Here’s How Restaurants Are Using Text Message Marketing

Are you reaching your customers where they are? If you're not using text message marketing, you're not. Most, if not all, of your customers have smart phones, and you might be surprised at how receptive they can be to text marketing. Ninety-eight percent of marketing texts are read, perhaps in part because users know these messages are unlikely to be spam.

Short message service (SMS) or multimedia message service (MMS) texts are perfect for promoting your limited-time-only deals or reminding customers that it's almost happy hour. People tend to think with their stomachs at certain times of day, and reminding them of your tastiest menu items at the right times can bring in repeat business and new business with vouchers, deals, coupons, and prizes. If you want to send text message notifications to all of your customers at once, you should start sending automated SMS messages. This will help you save time and make your communication process more efficient, since you won't have to waste time sending hundreds of individual text messages.

Assemble Your Subscriber List

You can't just buy a list of cell phone numbers on the dark web and start bombarding them with marketing text messages — not legally, anyway. Before sending out any marketing texts, you have to get consent from the consumer who owns the number — they have to opt in. Under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) and the Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing (CAN-SPAM) Act, you have to get consumers' permission to send them marketing texts, and you have to give them the option to easily opt out.

You will have to promote your text marketing program to existing customers through other forms of communication. To stay compliant with regulations, you have to make sure texts include a clear opt-out option, and that you give customers a reasonable estimate of how many marketing texts they can expect to receive per month. You should also incorporate language to the effect that your texts will only include relevant information about the restaurant's services and offerings.

Promote Your Deals

Once you have a customer's permission to send marketing texts, you're in the clear to send marketing texts as long as you don't exceed the maximum number per month you disclosed to the customer at opt-in. With the restaurant business being as fast-paced as it is, many eateries use text message marketing for restaurants to promote menu specials and other limited time offers, with marketing texts scheduled right before the lunch and dinner rush when people's stomachs are growling and they're open to suggestions.

You can use exclusive deals to attract more customers to subscribe to your text messages. When they can compete to win prizes, redeem coupons or vouchers, get family or student deals, or glean other exclusive benefits from receiving your text messages, they'll be more likely to subscribe and remain subscribed, and if they really like the deals, they'll tell their friends about them, too. Segment your subscriber database so you can target messages to different groups of customers. You wouldn't, for example, want to send the same promotion to customers with young families that you'd send to those aged 65 or older.

Boost Customer Engagement

The more engaged customers are with your brand, the more money they'll spend and the more they'll discuss your restaurant with their friends. Text message marketing increases engagement by sending your subscribers updates about new menu items, events, opening hours, and more. You can conduct polls over text to learn more about what customers like and dislike. You can even make it easier for customers to confirm reservations with automated text reminders. Automated text messages with booking reminders could cut down on no-shows, and text message marketing tends to be much more effective than more traditional kinds of marketing that may not be as targeted. With the enticement of limited-time discounts and coupons sent directly to their phones, text message marketing can turn otherwise casual customers into loyal, repeat customers who sing your praises online and in person.

Text message marketing is one of the most targeted means of reaching consumers, and it's one of the most effective. There are regulations in place to govern how you can use customers' phone numbers to engage with them, but as long as you follow them, you can use text messaging to draw in a lot of business, reduce no-show reservations, and increase your brand awareness — all while forging a loyal customer base.