Setting Up Email Marketing For A Restaurant

Setting Up Email Marketing For A Restaurant

Email marketing can be a great way to attract new customers to your restaurant.

It’s also becoming increasingly popular in the restaurant industry, which means that if you want to remain competitive, you need to adopt it and learn how to use it effectively.

That’s why today we are going to discuss how to set up email marketing for a restaurant.

Design Your Sales Funnel First!

Email marketing doesn’t exist in isolation – it should always be viewed in the context of your overall sales funnel.

That’s why we recommend designing your sales funnel first so that you would understand the big picture before you start setting up various email marketing campaigns.

There are several popular sales funnel models out there. Which one should you use to grow your restaurant business?

We believe that the most effective way to sell anything online is the Value Ladder sales funnel.

It was created by our co-founder Russel Brunson who then used it to take ClickFunnels from zero to $10M+ in annual revenue in just one year (it’s at $100M+ now!).

This sales funnel has four stages:

  • Bait. You offer the potential customer your lead magnet in exchange for their email address.
  • Frontend. You offer the potential customer your least expensive and least valuable product or service.
  • Middle. You offer the customer a more expensive and more valuable product or service.
  • Backend. You offer the customer your most expensive and most valuable product or service.

Ideally, you also offer a continuity program of some sort, meaning, a subscription product that generates recurring revenue.

We also recommend adding downsells, upsells, and cross-sells to these core offers in order to maximize your revenue.

The Value Ladder

The reason why this sales funnel works so well is that it allows you to:

  1. Start the relationship with that person by offering free value.
  2. Nurture that relationship by continuing to provide free value via email.
  3. Build trust by providing progressively more paid value at each stage.

Here’s how Russel explains it:

How To Build a Value Ladder Sales Funnel for Your Restaurant

Okay, now you understand the core structure of the Value Ladder sales funnel, but how can you build one for your restaurant?

It is widely believed in the hospitality industry that you need someone to come to your restaurant three times to convert them into a regular customer.

That should be the primary purpose of your Value Ladder sales funnel – you want to obtain the potential customer’s email address, then get them to come to your restaurant at least three times.

We advise structuring your Value Ladder like this:

Bait: Free Meal

The best way to get someone to check out your restaurant is to offer them a free meal. Who’s gonna say no to that?

So look at your data, figure out which dish is the customer’s favorite, then offer that dish + a drink for free.

Then create a landing page for this free offer so that you could collect people’s email addresses and start driving traffic to it with paid ads and promoting it on your social media.

You will lose money on this bait offer but probably not as much as you might think because some people will inevitably order a dessert, more drinks, etc. which will help offset some of the cost of that free meal.

Frontend Offer: Free Dessert

Okay, now that you got the potential customer’s email address, it’s time to send them another offer.

This time, instead of offering a free meal, offer a free dessert – this will incentivize them to come to your restaurant again.

People typically don’t go to a restaurant to eat just the dessert, so those who take you up on this offer will likely end up buying a main dish, a drink, or at least tea or coffee.

You might start turning a profit at this point.

Middle Offer: Free Dessert For Two People

Okay, now you want that customer to come to your restaurant for the third time, this time with someone else.

So instead of sending them another free dessert voucher for one person, send them a free dessert voucher for two people.

That way, they will be incentivized to bring another potential customer to your restaurant, possibly someone who has never been there before.

Backend Offer: Kids Eat Free!

Now that customer has visited your restaurant three times. They are on their way to becoming a regular!

If your restaurant is family-friendly, send them a “Kids Eat Free” voucher, which will incentivize them to bring their entire family next time.

And if your restaurant isn’t family-friendly, then you can offer some sort of group discount, so that they would be incentivized to bring a group of friends instead.

This will introduce your restaurant to even more people!

What’s Next?

Once you have sent all four offers, you need to figure out how to stay in touch with your new subscriber without annoying them with endless promotional emails.

The best way to do that is to launch a monthly newsletter that will give you an excuse to email them on a regular basis.

The key here is to make sure that the newsletter content provides value even if the subscriber isn’t interested in the offers you are promoting.

Here are some ideas:

  • Share links to interesting food-related content such as articles, podcasts, and videos.
  • Create your own educational content designed to help your subscribers improve their cooking skills.
  • Interview interesting people who work in the restaurant industry. You can start with your own team!

Then, at the end of the email, share restaurant news and have a specific offer with a call to action.

This is a much better approach to email marketing than bombarding your subscribers with random offers all the time.

Of course, if you have a time-sensitive offer, such as a Valentine’s Day special, you can send a broadcast email to let your subscribers know about it.

But be careful and don’t overdo it. What matters is that people continue opening your emails. And a genuinely valuable newsletter is the best way to achieve that. So play the long game.

Email Marketing Best Practices

There are some email marketing best practices that we recommend implementing if you want to get the most out of your email marketing efforts:

  • Make sure that your subject lines are compelling. The subject line is the most important element of any email. Why?
  • Because it determines whether or not that email will get opened. And if the recipient doesn’t open it, then the content of it doesn’t matter.

    So think about why the subscriber should read that particular email. What’s in it for them? Emphasize that in the subject line.

  • Enhance your emails with relevant images. Say, if you are promoting a new dish, include a photo of it in that email. Just make sure that your food photos are taken by a professional who specializes in food photography.
  • Have a clear call to action at the end of each email. Every email must have a purpose. What do you want the subscriber to do next? You need to tell them that.
  • Consider also adding a call-to-action button to your emails. Call-to-action text links can work well but actual buttons tend to do better. You can A/B test this to see what works best for your business.

  • Optimize the emails with your core offers. Use split testing to optimize the subject lines, the body copy, and the calls to action of those four initial emails. Do the same for any other emails that you add to that autoresponder sequence. If it’s something that you will be automatically sending to all new subscribers then you should optimize it as much as possible.
  • Use marketing automation to make your emails more relevant. Marketing automation allows you to create automated email workflows where the subscriber’s behavior determines what emails they are going to get in the future.
  • Say, if you send them a free meal offer, you can create a workflow that splits into different paths depending on whether or not they opened the email and then on whether they actually used that free meal voucher.

    This can help you ensure that every email is as relevant to that particular subscriber as possible, which is a much better approach than simply sending the same generic emails to everyone.

Build A Sales Funnel For Your Restaurant with ClickFunnels 2.0!

ClickFunnels 2.0 has everything you need to build a sales funnel for your restaurant.

  • Sales funnel and landing page templates.
  • Visual editor that you can use to customize those templates.
  • Email marketing functionality that allows you to send broadcast emails, set up automated email sequences, and create email workflows with behavioral triggers.

What’s best is that we have a free trial which means that you can check out our software without any risk.

So why not start building your Value Ladder sales funnel today?

Start Your Free Trial

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