In a world where dining options abound and consumers crave experiences tailored to their unique tastes, personalization in the restaurant industry emerges as a critical differentiator. This isn't just about knowing your customer's name or their favorite dish; it's about creating a connection that elevates their dining experience to something memorable, something personal. From the ambiance to the service, and down to the menu itself, personalization can transform a simple meal into a story worth sharing. Real-life examples, such as a café that remembers your coffee preference or a fine-dining restaurant that sends personalized invitations for a wine tasting event, illustrate the power and potential of personalization to foster loyalty and enhance customer satisfaction.lization initiatives
Personalization starts with a deep understanding of your customers. Knowing their preferences, behaviors, and demographics enables restaurants to tailor experiences that resonate on a personal level. This section explores how data collection and analysis can uncover the insights needed to drive successful personalization strategies.
The foundation of any personalization strategy lies in effectively gathering and understanding customer data. This process not only illuminates who your customers are but also unveils their unique preferences and behaviors, setting a critical foundation for personalized experiences.
Surveys and feedback forms are invaluable tools for gathering explicit customer insights. They offer a direct line to customer preferences, satisfaction levels, and areas for improvement. Whether it's through digital platforms post-visit or paper forms at the table, these instruments can capture specific feedback that might not be observable through other means, providing actionable insights for personalization efforts.
Point-of-sale (POS) systems serve as a treasure trove of customer data, tracking every transaction, item preference, and purchase frequency. This data not only reveals purchasing habits but also helps in identifying trends and popular choices among your clientele. By analyzing POS data, restaurants can tailor their menu offerings and promotional strategies to match customer demand.
Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software is pivotal in aggregating and analyzing customer data. It compiles every interaction, from reservations to meal preferences, into a comprehensive customer profile. This holistic view allows for targeted marketing campaigns, personalized service offerings, and ultimately, a deeper connection with each diner.
Social media listening goes beyond tracking mentions and hashtags; it's about tuning into the conversations surrounding your brand. This method can unveil unspoken customer sentiments, emerging trends, and real-time feedback. By engaging with these conversations, restaurants can address concerns, adapt to customer expectations, and even identify brand advocates.
Loyalty programs are not just a mechanism for rewarding repeat business; they're a strategic tool for collecting detailed customer data. From preference patterns to dining frequency, loyalty programs provide a wealth of information that can inform personalized service touches, rewards, and marketing messages that resonate deeply with your customer base.
Each of these sources of customer data acts as a key that unlocks the door to your customers' desires, setting the stage for experiences that are not just tailored, but deeply personal. By leveraging these insights, restaurants can move beyond generic service to create moments of delight that keep customers coming back. This approach doesn't just build loyalty; it turns satisfied diners into passionate advocates for your brand.
With a wealth of data at your fingertips, the next step is to analyze this information to uncover actionable insights. Segmentation of customers based on demographics, preferences, and behaviors allows for targeted marketing and service strategies. Identifying trends and patterns can inform everything from menu design to promotional offers, ensuring that your restaurant remains aligned with customer desires. The goal is to use these insights to make every customer feel like your offerings are curated just for them.
Creating a dining experience that feels personal and unique to each customer is the essence of restaurant personalization. This section delves into the ways restaurants can customize menus, service, and even the ambiance to meet and exceed customer expectations.
Personalizing the dining experience starts with the menu. Offering dietary options caters to specific health or lifestyle choices, while seasonal specials can highlight fresh ingredients that appeal to the food-conscious diner. Customizable dishes empower customers to create their ideal meal, turning dining into an interactive experience. Technology, such as digital menus, can facilitate this customization, allowing diners to filter options according to their preferences seamlessly.
The essence of personalized service is making each customer feel recognized and valued. Greeting customers warmly, remembering their preferences, and making tailored recommendations are all practices that contribute to a memorable dining experience. Follow-up communications, such as thank-you emails or invitations to special events, reinforce the personal connection between your restaurant and your customers.
Technology plays a pivotal role in personalizing the dining experience. Online ordering systems offer convenience and efficiency, while table-side ordering and digital menus add a modern touch to service. AI-powered recommendations can suggest dishes based on a customer’s past choices, and virtual reality can offer immersive experiences for those looking to explore their culinary options in a novel way. AI chatbots for customer service can provide instant, personalized responses to inquiries, further enhancing the customer experience
The ultimate goal of personalization is to build a base of loyal customers who feel a strong, personal connection to your restaurant. Rewards and recognition programs, tailored promotions, and VIP experiences are all strategies that can increase customer loyalty. By continuously seeking feedback and making improvements based on customer data, restaurants can ensure that their personalization efforts remain effective and appreciated.
Restaurant loyalty programs are a powerful tool for encouraging repeat business and deepening customer relationships. Offering rewards can incentivize frequent visits, while personalized gifts or surprise treats on special occasions can make customers feel valued. Providing VIP experiences and exclusive access to events or promotions can further enhance customer loyalty. Implementing a referral program can also leverage satisfied customers to act as brand ambassadors, expanding your customer base through trusted word-of-mouth marketing.
Learn how developing rewards programs and offer management campaigns can enhance guest engagement for your restaurant.
The pursuit of personalization is an ongoing journey requiring regular evaluation and adaptation. Soliciting customer feedback through surveys can provide direct insights into areas for improvement. Analyzing customer data helps identify trends and preferences, guiding the development of initiatives that resonate with your audience. Training staff to deliver personalized experiences ensures that your service continually meets and exceeds customer expectations. Additionally, keeping an eye on the competition and industry trends can inspire innovative approaches to personalization, ensuring your restaurant remains a preferred choice for diners.
Personalization in the restaurant industry represents a powerful strategy for engaging customers, enhancing their dining experience, and building lasting loyalty. From gathering and analyzing customer data to tailoring every aspect of the dining experience and recognizing customer loyalty, personalization touches every facet of the restaurant-customer relationship. As we look to the future, the possibilities for personalization will continue to evolve with advancements in technology and changing customer expectations. Restaurants that embrace personalization not only set themselves apart in a competitive market but also forge deeper connections with their customers, laying the foundation for sustained success.
Embracing personalization requires a commitment to understanding your customers and continuously adapting to meet their needs. With the right approach and tools like Delightable, restaurants can unlock the full potential of personalization, transforming every meal into a personalized dining journey.
How can small restaurants with limited budgets implement personalization?
Small restaurants can start personalization efforts by utilizing cost-effective tools and focusing on areas that have a direct impact on customer experience. Personal touches, such as greeting customers by name or remembering their favorite dishes, can make a big difference. Utilizing social media to engage with customers and gather feedback is another low-cost strategy. Small-scale loyalty programs, such as punch cards for repeat visits, can also foster loyalty without a significant investment.
Can personalization improve online ordering experiences?
Absolutely. Personalization can significantly enhance online ordering by providing tailored menu recommendations based on past orders, remembering customer preferences (like dietary restrictions), and offering targeted promotions. Integrating a CRM system with your online ordering platform can automate these personal touches, making the ordering process more efficient and enjoyable for customers.
How do restaurants ensure they're not infringing on customer privacy with personalization efforts?
Transparency and consent are key to respecting customer privacy. Restaurants should clearly communicate what data is being collected and how it will be used to enhance the dining experience. Offering customers the option to opt-in or out of data collection and personalization efforts is crucial. Adhering to data protection regulations, such as GDPR for European customers, ensures that personalization efforts are both ethical and legal.
Maximize dining delight with tailored experiences. This guide offers strategies for using customer insights to personalize and elevate the dining journey.
View Ultimate GuideOperating a successful restaurant in the 2024 landscape requires more than just an exceptional menu and a prime location—it demands a deep understanding of who your customers are.
In this guide, we’ll explore the science of restaurant customer demographics, unraveling the layers of customer data to reveal how targeted insights can significantly enhance your sales and marketing strategies. By harnessing the power of demographics, restaurants can craft personalized experiences that resonate deeply with their audience, turning casual diners into loyal patrons.
Customer demographics encompass the statistical aspects of your restaurant's clientele, including age, income, location, and spending habits. Understanding these elements is crucial for tailoring your restaurant's offerings and marketing messages. Demographics provide a lens through which you can view your market, allowing you to identify which customer segments are most likely to frequent your establishment. This knowledge not only helps in customizing the dining experience to meet the preferences of your guests but also in optimizing your marketing efforts to attract the right audience.
Age, income, location, and spending habits stand as the pillars of demographic analysis. Age can influence menu preferences and dining times; income levels can determine spending capacity and frequency of visits; location can affect the choice of cuisine and accessibility; and spending habits can provide insights into the types of dining experiences customers value. By analyzing these indicators, restaurants can make informed decisions on menu design, pricing strategies, and promotional activities, ensuring they meet the specific needs of their target demographic segments.
Recent trends show a shift towards healthier eating options among younger demographics, while convenience and speed of service are prioritized by working professionals. There's also an increasing demand for experiential dining among higher income groups, looking for unique and Instagrammable dining experiences. Understanding these patterns allows restaurants to align their offerings with the evolving preferences of their customers, ensuring they stay relevant and competitive in a rapidly changing industry.
Crafting a marketing strategy without a clear understanding of your target customer is like navigating a ship without a compass. The first step in any successful restaurant marketing campaign is identifying your ideal customer profiles. This segmentation enables you to tailor your marketing efforts more effectively, ensuring that your message reaches the right ears and eyes.
Dividing your market into distinct segments based on demographics allows for more targeted and effective marketing strategies. For instance, a family-friendly restaurant might focus on households with children, offering kid-friendly menus and amenities. On the other hand, a high-end restaurant might target higher-income individuals seeking gourmet dining experiences. By identifying these segments, restaurants can more accurately tailor their offerings and marketing messages to meet the expectations of each group.
With the identified segments in hand, restaurants can craft personalized marketing campaigns that speak directly to the interests and needs of each group. For example, email campaigns for young professionals might highlight quick lunch options or happy hour deals, while marketing for families might focus on weekend specials or family meal deals. Personalization enhances the effectiveness of your marketing efforts, increasing engagement and, ultimately, customer loyalty.
Understanding your customers' demographics is the key to crafting dining experiences that not only meet but exceed expectations. By tailoring every aspect of the dining journey to fit the preferences and needs of different demographic segments, restaurants can create memorable experiences that drive loyalty and word-of-mouth recommendations.
Menu customization based on demographic insights can significantly enhance the dining experience. For example, younger demographics may prefer adventurous and Instagram-worthy dishes, while older customers might appreciate classic, comfort food offerings. Analyzing spending habits and popular choices can also guide seasonal menu adjustments or specials aimed at attracting specific customer segments, ensuring that every guest finds something to love on your menu.
Service styles and hospitality can also be adapted to suit the expectations of different demographic groups. Busy professionals might value quick and efficient service for a lunch break, whereas families with children might appreciate a more patient and engaging approach. Training your staff to recognize and adapt to these subtle cues can significantly enhance customer satisfaction and encourage repeat visits.
The ambiance of a restaurant plays a crucial role in attracting specific demographics. For instance, a vibrant and trendy atmosphere might appeal to millennials and Gen Z, while a quiet and refined setting could attract older demographics or business clientele. Incorporating demographic insights into the design and atmosphere of your restaurant can create an environment that resonates with your target audience, making them feel right at home.
Demographic analysis offers a roadmap to not only understand but also effectively engage with your target market. By identifying and catering to high-value customer segments, optimizing pricing strategies, and fostering loyalty, restaurants can significantly boost their bottom line.
Dive into your customer data to pinpoint segments that offer the highest revenue potential, such as affluent professionals or large family groups. Tailored promotions, such as corporate event packages or family dining discounts, can attract these high-value segments, maximizing revenue and efficiently utilizing marketing resources.
Demographic analysis can also inform dynamic pricing strategies. For example, offering lunch specials at a lower price point might attract young professionals looking for affordable dining options, while premium dinner experiences can be priced higher to appeal to affluent diners seeking luxury dining experiences. This approach ensures optimal pricing that matches the value perceived by different demographic groups.
Loyalty programs and personalized marketing campaigns designed with demographic insights encourage repeat visits and foster a sense of belonging among your customers. For instance, a rewards program offering discounts on family meals can endear your restaurant to family segments, while exclusive wine tasting invites can cater to the interests of affluent clientele, enhancing loyalty and encouraging frequent visits.
In a fiercely competitive landscape, unique demographic insights can be your secret weapon. By exploring unconventional segments, conducting thorough market research, and forecasting trends, restaurants can discover new opportunities for growth and innovation.
Look beyond traditional demographic categories to identify niche markets that are underserved. For instance, catering to night shift workers with late-night dining options or creating a pet-friendly patio area can attract unique customer segments, setting your restaurant apart from competitors.
Regular market research, including surveys and focus groups, can uncover untapped demographic segments and emerging dining trends. This proactive approach allows restaurants to innovate and adapt their offerings, capturing new markets before competitors.
Leverage demographic data to forecast upcoming trends and innovate your offerings accordingly. For example, if data shows an increasing interest in plant-based diets among your customer base, introducing a range of innovative vegan dishes could position your restaurant as a forward-thinking leader in sustainable dining.
The ability to gather and accurately analyze customer demographics is crucial for any restaurant aiming to make data-driven decisions. Adopting best practices in data collection and analysis ensures that your strategies are based on solid insights, leading to more effective targeting and personalization.
Implementing Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems and data analytics tools can provide a wealth of information about your customers. These systems can track customer interactions, purchases, and preferences, offering detailed insights into demographic trends. Utilizing tools like Delightable, which are designed with restaurants in mind, can help in segmenting your customer base, personalizing marketing efforts, and ultimately enhancing customer engagement.
