Introduction
A great customer journey is a factor of not only the customer’s experience at your restaurant but also their experience before and after dining with your establishment.
The pre-dining experience allows customers to avail offers, ensure their reservations are not missed and maybe even get excited about the specials menu. The post-dining experience includes receiving thanks for choosing your restaurant, giving feedback if any, and an opportunity to leave a review about their experience.
This interaction with the customer during their entire customer journey can be achieved with the help of a powerful and widely accessible tool, SMS.
Text message marketing for restaurants is the answer to all your customer engagement needs. In this article, we will be covering the benefits, use cases, legal aspects, and more of text message marketing for restaurants.
Benefits of Text Message Marketing for Restaurants
Let’s see why restaurants should consider text message marketing for all their customer engagement and experience needs.
Increased Customer Engagement
Text message marketing is the best means to increase customer engagement as it promises an open rate of 98% (that too within the first 3 minutes of sending). Text messaging is widely accessible as nearly everyone owns a mobile phone, and SMS isn’t dependent on the Internet.
75% of customers say that they are okay with receiving text messages from bands once they have opted in. Furthermore, SMS coupons are redeemed 10 times more often than email or printed coupons.
The engagement of an SMS campaign stands at around 45% while the engagement rate for email stands at a lowly 6%.
Personalization Options
Text message marketing for restaurants is often facilitated by text marketing platforms. These platforms allow you to segment your customer list based on any criteria of your choice. These segmentations allow to create a more tailored message for each customer. For eg, you can segment all the customers who prefer vegan food and send them all a personalized message for vegan offers. You can also use personalization tokens such as customer’s first name to make the message more tailored.
2 Way Communication
Text message communication is 2-way which means that both the customer and the business can engage in conversation with each other. If the customer receives a message from the business, they can easily respond to the message. This creates a more open and inviting channel of communication that allows businesses to build a more personal relationship with their customers.
When customers feel that the business is easily accessible to them, it helps them create trust in the business, which is why 2-way communication is a great tool!
Increased customer loyalty
Text message marketing allows businesses to be in constant contact with their customers and provides a channel for customers to easily reach out to the business. The customer develops a sense of trust and loyalty with the business through various interactions such as receiving personalized offers, birthday wishes, thank you messages, etc. Therefore restaurants can expect increased customer loyalty through text communication.
Cost Effective
When evaluating your return on investment (ROI), SMS marketing for restaurants is a cost-effective option, especially when executed in bulk. Given the high engagement and conversion rates associated with SMS, the cost per engagement is significantly lower compared to other marketing channels.
Use Cases of Text Message Marketing for Restaurants
Reservation confirmation
Text message marketing can be used by restaurants to send reservation confirmation texts. Restaurants can send confirmation texts as soon as the customers reserve a table. For example, if a customer calls to book a table, or books a table reservation through online means, you can follow it up with a text confirmation so that the customer also has proof of their reservation.
Table ready alert
Often times, customers may need to wait to be seated at their table. They might use this time to roam somewhere near to the restaurant or simply wait at the waiting area. One way to get their attention is by sending them a text alert about the status of their table.
Loyalty programs and offers
Text message marketing for restaurants can be used to send loyalty programs and personalized offers as customers would be more likely to engage with text messages and avail the offers quickly.
Weekly specials
To keep customers engaged and excited about your restaurant, you can send them alerts about weekly specials.
Event Invitations
Text messages can also be utilized to send any event invitation to the customers. You can send details of the event such as date, time, registration needed if any etc via text. You may also add a call to action at the end of the text message so that customers may register directly.
Restaurant Opening SMS Text
Text messages can be utilized to send new restaurant location opening information. You can send details such as the location of the new restaurant, create hype leading up to the day of the opening by offering special opening day coupons and so much more!
Open shifts and scheduling
Text messaging can also be utilized for internal communication. You may send shift updates to your staff and create group chats to convey information to your entire team.
AI-Powered Text Messaging
Text message marketing for restaurants can be amped up with the help of new-age AI-powered texting.
Through the use of AI, you can send text messages to customers based on certain triggers or send messages to customers until they respond to a message.
For example, you can send a series of text reservation reminders to customers with proper calls to action such as “reply with C to confirm your reservation” and only stop sending the reminders when the customer responds.
The Legal Aspect of Text Message Marketing for Restaurants
Clearly, text message marketing for restaurants is a great way to engage customers, however, it is necessary that businesses are well-versed in the legal aspects of customer texting.
In the United States, the Telephone Consumer Protection Act or the TCPA lays down laws and guidelines that businesses must follow when engaging in texting with customers. Under the TCPA, the following guidelines apply:
- Obtain Customer Consent: To engage in text communication with a customer, you must first obtain their consent for the same. The customer should state that they wish to receive texts from the business and have no objection to it.
To do so, you may send an email to your customers and ask them if they would like to sign up text message communication or you may have them fill out a form while they are at your establishment, another simple way could be placing text sign up QR codes at your restaurants so that interested customers can easily scan it and get enrolled for receiving text messages. - Identification: Once the restaurant has received consent from the customers to text them, they must ensure that the text they send to the customers has clear identification. This means the text must clearly state which entity is contacting them. Therefore, the restaurant name and the reason for contact must be used in the text.
- Timing: Text messages should be sent at appropriate times only. This must occur between the hours of 8 am and 9 pm.
- Opt-out options: Customers should have clear options to opt-out of receiving text messages if they wish to do so. Therefore the entity should include opt-out prompts such as “ Reply with STOP if you wish to unsubscribe from receiving text messages”.
If you follow these guidelines, you can begin your customer texting journey.
