In the marketing industry, email remains one of the most popular and most effective ways to reach customers. In the restaurant industry, email marketing can be a great way to build customer loyalty and brand recognition. It’s cheap, it’s easy, and it’s proven to bring customers in the door. So why aren’t more restaurants using it?

There’s no point in sending out an email if you don’t have anyone on your list. There’s also no point if the people on your list don’t patronize your restaurant. Tantalize your customers with deals and prizes to collect their email addresses. For example, use a raffle to collect email addresses, or offer 10% off coupons in exchange for signing up through your restaurant’s website.

Sending unsolicited email is also known as SPAM, and we all know how annoying that is. That’s why the best way to collect email addresses is to offer a little something in return and get your customer to volunteer their email address. It’s also important to make sure your customers understand that they are signing up to receive emails. Make it clear that they will be hearing from you in the future.

Every email marketing beginner thinks it’s a great idea to send out emails full of information about themselves and their business. The hard truth is, however, that your customer really doesn’t want to be bothered reading an email about a restaurant. What they do want know is when your happy hour is and what days you offer specials. Don’t send an email unless you have something to offer. Otherwise you’re just clogging up an already busy email inbox.

Use coupon codes or some other system to track the success of your email marketing campaign. Try different types of offers and see which ones have the highest conversion rate. In other words, does a 10% off coupon on any meal over $25 work better than a buy one, get one free drink during happy hour deal? The only way to know for sure is to get customers who heard about the deal through your email campaign to use a code when redeeming their discount.

In general, you shouldn’t be sending out emails more than once a week, and twice a month is probably a better route. No matter how frequently you decide to send out email, stick to the same schedule so that customers begin to expect your emails on the same day. This will improve the chances that your email will be opened and read.

There are a variety of options out there: Feedblitz, MailChimp, ConstantContact, Emma. These services usually charge you per email or per number of subscribers. Choose one that works for you and pay the money for a proper system. Don’t try to send emails out from your Hotmail account. For one thing, it looks unprofessional. For another, you will get labeled as spam sooner or later. These email services also have great tracking functions that provide important information, like how many people opened your emails, how many clicked links in your emails, etc.No Spam In Your Email Marketing

Words like free and buy now cause automatic spam filters to flag an incoming email message. Punctuation like lots of exclamation marks and all capitalized letters will also set off the alarm. Avoid these spammy looking words and punctuation in your emails like the plague. For more info on avoiding spam filters, check out this blog post.