By Roman Shvidun, Contributor
Running a small business today is no small feat, and the narrative is no different for business owners in the food scene. With global restaurant brands gobbling up more of the market, it has become extremely challenging for small restaurants to compete and gain loyal customers.
Thankfully, email marketing for restaurants can help you pull in your target customers! Despite the emergence of social media advertising, email marketing remains every business’s best friend. Why? Because it works.
This article walks you through why you should use email marketing and highlights excellent email marketing ideas for restaurants in 2022.
3 Reasons You Should Consider Using Email Marketing for Your Restaurant
Understandably, you have several options when it comes to picking a marketing channel for your restaurant. But why should email marketing for restaurants be a significant part of your sales-driving efforts?
Here are three critical reasons why every restaurant owner should invest in email marketing:
Build Stronger Customer Relationships
Statistics have shown that email marketing is one of the most effective ways to build a stronger relationship with your customers and gain loyalty. Some stats to keep in mind:
47% percent of marketing pros say email marketing is their most effective lead nurturing tactic
Email marketing has the single highest average ROI of all digital marketing channels, with an average of $44 for every $1 spent
Nearly 55% of consumers prefer email messages that contain products and offers relevant to them
Of course, you know that building an army of loyal customers is the fastest way to grow any business — especially independent, local restaurants.
Therefore, if you want to build better customer relationships, consider sending restaurant newsletters that provide value to your customers.
Some information you can add in your newsletters includes updates to your menu, restaurant specials, dietary tips, what sport games and matches you plan on showing, and more. You can even throw in some coupons as incentives for both new and existing customers to visit your restaurant.
Promote Deals
Aside from building your relationship with your guests, you can also use email marketing to promote your restaurant. For instance, you can send a promotional email telling your customers about discounts, exclusive deals, etc. In addition, you can even use these emails to deliver information about your restaurant to your customers.
This way, they can stay up-to-date about your offers and learn about your business. Here are some email marketing ideas for your restaurant’s promotional emails:
Updates on deals, discounts, coupons, etc.
Promotional codes
Exclusive recipes
Chef’s specials and themed menu offerings
Quick cooking guides
The history of your restaurant
Introduction to your restaurant’s team, welcome email and insight into what happens behind the scenes
Customer and business milestones
There’s no limit to what you can include in promotional emails — as long as you’re sure your customers would want to know — but your email account management has to be top-notch.
Invite Subscribers to Your Events
If you’re organizing an event or party, you’ll undoubtedly want your customers to attend. Thankfully, your restaurant’s email marketing campaign is one of the best ways to invite your customer base to your events.
However, it is not just about getting people into your restaurant’s parties. You’re also building a loyal customer base.
Customers who attend your events are more than likely to keep returning to your restaurant for repeat business! Therefore, inviting them to your special evenings is a great way to sell your business to them.
7 Terrific Examples of Restaurant Email Marketing
Below are some restaurant email marketing examples that give you the inspiration you need to leverage what email marketing has to offer.
The First-Time Visitor Email
Most people like to be recognized and appreciated. How can you use this to your advantage among new customers?
Send out an appreciation email to your first-time customers and thank them for choosing to visit your restaurant. This is also a good time to ask for feedback — what they liked and how they’d like you to improve.
Ensuring that first-time visitor appreciation is part of your restaurant’s email marketing strategy is a great way to secure repeat and loyal customers.
Also, you can configure your email marketing service to automatically send an email to customers who return after their first time.
The Happy Birthday Email
Birthdays come with their fair share of celebrations. As a restaurant owner, you can bring this business boost to your tables by inviting your celebrating customers to come and do it in your restaurant.
What better way to engage a customer than to show them that you not only know about their upcoming birthday but also want to share in their jubilation? You can even include some discounts and special offers as incentives to encourage them to come through!
Remember, if you play your cards right, you can potentially convert their party guests into loyal customers too.
Pro tip? You will want to send the birthday email a few weeks in advance to ensure the guest has time for proper planning.
The Loyalty Email
In this case, the objective is to use a string of emails to get your customers to keep coming back. We recommend creating a customer loyalty program that works and doesn’t eat too much into your profit margin.
For instance, after a customer visits your restaurant for the fifth time, you can email them with a redeemable reward, such as a discount on their next meal, a free side order, or maybe customized merch.
Aside from inspiring loyalty, this email also helps with customer engagement so they don’t forget you.
The At-Risk Guest Email
An at-risk customer is close to a customer churn. In other words, they are not likely to come back and may be considering switching to a competitor.
Thankfully, restaurant email marketing tools offer algorithms and AI that can determine when a customer is close to defecting.
For instance, your preferred service can come up with such predictions by tracking customer behavior (such as engagement rates) to determine patterns that indicate why a customer may leave and when it may happen.
Then, the system can automatically send an email containing an incentive to spur them to come back.
The Guest Survey Email
Today, online ratings and reviews have become a significant component of the success (or failure) of any business. This is a digital marketing fact. Not surprisingly, the narrative does not change with restaurants.
Therefore, it is crucial that you pay attention to your online reputation.
Thankfully, with an email survey campaign, you can boost your online ratings and even reduce (if not avoid) negative reviews. Here’s how guest surveys typically work.
Your system sends an email asking first-time customers to rate their experience.
Then, you can follow up with a link to your online reviews if they give a positive review.
If the review goes the other way, you should proceed with an apology email and maybe an incentive to get them to try again.
The Take-Out and Delivery Email
Take-out and delivery are more popular today than ever due to the coronavirus pandemic. Thankfully, it is also an opportunity for you to expand your customer base to accommodate people who would rather have their food come to them.
If you offer take-out and delivery, your customers should know. This means creating a restaurant email campaign for this purpose.
However, it is not enough to simply tell your subscribers that they can now order in. You should also provide them with the details of your ordering platform and any rules or restrictions you may have in terms of timing, locations, and more.
The Online Ordering Email
Once your customers know they don’t have to be in your restaurant before they can get your food, the next step is to show them how.
This means an online order email marketing campaign for your restaurant.
In this email, you’ll need to walk your subscribers through ordering from your restaurant online — the app or website, what they need to have, making payments, etc. You can even create marketing videos with a tutorial.
Remember, letting your guests know they can now order from the comfort of their homes or workplaces will open you up to a wide range of new growth opportunities.
Wrapping It Up
Maybe your restaurant is not as big as Pizza Hut or Chili’s. There’s no need to worry. Fortunately, applying the above examples of email marketing for restaurants can help increase your customer engagement and grow your business.
With time and consistency, you may even start competing with the big, global restaurant brands!
Do let us know if you have more questions, though.