In addition to leveraging CRM systems and analytics tools, employing direct tactics to gather demographic information can significantly enhance your understanding of your customer base.
Effective methods for collecting this essential data include:
Analyzing Average Check Amounts and Visit Frequency: By tracking the average amount customers spend and how often they visit, you can infer demographic details such as income level and dining preferences. This information can be used to tailor marketing efforts and promotions to suit the spending habits of different customer segments.
Birthday Programs: Implementing a birthday club or offering a birthday special not only drives customer loyalty but also provides an invaluable piece of demographic information – the customer's age. Age is a fundamental demographic factor that can influence dining preferences and purchasing behavior.
Loyalty Programs: Encourage customers to share information such as marital status and whether they have children in exchange for loyalty points or special offers. These pieces of information are critical, as highlighted by Jynessa Mason, VP of Analytics and Insights. Just knowing a customer's age, marital status, and whether they have children can significantly refine your marketing segmentation and targeting.
Customer surveys and feedback are direct channels to understanding your clientele. Regularly engaging with your customers for their opinions on menu items, service quality, and overall experience can reveal valuable demographic insights. Analyzing this feedback helps in identifying patterns and preferences across different customer segments, allowing for more targeted service improvements and marketing strategies.
In the era of data breaches and privacy concerns, maintaining the security and privacy of customer data is paramount. Adhering to standards like SOC2 and GDPR not only ensures compliance but also builds trust with your customers. Delightable prioritizes data security and privacy, as evidenced by our certifications and commitments outlined at trust.fishbowl.com. Choosing platforms that take data protection seriously is crucial for maintaining your restaurant's reputation and customer trust.
Embracing advanced technologies in customer data analysis can significantly streamline your marketing efforts and enhance your understanding of customer demographics. Delightable’s platform stands out with its Smart Segmentation, powered by AI, which allows marketers to quickly create audience segments without needing to rely on spreadsheets or manual processes. This innovative feature enables a more intuitive and efficient approach to market segmentation:
Ask Harmony: Utilizing natural language search capabilities, this feature allows you to query your customer database as if you were asking a colleague. This means you can obtain insights and segment data simply by asking questions in plain English, bypassing the need for complex queries or extensive campaign recall.
Suggested Segments: Delightable offers a curated selection of frequently-used segments specifically tailored for the restaurant industry. This feature is designed to help marketers identify and target key audience segments effortlessly, ensuring that your campaigns are always on point and relevant.
My Segments: This personalization feature keeps track of your previously used campaigns, allowing for easy access and reuse. By having your past campaigns readily available, you can efficiently build upon successful strategies and maintain consistency across your marketing initiatives.
These AI-driven tools not only set Delightable apart from the competition but also provide a distinct business advantage by streamlining the segmentation process. This allows for quicker, more informed decision-making, leading to more effective and personalized marketing campaigns. Learn more about Delightable’s Smart Segmentation and how it can revolutionize your restaurant marketing.
Customer demographics unlocks the potential for profound business growth for restaurants. By tailoring your offerings and marketing to meet the specific needs of different customer segments, you can create more meaningful dining experiences and foster lasting customer loyalty.
CTA – Embracing Customer Demographics for Business Growth
To truly leverage the insights customer demographics offer, embracing a platform like Delightable is essential. Our suite of tools is designed to help restaurants gather, analyze, and act on customer data, ensuring that every decision you make is informed and impactful. Start harnessing the power of your customer demographics with Delightable and transform your restaurant into a customer-centric powerhouse.
How can I start collecting customer demographic data?
Begin by utilizing every customer touchpoint — from in-restaurant interactions to online orders. Implementing a CRM system like Delightable can automate this process, making data collection seamless and integrated into your daily operations.
What's the most effective way to use demographic data for marketing?
The most effective approach is segmented marketing campaigns tailored to the preferences and behaviors of specific customer groups. This ensures that your marketing messages are relevant and engaging to each segment of your audience.
How often should I analyze demographic data?
Regular analysis is key to staying ahead of trends and adapting to changing customer preferences. Quarterly reviews can help you adjust strategies in a timely manner, though some aspects may require more frequent monitoring.
Can demographic data help in menu planning?
Absolutely. Demographic insights can guide menu development by highlighting popular items among different age groups, income levels, or dietary preferences. This allows you to tailor your menu to appeal to the tastes and needs of your target customer segments.
Unlock the secrets of restaurant customer demographics with Fishbowl's guide. Learn strategies for culinary success and customer satisfaction.
View Ultimate GuideIn today's competitive restaurant landscape, attracting and engaging potential customers is not just important—it's vital for the survival and growth of your business. The crux of successful restaurant operations lies in effective marketing strategies that not only drive visibility but also foster a unique brand identity, setting your establishment apart from competitors. This guide delves deep into the essence of restaurant marketing, exploring innovative strategies, practical tactics, and industry best practices designed to elevate your restaurant's presence. Emphasizing the importance of adaptability and the strategic use of technology and data, we aim to equip you with the insights necessary for crafting compelling marketing campaigns that resonate with your audience.
Restaurant marketing represents a comprehensive approach to promoting your dining establishment, designed to attract and retain customers. This multifaceted domain encompasses both traditional offline and modern online strategies, evolving continuously to adapt to consumer behaviors and technological advancements. In this section, we define restaurant marketing in the context of current industry trends and outline the scope of topics covered in this guide, emphasizing the critical balance between online presence and offline engagement for maximum impact.
Effective marketing efforts can significantly enhance brand awareness, ensuring that your restaurant stands out in a crowded marketplace. By deploying compelling campaigns and engaging content, you can boost recognition and recall among potential patrons, driving foot traffic and loyalty.
In today's saturated market, a strategic approach to marketing can give your restaurant a distinct competitive advantage. By crafting unique campaigns and leveraging innovative strategies, you can differentiate your brand and attract new customers, positioning yourself as a leader in the industry.
Marketing enables direct communication with your audience, fostering a deeper connection with your patrons. Through social media, email campaigns, and interactive content, you can engage customers in meaningful ways, encouraging feedback and fostering a community around your brand.
Leveraging marketing analytics allows you to gain valuable insights into customer preferences and behavior. This data-driven approach enables targeted campaigns, menu optimizations, and personalized promotions, enhancing the overall dining experience and boosting customer satisfaction.
Marketing technologies streamline operations, from reservation systems and order management to customer feedback loops. This operational efficiency not only improves the customer experience but also optimizes resource allocation, contributing to the restaurant's bottom line.
Creating a strong brand identity is fundamental to any successful marketing strategy. This involves more than just a name or a logo; it encompasses your restaurant's values, mission, design, tone, and overall feel. These elements should be professionally crafted to match your brand promise, ensuring consistency across all touchpoints. A well-defined brand identity establishes a framework of trust and provides a set of tools to consistently deliver your message to the target audience. When executed correctly, your brand’s visual and communicative elements, such as logos, color schemes, and messaging, should resonate with your target demographic, reinforcing your establishment's character and values. This consistency helps to build recognition and loyalty, ensuring that every interaction with your brand reinforces the customer's perception and expectation of quality.
Understanding your target audience is essential for crafting effective marketing campaigns. In this section, we'll discuss the importance of defining your ideal customer profile and provide practical tips for identifying commonalities, characteristics, and preferences among your clientele.
Choosing the right marketing channels is crucial for reaching your target audience effectively. We'll explore how to determine which channels are best suited to your restaurant's unique offerings and audience demographics, as well as how to create engaging content tailored to each platform.
Key performance indicators (KPIs) are essential metrics for evaluating the success of your marketing efforts. We'll discuss how to identify the most relevant KPIs for your restaurant, such as sign-ups, phone calls, and online purchases, and how to track and analyze them effectively.
Allocating your marketing budget strategically is vital for maximizing ROI and achieving your business objectives. We'll provide guidance on how to set a realistic budget based on your restaurant's goals, audience, and competitive landscape, ensuring that your resources are allocated wisely.
Formalizing your marketing strategy with a comprehensive plan is essential for ensuring consistency and coherence across your campaigns. We'll outline the key components of a successful marketing plan and discuss the importance of setting clear objectives, defining tactics, and establishing metrics for measurement.
Encouraging customers to share their experiences on social media can amplify your brand's reach and credibility. We'll explore the power of user-generated content and provide tips for soliciting and showcasing customer reviews, photos, and testimonials.
Partnering with influencers, local businesses, or events can expand your restaurant's visibility and attract new customers. We'll discuss the benefits of collaboration and provide guidance on how to identify and cultivate strategic partnerships that align with your brand values and objectives.
Today, a modern, responsive website acts as the cornerstone of your restaurant's online presence, serving as a virtual storefront that welcomes potential customers. Emphasizing a mobile-responsive design is crucial, considering the growing propensity for consumers to use their mobile devices for everything from browsing menus to placing orders. A mobile-optimized website ensures that visitors have a seamless experience, regardless of the device they're using, which can significantly enhance user engagement and increase the likelihood of converting visitors into customers. In this section, we'll delve into the importance of creating a website that not only looks professional but is also optimized for mobile usage, providing practical tips for enhancing user experience, driving traffic, and facilitating online conversions. By focusing on mobile-first design, your restaurant can cater to the modern consumer, ensuring accessibility and convenience at every touchpoint.
Establishing a presence on social media channels, local listings, and email marketing platforms is essential for reaching and engaging your target audience. We'll discuss the importance of optimizing your profiles and content for each platform and provide insights into effective email marketing strategies for restaurants.
Creating a loyalty program is more than just a tactic to increase visits; it's about building a community around your restaurant. Successful loyalty programs offer a mix of rewards, exclusive deals, and personalized experiences that resonate with your customer base. For instance, points-based rewards systems can incentivize frequent visits, while exclusive offers for members can enhance the perceived value of joining the program. The key is to ensure that the rewards are both attainable and desirable, encouraging ongoing engagement. Additionally, leveraging technology to track customer preferences and purchase history can enable more personalized offers, further enhancing loyalty and satisfaction.
A menu landing page is your digital showcase, inviting potential patrons to explore your culinary offerings. High-quality images, detailed descriptions, and an easy-to-navigate layout are essential components. Including customer reviews and ratings for dishes can also provide social proof, encouraging new visitors to try your restaurant. To drive conversions, integrate reservation tools or online ordering systems directly into the page. Remember, your landing page should reflect your restaurant's ambiance and brand identity, creating a seamless experience from digital to dining.
A welcome email series is a critical touchpoint for engaging new subscribers. It should introduce your brand story, highlight your unique selling propositions, and offer a special incentive for their first visit. The goal is to make a strong first impression that sets the tone for your relationship with the subscriber. Personalization plays a crucial role here; use the customer's name and preferences (if known) to tailor the message. A series of 2-3 emails spaced over a few weeks can effectively keep your restaurant top-of-mind, culminating in a call-to-action that drives the subscriber to make a reservation or visit.
In today's data-driven marketing landscape, collecting and utilizing guest data can significantly enhance the effectiveness of your campaigns. Utilizing a Customer Data Platform (CDP) allows for the aggregation of customer data across multiple touchpoints, providing a unified customer view. This holistic understanding enables more targeted and personalized marketing efforts, from customized email marketing campaigns to tailored social media ads. Ensuring data privacy and security is paramount; transparent communication about how data is used can foster trust and loyalty among your patrons.
Segmentation involves dividing your audience into groups based on characteristics such as dining preferences, visit frequency, or spending behavior. This enables more targeted communications that resonate with each segment's specific interests and needs. For example, casual diners might receive promotions for happy hour, while high spenders could be invited to exclusive tasting events. Effective segmentation leads to higher engagement rates, as messages are more relevant to the recipient. Utilizing segmentation tools within email marketing platforms can automate this process, making it both efficient and scalable.
SMS marketing's power lies in its immediacy and open rates, which significantly surpass those of email. Timely promotions, such as a same-day discount or a reminder about a special event, can spur on-the-spot decisions to visit your restaurant. Personalization, based on past behavior or preferences, can increase the effectiveness of these messages. The key is to balance frequency and value; too many messages can lead to opt-outs, so focus on sending offers that are truly compelling and relevant.
Participating in or hosting community events can dramatically increase your restaurant's visibility and deepen local connections. From sponsoring a local sports team to organizing charity events, these activities underscore your commitment to the community. Engaging your audience through social media or email marketing before, during, and after the event can amplify its impact, turning attendees into advocates for your brand.
Marketing your restaurant's commitment to sustainability not only showcases your dedication to environmental stewardship but also significantly boosts your brand appeal to a growing demographic of eco-conscious consumers. By integrating sustainable practices, such as local sourcing, energy efficiency, and waste reduction, you can differentiate your brand in a competitive market. This approach not only reflects positively on your restaurant's image but also attracts patrons who value ethical and environmentally responsible businesses. Effectively communicating your sustainability initiatives can enhance customer loyalty, attract positive media attention, and ultimately contribute to increased profitability through a stronger, values-aligned customer base.
A good restaurant marketing strategy is holistic, encompassing various digital and traditional channels to build brand awareness, engage with customers, and drive sales. Effective strategies are customer-centric, designed around a deep understanding of the target audience's preferences, behaviors, and needs. They are also adaptable, ready to pivot based on market trends, customer feedback, and performance metrics. For restaurant leaders and marketing team members, due diligence involves market research, competitive analysis, and ongoing performance evaluation to refine and optimize marketing efforts continuously.
Key elements of a great marketing strategy include:
Transform your guests’ dining experience into an unforgettable event with an exclusive chef’s table or special tasting events. These intimate gatherings not only allow diners to sample exquisite, off-menu items but also provide an opportunity to interact directly with the chef, creating a personal connection. For instance, a chef's table event could highlight the journey of a particular ingredient from farm to table, paired with the perfect wines. Promote these events through your newsletter and social media, encouraging attendees to share their experiences online. This not only drives word-of-mouth marketing but also elevates your restaurant's status as a destination for culinary exploration.
