Email Collection in Restaurant Setting

Now let me expound upon a few areas of the email marketing system and hopefully I can shed some light on certain trouble-spots, rough patches and bottlenecks.

Let's start with the e-mail collection strategies. The best way to gather names and e-mail addresses is to ask for them! Create a simple form on your computer, take it down to your local copy shop and have them make about 1000 copies, cut them properly and put them in to notepads.

These will create easy tear off sheets and help keep things cleanly stacked at the wait-station. These are placed in the check-presenter as I mentioned before. It is crucial that you train your staff to mention the form and ask them to fill out. Just by mentioning it your e-mail collection rate will go up by more than 50%!

The collection itself form can be rather simple. I recommend that you resist the urge to make it complicated. The less information that the guest has to fill out the more email addresses you will collect. If you start asking for their first and last name, email address, date of birth, anniversary, favorite food item, etc… then you've gone from requesting the email address to trying to survey them. That's a bad idea. I recommend that you ask for nothing more than the name and the e-mail address.

One thing that we have found successful in over 100 implementations is to have blanks on that form for multiple names and e-mail addresses. We have discovered that we get more names and e-mail addresses, and that the card is often passed around the table for everyone to fill out.

We have also found that these cards fit nicely into boxes and they are easily stored for archiving purposes.

A Critical Email Collection Strategy

Another absolutely crucial email collection strategy is the HTML form placed on your website. I have discussed this already but this ads a certain level of interactivity and a level of credibility to your site and your restaurant. When somebody fills out that form make sure that they automatically get a response saying that you have received their email and thank them for signing up.

Often, this easy “Thank You” message can include a printable coupon. If you're not into discounting consider offering a “comp” like a complimentary dessert on their next visit. And naturally you're going to want to include an expiration date on that coupon along with several other coupon disclaimers. Some disclaimers may include “dine in only”, “with the purchase of an entrée.”, “holidays excluded” just remember that the important thing is that you're collecting names and email addresses for future communication.

Continuing with effective email strategies...the ol’ glass bowl at the door can be effective. This strictly at your discretion a bowl is not the most effective means for collection but I’ve seen it work well for some. This one can be skipped, but if you do have the space you should consider it.

The #1 key to email collection and list building is systematic consistency.

Don't just implement one strategy. Do your best to implement several systematic strategies, because if you garner just a handful of email addresses from multiple methods you can increase the number of e-mail addresses on your list very rapidly. Get creative and build the list. Your list is the most important part of an e-mail marketing strategy.