Jenna’s Blog
Here’s What’s Working...
and How YOU Can Profit from It!
“I know what Loyal Rewards promotions are working best... and here’s where I’ll share them with you.
Plus tips, strategies, hot trends, and secrets of today’s most successful
e-marketers. So bookmark this page now or sign up for free email updates. I’ll help you create promotions that your customers will find irresistible!”
Don't ask people what they think about your ad. Judge effectiveness by running it and seeing how the market responds. You don't care if people like your ad... only that it gets them to spend money!
People respond better to an offer for a dollar amount off of a purchase rather than a percentage off. People can easily deduct x amount of dollars off of a price, whereas figuring out the percentage off actually requires a bit of brain power. This applies even if the percentage off would yield a bigger savings.
Although it sounds counter intuitive, teaching your prospects how to do what you do actually makes them appreciate your services more. For instance, teach them how to do their own oil changes, step-bystep. They'll love you for the advice... but hardly any will attempt it on their own. Instead, they'll realize how messy it can be... what specialized tools it requires... how difficult it is to do correctly… and how long it will take them... which makes them actually value your service more than ever before. Your instructional ad grabs their attention and gets high readership. And your coupon (don't forget that!) is conveniently there for them to redeem so they don't have to get their hands dirty. Get it? It's a highly effective psychological ploy that works tremendously well.
As simple as it seems, most retailers today don't acknowledge the presence of their customers when they walk through their doors. Do you? It's as if saying, "hello" requires a major expenditure of time and effort. It's especially important if you're busy serving another customer. Saying, "Hello! I'll be right with you!" lets patrons know:
1) You value their visit,
2) You think they're important enough to acknowledge (they're the ones who help you feed your family... did you forget this?),
3) You're aware they're waiting, and
4) You won't keep them waiting any longer than absolutely necessary. (After all... they want to give you their money!)
Train every employee to acknowledge your customers. If they won't do it, then acknowledge their lack of employment.
This week we had a huge Loyal Rewards customer cancel his email account with us to switch to text marketing. I sent a final email to his customers telling them they are discontinuing the email program in lieu of text marketing. I have received over 100 replies to their last email – here's what their customers have to say:
· I am your best customer--I don't text--I guess you don't need my business--thanks a lot
· I don't think that is fair. I don't have texting and I am a great customer. So I feel like I am being cheated and left out.
· Very sad to see you're going away from the email coupons. I don't text, and won't, so I'll not be able to use your coupons. Thus, probably won't visit much anymore :(
· Great you are going totally to texting and discontinuing e-mails -- too bad for you as i do NOT text on my cell phone. You lose a customer
· Not everyone has cell phones and do texting!! What about us? NO MORE EMAILS, NO MORE BUSINESS!!!
· Well sorry I can’t be a part of your program, I DO NOT text. Guess you will lose some customer’s by going to just a text program.
We are only eliminating an email program, not a loyalty program where their customers have earned points. Keep this in mind if you are considering a loyalty program -- Since only 7% of restaurants use loyalty programs, history has proven that few businesses stay with their loyalty program for the long term – and when you cancel it, you lose customers.
Moms are the best. They encourage us to be better, scold us when were wrong and scoop us up when we fall. Simply put, they are our biggest fans.
While motherly prodding is sometimes annoying, there's no denying that 'momisms guide us through lots of sticky situations and come in handy when we least expect them to.
Moms even know what they're talking about when it comes to working on your email marketing campaign. Follow this advice for a mom-approved campaign.
Treat Others the Way You Like to be Treated
Its the golden rule, and really quite simple to adhere to. Your email list is made up of people, and those email addresses that you covet really belong to human beings.
Don't talk at them, but engage in conversation and invite feedback in a friendly and polite manner.
Be Yourself
Everyone is a little quirky. Use your uniqueness to your advantage and make your emails a reflection of your personal style. Your personality sets you apart, and it could be the edge that brings subscribers back for more.
Mind Your P's and Q's
Remember though, just because your email reflects your personality does not mean it is the right stage for your personal rants and raves.
Be polite; don't discuss topics that might offend your subscribers or you might have to wash out your mouth with soap!
You Catch More Flies with Honey Than Vinegar
Be like Hugh Honey, not Vick Vinegar. Use an incentive in your web form to sweeten the deal. Outline the benefits to subscribing to your list, and always use positive language. If you constantly berate your competitors, subscribers will pick up on your negativity.
What If Everyone Jumped Off a Cliff? Would You Jump Too?
Sometimes doing the right thing is hard. Its not easy to build a list, but in the long run you will win when you have legitimate and engaged subscribers.
Never Be Too Proud to Ask For Help When You Need It
Were always here to help. Give us a call or send us an email if you ever have questions!
If what you're selling is worth buying… it's also worth showing! Don't just talk about your food… show it! Don't just say how much your brake service is… show a mechanic doing the work! Don't just run a coupon for $20 off a massage… show someone enjoying the service in a beautiful, relaxing setting. Remember: the idea is to put images into people's heads. The easiest way to do this is with photos and illustrations!
Restaurant Marketing Expert Joel Cohen featured these tips in his 4/15 newletter, Wow #205. Thought these may be helpful to you...
-Restaurants that don't get creative are missing out on a whole bunch of fun and sales. And fun is the best way to keep your staff motivated and put a smile on guest faces. Restaurants have forgotten that weird, whacky and wonderful is a great differentiator when your competitors are doing the same old tired stuff and sending out the same old tired looking email newsletters.
-So what do you do about it? Try getting out of the way of the same old thing and the same old tapes. There are no rules anymore. Everything's changed. You have guest permission to be entertaining, to start a fun department with your staff and to even change your title on your business card to "Director Of Fun."
The March issue of Restaurant Business has a great article about the power of giving your customers a free offer.
The word has such a strong connotation it leads people to gamble away their hard earned money under the believe they can beat house odds in Vegas, so why wouldn't it work to get customers through your door?
In his recent book Predictably Irrational, Dan Ariely puts it best, "Free gives us such an emotional charge that we perceive what is being offers as immensely more valuable then it really is" Ariely believes the power of free is related to our intrinsic fear of loss. With free, there is no fear of loss, as, well, it's free.
We believe the power of free products or services works on two levels. The first has to do with engendering a sense of surprise, delight and excitement. With all of the anxiety regarding the current economic climate, free products make the consumer feel good in a way that lower prices or sale prices cannot. Put another way, it's the shopper's job to hunt down the best prices, it's the retailer's job to surprise them and make them feel better.
The other reason free succeeds is related to universal cultural norms regarding reciprocity. As most of us realize, the unilateral giving of a gift compels one to return the favor, however small the gift may be. And because this is a cultural thing, it is a very powerful force. By now most of us have endured the uncomfortable experience of being surprised by a gift—say at a holiday party--when we have brought nothing to 'return the favor' Extrapolating this effect to the retail level (i.e., bestowing a surprise gift upon a shopper) may seem less consequential, but there is an effect there, however subtle.
Social media is a partner, not a threat, to email marketing because it provides new avenues for sharing and engaging customers and prospects.
"Even though people are spending more time using social media, they are not abandoning e-mail,” said Debra Aho Williamson, eMarketer senior analyst and author of the new report, "Maximizing the E-Mail/Social Media Connection." "The two channels can help each other, offering the opportunity for marketers to create deeper connections."
So far, the consensus of the value social media adds to e-mail marketing has been in the area of softer metrics. 81% of marketers surveyed by MarketingSherpa in summer 2009 said social media helped to expand the reach of their e-mail content, most likely because of sharing buttons incorporated into e-mail newsletters. A further 78% said social helped to increase brand awareness.
Bottom line? Social Media helps build your brand, email marketing get people thru your door.
We recently surveyed some of our clients - here's an interesting thing we found:
Many people admit they are not aggressive enough in collecting emails (either not asking directly or not attempting to collect much) Those that DO ask directly generally get a good response. Need help or ideas to collect emails? Just ask us - we know what works! Watch this 2 minute video to learn how to effectively build an email database:
A well-respected advertising guru stated these two direct marketing truths:
1) "Direct marketing is the only medium that allows you to use hard numbers to plan, engineer, and measure programs" and
2) "Most people still don’t use the numbers to plan, engineer and measure programs."
Hopefully you understand Truth #1 and don’t practice Truth #2. For example, make sure you save the gift certificates your customers redeem and then calculate the response rate you’re getting. More importantly, always track how many sales and customers you make so you know the exact ROI you’re getting. Something that’s virtually impossible with any other form of marketing!
Why spend time, money and effort sending email marketing campaigns if you don’t know if you are making sales from them? You cannot improve your campaigns if you don’t measure the success of them. Watch this 2 minute video to learn how to make the most of you email marketing dollars:
Here's great Valentine's advice from marketing expert Michael Attias.
February is here and that means Valentine's Day. This holiday ranks as one of the largest dining out days of the year. Who doesn't want to treat their sweetheart to flowers, chocolate and of course a romantic dinner? Forget one or all of the previous, and you and Fido will be spending the night chasing rabbits in the backyard.
Restaurants count on Valentine's Day to deliver a flood of sales and profits. Why not get more bang for your restaurant marketing buck? No need to limit Cupid to just a single day of waiting tables. Dub the entire month of February, "Romance Month".
This gives you four weekends to get your register bells ringing, not to mention the days in between. Here are some out-of-the-box profitable ideas to make the most of this restaurant marketing love-fest.
The French call it a Prix Fixe menu, I call it bundling. Create a romantic dinner for two that includes an appetizer, salads, two entrees, dessert and a bottle of wine or champagne. By limiting choices, you can control your inventory and profits. Your chef and kitchen staff will appreciate less stress by simplifying the menu.
Bonus gifts, or the little extras, will help you make the sale, or should I say reservation. Offer bottles of wine, movie tickets or roses with qualifying purchase. Any ad specialty rep can find you low cost; high perceived gifts like freshwater pearls to give away with an advanced reservation.
Help your customers look like heroes with the love of their life and they'll reward you all month long.
Would you like your customers to come back more frequently? Then email them!
Research shows email is the fastest, lowest-cost way to bring your customers back more often. Email gives you back $57.25 for every dollar spent according to Direct Marketing Association research.
Click Here to watch this 2-minute video about growing your business with email marketing.
A "story mover" is an old sales term that refers to a dramatic story a salesperson would tell his prospect to help influence them to buy. It's a powerful technique that works equally well in print advertising. For example, let's say you’re having a sale. Just advertising "SAVE 25%" has limited impact because it's so commonplace. However, if you tell people that the reason you're having a sale is because, for example, Mondays are typically slow days and you want to stimulate business and keep your (mechanics, cooks, bakers, drycleaners, employees of any kind) working, you’ve played the credibility card and given them something that makes sense. Try it in your next ad!
