e-mail madness for restaurants

It's winter. It's a new year. It's a birthday, twenty years of Westside Pizza. Westside decided to celebrate by offering up two pizzas for twenty bucks. Sent out on December 31st, you have ten days to take them up on this offer.

It's a good offer, but Westside could have done more to get me to take it up. They could have positioned this offer to drive more business around it as well.

Let's start with the timing. New Year's is a time for parties. New Year's Eve is also a time that people go out. Given that folks are busy, this might not be the best time to be sending them the one e-mail that announced this offer.

One e-mail isn't enough anyway. Hung over on a Friday, maybe even having a family to feed, a New Year greeting the afternoon of the First would make sense, of course reminding customers of the offer, and that they don't really have to cook today if they don't want to. I'd follow up on the 6th, a Wednesday, and again leading into the last weekend of the offer on the 8th.

This might sound like a lot of e-mails. And we obviously don't want to drive our customers away, but if done right though, we wouldn't. We've asked our customers how often we can contact them (here's my sample form), and we can dial it in even more. We will adjust their e-mails according to their preferences. And we give them an opportunity to adjust their preferences at the bottom of every e-mail.

At the next level, this would be integrated with the sales system, and follow up sequences would appropriately trail buying activity.

As I look at their site, there are two other things Westside could consider. One, send out an announcement a few days before New Year's to let people know that Westside can provision their parties (or feed their kids and babysitter while the parents are out partying).

The second is to offer party-sized portions. You see Westside doesn't only do Pizza. They have oven-baked pasta, salads, and some fun desserts. They could offer up larger portions or even put together party packages.

Please feel free to visit my site for more thoughts on e-mail marketing for restaurants:

Restro Maestro

Disclaimer: I have no relationship to Westside Pizza other than visiting its site. When I use the term “we,” I mean it as an we e-mail marketers and nothing more.

I signed onto the list of Riverhouse in February. This was on a wedding oriented page. Since then, I've received four e-mails: an invite for Easter brunch (February 27), a July/August newsletter (July 30), and an invite to book my holiday parties (August 25). Why would I get these e-mails if I want to get married?

I got to Riverhouse by way of its marketing for Belle Terrace at Avon Old Farms (recently reopened as The Northhouse by it's new proprietors, the Chabot Family, which also owns Farmington Gardens). Neither the website nor the e-mail campaigns are doing all they could to drive business to these companies.

This is what I'd do if I were developing for Riverhouse or Farmington:

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Gramma D's is an Italian American Restaurant and Pizzeria in Walton New York, a Village of about 3100 people in the Town of Walton, about 5600.

It's a cash only kind of place with about 40 seats and a three and a half stars on three Yelp reviews. It sits across the street from a McDonalds on the half a mile of Delaware Street where New York Routes 10 and 206 overlap.

I travelled past it on my way to Ithaca with my parents. They opted for McDonalds. It's a known quantity and that's a little more important to them than trying a new place.

I walked around the town while they did McDonalds, and as we were passing back through town again on our way home, and had someone to meet, I suggested we have a little adventure and visit Gramma D's.

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As my clients and followers know, my e-mail madness service is about using e-mail to bring in:

• More Loyal Customers
• More Often
• (especially on the “off” days)
• Boosting the Bottom Line

This month, I'm going to look at Maggie McFly's, a Connecticut restaurant with five locations. Maggie McFly's considers its sweet spot to be the family, but does a lot to make itself relevant to anyone who wants a solid American dining experience. It gets mixed reviews on Yelp with an average three star rating at most of its restaurants, and has been doing a nice job, especially recently, in responding to customer comments. This is always done in the name of Ray Harper, the owner, as it ought to be. It looks to have some very loyal fans. That's always a good place to start. It has obviously attained some level of success.

But we know the restaurant industry often runs on tight margins, and when we can bring our loyal customers around even one more time a month, it can have a nice impact on our bottom line. And I think we can do a lot better than that.

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