Engage your audience and expand your reach with interactive social media campaigns. For example, a recipe contest inviting followers to create their own version of a dish from your menu encourages participation and generates buzz. Alternatively, a hashtag challenge related to a seasonal theme or menu item can spark user interest and drive content creation. Highlighting entries on your platforms not only rewards engagement but also showcases the community around your brand, attracting new customers intrigued by the interactive and inclusive nature of your restaurant's online presence.
Forge partnerships with local businesses to create cross-promotions that benefit both parties and the community. A collaboration might involve a coffee shop and a bakery offering a discount when customers purchase from both on the same day, or co-hosting events like wine and cheese nights with local vintners and cheesemongers. These partnerships not only broaden your customer base but also strengthen community ties, creating a network of local support that can boost visibility and patronage through combined marketing efforts.
Capitalize on the growing interest in home cooking and food preparation by offering virtual cooking classes or food demos. These sessions can showcase your culinary team's expertise and your restaurant's signature dishes, providing value to both local patrons and a broader online audience. Use platforms like Instagram Live, Facebook, or Zoom to host these events, making sure to include interactive elements such as Q&A sessions. This strategy not only reinforces your restaurant's brand as an authority in the culinary world but also maintains engagement with your audience, keeping your establishment top of mind even when they're dining at home.
Seasonal or themed menu launches create a sense of novelty and anticipation, drawing in patrons eager to experience new flavors. Whether it’s a summer seafood fest or a winter comfort food menu, these themed offerings can refresh your menu and attract attention. Promote these special menus through enticing visuals and descriptions on social media, your website, and through email marketing. Hosting a launch event or offering a limited-time discount can further incentivize visits, making your restaurant the go-to place for seasonal specialties.
Utilize email newsletters to keep your restaurant in the minds of your patrons. Beyond general updates, include exclusive offers, sneak peeks of upcoming menus, or first-access reservations to special events. Personalization can enhance the impact of these newsletters, tailoring content to the recipient's dining history or preferences. This approach not only boosts customer engagement but also fosters a sense of belonging among your patrons, encouraging loyalty and repeat business.
Encourage your diners to become brand ambassadors through user-generated content contests. Invite customers to share their dining experience with a specific hashtag or submit stories about their favorite meal. Offering incentives, such as a meal voucher for the best post, can increase participation. Feature winning entries on your social media and in your restaurant, celebrating your community's creativity. This strategy not only enriches your content but also enhances credibility, as prospective customers view genuine experiences shared by their peers.
Each of these marketing ideas offers a unique opportunity to engage with your audience, build brand loyalty, and attract new customers. By incorporating these strategies into your marketing plan, you can create a dynamic and interactive presence that stands out in the competitive restaurant industry.
Navigating the world of restaurant marketing presents a unique set of challenges, but with the right strategies, these obstacles can turn into opportunities for growth and engagement.
Engaging with customer reviews, both positive and negative, presents a challenge but is crucial for maintaining a positive brand image. Respond promptly and professionally to all feedback, viewing negative reviews as a chance to improve and showcase your commitment to customer satisfaction. Implement changes based on consistent feedback and highlight these improvements in your communication channels.
Ensuring consistent brand messaging across all platforms can be a daunting task. Develop a brand guideline document that outlines your restaurant's voice, tone, and visual style. Regularly review your marketing materials and social media posts to ensure they align with your brand identity. Consistency in messaging builds trust and reinforces your restaurant's character.
The restaurant industry is fast-paced, with consumer preferences constantly evolving. Stay ahead by regularly researching market trends and customer feedback. Adapt your menu, services, and marketing tactics to meet these changing needs. Engage with your customers through social media polls, feedback forms, and direct conversations to understand their desires and expectations.
Finding the right mix between digital and traditional marketing can be challenging. Identify your target audience and determine where they spend their time. For younger demographics, focus more on digital platforms; for older customers, consider traditional methods like flyers and local ads. Utilize analytics to measure the success of different channels and adjust your strategy accordingly.
Social Media Management Tools (e.g., Hootsuite, Buffer):
These tools streamline social media strategy, allowing for efficient scheduling, posting, and analytics across multiple platforms.
Email Marketing Platforms (e.g., Mailchimp, Constant Contact):
Email marketing software facilitates the creation and distribution of newsletters, promotional emails, and personalized communications to engage your audience effectively.
Reservation and Order Management Systems (e.g., OpenTable, Toast):
These systems optimize reservation handling and order processing, improving operational efficiency and customer satisfaction.
Review Management Software (e.g., ReviewTrackers, Yotpo):
Managing online reviews is crucial for reputation management. These tools help monitor and respond to reviews across various platforms, maintaining a positive brand image.
Delightable:
When selecting your tech stack, it’s increasingly important to ensure that your tools and existing systems are well-connected to one another, enabling you to share and sync your guest data from platform to platform.
Delightable is a comprehensive Guest Relationship Management (GRM) platform designed to seamlessly integrate with your existing tools, including email, SMS marketing, online ordering, loyalty programs, or gift cards.
The innovative platform enhances your marketing mix with powerful features that synergizes and enriches your existing toolsets by tying all customer interactions and data points together. Even if you utilize different systems for email, reservations, or orders, Delightable serves as the central hub, ensuring all data informs your marketing strategies.
Mastering restaurant marketing is an evolving journey that demands creativity, strategic thinking, and a deep understanding of your unique brand and target audience. By weaving together innovative strategies, engaging your community, and making the most of digital tools, you can create captivating marketing narratives that resonate deeply with your customers. The essence of effective restaurant marketing lies in fostering genuine connections, providing exceptional experiences, and nurturing a loyal customer base.
Adaptability is the cornerstone of thriving in the ever-changing landscape of restaurant marketing. It's essential to continuously evaluate and refine your strategies based on robust and reliable customer feedback and performance data. Remember, marketing is a process; you'll experiment with various tactics, some more successful than others. However, by consistently collecting data, you ensure there's always a path forward, guiding your decisions and helping to refine your approach.
Implementing the diverse strategies and insights shared in this guide can significantly elevate your restaurant's profile, meaningfully engage customers, and drive substantial growth. Always keep an eye out for emerging technologies and trends that could amplify your marketing efforts. And remember, the essence of impactful marketing lies in leveraging robust data to inform your strategies, ensuring every move you make is data-driven and aimed at fostering lasting relationships with your customers.
Explore Fishbowl's ultimate restaurant marketing guide to boost your business with effective strategies, tips, and industry insights.
View Ultimate GuideIn today's digital age, the restaurant industry is undergoing a transformative shift, propelled by the rise of technology and changing customer behaviors. Omnichannel marketing has emerged as a vital strategy for restaurants aiming to thrive in this dynamic landscape. By offering a seamless customer experience across multiple channels, from in-house dining to online interactions, restaurants can meet the modern diner's expectations for convenience, personalization, and engagement. This guide delves into the essence of omnichannel marketing within the restaurant sector, highlighting its significance and outlining strategies for effective implementation.
Omnichannel marketing transcends traditional and digital boundaries, creating a unified brand experience for customers, whether they're placing an order through an app, browsing your website, or enjoying a meal in your establishment. This evolution from single-channel and multichannel approaches to a comprehensive omnichannel strategy reflects a broader shift towards integrating physical dining experiences with various digital touchpoints. Such integration ensures that every interaction with your brand, regardless of the medium, is consistent, personalized, and reflective of your restaurant's values and offerings.
The surge in mobile usage has revolutionized how customers interact with restaurants. Mobile ordering, app-based reservations, and QR code menus have become commonplace, offering convenience and efficiency to the dining experience. To capitalize on this trend, restaurants must ensure their mobile experiences are optimized, user-friendly, and integrated with other marketing channels, providing a cohesive journey from the first tap to the final taste.
In today’s digital age, consumers expect to interact with restaurants in a variety of ways: browsing menus online, placing orders via mobile apps, sharing dining experiences on social media, and more. Omnichannel marketing ensures that your restaurant meets customers on their preferred platforms, from Instagram and Twitter to email and your own website. For instance, a customer might discover your restaurant through a Facebook post, explore your menu on your website, and finally make a reservation through an app. Each touchpoint is an opportunity to engage and convert, making omnichannel marketing indispensable for broadening your restaurant's reach and ensuring it remains accessible and appealing to a diverse customer base.
Leveraging data across channels enables restaurants to understand customer preferences and tailor marketing messages accordingly. Imagine a customer who frequently orders vegan dishes; omnichannel marketing allows you to send them personalized offers for your new vegan menu items or invite them to a special event featuring a guest vegan chef. This level of personalization not only delights customers but also builds a sense of loyalty and connection to your brand, encouraging repeat visits and positive word-of-mouth.
Seamless experiences across all channels — whether it’s making a reservation, ordering food, or posting feedback — contribute significantly to customer satisfaction. A customer’s journey that begins with an easy-to-navigate website and ends with a satisfying meal and prompt service can turn a first-time guest into a loyal patron. Loyalty programs integrated across in-house dining, online ordering, and social media further incentivize repeat business and foster a community of dedicated followers.
The omnichannel approach generates a wealth of data, providing deep insights into customer behaviors and preferences. This real-time information allows restaurants to make informed decisions about menu adjustments, marketing strategies, and customer service improvements. For example, analyzing data from your online ordering system can reveal popular dishes, optimal delivery times, and even geographic areas with high demand, enabling targeted marketing efforts and operational enhancements.
In a crowded digital landscape, a strong omnichannel presence boosts your restaurant’s online visibility. By actively engaging customers across various digital platforms — including Google My Business, Yelp, and TripAdvisor — you enhance your restaurant's search engine rankings, making it easier for potential customers to find you. High-quality, consistent content across these channels not only improves visibility but also establishes your restaurant’s reputation as a top choice for diners.
Omnichannel marketing opens multiple avenues for customers to share their feedback, from social media comments to online reviews and direct feedback through your website or app. This constant stream of feedback is invaluable for identifying areas of improvement, adjusting your offerings to meet customer expectations, and acknowledging and rewarding customer loyalty. Engaging with customers across these channels demonstrates your commitment to excellence and customer satisfaction, further enhancing your brand’s reputation.
Creating detailed customer personas involves more than just demographic information; it requires an understanding of your customers’ dining habits, preferences, and expectations. Use data analytics to uncover patterns in ordering behavior, preferred dining times, and favorite menu items. Mapping out the customer journey then allows you to identify key touchpoints where you can engage customers, such as through personalized email marketing following a reservation or targeted ads for customers who’ve shown interest in specific dishes.
Brand consistency across all channels reinforces your restaurant’s identity and values. This means ensuring that your visual branding, tone of voice, and messaging are harmonious whether a customer is reading an email, browsing your website, or scrolling through your social media feeds. For example, your Instagram posts should reflect the same brand personality as your menu descriptions and email communications, creating a cohesive and recognizable brand experience.
Beyond integrating your POS, CRM, and CDP systems, consider the broader ecosystem of technology solutions that support omnichannel marketing, including reservation systems, delivery platforms, and payment processors. Seamless integration of these technologies ensures a frictionless experience for customers, whether they're making a reservation, placing a delivery order, or completing a payment. For example, integrating your reservation system with your CRM can enable personalized greetings and service based on a customer's previous visits and preferences, enriching the dining experience and fostering loyalty.
Incorporating customer feedback into your omnichannel strategy is crucial for maintaining relevance and satisfying customer needs. Regularly soliciting feedback through surveys, comment cards, social media interactions, and review platforms provides invaluable insights into customer satisfaction and areas for improvement. Use this feedback to make agile adaptations to your services, menu offerings, and marketing messages, ensuring your restaurant stays aligned with customer desires and expectations. For example, if feedback indicates a demand for more plant-based options, you can highlight these choices in your marketing channels and monitor the response to further tailor your approach.
Advanced technology, like AI and machine learning, can significantly enhance personalization in your marketing efforts. These tools analyze customer data to predict preferences and behaviors, enabling you to send personalized recommendations, promotions, and content that resonate with each customer. For instance, a customer who frequently orders spicy dishes might receive targeted emails highlighting your latest spicy menu additions or exclusive offers on their favorites. Investing in technology that facilitates deep personalization will set your restaurant apart in a crowded market and deepen customer relationships.
Ensuring your staff is well-versed in your omnichannel strategy and how it translates to customer interactions is key. Cross-training your team across different roles and channels enhances their understanding of the customer journey and how each touchpoint contributes to the overall experience. This knowledge enables staff to provide consistent, informed service, whether they're interacting with customers in person, over the phone, or through digital platforms. Regular training sessions can update the team on new marketing campaigns, technological tools, and how to deliver a cohesive brand message, fostering a unified approach to customer service.
Your online reputation is a critical component of your omnichannel strategy. Actively managing your presence on review sites, social media platforms, and your own website ensures that the narrative around your brand remains positive. Responding promptly and professionally to both positive and negative feedback demonstrates your commitment to customer satisfaction and can significantly influence public perception. Moreover, leveraging positive reviews in your marketing materials and on your digital platforms can enhance your restaurant's credibility and appeal.
Utilizing various channels for engagement means adapting your content and interactions to fit each platform’s unique features and audience. For example, while Instagram may be ideal for showcasing high-quality images of your dishes, email marketing might be more suited for sharing detailed stories about your ingredients’ origins or chefs’ backgrounds. Tailoring your approach to each channel maximizes engagement and connects with your audience in meaningful ways.
