5 Important strategies to get the most out of your restaurant email marketing

Why email marketing?

With so many options available, it’s not surprising that many restaurant operators find it difficult to decide which digital channels are the best investment to get the biggest return. What is surprising is how many brands undervalue the potential of email marketing. So, why is email such an important part of a restaurant’s marketing plan?

• Good email marketing has been shown to deliver the best ROI of any marketing channel. 

• It helps you turn one-time visitors into loyal customers.

• Almost 50% of smartphone users say they prefer brands to communicate with them via email.

• Sticking to a subscribed list and avoiding ‘spammy’ behaviour will give you direct access to your audience, vs playing the ‘algorithm game’ with social media.

• Results are easy to track and measure, meaning you can continue to improve and optimise campaigns over time, rather than working on assumptions and guesses.

• Email allows you to personalise your message more effectively, which builds strong relationships with your audience over time.

How important is data?

You’ve heard it many times; great marketing is about getting the right message to the right person at the right time. Email gives you a unique opportunity to measure how successfully you’re doing this, and more importantly to continuously improve. 

Crafting the right message, and deciding when to send it all starts with understanding who the right person is, and what they want and need to hear. That’s where great data is invaluable. 

A good hospitality CRM system will help you to build up a clear picture of your audience, so that you can understand them better and personalise your messaging to them. The more data you capture, the better equipped you are to create highly effective customer segments. 

A good CRM allows you to analyse your data, look for trends, and find ways to build revenue and increase footfall through strategic marketing campaigns. Look for one that integrates with your EPOS system, your booking system, your loyalty platform, guest WI-Fi, and other relevant software so that you can capture the most comprehensive picture of your customers. 

5 Top strategies for restaurant email marketing

Be dynamic and make it personal

According to Demand Science, segmentation offers a 760% increase in email revenue. It makes sense, after all we’re all more likely to respond to an email personalised to our individual interests, demographics, geography, and circumstances. In other words, relevant marketing is far more likely to capture your audience’s attention and engage them.

As we’ve already discussed, the effectiveness of segmentation is only as good as the data you’ve got, which is great news for savvy restauranteurs. You have access to so much information about your customers – from purchase behaviour and loyalty apps, to Guest Wi-Fi and online booking, you can build a really clear picture of who each customer is, and what matters to them. 

Consider the impact of advertising your half-term ‘kids eat free’ promotion to customers without children – not only is this content irrelevant, but it also suggests that your venue is tailored to families and not the choice for an intimate dining experience with their partner or an adult-centred birthday celebration. In reality, your venue may well cater to both at different times, so it’s important to target the right audience segment with the right offer. 

Understanding what your audience wants is only the first step though; using that information to make sure you’re getting the message right for each person is where you can really increase your ROI. Dynamic content lets you send one campaign to your entire list, whilst simultaneously personalising the message based on carefully constructed segments. 

Skip the newsletter

Ok, we don’t mean that literally. After all, newsletters definitely have their place. But all too often we see generic email blasts being sent out by busy in-house marketing teams, with no effort to make the message relevant. It’s really obvious when this is the case, because the message is all about what the restaurant wants to say, rather than what the customer wants to hear. Nothing turns a customer off more quickly than talking at them rather than to them.

Email marketing isn’t just about mass email blasts to all, or even part of your list. In fact, it could be argued that this is only a small part of a great email strategy. By building triggered and automated sequences, you can ensure that your messages are always landing at the right moment, whilst making the whole process work with minimal input from you.

Some obvious examples are birthday emails, booking confirmation emails, and requests for reviews. But how about an email the day before a booking to say you’re looking forward to seeing your guests, which might help cut down on no-shows? Or an email to people who haven’t visited for a while, to encourage them to come back? Maybe even a little reward for really regular customers to show them you appreciate them? 

Of course, mass email campaigns have an important role to play as well. Emailing a certain segment about a relevant special offer, or launching a new menu are great reasons to get in touch with your subscribers. A newsletter that demonstrates your company’s values – sustainability practices, community influence and company updates, will help you stay in the mind of your less frequent customers, as well as communicate your other services – such as dine at-home kits or online ordering.

Build relationships

For restaurants, email marketing should be viewed as a communication channel as well as a marketing channel. That means you should be looking at it as a way to engage your customers, not just inform them. 

Customers want to feel as though you’re interested in what they have to say, so encouraging your customers to leave feedback after a visit will not only help you build a bank of online reviews, it will make your customers feel valued. Online reviews are more important than ever; our recent research showed that 56% of consumers reported being deterred from visiting a venue if they couldn’t find reviews online in advance

When you’re creating an email campaign, you should be looking at it as a way to strengthen and deepen your relationship with each recipient. After all, it’s easier and more cost-effective to drive repeat visits from your existing customers than to find new ones, so it’s important to build lasting customer relationships that will have people returning to your venue time and time again.

Focus on retention

That brings us to the importance of customer retention. Customer loyalty programmes are an effective way to reward regular customers, and can incentivise email list sign-ups. It’s also possible to segment customers who have signed up to your loyalty programme to ensure you remain relevant to them when delivering new promotions, items and discounts through email.

When it comes to first-time visitors, email marketing gives restaurants an excellent opportunity to turn them into returning customers. You can segment and target this group by considering how they found you. 

For example, Groupon vouchers can be great for creating an uplift in new customers, but it can be difficult to convert these guests into repeat visitors. But now you know they appreciated a discount, perhaps offering a return discount could be a good way to generate another visit?