It’s crazy! You spend a fortune placing ads, and after you finally attract customers and sell them, how often do you follow up? Auto shops, for example, all have their customers' phone numbers, yet hardly any of them do. That's why doing so makes a tremendous impression. Cost? 1 minute of your time. Worth it? You bet your life! Start this week!
Psychologists tell us that human beings look for what is called "social proof" before they buy. They want to know that others have bought and have "survived." No one wants to be the guinea pig. That's why testimonials are so powerful. And quoting statistics. And saying how long you've been in business. And stating you're a member of the Better Business Bureau, or local merchant association. And that you offer a satisfaction guarantee. Always thinking, "How can I boost my credibility so people will believe my claims?" will serve you well in advertising.
This is great advice... it was just in Bill Marvin's Electronic House Call #620.
"The big rule of thumb in the direct marketing business is that a list loses 10% of its value every month that passes without some sort of contact. This means that ten months of neglect and your list isn't worth a dime! How's that for perishable?"
Email your customers every two to three weeks. Not too little. Not too much. With pertinent content, it's just about right.
Seniors are the fastest growing group of Internet users, and use it they do. Some 65% of those between 50 and 64 use the Internet for communicating, for organizing groups of people with like interests, for shopping, and for connecting with family and friends.
Today's seniors are very active and involved in their destiny. They are also very consumer savvy. If you offer specials or discounts, make sure that the promise is delivered and it exceeds expectations.
Companies that are not focusing on the new senior market are handing over a huge portion of business to those who are catering to this very large and diverse consumer group. While it is inappropriate to lump this multi-faceted group of the new senior into one large category, it is just as inappropriate to ignore the impact they have had and will have on the economy and the future of our country.
How are you reaching this very important new senior consumer?
Competing for your customers' attention online can be tough, especially when you're up against dancing banner ads and all of the daily emails customers get. Here are three tips to cut through the clutter and capture your customers' attention in this crowded space:
1. Create a sense of urgency. Send out a coupon that needs to be used by midnight or offer a free product to the first 50 respondents.
2. Energize your customers to tell their friends. Word of mouth is incredibly powerful and valuable, especially on the internet. Give your customers something exciting that they'll want to share with their friends.
3. Make it fun. Whatever the interaction is, keep it simple, fresh, and engaging.
Many local newspapers would be happy to feature you as a columnist if you can provide interesting information to its readers. Simply ask! Auto shop owners can write a short Q&A column that helps readers with auto-related issues. Restaurants can write food-related articles. You make up the questions and answer them like the expert you are! "Car Corner" or "Food Facts!" or some other catchy title could become a popular feature. Best of all, it gets tremendous publicity for your shop... establishes you as a recognized expert... provides excellent clippings to hang on your waiting room wall... and it's 100% free!
—Error! If readers can insert your competitor's name in place of yours and the ad still makes sense, then you are a generic advertiser! Your ad should make claims that your competition can't! What makes your products and services better? Find out now... and start bragging and selling more!
Most retailers overlook the most powerful feature of any ad: testimonials from happy customers! Do you use them? You should! They're powerful and believable. With your customers' approval, be sure to also include their full name and city, not just their initials. Offer them a freebie for their photo and your ad will have far greater impact.
If what you're selling is worth buying… it's also worth showing! Don't just talk about your food... show it! Don't just say how much your brake service is... show a mechanic doing the work! Don't just run a coupon for $20 off a massage... show someone enjoying the service in a beautiful, relaxing setting. Remember: always put images into people's heads. The easiest way to do this is with photos and illustrations!
The below is from Seth Godin's blog. Godin is author of ten books that have been bestsellers around the world....
If you walk into a company-owned cell phone store to sign up for a contract, what are you worth?
Given the huge gross margins at AT&T and Verizon and the standard two-year contract, I think it's easy to figure on more than $2000 in lifetime value.
If you ran a business where a customer represented an additional $2,000 in profit, how would you staff? How long would you make someone wait? If staff costs $25 an hour, how long would that extra person take to pay off?
Few businesses understand (really understand) just how much a customer is worth. Add to this the additional profit you get from a delighted customer spreading the word--it can easily double or triple the lifetime value.
So, a chiropractor might see a new patient being worth $2,500, easily. And yet... how much is she spending on courting, catering to and seducing that new customer? My guess is that $50 feels like a lot to the doc. Instead of comparing what you invest to the benefit you receive from the first bill, the first visit, the first transaction, it's important to not only recognize but embrace the true lifetime value of one more customer.
Write it down. Post it on the wall. What would happen if you spent 100% of that amount on each of your next ten new customers? That's more money than you have to spend right now, I know that, but what would happen? Imagine how fast you would grow, how quickly the word would spread.
Here's how you'll know when you've really embraced this--a good customer at your podiatry practice (or supermarket or tax firm) walks out the door in a huff and you turn to your partner and say, "There goes $74,000."
There was recently a great story in a Long Island, NY newspaper about a man who claims to be the "World's Best Fisherman." And he just might be. That's because he catches more fish with his simple rods than most commercial fisherman do with all their fancy, expensive gear—and he's been doing so for decades! When asked, "How do you do it?" he said, "Simple. Most fishing gear is designed to get fisherman to buy it. But I don't think like a fisherman… I think like a fish!" He knows their habits... where to find them... when they feed... and what they eat.
What a great business metaphor! You know your customers better than anyone. So when making an offer, don't think like a salesperson... think like a customer! This simple mental shift gives you a far better understanding of how to hook them with your offer.
With each check or receipt you give your customers, also hand them a stamped postcard with several questions asking them about their experience. Include the powerful question, "What DON'T we offer that you wish we DID?" Enough similar responses point to new products and services that your customers are telling you they want to buy! See the potential?
Can you think of 12 good reasons why people should visit you over your competition? Then tell them in a series of consecutively numbered ads. Your headline follows this simple formula: "12 Good Reasons to Bring Your Car to PitStop for Your Next Oil Change: REASON #1: We Get You Out in 30 Minutes—Guaranteed!" Then simply fill in the details. Your next ad is #2, 3, 4, etc. in the series. This kind of advertising has a strong psychological "piling on" effect that's grounded in numbered facts... and is very credible.
Factual comparisons between your products and service and the other guys' is fair play and helps consumers make smarter choices. It's not necessary to name names. Simple statements of comparison get your point across.
Consider the headline, "FACT! Some Pizzerias Use Frozen, Weeks-Old Dough!"
Ouch! Along with an explanation of how yours is made in-house, fresh daily, this tactic hits like a sledge hammer. It instantly makes readers question the practices of all other pizzerias and puts you in a more favorable light.
Is it their first visit? You won't know unless you ask! Do they like their food? If not, how can you make things right so they return? Simple questions give you "advertising ammo" that you can turn into profit… but "you gotta ask!"
Crummy looking hand-written or amateurish computer designed signs shout, "poor quality here!" Replace them with attractive, more business-like versions that reflect your commitment to professionalism. Yes... it really does matter!
"The prospect doesn't give a damn about you, your company or your product, All that matters is, 'What’s in it for me?'" Bob Hacker.
Most marketing and advertising tells the prospect, "Give me the business you've been giving to somebody else," or, in essence, "Let me make the money instead of my competitors"!
You must educate and inform the customer about your product or service; its construction, advantage, warranty, and comparable performance against other brands, etc. Offer the prospect the chance to test (or try out) the product or service at your risk, not theirs.
Here's a great tip from marketing expert Tom Feltenstein.
"Every marketing technique should employ complete salesmanship and be evaluated like a salesperson on a draw against commissions. Is it paying for itself, or is it a drain on cash flow? Everything must justify itself or be replaced. Advertising and marketing are, in fact, highly leveraged (or inversely leveraged) forms of multiple salesmanship. If an individual salesperson doesn't produce, that costs money, but it's not fatal. Ads, commercials, or sales letters that fail can cost you your business. At best, they cost you the near certain possibility of more profits."
When crafting ads, commercials, mailing pieces, and sales approaches, seek profits, not applause. Most companies try to be aesthetically appealing, at the expense of results.
You must put the question to an empirical test and let your market tell you what products, prices, packages, pitches, offers, and guarantees are most or least appealing.
When you test one approach against another, they produce widely varying results. One ad may produce widely varying results. One ad may produce 10 times the results. One sales approach or presentation may result in four times as many sales as another. You’ll only find this out if you test.
This must never be predetermined by conjecture. You must analytically test various premises and run with the winning approach, not, just the lesser performing ones you personally like the most.
• Drinks served in easy grip, plastic cup (4 oz).
Don't top off the beverage but offer free refills.
• Offer bendable straws.
• Put a cherry in the drink.
• Serve entrees with salad forks.
• Serve soup with a teaspoon & a cup of ice (to cool down the soup).
• Provide extra napkin and/or wet naps.
• Staff is attentive to the needs & demands of families.
• Have high chairs & booster seats (plenty to go around).
Be sure they are clean and in good repair.
• Have changing tables in both men & women’s restrooms.
• Offer a separate kids menu.
• Tableware should be kid proof.
• Know how to deal with finicky eaters.
• Make the waiting game fun.
• Keep plenty of stock on toys, crayons, etc.
• Ask parent's permission. "May I bring.... ", "Should I serve their
meal as soon as it is ready? ", "Do you want the
beverage served now or with their meal?"
• Seat kids by windows. There are distractions and things to look at.
• Have a "Clean Plate Club".
• Consider a Kids cafe on your slower days to draw families and
young children into your restaurant.
• Before kids leave, offer them a balloon or toy, etc.
•Greet kids by getting down on one knee, talk at their eye level.
There are many opportunities to grow your business and assure repeat business by marketing to kids...
•Families with children account for over 45% of the personal
consumption expenditure for food away from home.
•Kids never dine alone.
•Kids exert tremendous influence on family decisions where to eat.
•If you make the kids happy, the parents are happy.
Today's 8-year olds are not the same as 8-year olds of 30 years ago. They are smarter, more worldly, tech savvy and more independent. They are tired of the same old chicken finger menu choices. They are tuned in to the eating-out experience, and know what they want.
According to a recent report by the Nielsen Company, people who are heavy users of sites like Facebook and Twitter actually use email more than those who are lighter users.
Nielsen's study revealed that the time heavy social media users spent using email significantly increased between April 2008 and April 2009, from around 80 minutes to more than 180 minutes.
When you think about it, this makes sense. After all, Facebook sends a constant stream of email to your inbox every time a friend has commented on a post, or tagged you in a photo, or any other kind of activity on the site. And, one of the reasons people join and participate on sites like Facebook or Twitter is to make connections. So of course they'd encourage those relationships by staying in touch off the sites.
For email marketers, this presents some obvious good news: The more email people get, the more they’re going to be checking their inboxes. And the more they check their inboxes, the more chances they have to see your email messages.