The digital landscape is ever-evolving, and so are customer expectations. Regularly analyzing engagement and sales data across all channels enables you to understand what resonates with your audience and what doesn’t. This ongoing analysis should inform your marketing strategy, allowing you to make data-driven adjustments that enhance customer engagement and drive sales. For instance, if data shows that email campaigns featuring behind-the-scenes content generate high engagement, you might consider increasing the frequency of such emails or replicating the approach on other channels.
One of the primary challenges in omnichannel marketing is ensuring consistent branding and customer experience across all channels. Discrepancies in messaging, offers, or even the tone of communication can confuse customers and dilute your brand identity. For instance, if a promotion is available through your app but not recognized in-store, it can lead to customer frustration and a perceived lack of reliability in your brand. Overcoming these challenges requires meticulous coordination and a centralized content management system to ensure all channels reflect the same brand values, offers, and messaging. Despite these hurdles, achieving consistency solidifies your brand's reputation and enhances customer trust, making the effort well worth it.
Restaurants today have access to an unprecedented amount of customer data, from dining preferences to order history and interaction logs across various platforms. Managing and making sense of this data can be overwhelming, posing significant challenges in data consolidation, analysis, and practical application. The key to navigating this data overload is to invest in robust Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and Customer Data Platform (CDP) systems that can aggregate, analyze, and provide actionable insights from your data. Although daunting, mastering data management is essential for personalizing customer experiences and making informed business decisions, ultimately unlocking the full potential of omnichannel marketing.
Ensuring seamless communication between various digital platforms and operational systems is a major technical challenge in omnichannel marketing. Restaurants often use a mix of solutions for reservations, orders, CRM, and marketing, which may not naturally integrate. This can result in disjointed customer experiences and operational inefficiencies. Overcoming these challenges requires careful selection of compatible technologies and possibly custom integration work. The investment in integration ensures that data flows smoothly across systems, enabling a truly unified and efficient omnichannel operation.
Aligning every team member, from marketing to front-of-house staff, with the omnichannel vision is crucial yet challenging. Each team member plays a role in delivering the omnichannel experience, whether they are directly interacting with customers or supporting backend operations. Comprehensive training programs and regular communication about omnichannel strategies and goals are essential to ensure that everyone understands their role in executing the omnichannel experience. Customizing training for the specific needs of the restaurant industry, focusing on scenarios staff are likely to encounter, helps in creating a cohesive team aligned with the omnichannel vision.
Other Relevant Challenges:
In an era where personal data is a valuable commodity, restaurants face the challenge of balancing personalized marketing efforts with the need to respect and protect customer privacy. Ensuring that data collection and usage comply with regulations like GDPR and SOC2 is paramount. Transparent communication about how customer data is used and providing options for customers to control their data can help mitigate privacy concerns and build trust.
Customers have varied preferences for how they wish to interact with restaurants, from traditional phone reservations to social media engagement and everything in between. Catering to this diversity requires restaurants to maintain an active and responsive presence across a wide range of channels, which can be resource-intensive. Understanding your customer base and prioritizing the channels they most frequently use can help focus your efforts and resources effectively.
The digital landscape is constantly evolving, with new platforms and technologies emerging regularly. Keeping pace with these changes and integrating new tools into your omnichannel strategy can be challenging but is necessary to stay relevant and competitive. Continuous learning and a willingness to experiment with new technologies can help restaurants maintain an edge in the omnichannel space.
Selecting the right technological tools is crucial for navigating the complexities of omnichannel marketing. A well-chosen suite of tools enhances customer engagement, fosters loyalty, and maintains a consistent brand voice across all platforms, while also yielding valuable insights into customer behaviors and the effectiveness of marketing strategies. Below, we outline essential technologies that should be part of your restaurant's omnichannel marketing toolkit.
In today’s fragmented media environment, cohesive management of email and SMS platforms is non-negotiable. These tools should enable synchronized messaging that aligns with your restaurant's branding and promotional calendar, ensuring a consistent message across all touchpoints. They should also offer automation features to trigger messages based on customer behavior, making your marketing efforts both efficient and personalized.
A robust loyalty program bridges the gap between digital engagements and in-restaurant experiences, encouraging repeat business. Your loyalty system should integrate seamlessly with other platforms, tracking customer interactions both online and offline to deliver tailored rewards and offers. This integration helps in creating a seamless customer experience that reinforces their connection to your brand.
Digital reservation systems should do more than just book tables; they should serve as an extension of your omnichannel strategy. Look for systems that integrate with your CRM, loyalty program, and marketing platforms, enabling personalized guest experiences from the moment a reservation is made. This approach ensures each customer interaction is informed by their history and preferences, leading to higher satisfaction and repeat visits.
Centralized analytics and reporting are indispensable for omnichannel success. Your chosen platforms should offer detailed insights into customer journeys across all channels, from initial contact through post-dining follow-up. Look for tools that provide real-time data and customizable reports, enabling you to make informed, agile marketing decisions based on actual customer behavior and campaign performance.
The future of restaurant marketing is unequivocally omnichannel. As technology continues to evolve and customer expectations rise, embracing an omnichannel approach is no longer optional but a necessity for restaurants aiming to succeed in the digital era. By prioritizing customer experience, consistency, and data-driven insights, restaurants can navigate the complexities of omnichannel marketing and emerge as leaders in the new dining landscape.
Emerging trends, such as augmented reality dining experiences, chatbots for instant customer service, and AI-driven personalization, hint at an exciting future for omnichannel marketing in the restaurant industry. Staying ahead of these developments and continuously adapting your strategy will be key to maintaining relevance and delivering the ultimate dining experience, both offline and online.
Explore Fishbowl's guide on integrating digital and physical marketing for restaurants to improve customer experience.
View Ultimate GuideThese days, reaching new patrons is a steep climb, especially as paid digital media costs soar. Restaurants have traditionally leveraged email, SMS, and loyalty marketing to attract loyal customers without breaking the bank—with email marketing as the cornerstone. But what’s the secret to getting customers to sign up for your email campaigns? What makes them opt into SMS messages? How can you persuade them to join your loyalty program? And once someone enrolls, how do you continue to grow your opt-ins, while reducing the number who decide to opt-out? If you're curious about how rivals are boosting their traffic, remember that it's never too late to harness targeted, data-driven marketing for instant impact. The silver lining? Advanced analytics tools are now accessible, leveling the playing field. These tools can pinpoint your most valuable patrons, enabling you to sharpen your marketing strategies for maximum effect. So, let's dive into the how-to of these powerful marketing tools.
It’s been estimated that 80% of a restaurant’s business comes from 20% of its customers. So, it makes sense to focus on those customers that will provide the highest lifetime value (LTV) rather than targeting infrequent visitors. The first step in doing this is to gain a deeper understanding of those guests, so you can continue to market to them, and find others like them. This requires more than just understanding how they interact with you. You’ll want to know their habits and preferences outside the restaurant: where they’re from; what they do when they aren’t with you; and what interests they have. CRMs like Fishbowl’s Delightable can capture and track essential first-party customer data such as:
For most restaurants, these data points originate from systems already in use. Whether you realize it or not, every interaction with every guest or potential customer creates information that you can access to glean new insights.
First-party data is essential because it’s information you already own.
It’s critical that your CRM can integrate with your existing tech stack to access your data and avoid silos—multiple databases with different logins, passwords and reporting. The ideal Customer Relationship Management system streamlines your workflow with a dashboard that contains these inputs in one easy-to-understand interface.
When all your data is in one place, you can begin to create a 360° view of your guest.
Once you can connect and compile your restaurant’s data onto a CRM, you can segment your audiences in various ways, and use those micro targets to develop specific marketing programs. What might those segments look like? Try sorting them by:
When delving into your data, categorize the information to spot trends and identify opportunities. This organization also aids in creating 'lookalike' audiences with similar characteristics and behaviors. Consider these various data types:
Fishbowl works with more than 50,000 restaurants to power marketing campaigns and develop strategies that increase customer engagement. With a powerful platform like Delightable, you can scale efficiently and effectively. Nowhere is this more evident than with our partnership with Texas Roadhouse, the fastest growing restaurant brand in the United States. Working with Fishbowl, Texas Roadhouse has seen exponential database growth, and has the analytics required to understand that expansion down to the local level. Powered by this data, we help a 670-location restaurant chain grow their local databases and acquire new customers through local contesting, website signups and more.
Strategies for how to collect, manage and use your data for better restaurant marketing.
Before you can use data, you need to get that information in the first place. There are many novel ways to start, such as:
You can’t buy engagement, but you can build it, and there are lots of ways to reach would-be customers on any number of platforms. Every channel has its own pros and cons. As the adage goes: Go where your customers are or lose them for good.
Some of the many places to spend your marketing dollars:
Putting your business in so many places can stretch your budget, be time-consuming, and deplete precious manpower. But there are at least two highly efficient channels that can drive significant ROI with even the most modest investments: email and SMS.
For restaurant marketers, there is no better tool than email. As a longstanding communications platform, email offers restaurants stability, control and affordability.
A vast audience of 4 billion daily users relies on email—and it’s the preferred method of communication for many.
Moreover, the impressive ROI from email marketing outshines other channels, and with Fishbowl’s automation capabilities, crafting targeted campaigns has never been more streamlined or impactful for restaurant operators.
SMS Marketing (texting) is another potent channel from Fishbowl. With text, restaurants can get guests’ attention immediately by delivering messages straight to the device they use the most– their phones. And SMS marketing can often be more rewarding:
Fishbowl’s Delightable CRM enables you personalize email and SMS messages, because audiences respond better to personalization:
The importance of personalization cannot be understated, and for good reason:
Personalization is more than simply using a recipient’s name in a subject line or as a salutation. It means using your CRM’s ability to identify and segment audiences based on individuals, preferences and behaviors; and then use those traits to create content audiences will engage with. Examples of personalization may include how an offer is created; what images to show in different emails; or the language used in the call to action (CTA).
The Fishbowl team helps restaurant clients to sort through the nuances of personalization to create compelling content that resonates with each audience.
Without Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and a way to measure them (metrics), it’s impossible to know how well your campaign is doing, or how much revenue can be attributed to specific channels.
Everything you publish or send should have a purpose. Ask yourself, “what is the objective, and how will I know if we succeeded?”
A CDP lets you establish what you want to measure, and how, so you can instantly identify strengths in your marketing program, as well as areas that need improvement.
Lifetime Value (LTV: A Customer Data Platform (CDP) can quantify LTV, a critical metric for refining customer acquisition. It's not just for creating lookalike audiences; it assesses if new customers match the value of your best patrons.
Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC): CDPs clarify CAC by tracking multiple touchpoints across channels, offering insights to streamline customer journeys and enhance ROI. Continually evaluate LTV and CAC to optimize media spend.
Conversion Rate: Define what conversion means for your marketing—be it a click, information share, or restaurant visit. Nurture customer relationships to progress from simple interactions to regular dining experiences.
Drop-off Rate: Identify and resolve technical barriers in the customer journey, such as website navigation issues or reservation system glitches, to prevent potential losses.
Churn Rate: Personalization is key, but ensure it reflects the actual dining experience. A rising churn rate suggests a disconnect between customer expectations and reality, signaling a need for adjustment.
One of the big benefits of a CRM is real-time reporting. That means that you can quickly find what’s proving to be most successful and use that knowledge to fuel your next approach, or double-down on your existing one.
Likewise, it quickly lets you know which approaches aren’t generating the results you’d hoped for so you can move those resources to the places that are serving you better.
However, this only applies if you’re paying attention, so set aside time regularly to see how your current initiatives are performing and optimize them.
In the restaurant industry, the intersection of data protection and privacy is not only a legal imperative but also an ethical one. As establishments collect more personal information from guests than ever before, they must navigate a complex web of regulations. Ethically, restaurants are stewards of sensitive data, requiring a commitment to transparency and integrity in how they gather, use, and safeguard customer information. This delicate balance is crucial for building customer relationships and upholding your reputation.
When someone provides personal information, they are trusting you to use that information for the exact purpose that you stated at the outset. Falling short of that goal breaks customer trust, and will forever spoil that customer relationship.
As a business in good standing, it is essential to maintain goodwill with your clientele. So, ensuring your guests’ comfort and safety should be your priority. Remember that data ethics means asking “is this the right thing to do?” and “can we do better?” If the answer is no, then you’re not using data the right way.
There are many established and evolving legal issues around data privacy and data protection. Tapping into data requires navigating the complexity of regulations like GDPR and CCPA, which empower consumers with rights over their personal information. There may also be local and state guidelines to consider; and if you have multiple locations different rules could apply.
Most third-party solutions (like Delightable) are continually improved as rules and regulations change.
Today, mastery of guest acquisition is not just an art; it's data-driven science. At the heart of this pursuit is the pivotal role of customer data—a treasure trove that can unlock boundless opportunities for growth and customer loyalty. As we've explored, this power comes with a responsibility to adhere to stringent legal and ethical standards, ensuring that trust is the foundation of every customer interaction.
Enter Delightable, Fishbowl's Customer Data Platform (CDP), a transformative tool that can elevate the guest acquisition game. With Delightable, the complexity of customer data becomes a streamlined pathway to personalized marketing strategies that resonate with diners and cultivate memorable experiences. It's not just about collecting data; it's about harnessing it to create connections that turn first-time guests into regulars, and regulars into advocates.
In closing, the ultimate guide to restaurant guest acquisition is about embracing the tools and practices that make your data work for you. Fishbowl is at the forefront of this revolution, providing the insights and capabilities necessary to navigate the competitive landscape with confidence and creativity. For restaurants looking to thrive, it's time to think outside the bowl and dive into the data-driven strategies that promise a future of full tables and satisfied customers.
