What should you do next?

It might be time to take a look at what items you have set up to appear in every email. Are you missing any important side notes? What can you add to fill your tables with more hungry customers?

Example: Taleo’s Bill of Email Fare

Our friends over at Taleo Mexican Grill in Irvine, California have the recipe for a well-done newsletter with all the trimmings.

What can your restaurant put in its emails to impress patrons?

Menus

Link to them! A surprising number of restaurants don’t have their menus listed online. Describing your dishes can convince even frequent diners to come in for that interesting new combination or a mouthwatering old favorite.

If your restaurant doesn’t have a web site, you can create and post your menu here.

Coupons

A small discount, exclusive to your email subscribers, may keep guests coming back – and keep them reading your new emails.

Here’s an example from one of Taleo’s emails:

Directions

Provide a link to driving routes, tips on parking, and public transportation information.

Take the guesswork out of getting there, and new customers may become regulars.

Gift Cards

If you offer them, say so.

People are always looking for gift ideas, and are likely too wrapped up in the dining experience when on site to seek them out.

Reservations

If you accept these, provide a link to a reservation page on your site, like this, or display your phone number.

Even if your number is listed elsewhere, seeing it listed for reservations suggests that subscribers call it for that reason.

Hours of Operation

When customers get your updates about happy hour discounts, lunch specials or live music events, they can glance over to see just when to plan their visit.

Save them the hassle of searching for your hours on your web site or showing up to an empty, dark building.

Calendar of Events

After you announce a Tuesday-night open mic or a Sunday dinner discount, list it on a calendar. Connect to it through a link, display a miniature version that can be clicked to open fully, or provide only the next week’s schedule in each message.

Pictures

If a picture is worth a thousand words, then a picture of colorful, tasty food is worth a thousand tummy-grumbles.

Wild cravings for your food might be the best enticement of all.

Additional Ingredients

Taleo’s email didn’t include mix these in, but others have. And they might just be right for your newsletter.

Mini-Polls

Ask for feedback on your menu items, your seating options, your special events. You’ll collect valuable information, and you’ll show your patrons that their preferences are important.

Reviews

Customer opinions you collect on comment cards can be powerful testimonials. So can emails of appreciation. Consider publishing a response or two per email, possibly in a sidebar.

This is a lot to add, so keep things organized, subtle and listed neatly to keep from overwhelming your readers. Go for a complete, but not cluttered, design. And remember to track your clicks to see which links customers are taking advantage of.

We appreciate your feedback. Please deposit in comment box below.

Which of these have you included in your newsletters? Which do you think customers look for the most? Do you include anything else that your readers seem to really appreciate?

Want to Learn More?

For more information on email marketing for restaurants, view our complete Email Marketing for Restaurants Guide.

The Autoresponder Send Windows feature can help increase the relevance of your emails – that sometimes hidden factor that ultimately determines how well your email marketing campaigns perform.

However, you may be at a loss for just how you might employ send windows in your campaigns.

Fortunately, with some creative thinking, we think every email marketer can come up with a use that will make a significant difference in their results.

Let’s take a detailed look at an example of how send windows might be used to boost the effectiveness of an email marketing campaign.

How a Restaurant Might Use Send Windows

The owner of a restaurant wants to send a series of autoresponder messages to all new email subscribers to advertise regular events and promotions. They can use send windows to help ensure they reach the subscriber in their inbox when they are most relevant and likely to provoke a response.

Here is what this autoresponder sequence might look like:

Note: If you’re unfamiliar with Autoresponder Send Windows and how they work, you may want to learn a bit about them before reading further.

1. Message 1 – Welcome Message

   Every autoresponder sequence should have a welcome message.

   In this case, our restaurant may want to provide some basic information about their restaurant (e.g. link to menu, directions) and set some expectations about what the subscriber will receive later.

   Note: This message has no send window, since it is always sent immediately after someone subscribes.

2. Message 2 – Mornings, Monday through Friday: Buy a breakfast sandwich and receive a free coffee

   
   To promote a work week, on-the-go breakfast special, we probably want to catch our subscribers early in the day, the first time they check their email.