One of the most important rules of effective marketing is: Always try to reach people where they are. As this study shows, reaching people with email marketing continues to be a great idea.
An online consumer study by The NPD Group conducted in June shows that affordability of dining out is top of mind among consumers, especially as they struggle with increased unemployment. As the economy slowly improves, restaurants still will be expected to provide the traffic-driving deals many are promoting today, NPD data indicated.
When NPD asked consumers who have cut back on restaurant visits what would entice them to visit restaurants more often, they listed discounts, something free, more dollar menu items, choice of price offerings, and other cost management options. According to the study, most consumers wanted a price discount on a regular menu item over free items or 99-cent offerings.
NPD added that restaurant visits prompted by deals represent a quarter of the industry’s total traffic.
1. While good email marketing will keep your list engaged, the reality is that you need to continually use opt-in strategies to keep it viable.
2. If your customers can’t easily navigate your email or find the information they want at a glance, your messages will fall flat.
3. Use teaser text and HTML colors and layout rather than an image so readers can get an immediate “preview” of your email even if images are disabled.
4. Put the important content – the offer, call to action, newsletter contents etc. – at the top of the email for immediate viewing. You only have seconds to make your case, so make the most them.
5. Design and test your e-mail so that the call to action is clearly visible when graphics are turned off (48% of people do not view images by default!)
6. Consider how your e-mail will appear on mobile devices because more people are using Blackberrys and iPhones to view their e-mail inboxes.
There are a ton of ways to get people to sign up for your email marketing offers. Here are 19 ways...
1. Include an email club sign-up link in your signature of all of your emails.
2. Send an opt-in email to your address book asking them to join your list.
3. Incentivize your employees - Give them $ for collecting VALID email addresses.
4. Referrals - Ask you customers to refer you, and in exchange you'll give them a discount.
5. Trade newsletter space with a neighboring business, include a link for their opt-in form and ask them to include yours in their newsletter.
6. Giveaways - Send people something physical and ask for their email address as well as their postal address.
7. Do you have a postal list without emails? Send them a direct mail offer they can only get if they sign up to your email list.
8. Include opt-in forms on every page on your site.
9. Popup windows - When someone attempts to leave your site, pop up a window and ask for the email address.
10. Include a forward-to-a-friend link in your emails just in case your recipient wants to forward your content to someone they think will find it interesting.
11. Offer "Email only" discounts and don't use those offers anywhere but email.
12. Telemarketing - If you've got people on the phone, don't hang up until you ask if you can add them to your newsletter.
13. Put a fishbowl on your counter and do a weekly prize giveaway of your product - then announce it to your newsletter. Add everyone who put their card in on to your newsletter list.
14. Include an opt-in form inside your emails for those people who get your email forwarded to them.
15. Tradeshows - Collect business cards and scan them into a spreadsheet. Make sure you ask permission to send email to them, then mark the card.
16. Use Facebook - Host your own group and invite people to it, then post new links often. From time to time, post a link to sign up for your newsletter.
17. Use Facebook - Post the hosted link from your newsletter into Linked Items to spread the word.
18. Use Facebook - Include an opt-in form on your Facebook Fan page.
19. Use Twitter - Twitter the hosted link of your email campaign every time you launch.
If you've got any additional ideas, let's hear them!
Be Clear and Concise: Stick to simple words, short phrases, and paragraphs consisting of one to three short sentences. Your recipients should not have to dig through lengthy text for your offer.
Get Right to the Point: You only have a few seconds to entice your readers to act. Answer important questions for the recipient like, Who are you?, What do you want me to do?, and What's in it for me?
Highlight Your "Call to Action": Know what action you want your recipients to take and make it easy for them to do so. A simple but effective call to action might be something like, "present this email offer and receive one free appetizer."
Focus on Benefits: Don’t just talk about your business; focus on what will appeal to your customers.
Create a Sense of Urgency: Give your recipients a reason to act now. Limit any offers to a specific time period. This will entice the reader to quickly act or risk missing out.
Choose Your Words Carefully: Good word choices communicate trust, benefits, and urgency. (You, exciting, effective, save, value, new, introducing, why, exclusive, and guaranteed.) On the other hand, try to avoid words that don't communicate a direct command or result. (may, maybe, hope, wish, try, but, could, perhaps, and strive)
Use Punctuation Sparingly: Save exclamation points for when you really need them, use ALL CAPS carefully for emphasis. Your concise, specific content along with the clearly communicated benefits of your offer should be all the incentive your recipient needs to act.
1) It's Inexpensive: Email marketing is an affordable way to stretch a tight marketing budget. There is virtually no production, materials or postage expense. Send emails for pennies per piece.
2) It's Effective: Proactively communicate with your existing customers and prospects instead of passively waiting for them to return to your Web site or storefront. Email marketing returns $57.25 for every dollar spent, more than 150 percent greater than the ROI for non-email online marketing (Source: Direct Marketing Association (DMA), 2007).
3) It's Immediate: Create and send compelling email promotions in minutes or hours. Email marketing messages can be sent at any time and effect daily sales by hundreds of dollars immediately.
4) It's Measurable: Make the call to action clear: "Present this email offer to receive..." Have your staff member write the check total on the email. After the offer expires, simply count up the number redeemed and the check totals. Here's a link to our ROI Calculator that makes it simple: www.loyalrewards.com/roicalculator.php
5) It's Easy: There are plently of emailing programs that allow you write, design and send all your promotions yourself from their complicated websites -- a time-consuming hassle. Worse still, there's a ton of trial and error until you find the wording, design, and offers that get the best response. If you enjoy getting your hands dirty, that's fine... but then Loyal Rewards is not for you. It was designed for busy people who need to promote, but don't have the time or interest) to do it themselves.
Increase your e-mail marketing effectiveness by engaging your customer through social sharing. Many email marketing services link e-mail marketing campaigns with social media networks. For example, the recipient of the email message can post it to their Facebook page - then all of the person's friends can also see the the email message. So instead of your email reaching just one person, it reaches that one person, plus all their Facebook friends. This is a standard, free-of-charge benefit on all Loyal Rewards Email Campaigns. Sharing information found in newsletters and e-mails by uploading the article to customers' Facebook accounts has started to become more popular than the forward-to-a-friend option.
In addition to sharing information with your Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter accounts, these programs are bridging the gap between e-mail and social media. It's important for your organization's management to realize that the surest way to increased sales and happy customers is a well-run, well-monitored e-mail program. Other programs may get cut, but an investment in e-mail will pay for itself many times over.
You must ensure your email messages are relevant. You want your email to be the one the reader is anticipating. Smart marketers use techniques to create the sense of an "insiders club" by providing offers and information only available via the inbox. Simply ask them "Would you like to be part of our special frequent diners club? It's an exclusive group of diners that gets special dining opportunities via email that others don't get."
Making offers exclusive to the email channel can help build anticipation and improve open rates. Remember, less is more. Too much information will overwhelm readers, causing them to lose interest in your messages.
Here's part of an article about the value of free giveaways. It ran in the July 21st issue of Nation's Restaurant News entitled "Free Food Snags new guests, lures in old customers"
"...There's an urgency now to dangle a freebie in front of consumers, and the reason is clear. There's nothing like a recession to keep people at home, so it takes something as drastic as the promise of free things to get those same people in their car and out to eat," said Tonya Hamilton, founder of Hamilton Strategic Marketing in Madison, Wis....
Buzz is precisely what giveaways are suppose to generate to get consumers to try a brand for the first time or to increase their visits and Zazby's strong sales for the event is not unusual, said Tim Hackbardt, a former Taco Time and Del Taco marketing executive who founded White Barn Group, a strategic restaurant and ad agency in San Juan Capistrano, Calif.
Consumers will buy additional menu items when they come in for their freebies, he said, and because they giveaway usually generates a lot of awareness for the brand, "you get spill-off into other dayparts" from consumers who aren't looking for a deal but buy something because the brand is now in their consideration set...."
I just read this article in the August 18th "Profit Tip of the Week" by RestaurantOwner.com. They have great survey data on how to thrive in this ecomony — and a great reason to be doing email marketing.
"We just completed our "State of Your Restaurant" survey in which over 600 RestaurantOwner.com members in the U.S. and Canada told us how their restaurants are doing so this year compared to last.
The survey reveals that although the recession is having an impact on sales and profitability, many independent operators are adapting to the changing conditions and a surprising percentage report higher sales and greater profitability for the first half of 2009 than during the period last year.
One question we asked was "What's the smartest or most effective change you've made in response to a slower economy?"
The most successful operators, those reporting an increase in sales or profitability this year over 2008, frequently sited the following as one of the main reasons for their success.
1. More marketing to existing customers
2. Loyalty/frequent dining program
3. Monthly customer newsletter
4. Social networking like Twitter, Facebook, etc.
The common thread in the above activities is that they give operators the opportunity to put their restaurant on more of their customers' "short list" of dining choices. Get your restaurant on more people's short list and you're likely to see more repeat customers and greater sales.
Here is part of an article written by Bruce Horovitz on USAToday.com, entitled "IHOP, other restaurants lure parents with kids eat free deals." IHOP is set to launch a "Kids eat free" promotion for the next month to increase traffic – and other restaurants are joining the trend with numbers to support their choices.
"Restaurant operators have reported customer traffic declines for a staggering 22 consecutive months, the National Restaurant Association reports. Families are staying home: Visits from families with kids were down 5% for the year ended in June, NPD Group says.
"Free is magic," says Barry Schwartz, psychology professor at Swarthmore College. "It will seduce people into eating out who shouldn't."
Some parents get so giddy about free kids meals that they celebrate by buying desserts or drinks and spend more than if they had paid for the kids meals, says Barry Yow, whose website MyKidsEatFree.com is tracking the trend. And, he notes, many chains don't include drinks with the "free" meals.
Other chains have recently hopped onto the kids-eat-free bus, including Fazoli's, El Torito and even Ikea... All of which require the purchase of an adult entree for each free kids meal and apply to kids ages 12 and younger."
This is from the book "Yes! 50 Scientifically Proven Ways to Be Persuasive" by Noah J. Goldstein, Steven J. Martin, and Robert B. Cialdini. Great experiment to have your servers try:
In an experiment, waiters gave candy with the restaurant bill to diners in three different ways: one piece of candy for each guest; two pieces of candy to each guest; and one piece of candy for each guest followed by walking away from the table and then turning around to give a second piece of candy to each guest. The results were: 3.3% increase in tips for one piece of candy; 14.1% increase for two pieces of candy given at once; and 23% increase in tips for the walk away and return with a second piece scenario. What's this tell you? Unexpected and personalized gifts are powerful motivators.
Here are a few tips for your business to help increase awareness and sales:
Emphasize the value of your product or service to your customers. With budgets being tight, people want to know how a product or service will benefit them.