Delightable from Fishbowl is a Guest Relationship Management platform (a mighty GRM) that offers all the features restaurants need.
Created specifically for the industry by a company with more than two decades of experience in analytics, marketing and customer acquisition tactics, Delightable is designed to give the edge you need to compete in today’s tough market.
It’s critical that your CRM can integrate with your existing tech stack to access your data and avoid silos—multiple databases with different logins, passwords and reporting.
View Ultimate GuideKeeping your existing customers coming back is key to the success of any restaurant venture. That’s because acquiring a new customer costs on average about five times more than keeping a current one. In fact, increasing customer retention rates by just 5% with a restaurant customer loyalty program translates into a profit increase of anywhere from 25-95%, which is why they are crucial to a restaurant’s success.
A restaurant loyalty or rewards program is simply a program that incentivizes your existing customers to come back more frequently and spend more with you when they do. There are a variety of ways that a loyalty and rewards program can be structured. It can be as simple as a card that gets stamped or punched any time a guest patronizes your establishment; or a tiered points system with rewards that increase based on the amount of spend or number of visits. This flexibility ensures that there is a rewards program that will make sense for almost any type of restaurant.
Encouraging repeat visits can have a significant effect on your profitability, but a loyalty or rewards program can impact more than just margins. Loyalty programs can also increase customer satisfaction; provide you with valuable data you can use to improve your business; generate larger guest checks; and even function as a way to test new initiatives and menu items. Understanding what benefits you’re interested in will help you ensure that you’re choosing the right type of loyalty program for your restaurant’s needs.
The rising costs of digital and social media are pushing customer acquisition costs higher than ever before, so it’s vital to ensure that you’re doing everything you possibly can to retain your existing customer base. Instituting a loyalty program has been shown to boost customer retention rates by as much as 25%, and customers who belong to loyalty programs have a 20% higher purchase frequency rate than those who don’t. Plus, loyal customers have been shown to spend 60% more than other customers. It’s hard to argue with those kinds of numbers.
People are predisposed to value the things that make them feel valued. It’s just human nature. A well-designed loyalty program will make your customers feel appreciated, which leaves them likely to share their positive feelings with others. 73% of loyalty program members recommend their loyalty program brands to others.
Guests who join your restaurant loyalty program tend to also be your highest lifetime value (LTV) customers. The more you know about their likes and dislikes, the more ways you will find to attract others like them. This also makes them a perfect test market. A successful restaurant rewards program can help with everything from innovating new menu items to vetting event ideas. Imagine a loyalty program that rewards your most fervent fans with a limited edition secret menu or promotional swag gear. They feel like VIPs, and you can test new creations. In other words, don’t be afraid to think beyond the discount for best results.
Loyalty program options have become increasingly sophisticated and customizable. While some broad mechanics that are commonly featured, there is an incredible amount of freedom to choose how customers earn rewards, and what kind of rewards your restaurant offers. Nearly every loyalty program is really a rewards program that is transactional in nature: the restaurant offers certain incentives in exchange for continued patronage. A good rule of thumb is to create a loyalty program that reflects your brand. While a top-tier restaurant might not want to offer a financial discount as an incentive, perhaps access to a special wine library or an exclusive event might fit perfectly, and could be a huge draw for a certain type of clientele.
This is the simplest type of loyalty program to implement, requiring no investment in infrastructure or technology. However, it also offers very little in the way of insight or operational intelligence. That being said, if you’re looking to incentivize return visits in the simplest way possible, a “buy x, get x” printed card solution might be a good option.
Customers get a custom stamp or punch each visit. When they reach a set amount (usually 10 or 20) they receive a free item. Because of the low barrier to entry, this kind of promotion is often used in small, independent QSR operations.
If you’re looking for flexibility, a points-based restaurant loyalty program might be a better solution to implement. Customers earn points by visits, dollars spent or any other metric you desire, and then redeem those points for rewards. As this type of program is managed digitally; and it’s easy to change incentives, reward levels or other aspects of the program on the fly, so you can adjust it as your restaurant’s business needs shift. To implement it, you’ll need to have a tech solution that tracks customer actions, and that empowers them to check their balances and understand rewards levels easily. Most reward program software integrates directly with your POS, to help you streamline implementation and track loyalty values. This also means you’ll glean a lot of data about their preferences, frequency of visits and common actions, and measure how those events directly impact sales.
This type of rewards program awards a set number of points for a given action, usually per visit or customer spend. Those points can then be redeemed for items, merchandise, experiences, or whatever else you think your customers will value.
Want to ensure your best customers are also the most highly rewarded? A tier-based loyalty program is the answer. As a valued guest, growing or keeping your status is a powerful motivator for return visits. This type of program lets operators provide high-incentive rewards that are scaled to the value of each customer. Like the points-based system, you’ll also gain valuable data on what motivates your customers to return, and what they love most. Run digitally, it is easy to shift rewards structures as your needs or your customers’ preferences change, so it provides a lot of flexibility in implementation.
Tiered loyalty programs segment customers into different levels based on their spend or visit frequency. Moving up a tier usually requires some level of consistency and in return provides the customer with more covetable incentives.
In this type of rewards program customers pay a yearly or monthly fee for exclusive access to discounts, menu items, events, or other special benefits. Subscriptions can be used for anything from a members-only VIP dining room or lounge, to a special plus-up with every meal. The restricted nature of the program can be a powerful draw for high-end customers seeking ultimate rewards: imagine food items that wouldn’t be otherwise practical to include on a standard menu, limited edition spirits or wine varietals or vintages, or access to very special seating for meals or special events. Subscription-based loyalty programs can become a VIP showcase for your kitchen or wine program’s creativity.
Guests pay monthly or yearly to unlock benefits, providing the restaurant with a dependable revenue stream; in return the customer receives exclusive premiums.
Advancements in technology mean that it’s possible to know more about your best customers’ preferences, milestones and needs than ever before. With the right tech stack, it’s possible to create a loyalty program where the rewards and incentives are tailored to the individual and accurately scaled to each customer’s value to your restaurant. Imagine an incentive program where everything you receive is something that is sure to delight. Current technology can help make that level of personalization happen.
Data analysis tools are used to parse customer preference and visiting habits, resulting in dynamic customized rewards that reflect who they are as individuals, and the current business goals of your restaurant.
A loyalty program can do more than just incentivize return visits. Loyalty programs are incredibly versatile, so start with your broader business goals, and then ask yourself if there is a way to structure your restaurant’s loyalty rewards program to help you achieve them. As a bonus, the more unique your program is, the more it will feel like a personalized model for your guests, and the more memorable and enticing it will be. There are a few principles to keep in mind as you get started.
Before you decide which restaurant loyalty program is right for you, spend some time thinking about your business needs and see if there is a way to structure your program to help you achieve them. Do you want to use your rewards program solely to build incremental revenue? Or do you need it for market research? As a test market? To build your online reviews? As a social media incubator? All of these things are possible if you carefully think through your strategy and define your goals first.
Everything you do contributes to the way your restaurant’s brand is perceived. A loyalty program is no different. If you want your restaurant to be thought of a certain way, consider how your loyalty program can reinforce that. For example, if you have a chef known for experimentation and creativity, maybe your reward system is a taste of his or her latest culinary experiment. If you’re known for quality ingredients, your reward might be an invitation to a special dinner centered around the produce from one of the local farm suppliers. Find a way to make your loyalty program reflect who you are as a restaurant, so it becomes an instant brand builder.
Just because most loyalty programs are run a certain way doesn’t mean yours has to be. Get creative with your rewards structure, and you’ll get people talking. An Italian restaurant might have a yearly Medici dinner and ball as a top reward for its most active loyalty program members. A farm-to-table restaurant might offer a farm visit with their chef at the highest reward level. Don’t be afraid to do something original.
The most successful rewards programs are the ones which are highly monitored. Run regular reports, and look for ROI and profitability. Don’t hesitate to shift gears if something isn’t adding up.
With so many options for creating a successful restaurant rewards program, it’s easy to get lost in the details. A great tech partner will make all the difference. Find one that offers the flexibility you need to create a loyalty program that reflects your individual goals; a platform with the support and ease-of-use necessary to manage the program and understand its ROI. That’s where Fishbowl comes in. Fishbowl’s Delightable Guest Relationship Management platform integrates with all your existing systems, so your POS and rewards software connect with and inform your customer data. These inputs help you identify your highest LTV customers, as well as the promotions that generate the highest ROI. With these bits of information you have a powerful understanding of what different guests want, and how to segment them into highly-engaged audiences. Fishbowl was developed by industry experts with more than two decades of experience in restaurant marketing, data, analytics, and tech. We know how to help restaurants create news-worthy loyalty and rewards programs. After all, we’ve been helping restaurants create them almost as long as loyalty programs have been around.
Keeping your existing customers coming back is key to the success of any restaurant venture. That’s because acquiring a new customer costs on average about five times more.
View Ultimate GuideTech ecosystems are constantly evolving, so it’s no surprise that it can be difficult for busy restaurants to keep pace. SaaS platforms, analytics tools, and the very discipline of leveraging data to make business decisions can be daunting to wade through and discern what you need for your restaurant. While there is some overlap between what a customer relationship management (CRM) system can do and what a customer data platform (CDP) can do, they serve distinctly different functions, and more often than not, work best and most effectively in tandem. In fact, a CDP is often referred to as a CRM database, which gives you a clue as to how they work together. Most restaurants have at least a cursory familiarity with CRM tools. The concept and reality of a CDP is a relatively new addition to the tech landscape, and certainly new to the restaurant tech stack. It’s easy to understand why many restaurants have trouble understanding what it is, and whether they need a CDP in conjunction with a CRM. In fact, for most restaurants, utilizing both in concert is key to staying competitive in today's market. In this guide, we’ll walk you through everything you need to know about Restaurant Customer Data Platforms (CDPs), and help you understand how a CDP is critical to your restaurant’s business needs and how it works in concert with a CRM.
A CDP is a platform that aggregates, organizes, and enriches customer data from a wealth of different sources. This includes software you use for table management, reservations, payments, orders, checks – as well as third party systems,reviews, check-ins, social posts, delivery apps, loyalty programs, sites visited, and ad data, for instance. In other words, a CDP takes guest data from your various platforms and organizes it, allowing you to build robust customer (guest) profiles that are surfaced to you in your restaurant CRM. In fact, one of the main purposes of a CDP is to create high-level and actionable business insights, such as understanding which customers provide the most revenue over time and how to find more of them most efficiently, or easily viewing your revenue across platforms and dayparts to identify strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities. Best of all, it does it all without the need to manually collate reports from different sources or enter data by hand, allowing management and staff more time to work on higher level tasks and helping with retention.
The purpose of a CRM is all in the name – Customer Relationship Management. It’s a platform or software suite that’s designed to help you foster a better relationship between your restaurant and your guests. It helps collect and organize data to provide you with critical personal details like name, favorite dishes, birthdays and anniversaries, past orders, reservations, loyalty program redemptions and interactions with staff, promotions, communications and events. More advanced CRM platform software can also help you identify broader trends, segment by more than simple demographics and tailor your promotions and offerings to the customers who would be most likely to appreciate them. Alone, CRMs alone are limited because they can’t see beyond your own systems and first-party data, so they don’t allow for the level of insight and personalization you can access when you pair a CRM with a CDP.
An easy way to understand how restaurant CRMs and CDPs are different is that a CRM help you manage the one-to-one and one-to-many relationships with your guests, while a CDP is a layer that can add additional context to understanding guest behavior, and is useful for generating large-scale insights that can help you optimize results across your organization.
A restaurant CDP can access a broader pool of customer data, offering visibility beyond the limitations of your own direct interactions. A CDP can tell you what sites your highest value customers visit, so you can optimize your media spend. It can show you whether your best in-restaurant customers are also your best delivery customers. It offers a much more accurate picture of the lifetime value (LTV) of every customer you acquire, which leads to a more accurate understanding of the cost per acquisition (CPA), and how many steps it really took for you to acquire them. Used in concert with an advanced CRM system, CDPs also help better segment and personalize your outreach efforts. In other words, you can get more accurate insights into who your best customers are, what they love and don’t, and how to optimize your budget to acquire more of them.
A CDP enables you to track customer feedback, both positive and negative, and connect that information with actual guest behavior. This means that you can understand what your best customers love and what could be improved. This can help you create menu changes that increase frequency; help you fix potential problems such as wait times before they become an issue; give you a deeper understanding of which among your staff are your highest performers; and flag any changes in food quality instantly.
As data is automatically updated, you can get an up-to-the-second view of how your business decisions are affecting your sales. This allows you to understand how even small shifts can impact your bottom line. This can be useful to gauge whether changing a supplier impacts your sales, whether your restaurant is over or understaffed or whether there are sudden shifts in a particular dish’s popularity.
If you know your highest-value customers are very interested in farm-to-table, for instance, you’ll know to focus on the quality of your suppliers in your communications to them. While a CRM might tell you that your customers act a certain way, a CDP can help you determine why, and that can make all the difference in ensuring that every communication you send has the greatest impact on the recipient.
According to a recent study, companies using a both platforms saw: 9.1X increase in guest satisfaction 2.9X revenue growth 5.7X increase in customer spend 4.9X annual growth in up-sell revenue
We’ve shown you a CDP combined with a robust CRM can be an important tool for restaurants, but are they the right choice for your restaurant? Here are a few questions to ask to help determine whether one might be right for your business.
A CDP combined with a CRM can help ensure that your marketing and promotions target your highest value customers, rather than those who will visit once and never again.
Who are your most profitable guests? Who are the ones talking about your restaurant, inviting others, ordering takeout when they can’t visit in person? What do they love about your menu? What entices them to keep coming back? Using a combination of a CDP and CRM will help you answer questions like these.
