Want to improve or get started with email marketing for restaurants this year? Then this guide is for you.

Setting up restaurant email marketing shouldn’t be difficult or time-consuming. But if you don’t know where to start, we’ve got your back!

👋 By the end of this guide, you’ll know how to use email marketing to connect with your diners, promote your business to them regularly, and drive repeat purchases. 

This guide brings the best of restaurant email marketing tips, tricks, and best practices you can apply to make the most of your email campaigns.

We’ll cover the following: 

• Why restaurant email marketing is important.
• How to get started with restaurant email marketing.
• In-site email marketing best practices and ideas.
• Direct email marketing best practices and ideas.

To start us off, let’s understand why restaurant email marketing is important.

Why restaurant email marketing is important

Coming up with a restaurant email marketing strategy is a worthwhile investment.

📈 To begin with, every dollar you spend on restaurant email marketing alone can earn you an average return of up to $38.

That’s quite a generous return on investment, meaning you’ll get your money’s worth and more.

Unlike other marketing channels, email marketing stands out as the best way to attract new customers, retain loyal customers, and create meaningful connections with guests for the following reasons: 

Email is a direct line of communication with your customers

📈 According to studies, 99% of email users check their email daily. Some people take it further by checking their emails up to twenty times daily! That’s a lot.

When you use email, you can directly engage with these users and send them personalized messages in their email inboxes. If you’re a small business, using direct emails is way better than hoping for new customers to run into your brand or promotions on social media. 

📈 64% of other businesses like yours already use emails to reach their customers. It makes perfect sense to join them. 

With direct emails, all promotional material and email newsletters go straight to your customers’ email inbox. For this reason, they’re more likely to notice and read what you’re sending.

Also, this direct engagement allows you to build a loyal customer base and manage direct connections easily.

Email marketing is cost-effective

Compared to other marketing channels, email marketing is relatively low-cost. You don’t have to pay for print, postage, ad space, or any additional costs like you would for other marketing strategies.

What you need is a budget-friendly email marketing service provider and/or an automation tool like MailChimp or Zapier. These tools let you send targeted emails to specific customer groups, automate email marketing campaigns, easily track performance, etc, at affordable subscription plans.

So, if you’re a small business operating on a tight budget, email marketing is the best channel to promote your business to your customers. 

It allows you to promote your business and its events effectively

Part of maintaining a healthy relationship with your customers involves keeping them well-informed about the happenings of your business. 

As a restaurant owner, you can use emails to directly update customers on special offers, new menu items, promotions, restaurant opening hours changes, upcoming events, etc. 

Regularly updating your customers via email is beneficial. It creates anticipation, and customers are more likely to visit you more often and even invite their family and friends.

📈 Increasing the number of returning customers by just 5% can lead to an increase of 25%-95% in revenue. Sounds great, right? 

Now that you know the value of restaurant email marketing, let’s look at how to get started.

How to get started with restaurant email marketing

Setting up restaurant email marketing doesn’t have to be complicated. In this section, we’ve broken down four simple steps you can take to get your first email marketing campaign off the ground.

Step 1: Choose a reliable email marketing platform for your email list

First, choose an email service provider like Mailchimp, Constant Contact, or Sendinblue. 

The best email service provider should offer automation tools for creating, sending (including bulk sending), and tracking emails at an affordable pricing plan.

A good email provider should:

• Provide reports on the number of subscribers, unsubscribers, forwarded emails, etc. These reports can help you evaluate the success of your marketing campaigns.
• Give you the ability to segment your subscriber list. This way, you can send out targeted emails to first-time diners, regular customers, customers’ birthdays, anniversaries, etc.

Most importantly, your restaurant is unique, and so should your emails. Therefore, consider a platform that provides fully customizable email templates that perfectly fit your restaurant branding.

TIP: Conveniently, most of these email marketing tools offer a free trial. Make sure to spend some time testing these platforms before spending a dime.

Step 2: Hook this up with your restaurant website or POS system

Now that your email service is up and running, it’s time to collect customer emails for your restaurant’s email marketing campaigns.  

You can do this by linking with email providers at the point of sale, on your restaurant’s website, or during events. If customers are interested, they can sign up for your email list by entering their email addresses in those subscription forms.

Including a promotional offer can incentivize diners to enter their emails in the sign-up form on your website.

Step 3: Come up with your restaurant email marketing strategy

For your email campaign to be effective, the content and layout should be engaging and informative.

In the next section, we’ll share some top-notch email marketing practices and ideas that you can gather to create a powerful restaurant email marketing strategy.

Step 4: Monitor and analyze performance

Finally, leverage the email platform you chose to track open rates, click-through rates, and conversion rates. Consistently tracking these metrics will enable you to fine-tune your email strategy. You should also experiment with various types of content, sending times, and subject lines to discover what works best.

Roll up your sleeves now. The hard work begins. The next section will start with in-site email marketing best practices and ideas.

In-site email marketing best practices and ideas

Firstly, email marketing for restaurants doesn’t just mean your restaurant email list. 

