Restaurants often offer a daily special the chef may create that morning. How can they let their customers know what the special is that day? Text message marketing!
Email marketing campaigns work well but the open rate has declined quite a bit in recent years and not everyone is constantly connected to their social media accounts but they WILL check their text messages quite often.
Text message open rate is a whopping 97% and are often read within 10 minutes. This ensures the message, although short and sweet, will be read.
How does this work?
The customers must opt-in to the mobile marketing list so all messages sent to their cell phone will be permission-based. This is not spamming. The customer actually wants to know what the specials are so they have freely given their mobile number to receive these text message on their cell phones.
To join the restaurant’s text message marketing list, customer texts keyword “sushi” to short code 69302 (sample only.)
Customer receives an automated text message right back. Maybe something like, “Thanks for joining our Mobile VIP List! Show this text to receive a free sushi roll with your next purchase.”
By completing this step, the customer has ‘opted in’ to join the mobile distribution list they can text this person in the future to keep him/her connected.
To get customers and potential customers to opt into a mobile marketing list, restaurants may promote the keyword and short code on table tents in the restaurant, on flyers, ads, on social media and websites. Training wait staff and bartenders to encourage patrons to opt-in is also helpful. When the customer logs in, they will be notified of approximately how many text messages per week they plan to send and instructions on how to STOP or opt-out of the list any time. This line of information should be mandatory to comply with anti-spam regulations.
For a restaurant to create and manage a mobile marketing campaign such as this, they will need to set up an account with a text message marketing provider. Very much like many businesses need an email service provider to send bulk email campaigns and newsletters, it’s basically the same set up for bulk SMS or text message marketing campaigns to manage contacts, set up campaigns and track the effectiveness of each campaign.
The daily special promotion is only one of many ideas a restaurant might be able to implement in a mobile marketing campaign.
To find out more about SMS (short message service) bulk text messaging services, please contact a Creative Links representative or visit Mobile Marketing Studio and sign up for a free trail.