Collating reports, manual data entry, combining analytics from different sources – all these repetitive tasks can eat away at employee satisfaction and take away time that could be spent to grow the business. A CDP can address this.
Key performance indicators (KPIs) are the benchmarks for any restaurant’s success. By helping you see the impact of any changes you make across your business and across a customer lifecycle, a CDP and CRM can revolutionize how you measure and understand what works and what doesn’t.
A CDP allows you to gauge how everything from menu and supplier changes to employee hourly shifts impact profit margins and guest satisfaction instantly. If you’ve had issues where an improperly vetted decision has cost you in guest receipts, turnover or margins, a CDP is one way to prevent that from happening again.
A CDP and CRM are only as good as the information they draw from. A good CDP will allow you to easily connect to data from across your tech stack – POS, marketing automation, online ordering, third party delivery apps, in-restaurant WIFI, reservation systems, loyalty programs and many others.
A pool of high-quality information can’t help you if your CDP and CRM don’t have the tools you need to turn insights into action. A great CDP/CRM combo will have a wide variety of reports it can generate that will give you the foundation you need to make the strategic and tactical business decisions that really matter.
An intuitive user interface and a searchable knowledge base can save you hours on the phone to customer support. Make sure your CDP-CRM has both.
Because both a CDP and CRM track and store data about your customers, choosing a trusted and experienced company with an extensive record in complying with General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) is key.
Restaurants have had a lot to contend with a lot in the past few years. Rising costs, staff shortages, economic uncertainty – all have made profitability harder to maintain than ever. A CDP+CRM can help ensure that the most important business decisions have the greatest possible impact. This makes either or both an excellent choice for any restaurant looking to grow business and maintain margins, no matter what the future has in store. Want to actually see the difference a CDP+CRM can make in your restaurant today? Try Delightable – an all-in-one solution that combines the industry’s best Restaurant CRM and CDP, offering in one easy-to-use and even easier-to-integrate Guest Relationship Management platform.
Tech ecosystems are constantly evolving, so it’s no surprise that it can be difficult for busy restaurants to keep pace. SaaS platforms, analytics tools.
View Ultimate GuideOur email inbox is our digital living room. It’s the place we reserve for one-to-one conversations, which makes email marketing personal in a way even social media marketing can’t match. And that’s why restaurants who want to build better relationships with their customers can’t do better than developing an effective email marketing program. In this guide, we’ll teach you everything you need to know to create restaurant emails that will outperform the industry average and drive repeat visits and customer loyalty.
Developing a carefully considered email marketing strategy is still one of the best ways to ensure the success of your restaurant. That’s because email marketing offers better ROI (return on investment) than almost any other marketing channel, netting an average of $36 for every $1 spent. It’s also one of the most affordable digital marketing channels. You can begin developing your program with as little as a few hundred dollars. Best of all, you own the data and the insights, turning your efforts into a valuable resource that can fuel your restaurant’s revenue growth for years to come.
When a customer gives you their email address, they are inviting you to create a stronger relationship with them. Do this effectively, and you can turn a prospect into an occasional visitor and an occasional visitor into a committed regular.
As we noted above, email is altogether personal. The more personalized your message and approach, the more successful you will be. In fact, studies have shown that messages that are specifically-tailored to the recipient can increase open rates by as much as 29%. This goes beyond just calling your customers by name. After all, when your favorite regular walks in, you know just what to recommend. A properly maintained email database allows you to have that relationship with every guest on your list.
Email list segmentation, the process of dividing up your email list by interest group, drives up to 36% of email marketing ROI. This could be as simple as offering new and returning customers different incentives, or as tailored as targeting your emails to interest-based or demographic groups. Keeping your message relevant ensures that your customers won't just open your restaurant emails, they’ll look forward to them.
While offering incentives such as discounts for sign up or reservations can be effective restaurant email marketing tools, they aren’t the only way to drive loyalty, and aren’t right for every restaurant, target or email. Why not help them feel like insiders with special access to events, secret menu items and seasonal promotions? Or give them a behind the scenes look into the kitchen or the creation of a new menu item? You could even introduce them to your chef or key suppliers to create a stronger emotional connection and highlight the quality of your menu. There are countless ways to encourage repeat visits and significantly increase revenue without sacrificing margins; all it takes is a little imagination.
As the saying goes, we eat with our eyes. That’s particularly true for restaurant emails. (After all, what other choice do we have?) Even the most delectable copy can’t take the place of appetizing imagery, so make sure that you always include at least a feature photo that does your subject justice. There are a host of AI tools that can help you create professional-quality imagery for minimal investment, so it’s easier than ever to create crave-worthy pix.
Most large brands create a content calendar with different themes to ensure that even their most devoted customers are served email that always surprises and delights. And it’s an approach even the smallest restaurant can emulate. Starting at least a couple of months in advance, create a calendar with all the events and themes you want to highlight and which audiences you will target. This will let you see at a glance what every audience segment will receive, and ensure that the proposed content is varied and relevant. Once you’re happy with a calendar, get crafting. Be sure to save any content that isn’t time-dependent into an email and newsletter content library you can draw on when new customers sign up. Before you know it, you’ll have an evergreen content library that will be the envy of your competition.
While the average open rate for restaurant emails is a respectable 38.5%, the average click-through rates (CTR) are a dismal .68% (compared to an all-industries CTR average of 1.33%). This means most restaurants are struggling to connect words to actions. This doesn’t just add up to lost revenue. It also makes it difficult to understand what content is resonating and what isn’t, and hard to update your email marketing strategy accordingly. Always have an idea in mind of what action you want your guests to take after they read your email. However, just like with your types of content, it’s important to take a broader view here. This could mean making a reservation or ordering takeout, but it could also mean clicking to learn more about a particular supplier or menu item on your site, or downloading a recipe for a treasured salad dressing that keeps your menu top of mind.
When it comes to email marketing subject lines, shorter is better. The ideal length is 17-30 characters, which ensures your subject line will be viewable on both mobile and desktop without getting cut off. That means that every word counts, so make sure you are using every word effectively and that your word and punctuation choice reflects your restaurant’s brand perfectly. The best approach is to distill your restaurant email or newsletter down to its most compelling point and write a subject that highlights that. If you have a limited-time offer, put the offer in the subject or highlight the deadline to create a sense of urgency. If you’re introducing a new menu item, showcase a behind-the-scenes peek to learn about a new technique or unexpected ingredient that went into its creation.
Just like you want your restaurant to be instantly recognizable from the street, you want your emails to reinforce the brand you’ve so carefully cultivated and stand out at a glance, even in a crowded inbox. The way to do this is to have your design team create a set of branded templates for every type of email or newsletter you plan to send. This will also allow you to create new content much more quickly, with less oversight time and design cost. A typical basic email template package for restaurants would include:
Those are just the basics. The more you can automate your email marketing approach, the more time you’ll save, so if you find yourself creating the same type of email more than once, don’t be afraid to create a standard template for it. Your customers will get a more consistent and polished experience, and you’ll save on design and oversight costs.
No one likes to get bombarded with too many emails. Industry best practices state that you should send out restaurant marketing emails or newsletters no more than once a week. Of course, ideal frequency will depend on both the type of restaurant you are, and the person you’re targeting. If you’re a high-end restaurant, and you’re sending an email to a guest who only comes once a year for their anniversary, once a month might be plenty. OK, so now we know how often, but what about when? Generally, restaurant emails sent Tuesday through Thursday from 1-3 pm are more likely to be read. And, while 23% of emails are read 60 minutes after they are sent, some recipients might wait as long as two or three days, so make sure your event marketing emails and time-gated offers or restaurant email promotions are sent at least three days in advance for the greatest possible response rate.
A/B testing, the process of sending two different emails to a subset of your target before sending to the entire group, can be an invaluable tool for optimizing your restaurant email marketing results It’s important to note that small changes can make a big difference, so try not to test too many things in one A/B test. Some things you might consider are varying your subject line, testing different copy lengths or different subject matter to see which is the most relevant. The more you get to know what works best for each of your email or newsletter target groups, the more you can incorporate those learnings into future campaigns to supercharge your email marketing and newsletters.
Seasonally themed emails and promotions, events and time-gated offers are a great way to entice action when you are looking to boost results. No one likes to think they might miss out on something special, so be sure to work in time-gated emails into your restaurant content calendar for best results. These could be as simple as a special limited-time seasonal dish or an exclusive event for a particular holiday. It could also be an offer that’s only available for a brief time. This reinforces the customer value of being on your email list and allows your guests to feel like they are the first to be in the know.
There is a wealth of options to choose from when you’re trying to select an email marketing partner. From simple restaurant email marketing tools that can help with design and templates, to restaurant email marketing apps that can cover a variety of functions, the sheer volume of choices can be a bit overwhelming. However, a bit of time and care up-front can save you a lot of headaches later. Restaurants are businesses with very specific needs, so choosing a partner who specializes in restaurants might be a good place to start. Or perhaps you’re more concerned with integration with your existing restaurant software, or the flexibility to serve a wide variety of functions. For instance, a newsletter focused-app might not have the versatility you need to create a drip campaign – an email campaign that would automatically send in pre-scheduled intervals. Some features to consider:
If you don’t have a comprehensive email or newsletter marketing program, you’re losing out on potential revenue.
Our email inbox is our digital living room. It’s the place we reserve for one-to-one conversations, which makes email marketing personal in a way.
View Ultimate GuideIf you’re not using SMS messaging to build your business, you’re missing out on one of the most effective marketing channels for restaurants. The average American checks the phone almost 100 times per day; unlocks it 150 times a day; and actually touches the device more than 2,000 times a day. And 91% of those well-connected users say that they are willing to opt-in to receive text messages from brands. However, for many restaurants, SMS, or text messaging, is a widely underutilized channel. This guide will teach you everything you need to know to change that.
Text message marketing, also known as SMS marketing, is simply the act of sending a message to a specific set of opted-in subscribers. This type of messaging can be used by restaurants and their customers for a variety of purposes:
When we refer to text message marketing as one of the most effective marketing channels, we aren’t saying that lightly. Text messages boast a 98% open rate, which is five times higher than email, the next most effective channel. What’s more, text messages aren’t just opened, they are acted on. SMS messages average a 45% response rate, which is something no other channel can claim. Plus, it’s instant – 80% of customers will read a business text within five minutes of receiving it. Those numbers alone should make text messaging a key consideration for your marketing strategy. It is also one of the only channels where everyone on it has asked to be there. It’s important to note that you need to get your customers’ specific permission or opt-in before you begin sending them texts. This isn’t just good business practice. It’s required by privacy laws. (You’ll also want to give them the option to opt-out, if only in the first message you send them.) This ability to join and depart at-will makes it particularly important to have a well-thought-out strategy that ensures that every communication provides value, so your customers remain engaged and happy to hear from you. Given the potential rewards, it’s well worth the effort.
As with any type of marketing, text message marketing has its own commonly used terms and acronyms. It helps to have at least a basic understanding of some of the terms and what they mean before you dive in.
An SMS message is the original form of text message. The acronym stands for Short Message Service, and refers to a text-only message, with no images, audio, video or other form of multimedia. There are compensations for the lack of embellishment: SMS is a universal format that works well with any type of mobile phone, and uses a phone’s native messaging app and cellular network, which means that it looks the same for everyone, and isn’t likely to incur technical issues. All text messages should be brief, but with SMS it is essential as messages are limited to 160 characters.
The next level of text message is the Multimedia Messaging Service or MMS. Like an SMS, it uses a phone’s native messaging app and cellular network, but this format supports audio, pictures or other forms of multimedia. There is no character limit as every phone is different, but most phones are incapable of handling messages that are over 300 KB, so simplicity is still key.
The most elaborate message format is known as Rich Communication Services or RCS. It requires a data or Wifi connection and won’t work with every phone model or with compatible phones that are set up to prevent RCS communications. But RCS lacks in accessibility it makes up for in versatility and wow factor. It supports video, locations, transactions, video calling, live chats, and a lot more. It’s almost like combining the features of an app with the ease of a text message.
An opt-in is a text message where a customer gives your restaurant explicit permission to send them marketing messages. This is a legal requirement and is an essential first step before you send a guest any kind of promotional text.
A subscriber is a customer who has given you permission to receive your marketing messages.
The database of all customers who have agreed to receive marketing messages is known as a subscriber list.
An opt-out is a text message sent by customers to a restaurant to inform them they no longer want to receive marketing messages. Restaurants are required to send opt-out instructions as part of the first text they send a customer. A typical way to handle this is adding the phrase “Reply STOP to unsubscribe.” at the end of the first message.
This refers to a 5 or 6 digit number that’s used in marketing to replace a standard 10-digit number as it’s easier to remember. An example of this is “Dial 56556 to get notified about future events.”
A long code is a standard 10-digit telephone number that can be used to send and receive SMS and MMS numbers.
A Uniform Resource Link (URL) is a link to a unique resource on the Web. This can be a page, a document, an image, a survey - anything you can find on a standard web link.
Web links or URLs aren’t known for their brevity. Link shortening services were developed as a way to allow links to be included within standard text message character limits. URLs that have been shortened by using a link shortening service are known as Short Links. You might also hear them unofficially referred to as Bitlys after one of the oldest shortening services - bit.ly.
With a low cost of entry, it’s easy to implement an SMS marketing program in even smaller restaurants. However, there are almost as many uses for text message marketing as there are types of restaurants, so it’s important to have a strategy that will work for your specific need before you begin.
Sending texts can cost as little as $.015 per text and are often available at a flat monthly rate based on a committed monthly volume.
