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Email marketing to fill the tables of your restaurant

Imagen Email marketing to fill the tables of your restau

There are restaurants of all kinds: the romantic perfect for couples, the familiar where children have space to play or the business menu for those who never eat at home. But all have one thing in common: an empty table is synonymous of losing money. Email marketing is a way to get fill your tables with just dedicating a few hours a week.

The first thing to think about is what kind of email campaign are you planning to send to your subscribers. Here you have some ideas to get you started to imagine how could be your newsletter:

Menú: It is the easiest way to remind your customers that can come to enjoy your meals. It can be weekly, to highlight a dish or by season change.
Special dates: Related to the above, and now that the holiday season is approaching, inform your customers about the menus you are going to prepare for holidays. Like this, you'll give them an exclusive to make the reservation on a priority basis.
Promotions: To encourage subscribers with a special discount is very simple with a coupon for online reservations. This will also serve to get new customers if you allow this coupon could be forwarded to a friend.
Events: If in your restaurant you celebrate a meeting, presentation or exhibition of pictures, send before an email campaign encouraging them to visit it. Combined with the above, you can offer a special menu.
Be close: Explain with pictures some secret of the chef, how the products arrive to the restaurant or how the tables are organized each morning. Allowing to know what happens in your restaurant is a way to give confidence to customers.
Contest: you can encourage your subscribers to send and share photos of your dishes in their social networks, for example, in exchange for an invitation to an special dish.

The next step is to publicize your new newsletter. The most obvious place is your website: Add a form clearly explaining the benefits of being a Subscriber. If you accept reservations online, use them to pick up new sign ups. You can also use your own restaurant to get new subscribers. For example, ask them to give you permisson to send them your emails in the satisfaction survey or encourage them to visit your website in the ticket or in an additional card.

In addition to their basic information or the type of food that they like most, there are two fields we recommend you include in your sign up form: the desired frequency of email campaigns and the type of messages that they want to receive.Perhaps the social networks are the ideal place to share the daily menu but make a daily email campaign could be annoying. Let them decide them and thus you'll ensure better opening ratios.

You can also ask them their date of birth to invite them to a bottle of champagne if they come to celebrate it with you and have some other detail with them like a cake or a better table. Of course, don't make this field as 'required' or ask them to fill it when they've been customers for some time.

The last step is to prepare your email campaign template. A basic recommendation is that you include in your emails the kitchen hours. Highlight the dates if you're informing about menus, also the subject line and the preheader. And dont forget to make it responsive just in case customers forget to print your coupon and have to show it to you or to comfortably read the indications that youve sent them together with their reservation to find out how to get to your restaurant.

If you are planning your email marketing strategy with time, you'll see how, with just a few hours a week, you'll get to fill more tables.

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