Offer coupons and sales. Everyone is looking for a good bargain right now. Show you care by giving them one.
Studies have shown that companies that keep or increase their spending on marketing during a recession end up in better shape at the end of a recession. The average cost-per-impression of a promotional product is $.0004, according to a recent ASI study. Of the surveyed respondents, 84% remembered the advertisers of the promotional product they received.
Many businesspeople think that image advertising --billboards, TV commercials, etc. -- is what they should be doing. But image advertising is almost always a waste of money for smaller local retailers.
Instead, you should focus on the power of direct response advertising that's created to bring immediate, measurable results. This way, you'll know what works and what doesn't! In fact, all of your advertising should be trackable so you know how many people responded. Making a unique offer that customers get only if they mention it -- or bring in a coupon -- is exactly that.
Create an enticing "Call to Action." "Click here" only goes so far ... "Click here to download a free white paper" or "Click here to receive a 20% discount on your first order" tend to generate much higher click rates. Focus on what's in it for the reader."
According to marketing consultant Jeanne Jennings, distributing your B2B e-mail marketing campaigns during business hours on week-days increases response.
Reason: you have a better chance of getting opened and read if you land in the inbox mid-day, rather than at night or over the weekend. When people get in their office, many have inboxes that are full, and you're competing for their attention with everything else that landed overnight or over the weekend.
According to Internet marketing expert Amy Africa, the average user spends 10% more time on web sites that have a lot of photos showing people. Reason: according to Amy, when we see other people's eyes, we stay longer.
How does this translate into more online revenues? "The more you stay, the more you pay," Amy notes. (That's the same reason why
Barnes & Noble now serves coffee and puts out comfy chairs for you to sit and read.)
Tip: You can find cheap, royalty-free stock photos of almost any image, including shots with people, at my favorite online stock photo resource: www.dreamstime.com
Sure you could send your own email offers... if you're willing to spend the time and money and you don't mind the work. Why not make it easy on yourself and use an email marketing service. Spend time doing what you are good at and enjoy - and let the email marketing up to the professionals. Here are the Top 10 Reasons to use an email marketing service.
1. Are Approved as Bulk Mailers: Many email clients and most ISPs limit the number of emails that you can send at one time. Further, most ISPs guard against bulk emailing, as it is often spam. Legitimate services typically have strong relationships with ISPs and are able to send bulk email without being put in spam filters
2. Follow Professional Mailing Practices: Perhaps the most common mistake is exposing your entire list in the To: line, which violates all of your list members' confidentiality and exposes their email addresses. In addition, failure to include unsubscribe instructions, an unsubscribe link or a physical mailing address is now against the law.
3. Provide List Hosting and Management: Including signup for new subscribers, editing capabilities so that subscribers can edit their own profiles, and the ability to unsubscribe with one click. Because you are required by law to process an unsubscribe request within 10 days, the unsubscribe functionality alone is critical to successful email marketing. They sometimes manage bounces, differentiating between reasons for the bounce (including full mailbox, vacation message, nonexistent address or blocked
4. Require No Technical Skill or Support Staff: Whether you are using your email client (and going it alone), or using a bulk email software package, you will find that an email marketing service can save you precious time and money. With a service, the bandwidth, power and flexibility are "built-in." You do not have to worry about the technology or infrastructure required to send your email campaigns.
5. Handle Formatting: Email services usually send emails in multi-part format. This means that your emails will be delivered to your subscribers in the correct format every time.
6. Create Great Looking Emails: Some email marketing services provide professional HTML templates to make email creation easy by eliminating the need for any HTML skill
7. Get Higher Email Deliverability: Follow proper protocols, develops relationships with ISPs and is white listed to be sure your permission-based email gets through
8. Deliver Measurable Results: Enable the ability to measure the response of each email campaign
9. Include Frequent Updates and Enhancements: Using an email marketing service guarantees that you will always have the most current tools available to meet the changing requirements of the industry
10. Comply With Email Laws: As email marketing matures, so do the laws.
Here is part of an article written by Jamie Hartford, a freelance writer and former QSR associate editor, entitled "Casual Dining Goes Cheap." She describes how full-service is rolling out less-expensive offerings.
"It's no secret that casual dining has been hit hard by this economic downturn. Last year saw the bankruptcy of established brands like Bennigans Grill & Tavern and negative comps across the segment. Not even big-name players have been immune.
To bring consumers back, casual-dining chains are rolling out the deals. While not new to the segment, the abundance of discounting and lower-priced offerings increased since the fall of 2008, Riggs says. Experts say lower-priced offerings in casual dining have a dual purpose: to bring in more guests and drive sales—with the former a prerequisite to accomplishing the latter. Traffic in casual dining fell by 2 percent from the previous year for the final quarter of 2008 and customer counts fell off even faster in the first quarter of 2009, according to NPD.
"People coming in the door is of the utmost importance right now," says Keith Gellman, president and publisher of the Web site RestaurantChains.net.
The heavily promoted lower prices are intended to make the chains top of mind for lunch goers and avoid a veto vote from penny-pinching members of a group, says Darren Tristano, executive vice president at Technomic, a food industry tracking and consulting firm.
"They are meant to drive value-seeking consumers who are going to look for price point above everything else," he adds.
But how can casual-dining restaurants, with the overhead from their large footprints and waitstaff, offer prices on par with quick-service and fast-casuals? One way is to offer smaller portions, which Chili's does on its "10 under $7" menu and Cheesecake Factory does with its "Small Plates and Snacks." Gellman posits that some chains might also be partnering with manufacturers to help them promote certain items at a lesser cost. Some, too, are taking a scalpel to food and labor costs. In any case, the low price can act as bait to fill seats with customers who might choose to add on high-margin items like appetizers, drinks, and desserts."
E-mail is the preferred means of personal and business communications for 67% of consumers, according to new research from Ipsos for Habeas, Inc. The firm also found 65% see e-mail as their primary communications device in the future, even when taking into account an increase in cyber threats and the development of new communications and Web tools.
Here's an interesting thought from Bill Marvin, The Restaurant Doctor...
"The only time you can really increase market share is when times are tough. That is when the timid operators curl up in a fetal position under their desks and hope they can hold out until all their problems go away. The only thing that will go away is their business ... and it will go to the operators who aggressively earn it.
What are you doing to actively expand your sources of revenue, reach out to new guests, develop new markets, bring in new diners (and give them such a great time that they will be loyal forever)? If you are not already doing it, then somebody is probably doing it to you!"
Epsilon, a Dallas-based marketing firm, recently released a study that shows the benefits of permission-based e-mail marketing campaigns and how they can have a major impact on offline consumer purchases and loyalty. Check out these stats:
57% of Consumers feel they have a more positive impression of companies when they receive e-mail from them
45% said that they simply receiving e-mail has a positive impact on their likelihood to make a future purchase from a company
50% said they're more likely to buy products from companies that send them e-mail, whether their purchases are online or at a place of business
Although there have been hard economic times for many in the food business, the restaurant industry is still thriving for some. According to statistics from Restaurant.org, more than 130 million individuals will be foodservice patrons on a typical day in America in 2009.
Coupon usage among U.S. shoppers has increased in recent years, based on a 2008 survey by ICOM Information & Communications (ICOM). 67% of consumers said that in this economic downturn, they are more likely to use coupons.
Stand out from your competition and bring people in with special offers and reasons to spend their hard-earned money with you.
According to the National Restaurant Association's (NRA) 2009 Restaurant Industry Forecast, 69 percent of customers said they would visit a quick-service restaurant more frequently if it offered discounts for frequent dining, while 66 percent said they would visit a quick-service restaurant more frequently if it offered discounts for dining on less busy days of the week. Furthermore, 53 percent said they would visit a quick-service restaurant more frequently if it let kids eat free.
Given that repeat customers account for 75 percent of quick-serve restaurant sales (per the NRA's quick-service operator survey), it's not surprising that operators are doing whatever is necessary to keep customers coming back again.
I just came across this article on www.expertclick.com written by Joyce L. Gioia, CMC, CSP, Certified Speaking Professional and Management Consultant for The Herman Group. She makes an excellent point on the value of engaging your customers. The best part? It can be as simple as training your staff to engage customers in conversation. Engaging customers on a human level is important because it develops a more personal relationship with individual customers. When customers feel less anonymous and more engaged, they are more likely to continue using the company.
"Consumers are spending less---and expecting more. In the third quarter of 2008, US consumer spending fell by 3.1 percent, the steepest decline since 1980. Concurrently, customer satisfaction is suffering. For the past 18 months, the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) has also decreased.
The companies that will survive are the ones that engage their customers. Recently, PeopleMetrics issued its 2009 Most Engaged Customers Study. Focusing on aspects of customer engagement, the report ranked the top-performing companies.
The study found "higher levels of customer engagement have a positive impact on the [desired customer] behaviors". Conversely, disengagement has the reverse effect. Specifically, "a fully engaged customer recommends a brand nearly four times more often than does an ambivalent customer". By contrast, an actively disengaged customer will tell an average of three people "to avoid a company and its services". "A fully engaged customer visits that company's website twice as often as an actively disengaged customer and makes three times as many online purchases."
Regrettably, engaging customers is more difficult now than in the past. Across the brands that were assessed in both 2008 and 2009, nearly half (13/27) experienced a significant drop in engagement levels (59 to 50 percent)."
Are you concerned 4th of July Holiday travel will hurt your sales this weekend? AAA has projected the number of Americans traveling on vacation this Fourth of July holiday weekend will decrease. Plus, they have great news for businesses on their spending habits:
...Expect to spend approximately $1,160 per household this upcoming holiday weekend...
Give your customers a reason to spend that money with you!
I just came across this article on yahoo.com entitled "6 Car Repairs You Can't Afford to Skip." I think it makes a great point depicting the mentality of most vehicle owners. And, why it's important to continually market to your auto customers.
"Here are six car repairs you might be tempted to skip to save a little cash. But we'll show you how making that call could cost you a lot more in the long run.
1. Brake Pads: It seems like common sense: Don't neglect your car's brakes. Still, when it's time to replace your car's brake pads, it's easy to look the other way.
2. Oil Change: An oil change should cost you around $40 at most quick oil change stations. And that same station will probably tell you to come back in three months or 3,000 miles. But do you have to? It depends. That old rule of thumb still applies to some cars, but others can go much longer between oil changes. Sure, you can save $40 by putting off an oil change, but you could end up spending $4,000 on a new engine.
3. Air Filter: Changing an air filter is cheap. It's even easy enough for most people to do themselves. Not changing your car's air filter, on the other hand, is expensive. By not changing a dirty air filter, you'll save about $15. But, if your car is supposed to get 25 miles per gallon, and gas is $2.50 a gallon, those savings have evaporated by the time you've driven about 150 miles.
