Restaurant branding, marketing and other notes on various design topics » email marketing

Do Daily Deals Encourage Repeat Business?

Joseph Szala — Tue, 19 Jul 2011 10:12:46 +0000

A lot of restaurants are concerned about whether or not daily deals like Groupon, Living Social and various others actually encourage repeat business, or if they’re just a great way to throw away food. EMarketer just posted some statistics on the subject that break down the results you can expect. Click here for the full article on emarketer.com

Official launch of BRIO, turbo-charged email marketing

Joseph Szala — Tue, 14 Jun 2011 15:42:52 +0000

We’ve had a number of our clients on our system, BRIO for quite some time. Now, I’ve finally made it formal with the launch of the “face” of BRIO. I’ve tailored the system to focus on restaurants, cafés, bars, and the like as I think that market is completely underserved when it comes to email marketing in general. The fact is, there are many nuances to marketing via email that most places just don’t explain to restaurant owners and chefs. BRIO is different. It’s turnkey. Read more at www.blastwithbrio.com

Study: Subscribers Eager to Open Deal Emails

Joseph Szala — Tue, 12 Apr 2011 07:40:42 +0000

eMarketer listed a study today that shows that subscribers to emails are eager to open daily email especially when they contain deals. Read the quick article here »

The fact is, when people subscribe to a newsletter they EXPECT to see emails. They want them. If you keep the content interesting and don’t abuse their information, you have active, avid readers. That’s undivided attention from your market. They’ve already bought in. Deals are one way to keep interest, but you don’t have to break the bank with a deal every email. Try sending an image and description of a new special dish, maybe highlight a server of the month. Give people ways to attach to your restaurant experience. Give them some personal, one-on-one time through your email marketing. Don’t make it all about you you you. Think about what you’d want to read in your inbox. Think about THEM.

Customer interaction doesn’t end with the sale

Joseph Szala — Tue, 03 Aug 2010 17:29:40 +0000

A lot of companies stop email marketing to their clients after the sale. Retention is the new acquisition as it’s easier to sell to current and past clients than it is to gain new clients. Over at the Get Response Blog, they’ve posted a great article on how to build a better email marketing program with regard to eCommerce. Check it out.

Consumers tend to layer their engagement with brands on social sites

Joseph Szala — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 15:14:03 +0000

eMarketer’s latest research indicates a layering effect with consumers brand engagement. Social sites have given people a way to experience a brand and stay updated with happenings. However, consumers don’t select just one media. Instead they layer it as shown in the diagram below.

Read the rest of the article at eMarketer.com

What is the right email marketing service for you?

Joseph Szala — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 23:05:56 +0000

Every business should be engaging in some form of email marketing or another. Whether frequent or infrequent, staying in front of your customers is marketing 101. There are hundreds of email marketing service providers out there and that can be overwhelming. Who do you use? What’s a good deal? What features should they provide? Let’s dig a little deeper as we outline what the right ESP is for your restaurant and/or company.

In order to establish the right service provider for email marketing, first you need to answer a couple of questions.

1. How many email marketing messages do you plan on sending per month or year?

2. How many people have subscribed to your email list?

3. Do you have an ad agency or designer on contract?

Frequent Emails, Large Lists, with or without a Designer

If you’re sending out email blasts once or more per month, then you need to look into a monthly fee service provider. The top three that we have used and like are MailChimp.com, iContact.com and Fishbowl.com. They all offer templates that you can customize and allow you send out as many emails as you would like as many times as you would like per month.

Infrequent email marketing, small lists with a designer or agency

If you’re more of a quarterly email type of company or marketer. Look to a service that charges per email sent. We’ve used CampaignMonitor religiously for these types of clients. You will probably need some technical knowledge to navigate this service.

Infrequent email marketing, small lists without a designer or agency

We suggest going with a service like MailChimp.com or Fishbowl.com. The user interfaces are extremely simple and they have templates you can customize.
All in all, you want to have the ability to review the statistics on your campaigns. Who is opening them? Where do they click? Do they convert? Whose emails bounced? They must also manage subscribing and unsubscribing.

Don’t think that these email marketing service providers are providing something that Outlook can do just fine. That’s simply not true. Choose a vendor and see the results.