MARKETING: 5 Best Email Campaign Tactics for Your Restaurant
With so many restaurants in every major city and town, it is getting increasingly difficult to keep and attract new guests to your locations. You obviously can’t just sit and wait for the nearby residents to visit you if you have any hopes of growing. So, what can you do to improve brand awareness and the overall profitability of your business? The answer lies in email marketing. Here are five email campaign tactics to help grow your business.
DID YOU KNOWS…
Dominque Crenn Earns 3 Michelin Stars
Dominque Crenn runs the acclaimed Atelier Crenn restaurant in San Francisco. And the restaurant was just awarded three Michelin stars, making her the first female chef in the United States to earn the distinction. Congrats!
News Gateway
Despite the scandals Facebook has been entangled in over the past 12 months, the world’s largest social network remains a popular source of news for Americans, far ahead of any other social network. According to survey data published by the Pew Research Center, 43% of U.S. adults get news on Facebook at least occasionally, with YouTube (21%) and Twitter (12%) the second and third most popular social platforms for news.
Holiday Music Streaming
It has happened to all of us: you walk into a store, thinking what a beautiful summer it’s been and suddenly there it is: Last Christmas. You’ve just been whammed. While radio stations and department stores tend to dust off the Christmas classics as early as November, private listeners get into the holiday spirit a little later.
SO PREDICTABLE
Why it matters to you: Predictive schedule laws are hurting flexibility and responsiveness for the restaurants affected.
The restaurant industry is a fairly well-regulated business by American standards. So when new regs are released, we tend to bristle at first and then learn to accommodate them. Well, in NYC a new law that requires restaurants to schedule their employees a minimum of two weeks in advance, outlaws close-opens, and makes restaurants pay administrative fees when they change a schedule within the two-week predictive schedule is being challenged aggressively by International Franchise Association (IFA), National Restaurant Law Center and the NY State Restaurant Association. It claims that it makes the scheduling process impossibly inflexible based on the needs of our industry.
Having been on the receiving end of a few lousy schedules, I can see how employees would appreciate some predictable schedules in their lives. However, I have also managed restaurants for years and handcuffing the schedule to a “no change” policy demonstrates a complete lack of understanding about our industry on the part of lawmakers. The IFA, et al, are arguing that it’s impossible to respond to the dynamic atmosphere in restaurants without being able to flexibly schedule the staff. In fact, I would wager most restaurant employees would agree and in fact flexibility is one of the hallmarks that satisfied staffers point to as the reason they are even in the restaurant business.
This well intended but misguided approach by NYC needs to be updated. Yes, hourly employees deserve some predictability so they too can live their lives, but eliminating any flexibility or penalizing a restaurant for making necessary schedule changes is simply not the answer.
[Source: NRN]
SPEAKING OF SCHEDULES, LET’S LOOK AT YOURS
Why it matters to you: Don’t let your schedule manage you
Great leaders have lots of recognizable characteristics. Among them is some form of organization. They don’t just approach a day and manage what happens next. They have a plan for each day and they schedule their time for maximum affect. Of course, this can sometimes backfire with silly things like scheduling relaxing or having fun, but in general, successful leaders know exactly what they want to accomplish as they approach their day. Did you know a Stanford study demonstrated that productivity drops sharply after 50 hours per week and then falls off a cliff after 55? Many of you are working hard, but not smart, and that’s why you need to take control of your own schedule.
This piece on Entrepreneur is a primer on how to get control of your schedule and make it work for you. Certainly you can start by acknowledging that plus-50 hours a week is not the answer. Second, don’t promise more than you can deliver. By scheduling every second of your day, you set yourself up for more stress. Loosely determine the timing of your activities and don’t stress if the timing isn’t exactly on target. Finally, have a plan as you approach each day, week & month. By giving yourself some structure, you will find you accomplish more in less time -- and feel better about your life, career and self as a bonus.
[Source: Entrepreneur]