If your venue hosts events like speed dating or wine tastings, this may be another route for customers with special interests to find your venue for the first time. You can then use this information to re-target them in the future with similar events or relevant offers. For example, your speed daters might appreciate a buy-one-get-one-free meal voucher for future dates.

Very often, first-time customers might not know about everything you have to offer, so adding them to your email lists for communication allows you to showcase your various menus, promotions and company values.

Finally, when it comes to attracting customers back for repeat visits, email can make sure they don’t forget you. Consider how often your customers are likely to visit you. For many consumers, eating out is a treat and they may only visit sporadically or for special occasions. Your email communications can help you stay top of mind in between visits. Just don’t be too salesy in your messaging, or you might send them scrolling to the unsubscribe link.

Calls to action

When you include Calls to Action in your emails (which you absolutely must do), make sure they link to a relevant landing page. Remember, an email is simply a shop window and your customer can’t buy from the window. 

An email campaign’s purpose should be to show enough of what you offer to entice them to come inside (visit your website or online booking page) and buy (make a reservation). And even more importantly, it should make it really easy to do so. 

When you’re adding in your calls to action, consider where those clicks will take them, and whether or not you’re directing them to a landing page that is likely to answer their intent. For example, if a reader has clicked on a link that says ‘menu’, don’t take them to your home page and expect them to find their own way to the menu. Likewise, if the button says ‘read more’, or you’ve added a hyperlink to the name of your business, they probably want to see pictures, find out more about the brand, and get a feel for you - don’t send them straight to the booking link. (And it goes without saying that a link that says Book Now should take them directly to the place where they can do just that.)

Common mistakes to avoid

There are lots of reasons that email marketing might not have worked well for you in the past. Here are a few of the common mistakes that restaurants make in their email marketing.

• Sending mass blasts with no personalisation. You have 2 seconds from the moment a reader opens your email to grab their attention. So, your message needs to be highly relevant and engaging to each recipient.

• Forgetting the importance of the From Name, Subject Line, and Preview Text. These are all vital tools in helping you to stand out in a noisy inbox, so don’t waste your chance by using something boring or generic. These are excellent things to test with A/B or Multivariate testing.

• Using spammy language. There are quite a few ways to get relegated to the spam folder. But spammy language is a big one. Overused phrases and overtly sales-driven messages raise red flags for spam filters.

• Failing to authenticate your domain. This has always been important, but with new rules which came into effect in 2024, you simply won’t make it to the inbox if you haven’t ensured that the DNS records are properly updated for your sending domain. Most Email Platforms will give you clear guidance on how to do this.

• Not following laws and guidelines. Aside from the fact that it could be incredibly costly to ignore the CAN-SPAM Act, or GDPR rules, you’ll get a reputation as a spammer very quickly if you don’t ensure your campaigns are compliant. And much like your business reputation, a poor domain reputation can be hard to redeem.

• Giving up after 2 or 3 tries. Email marketing is a long term strategy which should be centred less around lead generation than it is on building valuable long term relationships. If your first few messages aren’t giving you the results you want, look for ways to test and improve, and remember that every time a subscriber sees your brand name in their inbox, it sparks a little recognition, regardless of whether they open it or not.

The role of technology in restaurant email marketing

Technology has a vital part to play in building an effective email marketing strategy for restaurants. 

It’s vital to make sure you’re capturing as much information as possible at each stage of the customer journey, and using that information properly; the right technology will not only make this possible, but easy. 

From booking a table, through to paying for their meal, your customers can be enticed to share their information for marketing purposes. And while they’re visiting your venues, you could use services such as Guest Wi-Fi as another way to ask them for permission to use their data in your marketing efforts.

The right technology, specifically designed for hospitality, can help you get the most value from your email marketing strategy; consider using an integrated hospitality EPOS system that feeds info to your CRM in real time and helps you track customer behaviour. This will help you to set up triggers within your email marketing platform to send emails at timely moments.

If your CRM doesn’t offer email marketing functionality, choose an email marketing platform that offers features like comprehensive analytics, dynamic content, and A/B Testing so that you can use your results to keep improving your campaigns. 

Getting the most from your email marketing

In this article, we’ve examined why email marketing is so important for restaurants, and how valuable it can be for hospitality operators when it’s used strategically.

We’ve looked at key strategies to get more out of your email marketing, and discussed the importance of quality data in effective email campaigns. And we’ve considered some of the more costly email marketing mistakes that you should avoid.

If you’re ready to start maximising the value of email marketing for your hospitality business, the first step is to look at how effective your data capture processes are, and how you can extract the right information from it. 

Ready to take your email marketing to the next level?

If you’d like to learn more about how Access Acteol can help you connect, segment, engage and measure your data through its Single Customer View, why not book a demo now?

Your restaurant email marketing checklist  

In this article, we’ve explored the best marketing strategies for restaurants and hospitality businesses and how you can implement them in your business.  

Check out our email marketing checklist to help you get started with powerful email marketing campaigns:  

• Software support. Check you have researched the systems required and have them in place before you devise your email marketing strategy. This will save you valuable time and money as you may already have some in place but aren’t using them to their full ability, or you may find you need to add or upgrade if not.  
• Check your marketing strategy. Take a few moments to remind yourself of the wider plans to ensure an email marketing campaign supports them and is on-brand and on-message.  
• Work your CRM. Make the most of the functions your customer relationship management system offers, including segmentation, automation and analytics, to really reap the benefits.  
• Personalise. Customers love to feel special so make the most of segmentation and personalisation tools to encourage them to feel the love for your business.  
• Think outside of the box. Be creative with your campaigns to make your email stand out in your customer’s inbox.  
• Include a call to action. Make it easy for customers to find out more about the deal or book at table.