4. Transmission Fluid Leak: One of the most common problems associated with your transmission is a fluid leak. Transmission fluid is what cools and lubricates your transmission. If it's leaking, you need to fix it, and fast. Resealing a transmission is a relatively easy job and should usually only cost a few hundred dollars. Ignoring the leak can lead to the transmission seizing up and a subsequent transmission replacement --which costs several thousand dollars.
5. Burned Out Lights: Here's one car repair on our list that is really easy to ignore. Believe it or not, failure to keep your rear lights working can be an expensive proposition. First, if a police officer sees you with broken tail or brake lights, you're going to get a ticket. In some states, the fine for a broken tail light is $150, which makes paying for a new bulb seem like chump change. Second, broken lights increase your risk of being on the receiving end of a rear-end collision. And while the other driver's insurance should cover any damage (assuming they have insurance), you still have to deal with the headache of getting your car fixed.
6. Clogged Fuel Filter: Don't skip it. At its most expensive, replacing a fuel filter will be a few hundred bucks. Let it go too long, and not only are you looking at dealing with a car that will barely run, you could also have dirt in your fuel injectors -- causing them to need replacing. Replacing just one fuel injector can cost over $500. But if they all need replacing, you're looking at least $1,000 in repair bills…"
Here is part of an article written by Lisa Barone from Small Business Trends entitled "Email Marketing Success Is About Relevance." I think she makes great points about email marketing.
"Though it may sit in the shadows of today's shiner marketing techniques, email marketing continues to be an effective, low-cost way for SMB owners to reach out to, inform and retain current customers. In fact, according to new numbers from Forrester Research, email marketing will reach $2 billion by 2014. And that’s a very good thing.
Email marketing is effective for one simple reason: Customers like receiving targeted messages from companies they care about. They like when they're emailed about things they've already shown in an interest in. And that’s where the email thrives.
Email marketing is all about customer retention. It's about building stronger relationships with customers who already know you and decided that, yes, they want to keep hearing from you. They want to stay up to date on what you're doing, they want to hear about new products, they want to hear about hot deals, etc. The messages that land in their inbox help keep your company name in their top of mind and force them to constantly be thinking about you.
WebProNews took a look at the Forrester Research and quoted an Epilson brand study that said that 84 percent of recipients like receiving emails from companies with whom they've subscribed. Eighty four percent. That's impressive. It's hard to get 84 percent of people to agree on anything."
Here is part of an article from the May 18th issue of Nation's Restaurant News entitled "NPD: Restaurants should be reaching out to modern moms"
"Restaurants are not very adventurous when it comes to testing marketing initiatives, according BSM Media, a research firm founded by marketing and mom expert Maria Bailey. They stick to traditional advertising. They don't think about matching their marketing initiatives to moms' needs.
Such conservativeness is costing restaurants, Bailey said. For example they are missing a huge opportunity to reach Mom at the very moment when she is trying to decide what to do for dinner. 60% of all moms do not know what they are doing for dinner at 4pm, according to BSM Media. At that time of the day, moms aren't likely to be watching TV or reading a magazine, where they might typically encounter a traditional restaurant ad or promotion. They are more likely to be in front of a computer..."
The receipt of permission-based e-mail makes shoppers more likely to do business with a retailer, in addition to generating a more favorable opinion of the retailer and even a stronger sense of loyalty to that brand, according to the latest Epsilon research.
According to Epsilon's nationwide survey of consumers, 56 percent of recipients of permission-based e-mail from retail companies said they are more likely to make purchases from the sending retailers. More than half (52 percent) have a more favorable opinion of the retail companies that send them email because of the communications they receive. Nearly half (48 percent) feel more loyal toward the retailers and their products as a result of receiving permission-based emails.
"While e-mail marketing programs have become standard in the retail industry, measuring the impact of e-mail communications on offline sales and the lasting impressions of brands is not common," said Kevin Mabley, senior vice president of Epsilon Strategic Services, based here. "The research we conducted expands beyond just online behavior and measurable activities and demonstrates the offline implications and branding 'halo' effect of e-mail marketing."
The research also noted 87 percent of respondents who receive permission-based e-mail from retail companies said e-mail is a great way to learn about new products. In other key retail findings, 88 percent of respondents who received permission-based e-mail from a retailer downloaded or printed a coupon; 79 percent clicked a link in an e-mail to learn more.
Almost seven in 10 (67 percent) purchased a product offline and 60 percent tried a new product for the first time. And, 55 percent shared a coupon or forwarded the e-mail.
A recent national survey administered by Harris Interactive on behalf of Dairy Queen, a Berkshire Hathaway (BRKA/BRKB) company, revealed that almost half of U.S. adults (46 percent) are eating out at restaurants about the same or more as they did one year ago.
Celebrities including the Oracle of Omaha himself, Warren Buffett, and Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban also weighed in independently of the survey, which was commissioned to discover just how the economy has affected dining decisions.
Cuban, who several years ago took a challenge to manage a Dairy Queen for a day, says he would most likely take advantage of a value menu when asked about different economic incentives to eating out at a restaurant. He's not alone according to the survey:
A majority (89 percent) of those that eat out in restaurants say that when dining out they would take advantage of discounts including value meals, coupons, frequent custom cards/membership programs, etc.
When it comes to choosing a restaurant, almost three quarters of adults (71 percent) said price and menu variety were the most important factors in determining their choice of restaurant.
"Today more than ever consumers look for value, price and menu variety which is exactly why we introduced Sweet Deals, our new, permanent value menu," says Michael Keller, chief brand officer for International Dairy Queen, Inc.
"Sales have been trending up since we launched Sweet Deals and this survey supports the fact that people still like to treat themselves, but are taking the extra time to find the best value."
Sweet Deals allows Dairy Queen customers to mix and match nine menu items, choosing two for $3, three for $4 or four for $5. The menu combines both food and treats and gives customers the opportunity to customize their orders, not only in terms of what they would like to order but also how much they would like to order, how much they would like to spend and how much they would like to save. The menu includes a classic cheeseburger, all-beef hot dog, premium chicken wrap, regular sized French fries and onion rings, medium soft drink, side salad, and a small sundae or dipped cone.
What's Buffett's classic Sweet Deal? When visiting his favorite Dairy Queen in Omaha, he opts for the four for $5 Sweet Deals meal, a combination of a cheeseburger, chicken wrap, medium beverage, and a sundae.
According to catalog consultant Stephen Lett, the most effective catalog and multi-channel offers are:
Free shipping.
A dollar amount off.
A percentage off.
A free gift with purchase.
Lett notes that free shipping can increase catalog sales by 20% or more.
Dollar discounts work better than percentage discounts because, says Lett: "Consumers can relate to actual dollar amounts easier than they can calculate the percentage."
One of the crucial elements of an email marketing campaign is a clear call to action.
Lay out exactly what you want the recipients of your message to do, and
Design the message to make that path clear for the recipient, and easy to follow.
Don't distract with too many links or offers, and make not only the call to action clear but also what recipients can expect when they click through. This can be as simple as "present this email offer to your server and receive 20% Off Your Total Check."
The National Restaurant Association reports about 38% of all Americans will dine out on Mother's Day. In fact, many will dine out twice, celebrating with different people: The NRA reports that 59% celebrate at dinner, 51% at lunch or brunch, and 22% at breakfast.
A recent survey by Jiffy Lube International reveals that 64% of moms said they would prefer something useful and practical this year.
One practical gift to consider is the gift of vehicle maintenance. Whether commuting to work or running errands, Mom spends a lot of time on the road, and her vehicle handles a lot of wear and tear. In fact, a survey from MomCentralConsulting.com found that 78 percent of moms spend at least six hours in their car each week.(1) Driving a vehicle that doesn't run efficiently or breaks down can be frustrating. "Many moms focus on getting their family where they need to go, and it's important that preventive vehicle maintenance does not get overlooked in busy schedules," said John Sanfacon, head of Marketing and Innovations at Jiffy Lube International.
The Jiffy Lube survey found that 23 percent of women say their biggest pet peeve while driving is streaky wind shield wipers, and nearly the same amount (22 percent) say it's a squealing noise from the engine or brakes that won't stop. The gift of preventive vehicle maintenance can help with all of Mom's vehicle needs, and let her breathe a sigh of relief.
Here's a great article written by Jose L Riesco, a restaurant consultant. I think it teaches a good lesson about measuring your marketing...
In these days of doom and gloom I hear many restaurateurs complain about how slow business is and how the clients are spending less and less money dinning out.
However, as the saying says, "Times of crisis are times of opportunity".
If your business is slow, perhaps this is a great time to re-evaluate the efficacy of your marketing. Eliminate dead wood in your marketing expenses and start investing your money smartly in marketing that really works (and you can prove that really works).
I met recently with the owner of the latest restaurant that I am consulting with, and we did precisely this exercise.
I asked him to write down every single marketing expense that he was making, and then we started evaluating which ones could be tracked.
Amazingly for him (not for me because I was expecting this), 80% of his marketing expenses were non trackable. This means that he was expending a substantial amount of money advertising in the Yellow Pages, two local weekly papers and some other local restaurant catalogs, and yet he had no clue how many customers these expenses brought to his restaurant.
The first thing that we did was to eliminate any marketing expense that couldn't be measured. This is just a logical step to really assess the return of investment.
Let me ask you. Would you invest money in stocks or a mutual funds if you couldn't measure how well (or bad) they were performing?
Of course not, and yet many restaurateurs still spend money hoping for the best and without any substantial way to know how many customers those investments bring to the restaurant.
Since this particular owner was very attached to one specific weekly magazine, and he was assuring me that it brought him many customers, I asked him to change the ad to include a discount coupon.
If people really read his ad and came to his restaurant because of it, they will surely bring with them the discount coupon. In this way, he'll know how many real customers this ad brings him and we will be able to make the numbers to see if it breaks even to cover for the expenses of the advertisement (I sincerely doubt it, but we'll see...)
So after the inventory and cutting down several of his marketing initiatives, this owner was happy to see that he could save $2400 a month! That's money in the pocket that he was wasting.
But this is not all. We also started implementing some inexpensive marketing changes. For example, his online presence was very underwhelming and yet most of the potential and current restaurant customers nowadays (including his, of course) are looking for restaurants online.
So I started working with him beefing up his web presence.
Of course the first step is the restaurant's web site. His web site was nicely done but quite underutilized. I met with his webmaster and we implemented a signup form in the front page to capture his visitors information (on exchange for getting a welcome to my restaurant discount coupon when they enter it). We also added an online registration, a comments field and some other useful and interesting information for his customers.
He also signed up for Meta Flavor (www.metaflavor.com) a great (and free) way to promote your restaurant in the web.
Finally, he created a Twitter account and now started twitting whenever he has empty spaces and wants to bring people (quickly and inexpensively) in.
