Direct Marketing Value for Restaurants

Updated September 7th 2013

Direct marketing counts among the best methods of getting your promotions to your customers without influence from other marketing mediums like billboards and newspapers. It includes many forms such as printed ads and direct mail.

Direct Marketing involves reaching out to your customers in a concrete way by sending all the promotional materials directly to them. To achieve this you have to come up with innovative ideas that will have a positive impact on your business. Predominately the best customers for direct marketing are former and regular customers as you have their contact information in your database. This makes it easy to email, call, or text them. It also shows the importance of collecting as much information as possible about a customer.

Building a proper database goes a long way and ensures that your direct marketing campaign would be a success. Today’s CRM options are affordable so technology provides all necessary tools to create such a valuable and useful database. The information collected should be as comprehensive as possible. You need to know the clients name, address, contact information, email addresses and phone numbers. Keep records of their preferences, the amount they spend and other important personal details. This makes it easy to send the right message to the relevant customer and encourage them to visit your restaurant again.

Consider tools like Infusionsoft or CREDEMA that offer besides their CRM, easy to use Email Marketing and Marketing Automation tools. With these you can trigger actions based on web visitor’s behaviour, personalize communication and handle endless clients at once. Your company will look reliable, professional, responsive and personal. The only thing needed is some contact information.

There are numerous effective methods of collecting customer information in the restaurant. The easiest is by conducting customer surveys on your restaurants website. Here the customer has to leave all their personal information when filling in the survey form. Always ensure that you ask if they would like to receive any notifications and emails from you to avoid inconveniencing them.

Another effective method is by collecting information when you interact or conduct transactions with your customer. Here the POS system comes in handy as you get to keep all the information about those clients who use credit cards. You can install special software to track their spending habits and frequency of their visits. Whenever a customer orders a takeout or makes a reservation you can easily record their information into your database. You can also organize a simple contest or giveaway where customers have to provide their information when registering. Finally, you can obtain customer information from social websites especially if your restaurant has a social account. Important is that you give your future registered member something of value for the contact details provided.

Once you have successfully created a comprehensive database, the next step involves developing a suitable promotion. The promotion must be beneficial and enticing for it to achieve its objective. Avoid annoying your customers by sending them irrelevant or uninteresting text messages and emails. For effective communication it is best to personalize the promotions by mailing specific offers to a given customer group rather than all the customers in the database.

You can use the information you have in the database to your advantage when developing a suitable promotion. For instance the ordering habits and frequency with which a customer visits your establishment will go a long way in determining the right promotion to send to your customer. Other details like the amount a customer spends, occupation, date of birth, and size of family are also crucial in categorizing as well as developing effective promotion for your customers.

After you have successfully developed promotions for your customers you can start direct marketing. There are a number of strategies you can use to achieve this. Listed below are the most effective methods of directly marketing your restaurant.

• First we have Email marketing- This is one of the most effective direct marketing strategy given the advancement in technology. Currently e-mails are the preferred mode of communication to traditional print mail. Almost everybody has an email account and they check it regularly. Another advantage of this method is that it is cheaper and faster compared to other methods of communication.
• Next we have Text messages-They are as efficient as emails and more appropriate for this period as compared to traditional print mail. This method allows you to reach as many customers as possible within a short period of time and at a lower cost. However, you need to consult your customer before sending them a message as research shows that very few people like receiving marketing texts from restaurants.
• Next we have Direct Mail- this method (though not popular) is very effective and suitable for certain groups of clients. Older clientele prefer this to e-mail messages. Customers are also more likely to pay better attention to the mail at home as they have enough time to go through it. Another advantage of this method is it cannot be easily deleted like e-mails and text messages. However, the number of mails to customers should be reasonable and limited.
• Finally we have Telemarketing-This method is not very popular as most people don’t like receiving telemarketing calls. However it can be useful in some instances when you want to remind companies that have used your facility to host events or parties.

 

Keep in mind that people tend to forget about promotions easily. Your promotion should therefore also have an expiry date as this will encourage your customers to use it within the specified period. Additionally, you should ensure that the marketing material gets to your customers a week or two in advance giving them ample time to use it.

The final and most important step in your direct marketing campaign is to analyse its success. In case any email or text message you sent is undeliverable, then the contact information is inaccurate and has to be removed from the database. Monitor the response and customer behaviour on the messages and emails you sent out. After the promotion, carry out a marketing assessment to check if the campaign was successful. This will help you avoid any problems in future.

Written by Daniel Grossmann