How do new users find out about your restaurants? Either through market aggregators for restaurants and food businesses, flyers and print ads, or social media adverts, right? But all these get washed away with time. Most ads don’t even see impressions because scrolling supersedes salesy ads and promotional messages. Flyers get dumped in the bins, and market aggregators demand memberships and app installation.
SMS marketing is the new style of promotion for restaurant businesses. Through texts, you can reach out to your potential customers immediately. Learn how you can boost customer engagement with SMS marketing.
7 Ways to Improve User Engagement with Text Marketing
- Grow Subscriber List
SMS marketing with a small (or no) database only makes you lose opportunities. So, grow your restaurant’s SMS user database.
When you sign up users for email updates, newsletters, or transactional updates, seek permission to enable text marketing updates on the same form. This step reduces your effort and is more likely to append new numbers to your subscriber list.
Maybe seek your diners’ numbers for birthday, anniversary, and special food events information while asking for feedback. Several customers would be happy to receive a 25% discount on their birthdays and other occasions.
Use social media to promote updates and images (ambiance and food) from your diners and seek new users. Nothing works as swiftly as social media proof.
- Share Personalized Promotions
Knowing your diners and sharing updates that suit their needs, dietary habits, and choices can help you go a long way to building customer relationships. Update your user database to tag vegan, vegetarian, and meat-lover accordingly. Know if a user avoids sugar, has dietary preferences like low carbs, or has food restrictions for allergies.
Accordingly, send personalized offers. For instance, when you run sugar-free dessert festivals, send updates to diabetics and users who avoid sugar.
Personalization makes your users feel pampered and gives them a sense of exclusivity. And helps boost customer engagement for any food business.
- Create Urgency with Flash Offers
Who doesn’t love a surprise buy-one-get-one-free meal?
Take the benefit of the fact that diners need only one reason to book their tables. Send them updates on happy hours, ladies-only nights, and seasonal discount offers, and seek their bookings through an SMS.
For instance: “We’re open for a Happy Hour Cocktail Party tonight with a 40% discount. Book your table by replying HappyHour to this SMS. If booked within the next hour, you might win one free seat, too.”
Such time-sensitive messages can die a silent death in an email. Being the fastest and most personal communication channel, texting can boost customer engagement with SMS marketing.
- Reward Loyal Members
Loyalty is nothing if it can’t reap extra benefits for your loyal customers. Take their loyalty to the next level and make them your mouthpiece. Free of cost.
Reward your longtime members with slashed (or free) membership plans. Allow them to book discounted meals for their guests on a weekday when your business doesn’t see much footfall. Or give them one free meal to a certain amount for every referral they bring in.
An example could be:
“Dear member, thank you for being our esteemed customer. Now get a free lunch on every referral you make. Forward the attached link to a referral and ask them to use REF as the code to send us an SMS.”
- Serve Bookings, Cancelations, and Reminders
Allow subscribers and new users to book and cancel a table or delivery through SMS. You can send them reminders of an event, workshop, food festival, or booking over SMS.
Your foodie audience would love to attend an event on baking or oriental food. They would equally appreciate the ease of canceling or shuffling their booked slots through an SMS.
Such small gestures bring big outcomes. Look at the impact Equal Measure created by sending reminder texts to their diners.
- Seek Feedback
MMS and SMS marketing can also act as a feedback channel for your food brand. Send your users a link to feedback via SMS. Or allow them to revert through SMS itself about your latest food fest or their dining experience.
Seeking a user’s opinion shows that you care about their preferences and likings and are ready to upgrade your services to serve them better.
Also read: why use sms marketing with user database for growth.
- Tie Up for Promotions
Although overlooked, tying up with food bloggers, food photographers, and restaurant reviewers is a fruitful activity to reach out to and engage with new users through their established audience.
Post on your social media channels for reviewers, photographers, and bloggers to revert with an SMS about a possible tie-up. Create possibilities with them and see your audience size grow, even if by a tiny fraction.
Influencers in such areas can take your restaurant business to new horizons.
Ready to Boost User Engagement for Restaurants?
I Food and restaurant businesses have scored high engagement using text marketing. Our clientele list is the proof. However, don’t just take our words into consideration but reach out to our team of experts here. We can arrange a live demo for you and strike a proposal custom-made for your business’s needs.