72% customers still prefer companies to contact them via email – and restaurant business is no exception. For a restaurant, sending promotional and offer related emails is one of the most common marketing strategies to get customers and generate revenue.
But how often you send an email campaign that has a significant effect on your restaurant business or your email engagement rates? Will sending more emails get you more customers? Why your customers might not be clicking your emails?
In this article, we will reveal the answers to the above questions, common mistakes that a restaurant makes while sending their emails and the best solution to avoid them.
You’re Sending Too Many Promotional Emails
One of the major reasons that your user unsubscribe from your emails is due to high frequency. There is a chance of losing potential value customer if they unsubscribe from your email list. While the ideal time and frequency of sending promotional emails vary from industry to industry, data suggests that people are open to receiving emails once a week or twice a month.
Solution
Don’t bombard your user’s Inbox with frequent emails. Plan your email marketing strategy and opt for weekly or bi-monthly newsletter or discount code. Also, you can go for “manage email preferences” instead of “unsubscribe” where you can give your users an option to reduce the frequency of emails received by you. This way, you won’t lose a chance to connect with your valuable customer.
Your Mailing List Is Not Relevant
One of the most common reasons that your email is not working for your business is because you are sending it to the wrong database. Building a relevant mailing list for your business is extremely important. Once you have your own base of interested foodies, you’ll see a significant change in your email performance.
Solution
It is extremely important to understand the source of your customer data and its relevance. The best way to get the customer data is by collecting it yourself. When a diner visits your restaurant, ensure that you collect user’s data either during walk-ins and/or while taking the feedback. For error-free data collection, we would suggest you to go for a digital platform to collect feedback and manage reservations.
You Are Sending The Same Email To Everyone
A common user received 121 emails per day. Now, that’s a lot of emails. If you want your email to stand out, then it is important that you should go for email personalization and customization. Compared to non-personalized emails, personalized promotional emails have 29% higher unique open rates and 41% higher unique click rates. (Source – invesp)
Solution
Segment your mailing list based on loyal diners, new diners, diners who haven’t visited your restaurant for a while (say 2-3 months) and diners whose birthday/anniversary are coming. Personalize the communication and trigger targeted email campaigns based on the user’s data. Greeting your diners is not only common courtesy in email marketing But also a perfect reason to include an offer that’s hard to resist
To Sum Up
Email marketing is a powerful tool to promote your restaurant, given that you avoid these mistakes. To conclude, here are the three most important points to remember:
- Use digital platform to a high quality mailing list.
- Create an email marketing strategy where you define the frequency of your emails.
- Choose appropriate criteria for segmentation and personalize communication accordingly