These are just some examples of things that you can do to improve your marketing and save money in the process.
In these days of slow economy, taking control of your marketing and operating strategically and smart is a must, if you want to survive these challenging times.
With so much junk email nowadays, some customers may be cautious about giving you their email address. No problem! Just follow these time-tested suggestions and you’ll build a substantial customer marketing database quickly and easily. And the sooner you start the better!
TIP #1: Just ask!
Don't expect customers to sign up without any prompting. Simply ask, "Would you like some free gift certificates for a future visit?" After they say, "YES!" (and most will), simply hand them an Enrollment Ticket and pen and say, "Great! Just fill out the back and we'll send them to you!" Then don't say another word until they complete the form and hand it back. You're helping customers save money... and they'll love you for it!
TIP #2: Make It Easy!
Using the same question in TIP #1 above, this technique makes it a "no-brainer" for your customers to enroll. When they respond, "YES!" simply ask their first name and YOU write it on the Enrollment Ticket... then ask for their email address and YOU write it down. The less you say and the simpler you say it... the more customers you'll register.
TIP #3: Reassure Them!
If they're still unsure, tell them, "We don't send junk mail... don't worry about that. All you get are [YOUR COMPANY NAME] Gift Certificates, like 'Buy-One-Get-One-Free... Dollars Off... Free _____' [customize for your business]. We don't use your email address for anything else. If you don't like it, you just cancel." At this point, you'll likely have greater success collecting the name and email address for them, as discussed in TIP #2, above. In which case, simply act as if they're ready to enroll and immediately say, "Let me just get your first name..."
TIP #4: Supercharge Your Staff!
Several of our clients offer small, but effective incentives to encourage their staff. Example, a pharmacy manager offers his employees $20 for every 20 Enrollment Tickets they get completed. A restaurant owner gives his staff a t-shirt for a certain amount of Tickets collected. A pizza shop owner offers 25¢ per Ticket. Another gives 10¢ each, plus a prize of $30 for the most collected, $20 for second, and $10 for third. Don't worry about paying these small incentives. Your additional sales can easily outweigh the small expense.
TIP #5: Offer a Friendly "Bribe!"
For example, you might offer to take $2 off their current purchase when they either give you their completed Enrollment Ticket, or provide the information you need to complete the Ticket for them. While they're paying ask, "Would you like a $2 discount on this purchase?" After they say "Yes!", simply hand them a Ticket and pen and say, "Great, just jot down your name and email address... we'll take $2 off today's purchase... and send you some gift certificates for next time." Food servers use this idea before presenting checks to their patrons. Try it... it works!
Do you have other creative list growth ideas to share or questions to ask? Email me at Jenna@LoyalRewards.com
There are several elements to developing a reward program that will effectively build loyalty. A good reward program generally has the following aspects:
1. Customers are told how they will be rewarded.
While customers may appreciate an unexpected thank-you, reward programs work better if you tell the customer up front how much of a thank you they will get.
2. Appropriate rewards.
The following are key attributes of appropriate rewards:
Cash Value. The customer perceives the reward as having a tangible value.
Choice. The customer has choice as to which reward they receive.
Aspirational Value. An exciting reward can make a reward enticing beyond it's strict cash value. A free chocolate cappuccino has a higher aspirational value than a $1.59.
Relevance. The reward should be clearly associated with the business. When the reward is 'free' it can encourage customers to try other products and service offered by the business.
3. Consider Timing Carefully.
Don't offer the reward too quickly or too slowly. A reward offered too quickly will be seen as a promotional offer as opposed to a reward. This discourages, rather than encourages loyal behavior. A reward offered too late will be perceived as either unobtainable or of little value.
Rewarding customer loyalty increases sales and reduces costs by increasing customer share.
Effective reward programs accelerate the loyalty life cycle, encouraging first- or second-year customers to behave like a company’s most profitable tenth-year customers. Although we rarely measure promotion expense on a per-customer basis, it is not uncommon for the cost of acquiring a new customer to exceed $1000.
Here's an interesting fact from careerbuilder.com:
Less is more.
Edit your email content to be as succinct as possible. The best performing email of 2007 contained only 65 words and received a click-through rate 4x higher than average. It was concise, had a clickable clear call to action and was relevant to the target audience.
Here are a few email marketing tips from TargetX's Recruitment Minute Newsletter...
Outsource your email broadcasting. "Using an Email Service Provider (ESP) is an inexpensive way to maintain deliverability, along with a number of other benefits."
Make HTML templates that are simple and unobtrusive. "The simpler, the better. The star of your email is the copy, and specifically the call to action."
Track results. But make sure you view them within the proper context -- and that means defining your goals for each message before it is sent.
For cost-effectiveness, it's still hard to beat email as a marketing tool, says Dartmouth's Karlyn Morissette. "Email marketing is not rocket science, but doing it successfully requires careful planning and an eye for detail she concluded. "By following these guiding principles, you will be able to build an email marketing program for your business that will generate results."
Here are parts of an article I just read that seems to bode well for small businesses:
The gap of confidence between small companies and big ones is growing. We used to rely on the security of big companies. That's why we worked for them. And hired them. And put our money in them.
But with the virtual collapse of AIG, Lehman, Citibank, GM, Chrysler, and many more — now even GE is in trouble — all that's changed. Now it's a risk to do business with the big ones.
We simply don't trust companies anymore. We trust people. And in big companies, it's hard to even find a person to trust as we scream "operator" into our telephones only to get transferred to another menu whose options have changed.
That gives small companies a huge advantage.
Small companies with low overhead, reliable owners, a small number of committed employees, personal client relationships, and sustainable business models that drive a reasonable profit are the great opportunity of our time.
Small is the new big. Sustainable is the new growth. Trust is the new competitive advantage.
Michael Attias, a restaurant consultant, sent this story out. I think it teaches a good lesson about good service...
Tuesday morning I was in Las Vegas to lead a catering round table for Restaurant Hospitality's Concepts of Tomorrow show. Kevin Higar with Technomics was giving the breakfast keynote and shared a story about Texas Roadhouse with the audience.
Most restaurant hostesses rush to get you to a table. They're running the 100 meter dash waiting for you at your "table finish line". Texas Roadhouse hostesses walk next to you the entire trip to your table. The higher ups realized that this was one of the most important touch points in service. During the table walk, the hostess has an opportunity to find out whether it is your first visit.
If it is your first visit, the hostess notifies a manager and within a minute a manger is at your table. The manager is usually sporting a complimentary item like a cup of chili and welcomes you to the restaurant.
It is service like this that helps chains. Independent or chain, I can't tell you the last time a restaurant brought me a free sample and welcomed me as a new guest.
Kevin has visited Texas Roadhouse many times for his company and has tried to stump the hostess. He has stopped to tie his shoe and made the hostess wait on him while talking to friends at another table. Each time the hostess was patient and stood by him...at his pace...until they reached the table.
Now more than ever it is imperative you focus on the 101 little things to make you stand out. Most people suffer a life of quiet desperation with very little to discuss besides the headlines of the day or the weather. Bill Marvin, The Restaurant Doctor tells a story of a restaurant he owned in San Francisco. During long waits he would serve those awaiting a table a glass of wine. Word spread as we tend to share the out of the ordinary experiences in our life.
Here is a strong argument as to why the variable reinforcement works better than the constant reinforcement people get from traditional customer loyalty program. With variable reinforcement, the business decides when to send an offer and thus reward its customers on a variable schedule. With a traditional loyalty program the customer earns points and redeems them on a regular basis.
Schedules of Reinforcement
There is a popular misconception that if you start training a behavior by positive reinforcement, you will have to keep on using positive reinforcers for the rest of the subject’s natural life; if not, the behavior will disappear. This is untrue; constant reinforcement is needed just in the learning stages. You might praise a toddler repeatedly for using the toilet, but once the behavior has been learned, the matter takes care of itself. We give, or we should give, the beginner a lot of reinforcers - teaching a kid to ride a bicycle may involve a constant stream of “That’s right, steady now, you got it, good - However, you’d look pretty silly (and the child would think you were crazy) if you went on praising once the behavior had been acquired.
In order to maintain an already-learned behavior with some degree of reliability, it is not only not necessary to reinforce it every time; it is vital that you do not reinforce it on a regular basis but instead switch to using reinforcement only occasionally, and on a random or unpredictable basis.
This is what psychologists call a variable schedule of reinforcement. A variable schedule is far more effective in maintaining behavior than a constant, predictable schedule of reinforcement. One psychologist explained it to me this way: If you have a new car, one that has always started easily, and you get in one day and turn the key and it doesn’t start, you may try a few more times, but soon you are going to decide something is wrong and go call the garage. Your key-turning behavior, in the absence of the expected immediate reinforcement, quickly extinguishes, or dies out. If, on the other hand, you have an old clunker that almost never starts on the first try and often takes forever to get going, you may try and try to start it for half an hour; your key-turning behavior is on a long, variable schedule and is thereby strongly maintained.
If I were to give a dolphin a fish every time it jumped, very quickly the jump would become as minimal and perfunctory as the animal could get away with. If I then stopped giving fish, the dolphin would quickly stop jumping. However, once the animal had learned to jump for fish, if I were to reinforce now the first lump, then the third, and so on at random, the behavior would be much more strongly maintained; the unrewarded animal would actually jump more and more often, hoping to hit the lucky number, as it were, and the jumps might even increase in vigor. This in turn would allow me to selectively reinforce the more vigorous jumps, thus using my variable schedule to shape improved performance. But even some professional animal trainers fail to make good use of variable schedules of positive reinforcement; it seems to be a peculiarly difficult concept for many people to accept intellectually. We recognize that we don’t need to go on punishing misbehavior if the misbehavior stops, but we don’t see that its not necessary or even desirable to reward correct behavior continuously. We are less sure of ourselves when aiming for disciplined response through positive reinforcement.
The power of the variable schedule is at the root of all gambling. If every time you put a nickel into a slot machine a dime were to come out, you would soon lose interest. Yes, you would be making money but what a boring way to do it. People like to play slot machines precisely because there’s no predicting whether nothing will come out, or a little money, or a lot of money, or which time the reinforcer will come (it might be the very first time). Why some people get addicted to gambling and others can take it or leave it is another matter, but for those who do get hooked, it’s the variable schedule of reinforcement that does the hooking.
Here is part of an article from Ethan Boldt, editor-in-chief, Inside Direct Mail. He makes great points about many similarities between e-mail and direct mail copy and how understanding the key differences will help you run a truly effective multichannel campaign. Here are his thoughts...
The offer
"While [both channels] require the same understanding of direct marketing principles, there are differences in creative tactics—and e-mail requires even more emphasis on the offer than direct mail," explains Lee Marc Stein, copywriter and author of "Street Smart Direct Marketing." E-mail prospects are not going to take the time to read the copy and respond to the creative like direct mail prospects, so cut to the chase—"what's the offer?"—is even more key in e-mail, he explains.
