Your emails can drive action. In this scenario, they can encourage your customers to review the new menu, but also to look at your website in the process, subscribe to new updates, and visit your restaurant. They are encouraged to find out new information and specials that are only contained on your website or on a social media page. This means they have to take action and click on links, which drives your traffic and increases your online presence.
Your job as a restaurant owner is to consider what incentive your customers or potential customers will want, and then state that in the email.
In another situation, you may be promoting a new customer loyalty card which results in one free meal after ten purchased meals. In order to get customers to subscribe to the loyalty card, you might insert a special code into your email campaign that can only be used when your customer next dines at the restaurant. This is a way for you to not only encourage them to take action and visit your restaurant, but also to keep track of how well your particular email is doing.
Now let’s consider different types of restaurant scenarios and how email marketing can help. If you own a franchise of restaurants in multiple states, it can be very challenging to market to all of the regions. Some of your locations may be in different phases of their maturity; some may just be opening while others have been established for years. Some restaurants may be in an urban area while some are in a suburban area.
In these situations, email marketing can give your business the chance to support your corporate brand while also promoting local deals and building relationships with clients in different areas. You can promote new company developments or new menu options in your emails, while also adding local specials, local promotions, and local events for each franchisee. This makes it easy for you to get customer feedback on places like Yelp, and then go through the aforementioned steps of reviewing feedback and integrating suggestions.
If you have a franchise in its early stages, your marketing funds might be limited but you really need to find new customers in order to promote growth. These issues and many more, can hamper your marketing plan. But with email marketing you can build relationships with the local customers and offer local promotions all while supporting the larger corporate image. By attracting a handful of repeat customers, they can start spreading the word for you by forwarding the emails that you send. This scenario helps you incorporate your larger corporate features with local promotions and specials. In this instance, you are giving the customer all of the information they want in one place.