It also constitutes part of your overall restaurant marketing strategy. It’s essential that all components of your restaurant marketing efforts, including emails, work together to guide your diners to confirm their order smoothly. 

If you have a restaurant website where people can order takeout, you would want to connect your website and the online ordering platform to your emails. This way, you can automatically send transactional emails and notifications to your customers when they order from you.

As the restaurant owner, you can use transactional and notification emails when:

• You need to confirm a transaction or update your diners on their order status.
• You want to enhance customer satisfaction and loyalty – by letting them know you’re taking care of their order and needs.
• You want to communicate essential information promptly or promote your offers.

📈 Transactional emails have an open rate of 80-85%. Because of this, it’s a powerful marketing tool for your restaurant business. 

If you want to send this email to your customers and reap its benefits, we have the right plugin to help you do that.

Send automated emails when a customer orders from your restaurant

Orderable allows you to send customized automated emails when a customer orders from your restaurant. Orderable is primarily an online ordering WooCommerce plugin that lets you create an efficient ordering system for your restaurant website. 

This plugin handles restaurant orders for you. Once set up, you’re only left to receive customer orders from different restaurant locations and then process them for either local deliveries or pickup orders.

Update customers on the order status using transactional emails with Orderable

During this order fulfillment process, restaurant owners can notify their customers of the order status.

Specifically, you can send email notifications at different stages of the order journey and:

• Confirm that you have received a customer’s order successfully. This can include details like food items ordered, order number, estimated delivery date and time, or pickup time.
• Tell a customer when their order is being processed – include any relevant information about the prep time or any potential delays.
• Inform customers when their order has shipped – including details about the delivery driver (if possible) and an estimated time of arrival.
• Notify customers when their order is ready for pickup, specifying any instructions for a smooth pickup process.
• Thank your customers for their order – for this, you can include a warm message and perhaps give them a discount for their next purchase.

You can also ask your customers to provide feedback and alert them about upcoming events, promotions, or new menu items to keep them engaged with your restaurant.

As a restaurant owner, you shouldn’t overlook this type of email marketing when developing your restaurant email marketing strategy.

 If you want to take order notifications up a notch, Orderable lets you push notifications in the form of text or WhatsApp messages, too.

Now, let’s take a closer look at some of the best practices and ideas you can implement for your direct emails.

Direct email marketing best practices and ideas

In this section, we’ll walk you through some email marketing best practices you need to apply when communicating directly with customers on your email list.

We’ll offer ideas on what email content you should send. We’ll also share simple, implementable tips for sending the best emails possible.

Restaurant email marketing best practices

The following are some restaurant email marketing best practices and tips to increase the number of subscriptions and email open rates, engage your guests, and boost your revenue.

Create a welcome email sequence for new customers/signups

A welcome email should be your first email campaign. They’re triggered when a new subscriber signs up to your email list to confirm their subscription.  

As such, you can use them to create a lasting first impression on new customers with an introduction to your business or even a special offer. For instance, if you sell bagels, you can send subscribers a coupon for a free bagel with cream cheese in the welcome email.

Since new subscribers anticipate welcome emails, you can apply the following best practices and create impactful welcome emails that will impress first-time subscribers:

• Create an effective welcome email sequence – creating one shouldn’t be overly complicated. Just say hello, tell your story, demonstrate your value, feature popular menu items, share a glowing testimonial or two, and close the deal. When you send a welcome email, you can let customers know what to expect from you. For example, how often they’ll receive messages, what promotions or deals will be shared, and any extra benefits they might get for being on the restaurant email list.
• Offer a welcome discount or promotion – For example, a discount code for their first meal or a complimentary appetizer).
• Include follow-up emails – Consider a series of follow-up emails over the next few days or weeks. These could include additional information about your menu, chef’s recommendations, key staff members, or more customer testimonials.
• Provide contact information – This will make it easier for your customers to contact your business.
• Provide clear opt-out options – Include an unsubscribe option in your welcome emails for customers who aren’t interested. 
• Invite new customers to connect on your social media platforms – You can add links to your FAQ section if you have one.

Create an opt-in form on your website

Creating an opt-in form on your website allows your customers to share their email addresses voluntarily. Customers who’ve consented to sign up for your email list are more likely to engage further with your brand and become potential prospects or repeat customers.

Here are a few tricks you can use to build a dedicated email list and connect with potential buyers:

• Place the opt-in forms prominently on your website – for example, in the header or footer section or as a pop-up. This will easily grab your customers’ attention and lead them to sign up.
• Offer incentives during sign-up – such as a one-time discount, a free meal following a successful first order, or exclusive access to special events or menu previews.
• Simplify the sign-up process – the opt-in form should be simple, direct, and straightforward. Request only essential information like name and email address to keep this barrier simple.
• Provide a crystal clear value proposition – tell your diners the benefits they’ll reap for signing up for your emails. This may be exclusive offers, insider news, or first access to special events.For example, sign up for our email list for 10% off your next purchase.

NOTE: You’re less likely to end up as spam or get blacklisted if you’re sending emails to customers who consented to sign up for your emails.

