Restaurant email marketing tips and strategies for 2022

With so many digital marketing options available across social media and the broader web, many restaurant owners overlook the simple email as an effective tool for building and reaching out to their clientele. But trust us, an intentional and value-driven email marketing campaign can help you to bring new customers in the door and inspire your loyal customers to pop in for a meal.

As we noted over on our business blog, spending time and money on an email list is quite likely to pay off. Research shows small business owners can expect an average return of $36 for every $1 spent on email marketing.

Like anything new, it can be hard to figure out where to start. Luckily, there are a lot of tools available to help you develop your restaurant email marketing strategy.

Whether you choose to tackle it yourself or work with one of the many email marketing services available, a regular plan for promotional emails is one of the most effective marketing tools available to any small business.

Grow your customer email list

It’s not always easy to get customers to sign up for restaurant email marketing. Many people tend to think of promotional emails as just more junk mail they don’t want. So it’s essential to give a good reason for them to want to hear from you. We’ll talk more about email content later on, but for the moment, let’s focus on putting together your restaurant email list so that those emails have a good audience.

One of the first opportunities you’ll have to invite your patrons to join your email list is when they’re in the restaurant. You can add an invitation to sign up on each guest check. To make it fun and easy, you can also put a QR code on the bill, or perhaps a table tent, if it goes with your restaurant’s style.

Beyond that in-person opportunity, your restaurant website is the most natural way to get started with restaurant email marketing. This is especially true for new customers. A lot of potential diners will encounter your business for the first time online, and it’s a perfect opportunity to turn a curious browser into a happy diner.

Plenty of first chances present themselves on your landing pages after clicking a link from a search engine or your Yelp page. For a few ideas on basic website design, take a look at our guide to more effective restaurant marketing. If you’re web design savvy, you can add an email opt-in field to your page on your own, but if not, you can find a service to do it for you.

In the past two years the restaurant industry has been undeniably shaken up by the COVID-19 pandemic. While this has been hard on everyone’s bottom line across the board, there are some silver linings.

With a greater emphasis on delivery and takeout, customers have become more receptive to loyalty programs and email newsletters that allow for them to stay in touch with their favorite off-premise dining choices. As the world continues to open up more and more, people have become more interested in dining out, and you can reach them through email marketing.

Tailor your content so subscribers want to click

As important as it is to grow your list of contacts, that list won’t get you very far if your subscribers don’t have a reason to look at your promotional emails. The content ideas you use should have a central purpose: Add value to your email subscriber’s life to make sure they don’t click that “unsubscribe” button.

Think about what’s exciting for a customer when you write your email. Customers love special offers and hearing about any seasonal or new menu items you might be offering. Keep your marketing ideas fresh and exciting, and you can stand out from the inbox crowd with a cleverly worded email subject line, like “Super deals for watching the Super Bowl on our giant 100-inch screen!”

As soon as a customer decides to opt in to your restaurant email list, you have your first opportunity to begin building customer loyalty. A welcome email should contain a coupon or other special offers and an invitation to explore your other marketing channels. It’s also a great time to introduce your customers to more of what you have to offer them.

The welcome email is a perfect opportunity to find out a bit more about your new customers. You can request that they fill out a profile so you can send out birthday emails and even special offers for anniversaries. Even though this is easily handled through automation, recognizing customers’ special days helps deepen your relationship with them.

Restaurant email marketing can be a great way to help invite your customers back into the dining room as COVID policies ebb and flow. You can announce changes in local restrictions and in your restaurant’s seating policy, and offer unique, dine-in only special offers.

Among the most effective ways to get customers in the door is integration with Yelp Guest Manager. This front-of-house software enables customers to book reservations, order takeout, and check in on a digital waitlist. All of these features can be easily linked to in your marketing email messages, and make it extremely easy to bring customers back into the dining room.

However you choose to compose your messages, you want to make them accessible by:

• Keeping the message short and sweet
• Providing links to other marketing platforms like your website, social media, and your Yelp page
• Adding an incentivized call to action

All of these details are part of email marketing best practices.

Streamline your messages into an effective restaurant email marketing campaign

We’ve touched on methods for building a customer contact list and tips for composing attention-grabbing emails, and now it’s time to look at assembling the different pieces into a profit-boosting restaurant email marketing strategy.

An email marketing campaign should be consistent, but not to the extent that it feels like a burden. Even your most loyal customers probably don’t want to be receiving a newsletter every week. Quarterly works well, monthly does too, but any more frequently than that could start to feel a bit annoying. Remember: As important as it is to keep in touch with your customers, you want your marketing efforts to be fun and exciting, not bothersome.

Depending on what resources you have available in-house, it could be highly beneficial to make use of email marketing software, or even a full-scale, outsourced service.

When composing an email newsletter, you don’t always have to start from scratch. There are an abundance of email templates available for free or as part of an email marketing software package.

Mailchimp has been around for a long time, and includes a free option for small businesses. Constant Contact is another growing and very robust choice.

Once you’ve got the ball rolling, an email marketing campaign can do a lot of good as part of your broader online integration. A few automated emails will keep your business on customers’ minds and can help drive traffic to your website and social media profiles, as well as through the front door.

Getting your message out there

Integration is key when it comes to building an online marketing strategy. For your outreach programs to be most effective, you want to make sure your business web page, social media platforms, and Yelp page and resources are all linked up and at the customer’s fingertips. Restaurant email marketing is a vital part of that, creating a regular form of personal correspondence with your customers.

Yelp Guest Manager can be another profit-generating part of your online presence. Many of our services can help to streamline your interaction with your clientele, and we’d love to show you more of how we can help grow your business and revenue stream.

Be sure to check out all of our tools for increasing your revenue stream here, and see how they can work alongside a strong email marketing campaign to help your restaurant grow.