While there are many uses specific to the restaurant industry that are difficult to translate into one-to-one sales, texting is low cost and high reward, yielding an ROI of up to $8.11 per message across verticals.
Text is a communication format that is generally reserved for the people and things we truly care about. When someone allows you to text them, they are joining your restaurant’s family. That’s an incredibly powerful thing.
Text someone, and you know they will see it right away. That allows you to implement strategies you couldn’t in any other form of media. Just got a delivery of a limited supply of something special? You can use text to offer it up to your best customers to reserve first. Has someone canceled a coveted reservation time last minute? Text can help you rebook it instantly and will make your subscriber list feel like VIPs in the process.
Your subscriber list is made up of your restaurant’s biggest fans and best customers as a rule, so if you’re not sure about whether an initiative will be successful, they are also your ideal focus group.
Thinking about adding a new dish to the menu, but not sure how it will go over? Offer it up to your subscriber list as a secret menu item first. If it succeeds with your biggest fans, then you’ll have a good idea whether it will intrigue your wider audience before you shell out for higher-priced broad-reach media.
Your subscriber list is a valuable resource, but it’s also one that’s vulnerable. If you’re not mindful about the quality and frequency of your communications, you’ll find that customers will be quick to unsubscribe. Keeping some industry best practices in mind as you design your program will help ensure your subscriber list stays as robust as possible.
Text communication is a medium where every word counts.(And as we mentioned above, SMS messages are limited to 160 precious characters.) While you want your texts to have personality, try not to use three so-so words where one great one will do. Plus, shorter communications are more memorable, so keep it succinct and you’ll have more impact.
If you aren’t offering your customers something they will appreciate with every text, you’re not creating a text worth sending. This doesn't necessarily mean you must offer a discount or a free item necessarily; it might be along the lines of letting them know like a favorite dish that’s back on the menu or an event they might be interested in was just announced. When you send a text, you’re interrupting someone’s day, so make sure you make it worth their while every single time.
Every additional step that happens between your invite and the action you want a guest to take translates to a substantial drop-off in results. If you’re sending a text to invite your subscriber list to an event, being able to reserve your place with a simple text response will give you a better result than taking them to a web page where they have to input information you already have. For the best results, do your best to make converting as easy as possible on your guests.
Text is the most personal of mediums, so the more personal you make your approach, the better. Ideally, this will go beyond just using their name. With the right tech stack (such as Fishbowl’s Delightable Guest Relationship Management tool), you can segment your subscriber list by interest, value, habits, prior campaign engagement or any other useful data and insights. This makes it easy for you to ensure that every contact will be of value to them and will make your subscriber list more valuable to you as well.
How often is too often can vary widely with the type of restaurant you are, the strategy you are using for your text message program and the tolerance of your individual customers. Asking yourself whether every message has value to the person you are sending it to should help ensure that you aren’t being excessive, but we’d recommend starting slow and increasing in frequency as you gain insights from tests, segmentation and engagement data.
As outlined at the beginning of this article, text message marketing can take a wide variety of forms. Will you be using text messages to make reservations and ordering seamless? As a promotional channel? Or some combination of the above? Taking the time to think through how you want to use text messaging in your operation will give you the best chance of success, and will make every decision you make after that easier.
Before you start looking for a tech partner, it’s important to understand the integration capabilities of your current tech stack. If being able to make text reservations is important to you, for instance, you need to understand whether your current reservation system can accommodate that kind of functionality, or whether you will need to upgrade to make that possible. Understanding what you want to accomplish and what your current tech can do will help make choosing the right SMS technology simpler.
There are a lot of techniques for building your subscriber list. You could put an invite with a short code on the bottom of every receipt that offers an incentive for joining; or use a QR or short code on your menu or on a table tent. If your system allows it, you can also add a join option when someone makes a reservation with their phone number.. You can even subscribe guests to your text messaging when they log into your on-premise Wifi.
However, before you start thinking through techniques to build your list, it might be helpful to look at it from your customers’ perspective. Because text is an interruptive medium, it’s important to ensure every text offers your guests something of value. If you’re a QSR, maybe that’s a discount on an order. But if you’re a high-end restaurant, it might be exclusive access to an event, reservation time or special dish. Thinking through the benefits from a customer point of view will also help you imagine unique ways to promote your subscriber list beyond just a free appetizer, and that will also help you reinforce the value of your restaurant’s brand.
Restaurants are like no other business, and we’d advocate choosing a text messaging solution that’s built by a company who understands the unique needs of restaurant marketing. That will save you a lot of time wading through features built for other types of industries and trying to explain to reps why their one-size-fits-all solutions don’t fit your needs.
Dealing with technical integration issues can cost you in time, energy and customer frustration. To avoid all that, choose a partner that integrates seamlessly with not just your existing tech stack, but with a wide variety of restaurant software platforms, so that, if your business needs and technology shift, you can change course without breaking a sweat.
All the features in the world won’t help you if it’s impossible to learn how to use them. Make sure your tech partner offers an easy-to-use interface, a robust support library and a real human that is there when you have questions or an issue.
Reports and analysis are key to ensuring that you can quickly and easily evaluate what strategies are working and what aren’t. Choose a partner who helps you evaluate the results of every initiative in real-time, across platforms with a wide variety of reporting tools.
As your skills with SMS marketing grow, chances are you’ll find new ways to use it that you hadn’t considered initially. That’s why it’s best to choose a partner who offers a wide range of features you can access. Partners with robust features also tend to be quick to onboard new cutting-edge technologies, so you’ll always be able to stay one step ahead of your competition.
As your skills with SMS marketing grow, chances are you’ll find new ways to use it that you hadn’t considered initially. That’s why it’s best to choose a partner who offers a wide range of features you can access. Partners with robust features also tend to be quick to onboard new cutting-edge technologies, so you’ll always be able to stay one step ahead of your competition.
Text message marketing is subject to an array of ever-shifting privacy laws and ethical considerations. Picking a partner that’s well known and trusted in the industry will help you ensure that you’re always in compliance with current regulations.
If you’re looking for the ultimate text message marketing tech partner, we’d love to introduce you to Delightable.
Created by restaurant industry experts with more than two decades of experience in restaurant marketing, data analysis, segmentation and technology, Delightable offers all the features we’ve outlined above, and a whole lot more.
Visit us to learn more.
If you’re not using SMS messaging to build your business, you’re missing out on one of the most effective marketing channels for restaurants.
View Ultimate GuideConstantly refining, testing new approaches, and fine-tuning your marketing can help boost your guest engagement metrics; increase customer satisfaction; generate customer loyalty; and provide valuable data and insights to supercharge your ROI. However, without the right tools, implementing the most advanced strategies and techniques can take away valuable time, energy, and headspace from the important business of running your restaurant. That’s why more than ever, restaurants are turning to marketing automation.
Imagine if welcoming a new customer to your mailing list, letting a regular who hasn’t visited in a while know that her favorite dish is back on the menu, or offering a VIP a coveted reservation time that’s just opened up for the date of his anniversary, all requiring you to do nothing but push a button. That’s just an inkling of what marketing automation can do for your restaurant business.
Put simply, a great restaurant marketing automation platform (MAP) lets you schedule, trigger and send the right message to the right customer at the right time. Once you set it up, a MAP can make even the most sophisticated personalization and segmentation strategies run practically on autopilot.
Taking a highly-targeted and personalized approach can boost recency, frequency and spend, which is why 80% of brands who use personalization have experienced a measurable lift in results.
While you can personalize and segment without automation, it’s more time-consuming and error-prone. Technically it can be done, but you’ll spend more energy and resources than with a platform designed to help you configure, segment, and automate your marketing tasks.
It’s a busy world, and few of us have time to talk on the phone. In a recent study, 90% of customers said they preferred text messages from businesses to direct phone calls. SMS/Text message automation allows you to automatically send:
However, much like with email marketing automation, it pays to get creative. If you’re promoting a quiz night, for instance, you might send out a question that, if answered correctly, rewards your regulars with a free appetizer.
Treating every social media channel the same way can cost you in impact and reach. Tailoring your content and posting time to each channel and ensuring a regular posting schedule can significantly boost your audience engagement.
As audience engagement is key for getting your posts seen by both your followers and others, getting this right is key to a restaurant’s success.
How do you do that and still have time to run a restaurant? It’s easier than you think with Social Media Marketing Automation.
Reviews are the lifeblood of any restaurant, but the process of requesting, collecting and promoting them is a task most restaurants dread. Restaurant review collection automation takes it off your hands.
Loyal customers spend about 70% more on average than first-time customers. (Bloom Intelligence), and 16.1% of customers said they would be more willing to order from restaurants that offer a loyalty program (Restaurant Readiness Index). However, loyalty program automation options can significantly change depending on the software you choose, so it’s important to look carefully to find the features you want.
Delightable by Fishbowl is the ultimate Guest Relationship Management tool (GRM) crafted specifically for restaurants, and nearly everything on this page can me implemented and managed with it.
Created by pioneering leaders in CRM, analytics and strategic restaurant marketing, Delightable seamlessly integrates with the software restaurants use most.
Delightable pairs unmatched ease of use with advanced tools and analytics, helping even the most advanced marketers grow their skills along with their restaurant business. Try it for yourself.
Constantly refining, testing new approaches, and fine-tuning your marketing can help boost your guest engagement metrics; increase customer satisfaction.
View Ultimate GuidePerhaps it’s not that surprising that personalization and segmentation are hot topics in restaurant marketing these days. After all, the better you understand your existing and potential customers, the more you can customize your communications and their experiences. The more you speak to what interests your guests, the easier it will be to convince them to get to know your restaurant better.
But, there are many different types of segmentation. So how do you know what’s the most effective one for your needs? This guide will help you learn everything you need to tackle restaurant customer segmentation with confidence.
Customer segmentation is also called guest segmentation, or more broadly, audience segmentation. Simply put, it’s dividing your guests into specific groups, so you can speak to them in a way that’s most likely to interest them. Much like being introduced to someone at a dinner party, finding common ground is the first step to building a worthwhile connection. Likewise, going into meticulous detail about an interest you have that they don’t share will get you labeled a bore. The same principles apply with segmentation.
Even using simple segmentation strategies can have a huge effect on your bottom line. Not only will existing and potential customers be more interested in reading your communications (and more likely to act when they do), but segmentation will also decrease the cost of reaching them in the first place, increasing your ROI. That’s because broader targets are generally more expensive and less efficient than narrower targets.
In a recent Fishbowl case study¹, one national brand saw an increase from 4.56X ROI to 59.3X ROI simply by personalizing the type of burger featured in their annual promotion based on the guests’ past purchase history.
But that’s just a single case study. Looking more broadly, it’s been shown that personalized campaigns based on guest segmentation can increase revenue by 5-15% and reduce acquisition costs by up to 50%. And a recent McKinsey study found that companies that excel at personalization generate 40 percent more revenue from the same actions.
With these results in mind, the question isn’t whether your restaurant can afford to segment, it’s whether you can afford not to.
Understanding your customers in a deeper way can help you ensure success in just about every aspect of your business. It can provide ideas to revamp your menu to better appeal to high-value customers; or a way to find a dedicated audience for your more niche dishes. Loyalty programs, staffing, training and even which suppliers you choose can all benefit from knowing what your guests value and what they don’t.
Plus, knowing your customers better can help ensure that you make the most of every decision you make. For instance, if your best guests value farm-to-table, but haven’t promoted local suppliers you already use, you’re missing the full benefit of your existing actions in terms of customer loyalty and retention.
The evolution of technology (like Fishbowl’s Delightable) has provided restaurants of any size the means to employ highly-sophisticated segmentation strategies. However, even simple segmentation tools can still provide excellent business results.
If you’re new to customer segmentation, it can be helpful to start with the basics, but choose a technology partner that will grow with you as your skills grow. While there are best practices to follow, every restaurant is unique, so testing and learning is essential.
Perhaps the best known and oldest form of segmentation is demographic segmentation, which defines an audience based on broad statistical data such as age, income, occupation, education, or household makeup. Even this basic form of segmentation can yield surprisingly sophisticated insights when used correctly.
For instance, if you’re noticing your business is dropping off earlier due to an aging customer base, you might use age-based segmentation to develop a late night menu that would appeal to younger audiences, and a targeted campaign to promote it.
If data tells you your best margins are coming from households in a certain income range, you can specifically target more of those customers through income-based targeting. Or if your best customers tend to be highly educated, perhaps a partnership with local alumni associations would serve you best.
Maybe you’re in an area that indexes highly for a particular profession. One option would be to try to increase your lunch crowd by specifically targeting members of that profession with a discount or by advertising through a professional association. Another would be to target your existing regulars that visit with their colleagues with an incentive to bring their families for dinner.
These are just a few of the myriad of tactics you can employ with demographic targeting. Once you understand what defines your existing restaurant customer base, it’s much easier to create strategies to maximize your existing relationships and develop new ones.
Customer segmentation based on geography is another simple tool that can be used effectively. A large chain might rely on geographic segmentation to create and promote menu items designed to appeal to certain regions. Or a local restaurant might use it to target a nearby neighborhood where a large percentage of their most profitable guests originates. However, those strategies are just the beginning.
Imagine a sports bar targeting neighborhoods that support a particular team in order to become the unofficial headquarters of that fan base. Or a local restaurant whose menu items and communications are specifically designed to celebrate and appeal to a variety of different local micro-neighborhoods.
Geographical targeting can even be used to target rivals on their home turf. One of the most famous geographic campaigns was Whopper Detour, where Burger King® geofenced every McDonald’s location in the US and rerouted potential McDonald’s customers to Burger King locations with a timely deal coupon sent to their mobile phones.
