Email marketing is a great way to promote not only the Internet business, but also the restaurant segment. And for this there are good reasons:

• Cost Email marketing is one of the cheapest and most successful ways to promote.
• Work with reviews. After the client of your restaurant has finished the meal and left, you will be able to inquire what he liked and what did not, without waiting for the next visit.
• Formation of loyalty. It is possible to track which subscribers follow links and which pages of the site they visit. Next, send a coupon with a discount on the menu. You can also create surveys for customers and learn about their taste preferences.
• Your customers are interested in you. If you are provided with personal data (email address, name, etc.), then customers want to receive useful information. And this is a great opportunity to turn a casual visitor into a permanent one.

How to build a subscriber base?

There are many ways to build a base for restaurants, you just need to show imagination. We will give a few examples:

• Questionnaires
• Loyalty programs (club or discount cards, etc.)
• Business cards in exchange for bonuses / discounts / gifts.
• Promotional offers with activation by email address.

When to do the newsletter?

On weekdays it is more expedient to do a newsletter at 11 o'clock in the afternoon (before lunch) when the client is still at work and may notice the received letter with a proposal for a business lunch. Add to the newsletter information about new dishes, promotions, discounts, the ability to book a table for dinner or prepare a business lunch for a specific time. You can also send the restaurant's menu, interesting information about the traditions of eating at lunchtime around the different peoples of the world, the secrets of cooking, etc.
In addition, you can make the newsletter on Friday in the afternoon , when the person will plan their leisure time for the evening and your offer will be most welcome.

Content content mailings for the restaurant

• Promotions, new dishes and restaurant services
• Alert about upcoming event
• Cooking Recipes
• Congratulations on holidays
• Surveys (for example: put a rating or write a review)
• Vote for a new dish that will go down in the menu.

And here are some case studies!

Restaurant brand Galuppi’s began using email newsletters in 2010. They collected the subscriber base using the “Join our email club!” Cards. They described the benefits of a subscription: "We will offer you different vouchers, coupons, free drinks, parties and competitions in each message." Postcards needed to be filled and left in the restaurant.
Results: for 5 years, 7000 loyal contacts were collected.
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In A Pickle has been using email marketing since 2008. Even before opening a restaurant, its founder Tim Berkle knew how powerful the Internet was and, in drawing up the business plan of the establishment, he put email marketing on the right place. Tim points out savings on advertising with email.

The company collected subscriber base in different ways. For example, she organized the Super Bowl competition. Each participant put a sheet of paper with his email address in the box and wrote the number from 3 to 100 on the box. Cups with a certain number of points inside each were displayed. The player threw the ball 3 times into the circles, if the points coincided with the box number, a prize was given (a difference in numbers of 5 points was allowed).

They also carried out the action "Free Lunch". The establishment was an aquarium with the words "Join our email newsletter and get a lunch as a gift." Clients threw their business cards in exchange for food and thereby replenished their address base “In A Pickle”.

The results justified all the efforts. The company has a fairly large and stable base and 70% of discoveries.

Red Canoe Bistro has been using email marketing since 2010. Restaurant owner Tobias Paul Weiry set himself the goal of communicating with customers using email messages. He believes that this is the best way to share news and alerts about upcoming events.
The base was collected in a simple way: there was a bank in the restaurant where visitors could put their business cards with email addresses. The owner himself also collected business cards from his friends at parties and shows.
Tobias advises that you need to be attentive to customers and always try to surprise them.
The results were not long in coming. A week after the first mailing, a huge public interest in the restaurant was noticed. The restaurateur sent 3-5 letters a week, thereby making it clear to customers that they need a “Red Canoe Bistro”. In addition, Tobias conducted analytics mailings, and then adjusted his strategy.

For all these 3 restaurants, email is one of the key ways to maintain customer relations and a cost-effective way to promote an offline business.
Learn from the best examples and send effective newsletters!

Irina Chugay, SendPulse mailing list marketing