   By setting a send window covering Monday through Friday, from 6:00AM to 9:00AM, perhaps we can hit them when they could really use some breakfast and a coffee.

3. Message 3 – Sunday through Thursday: Buy one dinner, get a second dinner at half the menu price

   
   Sunday and weekday dinners are often relatively slow at restaurants, so our restaurant provides a price incentive to help fill tables.

   By setting a send window covering Sunday through Thursday, from 6:00AM to 3:00PM, we can send messages advertising a discount that arrives in the inbox when subscribers are looking to solve their dinner plans for the week.

4. Message 4 – Wednesday Dinners: Free dessert on a bill of $25 or more

   
   We send each subscriber a message giving them something for their sweet tooth to look forward to, with our send window for this message set to Wednesday, again from 6:00AM to 3:00PM.

5. Message 5 – Thursday Lunches: 20% off entire lunch bill when business card presented with check

   
   Our restaurant has a large banquet room with a TV that has video inputs perfect for laptop slideshows. We send a message with a send window set for Thursday between 6:00AM and 12:00PM, to target subscribers when they might be thinking of planning their next lunch meeting.

See Them in Action

The calendar below shows an example of a subscriber who (conveniently) signs up on the first of the month for the campaign described above.

Toggle on and off send windows, hovering over the green highlighted calendar dates to observe how they affect this sequence of autoresponders.

Notice that with send windows off, we don’t accomplish what we set out to do with our message campaign – target our subscribers when each message is most relevant to them.

Only with send windows on do we deliver these messages to all new subscribers when they are most likely to bring them into our restaurant as patrons.

Send Windows Aren’t For Restaurants Only!

Of course, the benefits of targeting subscribers during specific windows of time are not unique to restaurants, and we’ll highlight some other examples we’ve developed in future blog posts.

For the meantime, we might all benefit from some real examples from real businesses like yours. Have you setup your send windows, or do you have any ideas about how your industry might use them you’d like to share?

For more information on email marketing for restaurants, view our complete Email Marketing for Restaurants Guide.

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The thing is, these ideas (and others that we’ll continue to publish here) don’t do much good if you don’t have any potential diners to send to!

Just as with any other business, a restaurant’s email marketing campaign has to start by getting subscribers.

So where/how can restaurant owners build their lists?

On Your Website

As part of the research for this post, I looked at a number of restaurant websites, and was struck by the fact that most of them did not offer any email signup at all.

This is a no-brainer for any business. Get a signup form on your website already!

Restaurants in particular should put a signup form in at least two places:

• The homepage
• Their menu page (if you have separate pages for lunch/dinner, all the better – get the form on each of them)

Ideally, you should have a signup form on your other pages as well, but your home page and menu/s are a good start.

In Person At Your Restaurant

Comment cards have been popular for years at restaurants.

Include an email signup on those cards and bring them with the check!

Be sure to bring a pen with the check, too – even before you know if the customer is paying by credit card. That way, they can pass the time (while the server brings them their change or runs their credit card) by signing up to your email list!

With Takeout/Delivery Orders

Insert a card promoting your email campaign with your takeout and delivery orders.

Simply put your site URL on it and tell people to go there to subscribe.

Or, for a twist have them fill out a form on the card and bring it in on their next visit (this could work well where you’re offering a signup incentive like a coupon or half-price menu item).

On Menus and Other Promotional Pieces

Do you offer paper menus for customers to take away? Or send direct mail pieces?

If so, mention your emails on them.

As with the takeout cards, you may want to have people fill out something in person and then bring it back to your restaurant – that way, not only do they not have to wait until they’re at their computer to sign up, but they have an extra incentive to come back (to drop off the card and get whatever bonus you’re offering new members)!

When People Make Reservations

You don’t have to wait for customers to finish their meals before offering an email signup. Heck, you don’t even have to wait for them to arrive at your restaurant!