Additional restaurant email marketing best practices

Here are a few additional tips for a catchy email design.

Invest in your email subject lines

These few words can determine whether your email is read or ignored. With so much competition in the inbox, subject lines must stand out. Therefore, aim to create subject lines that stir curiosity or desire to open in just a few words.

• Keep the subject line short, to 50 characters.
• Highlight your most interesting offer.
• Use your brand voice.
• Don’t use all caps, and if you have an emoji that fits your brand, use one. 

📈 On top of that, personalizing your email subject lines can lead to higher open rates – as high as 50%.

Use high-quality images effectively

Once customers open an email, they tend to scan it rather than read a wall of text. So, make sure to use high-quality, eye-catching images of your dishes, restaurant, or special events to capture attention and entice diners. 

For example, describing your delicious pizza is more effective with a mouthwatering photo that makes diners hungry.

Include a clear call-to-action (CTA)

Every email should have a clear CTA. Typically, the CTA should be directly aligned to the final goal of the marketing strategy. 

For instance, you may want subscribers to make a reservation, view the menu, or take advantage of a special offer. Defining a clear, easy-to-understand CTA will ensure more conversions.

Segment your audience

There are many ways a restaurant can segment subscribers on their email list.

This is based on:

• Demographics: age, gender, location.
• Customer behavior or order history: e.g., frequency of visits.
• Order preferences: e.g., segment subscribers based on their favorite dishes or choice of preferred cuisine/frequently ordered dish.
• Special occasions such as birthdays or anniversaries.

Segmenting your customers this way will enable you to send targeted or relevant content to a specific audience and yield impressive results. Likewise, it is easier to create innovative email campaigns when you have more details about your target customer persona than a generic one-for-all approach. 

It isn’t enough to only have an effective email design and engaging email content. Each campaign requires originality and out-of-the-box thinking to run a successful email campaign. That’s what we’ll focus on next.

Creative email marketing ideas for restaurants

As a restaurant owner, combining creativity with effective email marketing techniques can help you connect with customers on a deeper level. Eventually, this should improve customer loyalty and drive more sales.

Let’s look at some restaurant email marketing examples and creative ideas to add to your email marketing plan.

Weekly or monthly menus

If your restaurant is the kind that changes its menu regularly, send out updates regularly. It’s recommended to send at least one email every week. The weekly menus can show off new chef specials. 

If you have a weekly deal or exclusive promotions, you can stir up the urgency by advertising them. Monthly menus should be carefully crafted and contain themed dishes to entice your customers back. 

If you like to, you can include behind-the-scene stories or share written or video recipes in your menus too. Doing this will help build anticipation around some of your most popular dishes or new menu items.

If a customer returns and tries out your latest offerings, that’s a win for you!

Seasonal promotions

Many holidays and festive seasons like Christmas, New Year, Halloween, Thanksgiving, Independence Day, etc inspire seasonal or festive menus. If you like to change your menu now and then, email the new and seasonal menu items to your prospective customers. 

Even better, you can start sending a few holiday emails with early bird offers for Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Christmas, etc.

Celebrate birthdays and anniversaries

When a patron’s big day rolls around, use anniversary or birthday emails to share your wishes and invite them to your restaurant for celebrations.

If you’re wondering, popular marketing tools like MailChimp allow you to collect customer data such as birthday dates, anniversary dates, etc.

This way, you can send gift cards or offer a free meal or a special dessert to all patrons during their birthday month or anniversary.

Event Invitations

Use emails to invite your customers to upcoming events at your restaurant in advance. For example, invite them to special events like tastings or themed nights at your restaurant.

If you want to spice things up a bit, you can introduce an online competition for your customers to submit innovative cocktails.

They can invite their family or friends along, and that’s an opportunity for you to win over new returning customers. If there’s a winner, their drink can be featured on your menu.

Offer exclusive offers for subscribers

For new email subscribers, send exclusive offers or special discounts, such as a free dessert or a coupon, on their next visit. 

You can also send exclusive discounts to your patrons to show them gratitude for their support. The inverse works as well. Identify the least active subscribers who haven’t visited for a while and send them tempting offers to win their return.

Start a loyalty program

Everyone enjoys feeling special. Therefore, reward loyal customers through personalized emails. For instance, creating loyalty programs can help your regular customers enjoy preferred seating, less waiting time, lower delivery fees, discounted rates, or even a peek at the new menu. 

Doing this doesn’t only contribute significantly to repeat business, but the additional perks can also amplify your referral network.

Improve your email marketing for restaurants today

Email marketing is a powerful yet cost-effective way to reach out to your customers to foster relationships and promote your restaurant’s offerings to them. By implementing the best practices and ideas discussed in this guide, you will be well on your way to creating an effective email marketing strategy. 

Transactional emails are some of the most effective marketing emails because customers tend to open them more often than not. Orderable, an online ordering solution for WordPress, allows you to use transactional emails to keep customers who order takeout updated at each stage of the order journey. 

You can use these emails to promote new menu items, special offers, etc., and keep your customers coming back to dine at your restaurant.