Incorporating the news
"Direct marketing copy that reflects current news and events usually outpulls copy that is not written with references to current affairs," says Bob Bly, copywriter and author of "The Copywriter's Handbook." He adds that incorporating news into copy is even more important in e-mail marketing than it is in direct mail. "In promoting investment newsletters, for example, if the Fed is going to announce a rate hike this week, your e-mails virtually have to be built around that theme," describes Bly.
Here is part of an article from Advertising Consultant, Drew Eric Whitman. He makes a great point about the outcome of Super Bowl Commercials. Here are his thoughts...
"In Tough Economic Times, Super Bowl Ads Set Poor Example for Business Owners Struggling for Customers"
According to advertising consultant Drew Eric Whitman, Super Bowl 2009 ads ignored the foundational principles of creating effective advertising, including: 1) highlighting the product's benefits, 2) distinguishing it from the competition, and 3) driving people to act.
"Instead of giving strong reasons to buy," said Whitman, "most Super Bowl ads subordinate their products to irrelevant humor. It's a disastrous recipe to follow for today's struggling independent business owners who often take their cues from what the 'big boys' are doing."
"GoDaddy.com—an internet domain registrar and web hosting company—spent millions showing three young men voyeuristically watching the company's spokesperson Danica Patrick taking a shower. Rather than inviting viewers to their website to learn more about how GoDaddy can help them achieve their online goals, they tell them to log on to find out 'how the shower ends.' It's like writing the word 'SEX' on an envelope containing a mortgage refinance solicitation. You'll definitely get response and recall," he said, "but by a non-targeted audience for all the wrong reasons" said Whitman.
Whitman explained, "The age-old advertising-success formula, "AIDA"—get Attention... stimulate Interest... build Desire... and ask for Action is largely ignored by Super Bowl advertisers... and is unknown to most independent business owners struggling to stay afloat. Advertising is selling, first and foremost. And with the economy mercilessly battering businesses in most every industry, their ads need to sell, not entertain."
"Taking cues from Super Bowl commercials to create your own campaign," he added, "might be a fun way to exercise your creativity, but it's a sure-fire way to F-L-U-S-H your ad dollars down the toilet."
Pew Internet & American Life Project published a study on Emarketer.com proclaiming about nine out of 10 US consumers ages 12 to 24 use the Internet. Not unexpected... But over 50% of people ages 65 to 69 are online, and Internet-using 70-to-74-year-olds make up 45% of people that age.
The biggest increase in Internet use since 2005 was in the 70-to-75-year-old age group; just over one-quarter of them were online in 2005 and now 45% are online.
Recently on www.briefingnewsletter.com, the Industry Outlook 2009 presented some great points that can be profitable if applied properly.
Hudson Riehle, Senior VP, Research & Informational Services for the National Restaruant Association pointed out... "Overall, the focus should be on getting loyal customers in again. Our research confirms the importance of repeat customers to tableservice restaurants – in family dining, they account for 75% of sales; in fine dining for 60% of sales. Good loyalty/frequent diner programs have never been more important."
Harry Balzer, Vice President and Chief Restaurant Industry Analyst, Npd Group - A Global Market And Research Company noted... "The growth in 2009 will be from market share. Even if the average number of meals that Americans eat out annually is down – from 207 in 2007 to 205 in 2008 - it's about getting a share of those 205 meals. People aren't cutting out eating, and there are 800 or so other meals in a year that are prepared at home. As a result, the potential market for foodservice is nowhere near saturation.
There will be no recession in eating; there will just be winners and losers. My belief is that Americans are looking for ways to moderate food costs so they don’t rise faster than their income... without cooking more. No matter where they are in the spectrum, the restaurants that deliver value and make it easy to get food cheaper without cooking more, in new and compelling ways, will win. ("Newness" is important, but value is of greater concern now, even beyond the price pressures we see today.)"
Here is an article from Bill Marvin, The Restaurant Doctor. He makes great points about consumer's purchasing behavior on Superbowl Sunday. Here are his thoughts...
"Super Bowl Sunday is one of the biggest days for home parties. For what it may be worth, Hallmark estimates the average attendance at a Super Bowl party is 18 people.
Unlike Thanksgiving or other sit-down-dinner holidays, Super Bowl entertaining is decidedly casual, with pizza, snacks, dips and frozen hors d'oeuvres the most popular. Food selection mostly revolves around two things: Can it be munched while watching TV, and does it go with beer or soda?
According to National Restaurant Association research, roughly one out of seven (15 percent) Americans order takeout or delivery food from a restaurant for a Super Bowl gathering at their house or someone else's house. For younger adults (ages 18-34) who watch the Super Bowl that figure rises to 22 percent.
Of those who ordered takeout or delivery, 58 percent ordered pizza (Pizza Hut alone plans to sell 2 million pizzas that day, a 39% increase over the average Sunday), 50 percent ordered chicken wings, and 20 percent ordered subs or sandwiches.
Those living in larger households (three or more members) were more likely than others to order takeout or delivery on Super Bowl Sunday, as were those living in a metropolitan area, and those living in the Northeast. In addition, approximately one in 20 Americans (4 percent) watch the big game at a restaurant or a bar."
Here's an article by Bill Marvin "The Restaurant Doctor". I think it's a good reason for small business owners to use a marketing program where the work is done automatically.
(Don't) Do The Work! You Can't Fix The Car While You're Driving It!
I am concerned that too many independent operators are actively tanking their restaurants even as they think they are being clever by pulling a shift and eliminating the need to pay another employee. The theory is not only short-sighted but dangerous.
How effectively can you implement a marketing plan if you are putting in 8-10 hours working the line? What sort of coaching can you provide? How can you create the connection that will tie your guests to the restaurant as economic conditions create more pressure on them to stay home?
Your responsibility as the leader is to lead ... and you can't perform that task while you are bussing tables. Besides, you are depriving someone else of a much-needed job!
You have work to do in times like this, no question about it ... but it is the work of the leader, not the work of an employee.
Do that work and you will own the market. Fail to do that work ... and somebody else will own you!
In this week's Joel Cohen's RestaurantMarketing.com Wow Newsletter, he makes a great point about the success some restaurants are having in this down economy. Marketing Expert Joel Cohen recognizes that by giving your customers a reason to return really pays off…
"I'm hearing that you have an email list of 3,000 people who have been to your restaurant ... who are only too eager to return ... when you send them your latest and greatest discount coupon."
Before your next email promotion, ask yourself three questions:
1. What is your favorite kind of email? If you're like most people, your favorite emails are those few lines of text sent by a friend or someone you were hoping to hear from—text solely aimed at you. If that person sent that mail in a decked-out styles-galore version, it would take longer to read, and you'd think that person needed to get out more.
2. How much time should you spend reading an email that was sent to you along with a zillion other people? Probably none. The mass marketer's not your friend. You can tell by the polished visuals that he's working overtime to manipulate you. In this lies a vital tip for marketers: Be a friend. Keep it simple.
3. What else is happening on the page when you view a typical email? What else is happening on the page? What isn't happening! Gmail is framed by content-sensitive ads, as are other web-based services like AOL, Hotmail, etc. There's only one way to stand out from all those ads: look less like an ad. Think simple.
Simple is almost always best. Embrace it, and your free to communicate easily and often with your clients.
The human mind is a sucker for simplicity, and that craving is never more apparent than when we sift through our email inbox, say agency execs Gary Levitt and Rob Lubow. "The eye embraces that which can be easily digested. Less is more," they wrote in a recent MarketingProfs article.
In an attempt to break from the herd, many email marketers ironically adopt a herd mentality of more clutter, more content, more images, more, more, more. This misguided quest of improved visibility merely leads to increased invisibility.
Unless you're emailing something of personal relevance or urgency to your client, you have only three and a half seconds to be interesting. Fail, and you're deleted. Simple is almost always best. Once simplicity is embraced, you're free to converse plainly with your clients—easily and often.
A well-respected advertising guru stated these two direct marketing truths:
1) “Direct marketing is the only medium that allows you to use hard numbers to plan, engineer, and measure programs” and
2) “Most people still don’t use the numbers to plan, engineer and measure programs.”
Hopefully you understand Truth #1 and don’t practice Truth #2. For example, make sure you save the gift certificates your customers redeem and then calculate the response rate you're getting. More importantly, always track how many sales and customers you make so you know the exact ROI you're getting. Something that’s virtually impossible with any other form of marketing!
Great service is the best advertising you'll ever create. Most businesspeople slave over just the right combination of words and images to create super ads, but fail to provide super service once the customer steps through their doors! If you get new customers through your doors, but treat these fresh prospects like nobody special your cutting your own throat! For just one week, challenge your staff to provide customer service that's 10x as good as usual... and watch what happens!
You should be promoting more aggressively than ever. During the Great Depression, for example, companies that reduced or eliminated advertising suffered greatly, while those that kept promoting enjoyed more businesses in the short term... and grew the fastest when the economy revived. Experts say direct mail and email are your best bets. There’s no waste and results can be measured. With newspaper and radio advertising, for example, there’s lots of waste. Your message often gets buried... or flat-out ignored. That's risky in this economy. So GET AGGRESSIVE NOW. While your competition is foolishly "lying low," you'll be capitalizing on their inactivity and scooping up the prospects that they’re not reaching.
It's often not enough to simply present your product and price and hope people flock to you. Advertising is salesmanship in print. A good salesperson always asks for the sale... and so should your ads. Say, "Stop by"... "Call us"... "Phone in your order"... "Hurry... Limited-time special"... "Buy now"... "Call to schedule your appointment today" ... and other similar phrases. Remember, advertising is not just information... it’s also psychology... persuasion ... motivation... and influence. Don’t assume that people know what to do... tell them!
There are only 3 ways to boost your business: 1) Find new customers, 2) Get your existing customers to buy more often, and 3) Get customers to spend more each visit. How many of these do you do?
Make sure you have a program in place that gives your existing customers reasons to come in more often. Coupons, specials, and events are all proven performers. And don't forget to constantly market to your customers when you're interacting with them! Try to "up-sell" them to a larger purchase... or remind them of additional items they’ll benefit from. When you have all 3 legs of your marketing plan in place, your results can be 3x as effective!
Does your community, or one nearby, sponsor a local festival where you could set up a booth to represent your business? Especially appropriate for restaurants, you could either sell your products or hand out coupons to convert “strangers” into loyal customers. Many businesses attract dozens of new customers participating in these community events. They’re fun, inexpensive, and if they attract a good crowd (and you offer an excellent product or valuable coupon), can be a great source of new buyers.
