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Think to yourself, what business would you take 5 min to read an email from?
There isn't one!
The days of the restaurant newsletter are gone. People are overwhelmed with messages from so many places and channels.
How do you make your email stand out? Short and sweet. If you were to put in as much effort crafting 3 to 5 memorable sentences as you do 3 -5 paragraphs of text, you would see an increase in engagement.
Don't believe it?
Test it.
Send half your list a long-form email with a link to a contest at the bottom.
Send the other half 3 -5 sentences that have some humour and reflect your brand's tone with the same link.
Guaranteed the short email has more engagement.
Got 60 seconds? Check out the video.
Everyone loves their birthday, well, almost everyone.
If you are still hesitant about starting an incentive based email program, the birthday club is the best place to start. Birthdays and going out for a meal go hand in hand.
You need to be using an email program that lets you send out date-based emails. We recommend MailChimp as it is inexpensive and can accomplish the task.
When you capture the contact's name and email address, ask for their birthday: month and day.
What should you give them as a birthday present? Well, what is it worth to be able to market directly to someone's inbox for an entire year? This should be over and above anything you already do for birthdays at your restaurant.
Set up an automation to send them emails.
Give them at least 2 weeks to use the incentive.
Send it before their birthday.
Send them an email on their birthday.
Send them a follow-up email after the incentive has been used.
Well, it can be.
Sometimes you need to talk to someone, someone with experience, who can help you see things differently. Someone to help you simplify your message.
There are lots of great people out there that genuinely want to help. Chip is one of them. At the very least, check out his podcast. Search for Restaurant Strategy on your podcast player.
No matter what, before you start investing money in marketing, make sure you have a strategy behind it and don't just do marketing to do marketing.
Most people receive their email on their mobile device. Some of these devices would mark the email as open even if the contact didn't look at it.
Also, just because someone opened an email doesn't mean they read it.
Engagement with your email list needs to be measured by using click-through rates.
Keep the information short within the email and include a learn more button.
Now the people who click the link are interested in what you're sending.
Concentrate on sending engaging emails more than just building the number of contacts.