Spend a little time getting creative with geographic targeting, and you might be surprised at the results.
Behavioral segmentation defines groups of people by what they do. This can include things like what dishes they order, the number of times they visit, what time of day they come, whether they eat in or order takeout, how and whether they interact with your loyalty program, and if they visit your website or interact on social media.
Much like the other types of segmenting, getting a deeper understanding of how your customers interact with your restaurant can boost your business in many ways. If you notice more customers are ordering vegetarian dishes, for instance, you could expand your vegetarian menu options or target those specific customers with a communication whenever you add a new vegetable dish to your menu.
Perhaps you want to increase the effectiveness of your loyalty program. Understanding which customers interact with it most could lead to a tiered approach with the most frequent visitors getting the best rewards.
If you know which customers are posting about you on social media, you can incentivize them with a free drink or appetizer. Or lure an occasional visitor more frequently by letting them know about a daily special that others with the same menu preferences enjoy.
Perhaps you notice that a significant group of people are visiting your site, but they never make it into your restaurant. If you understand where that disconnect is happening, you can target them with a campaign that may entice them to make a reservation.
In other words, behavioral segmenting helps you create strategies to alter the way your customers interact with you in order to create a more rewarding relationship.
With the rise of online communities, there is a lot of weight to the argument that we have become much more defined by our interests, lifestyles, beliefs and hobbies than we are by traditional demographics. After all, if someone were to ask you what most encapsulates you, how would you respond? Most people would call themselves a fitness junkie or serial knitter rather than a 36 year old certified accountant.
Any psychologist will tell you that talking to people about what they are most passionate about is the easiest way to get their attention, and that’s where psychographic segmentation shines.
Imagine how you might respond if you found that a significant portion of your customers are deeply concerned about climate change and the environment. This knowledge might lead you to introduce and promote recycling and food waste initiatives, highlight your organic menu options, or showcase your lack of chemical additives through targeted communications. The options are endless.
Perhaps you discover there are a surprising number of pop culture aficionados within your audience. You might institute a weekly trivia event to bring in traffic on slow Sunday afternoons. Or offer sports enthusiasts a special incentive that changes depending on whether their team wins or loses as a way to instill loyalty and camaraderie throughout the season.
Fishing enthusiasts might appreciate a content series where your chef lets them in on his secrets for preparing whatever local catch is currently in season as a way to keep your restaurant top-of-mind. Again, there are virtually no limits to the interesting connections you can make when you learn what people are passionate about and use that information to find common ground.
Are you looking to get your feet wet before you invest in new technology? Hoping to solve a particular pain point? Want more high-ticket guests? Ready to optimize your business as a whole? Each of these goals will have different approaches and levels of commitment, so it’s important to think through how to begin and how much time and effort youcan devote to ensuring success.
If you’re looking to get started without investing in new technology, it’s important to have a thorough understanding of what your current systems can and can’t tell you. A good customer relationship management (CRM) system can fuel a demographic or geographic strategy, while a robust POS might give you enough information to tackle a behavioral campaign.
However, a psychographic approach will generally require a customer data platform (CDP) that is able to give you a more thorough picture of what existing and potential customers are interested in and which ones make the most sense to target for your bottom line.
And a Guest Relationship Management platform like Delightable can combine all your data sources to build the most robust guest profiles, and then employ smart segmentation to build lots of different audience segments.
Now it’s time to dig into research. Let’s say your goal is to increase the number of large-ticket, highest lifetime value (LTV) guests. The next step is to define as much as you can about the current guests who spend the most with you, so you can formulate a plan to find more just like them.
Here is where you divide your highest paying guests into the different segments that seem to set them apart. Then you can easily compare and contrast the different groups to find the ones that deliver the most value.
Developing key performance indicators (KPIs) for each potential goal is essential to ensuring that you have an accurate picture of how your initiatives are affecting your business. These KPIs can then be compared with the baseline group outlined in your initial segmentation group.
Now you’re ready to create specific campaigns for your top segments. It's best to do this with a small representative sample audience in the beginning, then optimize as you start to learn what is providing the best result.
If you’re serious about using customer segmentation to grow your restaurant business, the right software can make all the difference. For most restaurants, customer data is siloed across a variety of systems (like POS, online ordering, reservations, social media, etc.), and it’s almost impossible to identify the same guest from one system to another. Even if you manually collate reports across platforms, it’s impossible to scale, and leads to a lot of inaccuracies and blind spots in your knowledge.
Depending on your challenges, the solution can be either a customer relationship management platform (CRM), and/or a customer data platform (CDP). CRMs give insights into the relationship between you and your customers, while a CDP can provide context to understanding guests and their actions outside of your restaurant.
For restaurants, there’s a better way: combining CRM and CDP onto a single platform, built exclusively for the restaurant industry: Delightable by Fishbowl combines the power of a CRM and the flexibility of a CDP into one intuitive ecosystem that gives an unparalleled understanding of your audience, and offers smart-segmentation so you can reach your customers at scale – with the right language, offers and timing to create meaning engagement and higher ROI.
Crafted by industry experts with more than two decades of experience in data, analytics, software and marketing for restaurants, Delightable the gold standard for any restaurant who wants an easy-to-use, all-in-one solution.
Perhaps it’s not that surprising that personalization and segmentation are hot topics in restaurant marketing these days. After all, the better you understand your.
View Ultimate GuideThe old adage “knowledge is power” is particularly true for running a restaurant. These days, there is more pressure on margins than ever before, and having an accurate picture of every aspect of your business can make all the difference to ensuring success. However, the proliferation of different analytics tools can make it overwhelming just to get started. This guide will teach you everything you need to know to help you understand the best way to use data to optimize your operation.
There are millions of ways restaurants can ‘bleed’ revenue, and they aren’t always obvious when looking at gross numbers. In fact, data-driven restaurants have a 23% higher survival rate, and data analytics has been shown to boost restaurant revenue by 10% while cutting costs by 5%. So getting comfortable with reporting and analysis is essential for any restaurateur who wants to increase margins and ensure success.
Reports that can help with almost every aspect of your business, so identifying which areas to focus on is the key to getting started.
How do you ensure you’re staffed at appropriate levels for every shift, and that your staff is working as efficiently as you need them to be? Who are your best performers, and who could use more training? What’s your ideal ratio of back-of-house to front-of-house staff across your business hours? There are reports that can help you understand all these issues, and will track improvement over time.
How can you stay on top of ever-shifting input costs to ensure your price points are where you need them to be? Want to stay ahead of food trends and track shifts in popularity? Is your menu designed as effectively as it can be? Menu optimization has been shown to increase profits by as much as 15%, so if you’re not tracking these, it is likely costing you margin.
Want to ensure you’re getting the best ROI for every marketing dollar you spend? If you’re not on top of your reporting, you’re missing out. Reports can help you understand where your efforts are best spent in real-time, so you can shift your budget to the initiatives and channels where it will be most effective before you see serious drop-offs in performance.
How do you stay current with reviews to see what’s working and what isn’t? Can you identify the factors that most impact frequency and average guest check? What keeps your best customers happy and coming back for more? Data analysis can help you see it all clearly.
What strategies should you use to create a loyalty program that’s better for you and your customers? Can you ensure loyalty without sacrificing profitability? How much is your loyalty program really costing you? Are you seeing drop-offs over time, and if so, why? Establishing ROI for your loyalty programs is notoriously difficult, but there are reports that can answer all these questions.
Being able to see how subtle shifts affect guest visits across dayparts, over time, can help you better predict your inventory and develop strategies to eliminate slow periods.
Why do certain locations perform better than others? What learnings can you use from your best performing locations to help those that are struggling? There is nothing more frustrating than seeing one location that consistently underperforms without being able to understand why. Data analysis gives you the tools to identify issues and solutions.
Data tools have proliferated to the extent that it’s easy to get lost in the sea of available options, so it’s important to know what type of report you need, and the key performance indicators (KPIs) you should track to get the insights you want.
Sales reports can help you track profitability, see how shifts in costs affect margins, understand whether you need to adjust your price points, and see trends over time.
How much are labor and food costs affecting your restaurant’s profitability? This report will tell you. A Sales Profit Report tracks revenues against expenses to help you understand the health of your business in real time. To be useful, you’ll need to ensure your tracking tool is able to capture every type of expense, from labor to food inputs to marketing. That’s why it’s important to ensure that your analysis technology integrates with every aspect of your restaurant’s tech stack. The more data it can access, the better your insights will be.
How healthy are your gross sales? Is your overall revenue increasing over time? Monitoring this in real time will help you react quickly to any sudden drop-offs and will also allow you to see how seasons, trends and other shifts affect your overall sales.
Are you staffed at the right levels for each daypart? How is your current staffing affecting your margins? Are you seeing a sudden shift in overtime costs? Is there a need to adjust your staffing approach by season? This report will answer these questions and more.
How many covers are you getting per shift? How does that compare to your own restaurant’s historical data? Are your reservations healthy? Has there been a sudden spike in no-shows? Is your time allotment per table accurate? You can set up KPIs to measure and track these issues with Reservations and Turnover reporting.
It’s been estimated that up to 10 percent of the food inventory a restaurant purchases is wasted. Tracking your inventory over time will help you better predict what you really need to have on-hand when, and will help you see if inventory issues are draining your profits.
Track your current stock levels and see the valuation for each item. Know at a glance when you need to use up your most costly inventory so it doesn’t end up a loss.
There’s nothing more disappointing to customers than finding out their favorite dish has been 86’d early in the night. This report lets you set minimum levels of all your most important items to ensure you’ll never again experience a last-minute inventory emergency.
Know at a glance whether an item you ordered is missing, late or when it’s scheduled to arrive. Get notified when vendors miss a deadline before it becomes a potential issue.
For restaurant operators, it’s frustrating to see quality ingredients go to waste. This report will let you set benchmarks for food waste so you can see how efficient your back-of-house is at any given moment, and catch any lapses before they hurt your bottom line.
Track your relationship with each vendor you work with over time in order to see cost fluctuations, delivery speed and other KPIs. Get an understanding of who your best performing vendors are, get insights that will help you negotiate costs, and know instantly if changes need to be made.
Having the ability to gain sophisticated insights into customer preferences and habits can be a game-changer for restaurants. It can have a significant impact on everything from marketing ROI to menu development.
Understand customer behavior and segment by demographics, order history, personal preferences or a host of other factors. If you use a tech solution (like our Delightable GRM) that lets you integrate all your different data platforms, you can build robust customer profiles that will help you create specialized marketing strategies. Delightable helps you identify your highest value (LTV) customers and attract more of them.
See what customers love and don’t love at a glance. Get notified in real-time when a guest posts a less-than-stellar review. Track Customer Satisfaction Scores (CSAT) and Net Promoter Scores (NPS), the industry standard KPIs for customer satisfaction.
Set goals and benchmarks for restaurant traffic, and get notified about sudden increases in no-show levels or drop-offs in visits.
How effective is your loyalty program? Are the rewards you’re offering appropriate for the value of each customer? What happens if you experiment with different tier levels, free appetizers rather than discounts, or other types of incentive structures. If you want to ensure your loyalty program is working as hard as you need it to, tracking signups, activity, tier levels and drop-offs would be your best KPIs.
Your menu is the lifeblood of your restaurant. Is it working as hard for you as it could be? Are the most popular items running out before their time? Are the prices you’re charging where they should be? Menu reports will tell you.
This report lets you see which menu items are your most popular and most profitable. Track how shifting input costs impact your profitability on an item-by-item level, and see whether old favorites have lost any luster.
How do different menu design strategies affect sales? Does the order of items listed change how your customers perceive them? Are you using the right language to entice an order? Does the design match the meal, the brand, and the overall experience? The answers may well surprise you.
How often are favorite items unavailable? Are you achieving a good balance between availability and scarcity? Ensuring your supply equals the demand can help you boost your restaurant’s margins with little effort.
A restaurant that isn’t profitable is a restaurant that’s on borrowed time. Financial reports will give you an early warning when there is something that needs to be solved immediately.
The Profit and Loss Statement allows you to quickly assess profitability over time and track expenses against revenue.
A liquidity crisis is something no restaurant wants to experience.Use this report to see your cash flow needs over time and make sure your capital structure is in line with your restaurant’s needs.
It’s easy to lose track of cash in the restaurant business. This report will help you stay on top of your physical currency intake and outflows.
The most common KPIs for restaurants to track are the ones that help them quickly see the health of their business at a glance. We’d recommend setting benchmarks for:
All the knowledge in the world can't help you if you don’t set aside time to review it regularly and act on it. Ensure you automate your reporting as much as you can so you can spend your time where it will do your restaurant the most good. Choose to focus on reports that provide you with actionable insights, and set up time not just to review your findings but to create at least one strategy to improve your business as a result of what you’ve learned.
Data and analysis can revolutionize your restaurant business, but all reporting partners aren’t created equal. Ideally, you need a partner that can pull in data from across not just every system you use, but also third party review sites and delivery apps. A partner like Delightable by Fishbowl.
Delightable is an industry-leading Guest Relationship Management platform that combines the elements of a CRM with the flexibility of a CDP to create robust guest profiles. Fishbowl experts can show you how to connect those profiles to impactful marketing campaigns across a variety of channels. And because every data input and outbound communication is connected through our platform, we generate a lot of data, and all of it can be leveraged to create accurate, insightful reporting in real time.
Delightable was developed by restaurant marketing data and analytics experts with more than two decades of experience helping restaurants become more successful through data insights and reporting. There is not a better, more versatile or easy-to-use reporting tool for restaurants.
The old adage “knowledge is power” is particularly true for running a restaurant. These days, there is more pressure on margins than ever before, and having.
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