Time-honored wisdom states that people respond better to an offer for a dollar amount off of a purchase rather than a percentage off. The reason is that people can easily deduct x amount of dollars off of a price, whereas figuring out the percentage off actually requires a bit of brain power. This applies even if the percentage off would yield a bigger savings.
Beyond dollars or percentages off, test other types of offers. Your creativity is the only limit. Send several different email offers and track them so you know what works best for you. The response rates vary for email offers due to all the different variables in sending an offer. Some send an offer just valid for one day (snow storm, Super Bowl) or a certain time of day (lunch) - doing so may reduce the response but it motivates your customers to come in when you would otherwise be slow.
More than 4 out of 10 consumers are dining out less often than they did six months ago... keep your name in front of them so they are thinking about you, and not your competition.
-Dinner comprises 54.8% of fast-food users' carryout occasions, according to a 21-quarter average from Quick-Track, a quarterly survey by San Clemente, Calif.-based Sandelman & Associates. Dinner makes up 48.4% of all QSR users' most recent purchase occasions. Lunch makes up 39.7% of all users' last occasions and 33.9% of carryout occasions.
-Guests using carryout on their last visit were more likely than all fast-food users to take advantage of a limited-time special: 23.9% vs. 19.1%.
-28% of consumers have not decided what they will eat 2 hours before dinnertime on weekdays and 35% on weekends. Many of these late-dinner deciders opt for quick-serve, takeout and delivered meals.
Email is preferred over every other form of human communication, including the reigning champ -- the telephone. Technology firm Reachon.com asked 10,000 people — their survey reveals the allure and power of email:
- 45% of respondents say the first thing they do when they wake up in the morning is check their email -- often before brushing their teeth.
- 20% admitted that reading their email first thing in the morning kept them from getting their kids to school on time, and 26 percent said it made them late for work.
- 80% reported that the first thing they do upon returning to the office from lunch is check emails -- even before checking voice messages.
- 15% conceded they check their email via PDA in the bathroom.
- 85% say they now prefer communicating by email rather than phone -- primarily because of email's ability to get straight to the point.
We have become a society that is more to the point and your marketing should reflect it.
According to the November 08 Email Marketing Metrics Report, much sooner than before! Nearly one-third (32.26% to be exact) of all opens occur within the first two hours compared to 29.57% six months ago and 29.40% a year ago.
You should not cut spending on email marketing. According to an October 2008 report by the Direct Marketing Association, the return on investment for email was $45.06 for every $1 spent, as opposed to non-email Internet marketing's $19.94. Email provided more than double the effectiveness compared to other online marketing methods. By the end of 2008, it will have driven $28 billion in sales and is projected to drive $32.6 billion in sales in 2009.
Here’s an excerpt from TargetX's Recruitment Minute Newsletter that helps explain the frequency of sending email offers.
While there is no consensus -- except that relevancy is king -- there is a range suggested by a number of email experts:
"Any frequency greater than one email a week is considered quite heavy -- and may produce an unwelcome backlash," according to Arial Software founder Mike Adams.
"On average, successful emailers send messages at least every three weeks," reports Ben Isaacson, former executive director of the Association for Interactive Marketing.
"If you mail less than once a month," says online marketing guru Jeanne Jennings, "you risk being forgotten by recipients."
We recommend every other week. Not too little. Not too much. With pertinent content, it's just about right.
Do your customers tell you "it's the best pizza we've ever had"? Then guarantee greatness.
Try hanging a sign in your restaurant & incorporation a money back guarantee in your marketing:
I Guarantee our Pizza is Great! If you don’t absolutely agree ...it’s FREE! No questions asked!
What's next?
1. You may get a flood of free loaders eating your pizza without paying. If this happens - it will be a quick, cheap lesson. If your pizza is truly good, this won’t happen because they know they will only get away with it once, then they will have to give up one of the few pizzerias that provides consistently good pizza.
2. You will sell a bunch more pizzas to people who are frustrated by having to continually play a game of chance to get a decent slice, people who are constantly having to part with their hard earned dollars before they know if the product is as tasty as promised.
Too often, customers bear the total RISK of doing business with us. If we buy a car and it doesn’t work, we take it back… But with smaller ticket items, we just pay and if they don’t meet our expectations, we just never go back…
The risk should be yours, not your customers—if you do this, your sales will dramatically increase, I guarantee it.
Below is part of an article from MarketingSherpa's Case Studies about an email marketing test. It further ratifies why simple email gift certificates have double the open rate of traditional email programs and why the results are much better than those from newsletters and other informational approaches.
Pala and his team learned that their customers preferred promotion-heavy email by a wide margin. It produced "five times more revenue per [delivered] email" than the information-heavy version.
It also got an open rate that was 200.6% higher than the educational email. For click-throughs, the promotion-heavy email won by 89.8%.
"We now understand that people don’t want to read about the products as much as we thought. If you don't have a really condensed and important message to communicate, then they don’t really care."
Election Night is usually slow for John Modestine, owner of The Village Tavern in North Wales, PA. So, he sent an email offer to his customers to try to boost sales. He sent 1979 of his customers an offer: Buy One Get One Entrée ($12 value) - valid for Tuesday November 4th only.
The Results?
29 parties dined
$37.50 check average
$10.29 discount per party
Netted $27.00 per party
He spent $89.06 to net $789.03 after discounts. The Return on Investment is 886%
Last year Americans ended a 16-year trend of declining redemptions by redeeming 2.6 billion manufacturers' coupons, according to CMS Inc., a coupon processing agent and promotions logistics service based in Winston-Salem, N.C. Coupon usage goes up as prices & unemployment rates go up. Coupon clipping isn't just for your grandmom anymore — email and online offers are also appealing to the younger generation. Their electronic based life makes it easy for them to just point & click to receive savings.
Digital coupons tend to have much higher usage rates than traditional paper coupons — as few as 1 percent of manufacturers' coupons are usually redeemed in a given year. Advertisers are also increasingly using coupons to attract attention to new products, and online coupons are helping them more efficiently reach consumers.
Email marketing allows you to send your savings offer right to your customers, proactively. There is no waiting for your customers to find you online. The simple fact is email works. Email is the highest ROI channel by far. Email marketing returns $57.25 for every dollar spent, more than 150 percent greater than the ROI for non-e-mail online marketing (Source: Direct Marketing Association (DMA), 2007). Plus, if it's not giving you a positive ROI, you will quickly know and be able to switch it up and try a different offer, time, database etc. You can't manage what you don't measure.
In the past it was thought that mid-week was best, but that theory is changing. In a study of email opens, Friday seems to be the biggest day for people to open an email that is sent to them. It's also the day that most Loyal Rewards Clients send email offers. Sunday is a low performer when it comes to open rates. Most still believe that a mid week campaign is the best choice with about 96% of campaigns and 92% of emails being sent Monday through Friday.
However, open rates are not nearly as important as the end result. Sending email offers is all about response and causing action. Open rate is still important for top of mind awareness, but getting your customers through your door is what pays the bills.
When deciding when to send an email campaign, you must consider what else your recipients have going on. During the summer months, they are most likely spending the weekend outdoors or on vacation - away from their computers. In the winter, they may spend more time indoors and have time on the weekends to check and respond to their email. Also, consider holidays and local community events when planning on sending your email offer. Giving discounts on Holidays is a great way to boost sales - especially on Holidays when you would otherwise be slow.
Time of day also plays a roll in response. A recent test sent the same emails at 9am, Noon & 4pm. The results are interesting, but not gospel. The winner? 9am.
Here's what the tests show:
-9am performed 15.63% better then 4pm
-9am performed 9.4% better then 12pm
-12pm per formed 6.9% better then 4pm
Think about when you read your email — also consider who your customers are. When I come into work, the first thing I do is go through my email. Usually, by 8:30am my inbox has been cleaned up and I'm ready for more emails. Others do the same — get to work, check their email and take care of any before starting their day.
There is no exact science when it comes to email marketing. The best advice I can give you, is to try a few different days of the week & times sent. Then, measure your results so you know what works best for you and your customers.
Here are some interesting statistics I got from Bill Marvin "The Restaurant Doctor". He said they came from the book Mindless Eating and are based upon a University study.
It showed when people dine out in groups they spend more per person than if they dine alone.
Here's how much more each person spends based upon group size:
2 people - each spends 37% more than if each dined alone
3 - 42% more
4 - 58% more
6 - 65% more
8 - 98% more
Obviously when people are together they eat and drink more. So try sending an email offer catered toward groups of people. Even with a stronger offer for larger parties, the pay-off should more then compensate.
Here's a clever idea from Scott Anthony - one of the best Pizza Industry Marketing Experts:
Make your pizzeria a trick or treat stop! Bring your kids to my pizzeria on Halloween - receive a 'treat' & get your picture taken with our mascot (costumed employees....) We will e-mail you a copy of the picture.
Thus you 'trick' them into giving you their information & build a quick database - what is a database worth to you? - PRICELESS - make your treat worth it.
Marketing cost + food cost of a slice of pizza, printing cost of a bounce back offer....less then $20.
After spending days, weeks, and months collecting emails, you're finally ready to start emailing your customers. There is so much you want to tell them. Every time an idea pops into your head, you might get an urge to send them a quick email. Don't do it. A recent study explains why to hold back on over sending. Your customers gave you their email addresses to allow you to contact them, but it does not give you authorization to send endless extraneous information - even if it's pertinent to you. According to the MarketingSherpa and Q Interactive "Email Marketing Benchmark Guide 2008," 41% of people mark an email as spam because the email they received was not of interest to them. This reasoning is second to "didn't sign up to receive email from sender" at 52%. The third biggest reason recipients mark email as spam is due to too much email from a sender.
Now what? When you are ready to email your customers - think about "what's in it for them?" Are you giving them a reason to come in and spend money at your business, or do you just have a message to tell them? It's ok to do both - just make sure you also give them something that is of value to them. This can be anything - an early bird special, lunch special, happy hour, or a bundling offer. Put yourself in your customer's shoes… would you like to receive an email from a local business telling you they've hired a new mechanic?
The researchers note that too much email is creating more competition among opt-in emails. As spam and junk filters improve, people are focusing less on conventional spam and more on which opt-in materials are of most significance to them.
Collecting emails can be easy, as long as you make it fun for your customers. Plus, your loyal customers will appreciate receiving savings offers from you and reward you with their business.
Challenge and reward your customers for predicting the outcome of a popular spots contest or TV reality show, such as Dancing with the Stars or American Idol for example. Customers write their guess and their email address on a slip of paper to be contacted if they are the winner. Then just slip the completed forms into a large box on display with signage that describes first-, second-, and third-place prizes. Winners are chosen by random drawings. The first three people drawn with the correct answers are selected as the winning contestants. This simple promotion is energized by the massive viewership and media attention these events enjoy. Appropriate prizes are anything from freebies, to gift certificates, and appropriate merchandise. Customers love it.
