodities. Limit your selling strategies. Rather, feed your subscribers with valuable information that would help them in making excellent decisions. For example, if you're offering a a new organic dish, you may talk about the benefits of organic food to health. Use your newsletter as an opportunity to tell your unique selling proposition and the benefits offered by your restaurant.

4. Limit graphics.

The best way to attract your customers and prospects to dine to your restaurant is by giving them visual presentations. This means you can attach images of your dishes in vivid colors. You can make them look mouth-watering and definitely enticing.

However, you should be careful with using graphics too. Technically, they tend to slow down download time of your e-mail. If your subscribers can't see your e-mail images in less than 5 seconds, you would never have the chance of showing your pictures to them. Thus, you're not able to send your message properly.

5. Create a good heading.

If your heading sounds too spammy or commercial, don't expect your subscribers to read your e-mail. Spend time coming up with a heading that would compel them to click on your mail. A good strategy is to spell out what they can get from reading an e-mail. "Enjoy 20 percent off your lunch with a coupon" is much better than "Buy your lunch now."

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