Restaurant Email Marketing Option Comparisons
Email marketing is no lo
nger an option for restaurants. It has become a staple for customer communications to the majority of your existing customers. While the email system is far from being perfect, it is extremely efficient for quick communications to a portion of your customers at a very low cost.
In the past year my restaurants have gone from no email system to regular valuable contact about every two to three weeks. Our opt-in email list now has over 1000 members and growing. The email addresses are like gold and we make sure they are valid and keep reminding customers of the value.
We have gone from doing small emails ourselves to contracting email marketing services with online companies. We have used two of the largest online companies that have vastly different costs, features and benefits. Both email marketers have programs that target restaurants as clients. Below is a synopsis of our experience with both:
- Constant Contact (www.constantcontact.com) is the larger of the two email marketing companies that we have used. They are inexpensive and cater to all types of businesses. However, they do have a good number of templates for the restaurant industry. Their system is comparatively easy to use, user friendly to set up and offers an online tutorial that is excellent if you have a good Internet background or word processing skills. Constant Contact also has a group of exceptional reports on each email sent out. Depending on the size of your mailing list and other options you choose, your cost will be around $25 to $30 per month.
- Fishbowl(www.fishbowl.com) is a restaurant email marketing company. They claim that their entire focus is the hospitality industry. They do have a broad range of templates for restaurants. They also have many more services for our business. For example they will input your mailing list members into the system as you get the addresses. They provide forms for your guests as part of their service. They have a good support staff that has been helpful. They are specialists in email marketing for restaurants and understand the issues we deal with. Notwithstanding the above, Fishbowl has elements of their system that are cumbersome. The interface that helps you create emails is crude and clumsy. Their database is inflexible and only accepts unique email addresses with no allowance for multiple people using the same address such as husband and wife or company employees. They also claim they have a higher delivery rate than other companies, but that wasn’t our experience. The cost for the Fishbowl restaurant email marketing service is much higher. Depending on size and other options it will be around $100 per month minimum.
The obvious question is; which company is a better value?
My answer would be that it depends on your restaurant’s capabilities. If you have the time or staff to input the names and email addresses and have an excellent all around computer knowledge, I would suggest you go with Constant Contact (or other similar service). If you have a very limited computer skill level and don’t want to be bothered with details, go with the Fishbowl program. Constant Contact has no long term contracts and may be a place to start. Fishbowl will want a yearlong agreement. Fishbowl is also getting into online ordering and mobile marketing, both of which have not been fully embraced by the restaurant industry, but could serve your type of restaurant well in the future. In terms of creativity, interface and flexibility, Constant Contact is a better choice. It should be noted that the NRA endorses Fishbowl and is partnering with them for some services. However, the NRA isn’t the individual who has to work with their rather archaic online interface.
For more information on restaurant email marketing, search OnaWait blog for more articles. You can also get an extensive background on how to build a restaurant email program in The Restaurant Ebook.
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