Someone making a reservation is identifying him/herself as a customer, someone especially interested in your restaurant (compared to say, someone who happens to visit your website but is not yet committed to coming in and dining with you).

Sites like OpenTable know this, and offer diners the chance to sign up to restaurants’ email lists when making reservations.

If you take reservations on your site, you should be doing so, too. It helps drive repeat business.

In theory, you should also be doing this when taking reservations by phone, but to be honest I haven’t quite worked out when during the reservation I would ask that, or how I would word it (your suggestions are quite welcome here!).

What Other List-Building Opportunities Do Restaurants Have?

In a future article on restaurant marketing I’ll talk about incentives you can use to make list-building easier.

For now, though, let’s come up with some other ideas that restaurant owners can use to build their email lists.

Share your ideas and suggestions below!

For more information on email marketing for restaurants, view our complete Email Marketing for Restaurants Guide.

Even if you leave diners with a good experience the first time they visit, if their next one is poor, they may:

	Never return
	Relay their bad experience to others

In this post, I’d like to suggest two steps to take, whether you think this is an issue for your restaurant or not. In any case, these ideas should help you to identify hidden problems and work with your staff to fix them.

Step One: Identify Problems

It’s probably not a common occurrence for people to storm out of your restaurant or scream bloody murder at your staff, so the problems you need to focus on are probably hidden.

The truth is that the average person isn’t so assertive and will politely leave and never come back if they have a particularly poor experience. It is impossible to know what they didn’t like without asking.

It can be a challenge to obtain information, but it is possible, and it’s the first step toward improvement.

Get Input From Your Customers

The best way is to survey your customers directly, using a multi-faceted approach:

Ways to Solicit Feedback From Diners

	Leave comment cards with checks
	Provide cards with the address of a webpage containing a survey form
	Ask for it in a message through your email campaign

Comment Cards

Comment cards are great for people who feel compelled, for better or worse, to tell you about their experience immediately. The problem is that not everyone feels so bold. They may also fear that the cards will never make it to management anyway.

Email Address

Set up an email address you or your manager check regularly, and print that email address on all comment cards also. Respond personally to these customers. They will appreciate the opportunity to be heard and your response may make them more likely to return.

Your Email Campaign

If you’re making it a point to subscribe customers to your email campaign, you have an excellent way to connect with them and obtain quality feedback. Add a message to be sent automatically to subscribers, asking them for input on their experience. Even if they don’t respond, you’ve added a personal touch to your campaign.

Step Two: Make Improvements

You should now have a valuable and steady source of information that can help you train staff and improve of quality and consistency at your restaurant.

By training, I don’t mean only the initial period of employment with you. Education doesn’t end when you finish high school or college, and training shouldn’t end after your staff begins working more independently.

Training 2.0

Regular meetings would be ideal, but more than most other industries, food service is extremely fast paced, and since schedules vary its very difficult to get every staff member in the same room.

You can meet many of their objectives through a successful employee email campaign. Have your staff sign up for it, then send:

	A series of messages highlighting issues that are universally important (e.g. greeting customers)
	Weekly or monthly messages that highlight issues from customer comments
	Upcoming schedule for staff

Required Reading

You’ll need to determine the best way of encouraging your staff to read the messages regularly.

They should greatly help your waitstaff them help themselves, in that better performance and teamwork on their part means better tips. Remind them of this.

You might also consider providing incentives for reading them and answering a relevant question at the bottom of each message. Ultimately, you’ll have to determine what’s best for your staff based on what you think would motivate them.

What’s Worked For You?

Obtain information by lending customers your ear, then use it to give constructive information to your staff. By doing this, you emphasize the service part of food service and promote consistency, leading to repeated visits.

How has customer feedback helped your business, and how have you enhanced training of your staff? We’d love to hear your feedback on this article.

For more information on email marketing for restaurants, view our complete Email Marketing for Restaurants Guide.

