Internet marketing is everywhere.  There isn’t one industry, large or small, which cannot benefit from marketing to an increasing and unending global marketplace.  Reaching out to customers and clients, while creating your brand awareness, has never been easier which is why restaurant owners have quickly joined the game.  If you are a restaurant owner, this is the perfect opportunity to increase your sales while building a loyal clientele.

What can Email Marketing do for your Restaurant?
•    Sending emails that tell your customers of new menu items, coupon specials or special events – keeps your restaurant in front of their minds and their stomachs!

•    Customer testimonials help build your business reputation, while creating a valuable viral campaign.

•    Sending out customer feedback forms gives your clients a chance to share their views, comments, and observations.  This is an ideal way to find out what your clients want, which in turn, creates repeat business.

•    Increasing website traffic.  If you have a website, include that in your email marketing campaigns.  Directing your clients to your website, gives you another large area of marketing to your target clients, while increasing a new segment of interested prospects.  Use your website to display your special dishes.  Offer some free recipes.  Everyone but everyone loves a good meal.

Building your Opt-in Email List
As your customers arrive simply ask them to drop off their business cards or email address.  Let them know you want to keep them informed of any specials, promotions, or discounts that you may offer during the week.  When you send out your email marketing campaign, don’t forget to include an unsubscribe option.  Don’t hold them captive if they want to opt-out.  Don’t forget to include a forward in your campaigns.  Using that option, your campaign not only builds a list of loyal clients, but at the same time, your clients will be able to send those campaigns easily to their friends, family and colleagues, as well.

Planning your Email Marketing Campaigns
What are your objectives?  Successful campaigns are built on planning and research.  What type of communications do you want to send to your customers?  What kind of dialogue do you want to begin?  As the restaurant owner, you need to know why you are sending out a campaign and what specific goals you hope to gain.  Are you promoting a new cuisine, announcing the addition of a new chef, creating more repeat business, or advertising a special dinner wine?  Having a set purpose of desired outcomes, helps you obtain the results you need.

How many is too many?  You must determine the frequency of your email marketing campaigns.  Frequency normally will depend on your personal needs and concepts.  Frequency ranges from weekly – to bimonthly.  Savvy marketers let their clients set the frequency range, because frequency is very subjective.

Know your Clients:  Ask for customer feedback.  Stay on the same page with your customers.  Knowing what they want takes out any unnecessary guesswork, while leading to another successful email strategy.

Track your e-campaigns: – Obtain live behavioral stats.  Tracking and analyzing your campaigns is the only way to know how your campaigns are performing. Tracking your data enables you to see if your emails were delivered, opened, and if your clients clicked through to your call to action.  Analyzing these campaigns will teach you about your customers’ habits and patterns.

Adding the Social Media Ingredient to your Email Marketing Recipe

Blog on your Website: – Invite your customers to share their thoughts and opinions on your blog.  Read what they are writing about.  Bring your personality into the discussion.  Social media is growing because people want to know you.

Create your own brand ambassadors:  Restaurants always have “regulars”, those people that come in consistently during the week.  Let them spread the good news via Facebook, Myspace, and Twitter.
Sign up with the local restaurant search engines: Yelp.com, Urbanspoon.com, and TripAdvisor.com – Don’t hide – be found.

Email marketers are always open to new and creative ways when looking to grow and diversify their client base.  This is an essential key ingredient for any email campaign.  An email marketing campaign is the perfect vehicle when looking to produce greater sales, while creating an interest and desire in your product or service.  So, would why would anyone invest their time creating a dynamic campaign, if they there were no recipients wanting to read it?  What a rhetorical question.  No one would ever plan to do that, but that is exactly what happens when you don’t build your email database lists based upon permission.

Permission Based Email Works

Permission based email marketing is a best practice that enables companies to take advantage of a solid, cost-effective proven marketing strategy, when looking to building a larger market segment while building and sustaining consumer trust.  The payback is well worth it.  In a report posted by Forrester Research, consumers open two-thirds of the email messages they have opted into.

When used properly, email marketing can be an exceptionally compelling and persuasive marketing method.  It’s a channel that makes it possible for a buyer and seller to openly and freely correspond with one another, building a sound and steady relationship founded on relevance, value, and trust. When handled incorrectly, email marketing can be damaging to your brand identity.  Sending unsolicited email can cause you to be identified as a spammer, causing loss of recipients, your reputation, and possibly your ISP provider.  A company’s reputation once lost is not easily won back.

What is Permission Based (Opt-In) Email?

Permission-based email marketing is the exact opposite of a spammer. The significant difference, of course, is that the emails sent have been requested.  Sending permission based emails increase sales, helping to strengthen the relationships you have already nurtured and developed with your clients and subscribers.  Permission based email turn curiosity into clients, and clients into repeat buyers.

•    Using email marketing software will automatically guide your email campaign in the right direction.  With permission based email marketing software, create flawless newsletters and email campaigns.  Our software will automatically manage: subscribes, unsubscribes, and bounces.

•    With autoresponders, you can control the type and frequency of every email campaign you are planning to send as well as thanking your prospects and clients for signing up, automatically.

•     How are your campaigns doing?  You cannot manage what you cannot track.  Tracking real-time behavioral patterns is essential.  Building successful campaigns rely solely on accurate and dependable tracking reports. With advanced tracking reports, you can adapt and adjust your offers, tactics and strategies, automatically boosting sales and profitability.

•    Creating a call to action that leads your recipients to a sign up page on your website or specific squeeze page, is a great way to increase your permission based opt-in list.  Make your form simple, clear, and easy to read.

•    Be Real – Be Relevant.  Nothing but nothing takes the place of relevant content.  Quality is always greater than quantity.  Your message should get to the point quickly.  Whether sending out announcements, promotions, sales, and testimonials, make sure you are not overwhelming them with graphics and unnecessary hype-filled chatter.

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