Email marketing for restaurants—it’s a numbers game. But they have to be the right numbers in the right sequence. Improving email ROI for your restaurant isn’t about simply upping customer email numbers, meaning getting more names on your email list so you can send more email campaigns and therefore drive more customers to your business.
How do you improve the ROI of email marketing for restaurant owners? Start by increasing the restaurant email segmentation. Do this, by increasing the segments you send to, not the total number of emails on your list. Instead of increasing your list by 1,000 names per month, segmenting means increasing the number of segments you send to. Segment your email list and break down your one big list into smaller groups that are more targeted, less likely to bulk send to inactive users, and deliver those smaller groups relevant content.
Sounds like a lot of work, right?
The answer is, yes it is work…but it’s oh so worth it!
All Email Marketing Services for Restaurants Should Focus on Segmenting
It’s worth it because emails based on specific email segments get a higher delivery rate, and more opens and clicks, with fewer bounces, spam complaints and unsubscribes. Not to mention it helps you as the business owner get cleaner customer data for your content marketing.
Take a look at these numbers – Email Segmentation Stats
- Segmented emails generate 58% of all revenue.
- Segmented emails can achieve a 760% increase in revenue.
- Segmented, targeted and triggered campaigns generate 77% of all ROI.
Despite all of these potential gains, however, 89% of businesses are not segmenting according to one source—89%! That means only 11% of businesses do segment:
Is your restaurant business among those not segmenting your email lists?
Restaurant Marketers Can Achieve Goals with Email Segmentation
Email segmentation helps to boost email marketing campaign results as the numbers above prove. But somehow marketers aren’t making the connection between what they want to achieve and how segmenting could help them to do so.
In our experience working in the field of email marketing services for restaurants, we have learned that product and service marketers usually want to increase all of the following as a result of their email marketing:
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The engagement rate
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Customer acquisition
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Level of email personalization
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Customer retention
All four of these email ROI goals are easier to achieve with email segmentation.
Email Segmentation Has the Following Benefits
Increase the email engagement rate
When your emails are segmented and therefore targeted, they are more relevant to your restaurant audience which increases your audience’s engagement with your email marketing for restaurants. As consumers, when we know an email is relevant to us, we are much more likely to open it and—finding that the message does indeed intrigue us—continue on to read it. If it doesn’t, 60% of us will just delete it.
Increase customer acquisition
It follows that an engaging email is more likely to lead to a customer acquisition, especially when that email speaks to that customer’s food, beverage or entertainment interests. Someone receiving a generic email is a lot less likely to convert vs. someone receiving a targeted, specific and timely message.
Increase the level of email personalization
Email segmentation is an effective way to personalize! But personalizing requires more than a “Dear [Name]” subject line. Compare using someone’s first name in an email that’s sent generically to thousands of other people on the same list to an email that doesn’t use first names but instead gives the recipients content or offers that are right up their alley.
Which email is actually personalized?
Increase customer retention
Finally, customers stick around because they get relevant and meaningful emails from the restaurant brand that sends segmented emails. They know that the brand is listening because the listening shows up in the email marketing from that restaurant. Why would they unsubscribe or switch loyalty to another restaurant brand? They wouldn’t.
Unlimited ways to segment emails
Email segmentation can be done in any number of ways, including by gender or by ZIP code or by subscription source, to name a few of the basic ones. From there, email segmentation can get as complex as you want it to be. EmailMonday.com suggests email segmentation can be based on all types of data, including:
- Geographic
- Demographics
- Lifestyle
- Behavioral
Email marketing for restaurants can get much more granular because you can collect specific data in each of these areas, including when a consumer usually visits a restaurant, what they typically order and how much they usually spend, for example. And all that data can be used for even more segmenting and therefore even more targeted email messaging.
The benefits should be obvious. So start segmenting your emails. Become one of the 11%, and increase the ROI of your email marketing for your restaurants—as well as your competitive advantage!
Not sure where to begin with segmentation?
iPost understands that as a restaurant owner, engaging your customer in-home and out-of-home is vital to your thriving restaurant.
iPost is the most comprehensive enterprise-scale platform for email and mobile marketing. We make hard things simple and repeatable and provide you the flexibility. In our world, speed is a competitive advantage.
Have our team analyze your business needs and discuss if iPost is a good fit to become your email service provider.
Book your Free Demo today to learn about our Restaurant Email Marketing Platform.