Some Templates You Can Use for Text Message Marketing for Restaurants
Here are some text templates that you may use for your restaurant:
Inquiry response
“ Hi [Customer Name], thank you for contacting [Restaurant name]. We are open from [Opening Time] to [Closing Time].”
Reservation Confirmation
“ Hi [Customer Name], greetings from [Your Restaurant Name]! This is to inform you that you reservation for [Number of customers] on [Date] at [Time] is confirmed!”
Reservation reminder
“ Friendly reminder: Your reservation at [Restaurant Name] is tomorrow at [Time]. We’re excited to serve you. If your plans change, please let us know. See you soon!”
Reservation updates
“Hi [Customer Name], this is to update you that your table for [Number of customers] is ready. Looking forward to hosting you soon.”
Reservation Cancellation SMS
“We’re sorry to hear you won’t be able to make it to [Restaurant Name] for your reservation on [Date] at [Time]. If you need to reschedule or have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact us.”
Thank You for Dining
“We hope you had a wonderful dining experience at [Restaurant Name]! Your satisfaction is our priority. Please share your feedback, and we can’t wait to welcome you back soon.”
New Restaurant Opening Soon
“Exciting news! [Restaurant Name] is opening a brand-new location in [Location]. Stay tuned for an unforgettable dining experience. We can’t wait to welcome you!”
Promotional SMS
“Don’t miss out on our latest promotion! Enjoy [Discount Percentage]% off your next meal at [Restaurant Name]. Use code [Promo Code] when ordering. Valid until [Expiry Date].”
Request for Feedback
“We value your opinion! How was your recent dining experience at [Restaurant Name]? Please take a moment to provide us with your feedback. Your input helps us improve.”
Birthday SMS
“Happy Birthday, [Customer Name]! 🎉🎂 Celebrate your special day with us at [Restaurant Name]. Come in for a complimentary dessert on us. Make your day even sweeter!”
You can also access our 50+ ready to use restaurant sms templates for more extensive and detailed list of templates.
Text Message Marketing Software for Restaurants Through Emitrr
If you wish to start texting at your restaurant, you will need a tool to help facilitate it. The tool is a text message marketing software. A text message marketing software or a restaurant texting service like Emitrr will let you send text messages and help you manage customer conversations, internal team communication, streamline other marketing activities, etc. Let’s have a look at how you can use a text marketing software for your restaurant.
2 way texting
As we discussed in the sections above, 2-way texting allows the customers to respond to your messages and ask you any queries they may have. The ability to respond to marketing texts instills a feeling of connection with the restaurant. Customers feel that the business is more reachable and responsive to their needs. It also allows customers to initiate conversation from their end if needed.
Contact Management
The contact management feature allows you to segment customers according to certain criteria. You may set criteria that seem fit for your business. For example, you can segment customers according to their food preferences such as Vegan or Non-vegan; or based on cuisine preferences. This contact segmentation allows to send more personalized messages to the customers, that they would most likely respond to.
Conversation Management
The conversation management feature allows to take various actions for a particular conversation. For eg, you may assign a conversation to one of your team members or a specific department. You can mark conversations as opened or closed. You can also set certain disposition parameters to the conversations to further segment the contact.
You may also club similar conversations into appropriate folders of your choice.
Group Texting
The group texting feature allows you to create groups with your team members so that you can engage in internal communication. Groups may be creates based on different departments, shifts etc.
Mass Texting
The mass texting feature allows one to send one message to multiple recipients along with personalization features to make the message seem more tailored. With the mass texting feature, you can simply draft a message, add personalization tokens such as first name, select or add the list of contacts, and hit send. This way you can send individual messages to all your contacts in one go. This would be a great feature to send mass alerts, promotional offers and more.
Translation
Some text message marketing software come with translation features so that you can communicate with customers in their preferred language. This is how the translation feature looks on Emitrr:
Review requests
This feature allows restaurants to send review requests to their customers. Some text marketing platforms like Emitrr offers automated review request campaigns along with manual campaigns. The automated campaign can be easily accessed through an integration with your POS systems. Once your POS and marketing platform are integrated all you need to do is turn on the review campaign from the list of automated campaigns.
This is how it looks like in Emitrr:
For the manual campaign, you can simply select the list of contacts you want to send review requests to and draft the message and hit send! Reviews help give more visibility and increase trust in the eyes of potential customers.
Feedback Forms
Feedback is an essential component of running a successful business. By collecting customer feedback, you can work on areas that need improvement and really listen to customer suggestions, and understand their experience.
Some text marketing platforms like Emitrr, allow you to create feedback forms under its dashboard from scratch and send it to your desired list of customers. In Emitrr, you can find it under the “Survey” section.
Integrations with POS systems
Integration with the POS system is a feature that will help the marketing platform to sync data. The integration allows restaurants to obtain information stored in the POS and use it for sending text and adding personalization tokens. The bi-directional integration allows for up-to-date customer information.
Analytics
The analytics feature demonstrates how your past and running campaigns are performing. You can use these data points to make observations and draw conclusions about your marketing strategies and more.
For example, with Emitrr you can view metrics such as Texting usage, Reviews, Team Performance etc.
Text Message Marketing for Restaurant FAQs
Yes, it is legal to send marketing text messages provided you have obtained the customer’s consent for the same.
To advertise through text message, you must first obtain the customers consent. Once the customer has given their consent, you can then send promotional messages using a text marketing application.
No cold SMS marketing is not legal as it does not follow the TCPA guidelines.
Conclusion
Text message marketing is a boon for restaurants as it promises great engagement and lays a path for increased customer trust and loyalty. It makes restaurants seem approachable and responsive to the customers. Restaurants can engage with customers in various ways such as by sending promotional offers, reservation confirmations and reminders, review requests, feedback, and much more.
If you wish to get started with text message marketing for your restaurant schedule a demo with Emitrr today!
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