You run a restaurant and pump a good chunk of your revenue into marketing. You plan your marketing strategy and track it, too. Yet, your booking volume spikes only for a couple of days and dwindles again after every new promotional campaign.
Reason? Your emails may land in spam. 83% of consumers have unread emails*. Your print ads are ignored. And who picks calls from unknown numbers? What is the solution, then?
Invest in SMS marketing for restaurant booking management and improve the efficiency of your business. Here are the why and how.
Why Use SMS Marketing For Restaurant Reservations?
Because Stats Say So
We surveyed how businesses use SMS and MMS marketing and communication. And found that scheduling topped the chart with 56% votes* among several SMS marketing use cases. Here is an excerpt for your reference from our State of Texting survey.
SMS is Breathable
People prefer texts to calls. Phone calls can be time-consuming and intimidating and stop your workflow for a few minutes. But texts don’t block you or your customers completely. Perhaps that’s why 58%* of consumers try to reply to a missed call via text.
Texting is Less Expensive
With all the minutes that you save by not calling your users or chasing them via emails, you can build and strengthen your customer relationship. And when you save time, you save money, right?
When we aren’t this cheesy, we tell businesses that SMS marketing is one of the most pocket-friendly mediums of promotions, user communication, and adverts. If you sign a deal with Textmunication, you’ll only spend pennies on each SMS. Just $125 a month for 4000 SMS to start with.
Check out our affordable SMS marketing plans and pricing
No Single Marketing Style is Adequate
Marketing is wide and deep, and all channels have their benefits. If someone recommends you only opt for text marketing, they’re laying a road with limited milestones for you. We aren’t one of those.
So, don’t stick to only social media marketing, emails, or text marketing. Buckle up for a diverse marketing endeavor and add more tools to your business strategy. And never miss out on the fastest medium of promotions: SMS and MMS marketing.
You just need to figure out the dynamics like short code or 10DLC, keywords for promotions, and how to build your SMS subscriber database.
How to Optimize Restaurant Reservation with SMS Marketing?
- Bookings and Cancelations
67%* of users prefer texts from a business about appointments, reminders, and scheduling than receive them by email or phone calls.
Phone tag is a frustrating situation for both parties when they try to reach out but can’t for some reason. Imagine how vexing this could be for your customers who want to book, confirm, or cancel a table.
But when you use SMS or MMS, no one needs to be available to accept that appointment call. Your reception desk or a staff member can send a text and wait for the response. This nullifies the probability of a phone tag situation. The same goes for booking cancelation and confirmation.
- Reminders and Updates
You’re 4.5 times more likely to receive a reply through a text than a marketing email from users. So, text marketing is a better route when you seek acknowledgment for a booking or rescheduling.
Want to send reminders for a party or conference in your banquet hall? Need to share the right floor and direction of the same to all the guests? Calling many people would be so unfeasible, right? Just shoot an SMS to all the stakeholders about any changes or information in seconds and stay calm about doing your job perfectly.
- Auxiliary Management Around a Booking
You can even organize your limited parking area by allotting a space a few minutes before the guest arrives and sending them the location via SMS. This rules out the waiting time for your customers, making them happy and any chaos on the curb or congestion in your premises.
If you need to process your billing, a text is the perfect channel to send transactional updates and an e-invoice. You can even send a link to your digital menu or the choice of your alcohol as an eye-catching image.
Launch your SMS-based Campaigns Today
All this smooth processing is possible because SMS is a high-priority medium, and its response time has no parallel. With SMS and MMS marketing and communication, you can also reduce the time spent on calls for takeaways. But that’s a topic for some other day.
Now that you’re aware of chalking out a good marketing strategy around booking, confirming, reminding, and canceling tables, you need to figure out a good SMS partner. With Textmunication, you get a hand-holding and expert assistance round the clock. Book your slot for a free demo with our sales head today.