Why people don’t return to your restaurant can be hard to figure out. But if you don’t have a regular customer base, it would be reasonable to assume a few things about people who don’t return. For instance:

• They don’t eat out frequently
• They want to try a variety of restaurants
• Their first meal at your restaurant was not enjoyable

These are important, but there’s still one more hurdle that can make the difference between having every seat in your restaurant filled or tumbleweeds blowing through the rows of empty tables on Friday nights.

A Lasting Impression

Consider this fictional story. A new, promising restaurant has arrived in town, and you’ve read mixed reviews in the newspaper. Unfazed, you try it out with your spouse, who would jump on any opportunity to avoid dish duty. You have no expectations. You’d just like to try the place out.

Once you arrive, you’re seated with warm, fresh bread brought promptly to the table, and you have an interesting conversation with John, your waiter, about the origins of the unusual name of the restaurant while you wait (only a short while) for your food.

You thought you were a good cook, but your basic spaghetti and meatballs is hard to remember when you’re eating the Penne all’Arrabbiata brought to you. John tells you it was culled from recipes passed down through generations of the chef’s family.

Four courses and a cappuccino later – you weren’t rushed – you leave with a friendly goodbye from the hostess, as she hands you your coats. It was a sensational experience all-around.

A Squandered Opportunity

Remembering that night as your old friend and her husband come to town, you suggest a return to the restaurant. On the way over, you rave about every little detail of your last visit, even the Italian dark chocolates they left with the check, in place of the standard mints you’re used to.

Well, things are a bit different this time around. You wait 10 minutes to sit, despite the fact that you can clearly see several tables available.

When you finally get to your table, there’s bread waiting, but its hard, cold, and there’s a butter packet in the basket that was clearly already used by someone else.

Your waitress has no idea what’s in the Penne dish you ordered last time, or whether the special of the day has shellfish in it (your friend is deathly allergic to shellfish). Your food is tasty, but it has clearly been sitting under a plate warmer for at least 20 of the 30 minutes you waited for it.

Suddenly an intimate meal at home with your spaghetti seems like it would have been a better idea, and you find yourself apologizing to your friends the whole way home after being rushed out of the restaurant by your server, who quickly clears the table and sits another party as you dig hopelessly through the closet for your coats.

Consistency is Key

Which of the two experiences is going to sit more firmly in your memory? How likely are you to return to that restaurant? Would you be willing to stand by a recommendation to this place anymore?

I certainly wouldn’t.

First impressions only take you so far. Certainly, when your customers first dine with you, its important to leave with them memories of an outstanding experience.

But that experience sets expectations in their minds, and if they aren’t consistently met, you’re losing people who otherwise would come back again and again, and they may avoid recommending you to others.

Next Time …

Overcoming this hurdle can require some hard work, and you’ll need to set expectations of your own with your staff. An effective email campaign can help you accomplish this.

In my next article, I’ll give you some ideas on how you can set a plan to achieve consistent success with customers so that they, and their friends, come back again and again.

Who better to establish these points than the lead creative force of your company? In the case of a restaurant, the head creator is the chef.

In this article, I’ll describe how introducing your chef can add a personal face to your email campaign and how even if you don’t have a restaurant, this type of message can benefit your own business.

Chefs Have Personality

We all love cooking shows. Consider the success of Emeril Lagasse, Julia Child, and (my personal favorite) Alton Brown. People look at them as master chefs, but we know the likelihood of ever tasting one of their dishes is as thin as the demi glaze on the seared filet mignon we see on our TV screens.

By contrast, what happens when customers come to your restaurant? Plates arrive in front of us and they look delicious, but we have no vision of where it came from and who made it. In most restaurants, the gap between the kitchen and the front end is as thick as the drywall that separates them.

Now, imagine the best of both worlds: having your chef come out to greet every table at your restaurant, serving dishes to your customers, explaining the freshness of the ingredients and the uniqueness of the plate.

Meet the Chef

In an ideal world, wouldn’t this be great? Wouldn’t your customers swoon over the idea of knowing who made their food, taking that personal touch to the next level?

Unfortunately, your chef has plenty on their hands, like, well, cooking. They don’t have the benefit of a production crew or the time to leave the kitchen every 5 minutes to greet each customer.

Luckily, if you’re collecting customers’ email addresses at your restaurant for your email list, you have options.

Have your head cook write up a ‘Meet the Chef’ message to introduce themselves. Need a few ideas for this email? They could:

• highlight their experience
• tell a story behind the creation of a dish
• explain the nuances of a dish and provide a special coupon for it
• provide an exclusive recipe
• narrate a day of cooking at your restaurant
• introduce cooking staff and give a tour of the kitchen
• give nutritional information on your dishes

.. and the list of ideas can go on and on. You want to keep your email short and sweet, so you might even consider starting a series of messages.

By using your email campaign to give your chef a voice and a face, you maximize the use of their time while adding value to your campaign and your restaurant.

For more information on email marketing for restaurants, view our complete Email Marketing for Restaurants Guide.

Don’t have a restaurant?

It’s always a plus to put a personal face on your email campaigns regardless of what type of business you run. In any case, it’s likely that you run a business smaller than the scale of a Wal-Mart or McDonald’s.

Corporate marketers usually work on the image of their brand because this personal approach is hard to accomplish at their scale. People come to you for your expertise as a trusted source. By giving yourself a voice in your email campaigns, you establish who you are and why you’re somebody to listen to.

As the first of a series, in this article I’ll offer advice on how quality oriented restaurants can use email marketing to increase their profits through cultivating a base of regular customers, something that could benefit a business of any type.

Return Customers Make the Difference

During my late teenage years, I started my first job at a restaurant, mostly because I needed steady employment while starting college. I was also interested in cooking on the side, and my parents liked the idea of my learning how to increase my food to mess ratio in their kitchen.

During my tenure, I worked with a few chefs (who were also the owners) and learned how important it is to draw customers back in. Getting a customer in the door can really cost a pretty penny when you consider the price of print advertisement.

Meanwhile, by cultivating a regular customer base, restaurants:

• lower the cost / visit ratio
• get free, effective advertisement by word of mouth

This is easier said than done, however. A good restaurant covers the food and the experience, but people are busy and there’s lots of restaurants in most towns. People like to try different things, so you can’t rely entirely on their own initiative to return.

So what is a restaurant to do? Print more coupons in the local paper that cost money and lower profitability?

The Common Approach

I still make messes in my own kitchen, but I’ve left the real food making to the pros. Since then, I’ve worked with AWeber on helping clients optimize their email campaign results.

I’ve seen a lot of customers fixating on price and giving sales pitches that focus on it. In coming up with ideas, it seems natural to start with what hits your subscribers’ pockets. For restaurants, we find coupons and specials in campaigns: weekly specials, birthday specials, valentine’s day specials, and so on, and so on…

Coupons are a great way to provide a particular of incentive for a visit to a restaurant, but remember that if all customers are looking for in a restaurant is value in a calories per dollar sense, they’ll choose the fast food joint every single time.

Beyond Coupons

What really makes a restaurant special? These USPs (unique selling points) are the points that should be highlighted in an email campaign. In helping a restaurant write its messages, I might ask them:

• Why are your desserts the best thing since Tiramisu?
• Is your wait staff always standing by, politely waiting to pour that next glass of cellared wine?
• How experienced is your chef?

The personal touch that’s so important at restaurants is just as important in email campaigns. By writing messages that highlight their unique qualities, restaurants can take the first impression customers have about their restaurant and build something more lasting.

Lasting impressions lead to return visits and reduce the cost of the constant advertisement to draw in new customers. Instead of driving profits into the ground, why not increase the value using an email campaign?

Sounds Good. Care to Elaborate?

In the coming weeks and months, we’ll cover some ideas concerning ways you can effectively use an email service to not only set yourself apart from the giants but also the competition right next door on your block.

We’ll also chime in with some ideas on how to most effectively generate a list of subscribers from a customer base at your restaurant.

Until then, 86 on this post (if you own/work-at a restaurant, you know what I mean).

For more information on email marketing for restaurants, view our complete Email Marketing for Restaurants Guide.