Email marketing: eight emails that bring guests back

Why email works differently for a restaurant

Your revenue grows in three ways and no more than three. You get new guests, they order more often, or they spend more each time. Most channels touch exactly one of them.

1. More new guests
2. More orders from the same guest
3. A higher amount per order

Search mostly brings in people who do not know you. Email touches all three: a welcome email gets someone over the line, a win-back email brings an old guest back, and a suggestion built on an earlier order makes the next one bigger.

Sending an email also costs you next to nothing, so almost all of the revenue it produces stays with you.

A guest only becomes interesting on the second order

If you pay to get someone to order for the first time, that cost comes off your margin on that order. On the second one you do not pay it again.

For takeaway and delivery that counts double: margins per dish are thinner than at a table, so you need the repetition.

Nobody can change the rules of your list

Instagram and Facebook decide who sees your post, and that changes a few times a year. An email address belongs to you, and keeps working the way it worked yesterday.

So start with the boring part, which is the list.

The list comes before the emails

Ask owners what they should have done sooner and many say the same thing: collect email addresses earlier.

Orders through Thuisbezorgd, Uber Eats and Deliveroo do not help. Those platforms keep your guest's details to themselves: what arrives is an order, not a customer. On your own ordering site it is the other way round.

• At the checkout on your own ordering site, where you need the address anyway
• At sign-up for your loyalty programme, where the address is the condition
• At the counter or the table, if your till has the field and your team asks
• In your own app, at the moment somebody creates an account
• In the bag on a platform order, on a card with a reason to order directly

That card is the only way a platform order turns into a guest of your own. Put something concrete on it: a dish that only appears on your own site, or something small for free on the first direct order. Ordering directly costs you no commission, so you have the room.

Never buy a list. Those addresses do not know you, open nothing, and get you into trouble with the spam filters.

Consent is something you sort out at the front

In the Netherlands and the rest of the EU you cannot simply email people advertising. People have to say yes themselves, you have to show when they did, and every email has to let them out again.

In practice that is one tickbox at the checkout and one line underneath. Sort it out now, because cleaning a list up afterwards costs far more.

This is not legal advice, and the rules get tightened from time to time. If you are unsure, put your set-up in front of somebody who does this for a living.

A list of people who said yes themselves opens your emails. A scraped list disappears into the spam filter and takes your good emails with it.

What makes an email work

An email nobody opens does not exist. A handful of parts decide almost everything.

One email has one job. If you want to show a new dish, fill your terrace and promote your loyalty programme, that is three emails, not one email with three buttons.

Write it as though it will be read on a phone, because it will be. Short paragraphs, one photograph, and a button that finishes the order in a couple of taps.

Three automatic emails around the first order

The emails that earn the most hang on a moment rather than a date. You set them up once and they work without you.

1. The abandoned order

Somebody fills a basket and never checks out. On a phone that happens all day: the bus arrives, the child shouts. An hour later that person is still hungry.

Send a short email showing what was in the basket, with a photograph and a button that opens there again. No story and no discount by default: usually the reminder is enough.

2. The welcome email

This is the first email somebody gets from you and usually the best opened. Say what is coming: the special of the week, new dishes, the occasional offer.

Put in one offer that makes the first direct order easy, and mention your loyalty programme.

3. Following up the first order

A first order is an introduction that runs both ways. Two emails make the difference here.

1. Within a day: ask how it went. If it went well, ask for a review on Google and give loyalty points for it. If it went wrong, answer it yourself.
2. Within a week: recommend two dishes that fit what they ordered, with a photograph and a button that sets up the order.

That first email brings you more reviews, and the chance to put a mistake right before it becomes a star rating on Google.

Two automatic emails for regulars

Now the guests who have ordered before. That is where your margin sits, and where you go wrong fastest by discounting for people who would have ordered anyway.

4. The ladder for guests who go quiet

Do not discount on a fixed day, discount on silence, and let the offer follow how long the silence has lasted. Somebody who has not ordered for a fortnight might be on holiday.

Give a product rather than a percentage. A dessert you make yourself costs you the purchase price of that one item, while ten per cent off comes out of your margin on the whole order. With a minimum order value the main course stays in the basket.

Use these emails to sell your loyalty programme. Make the reward concrete: not collect points, but every second order earns you something. An email saying there is one order between somebody and a free dish does more than a discount.

A small group orders far more often than the rest. Decide where that line sits and treat that group separately, with a larger combination offer.

5. The win-back email

The best win-back email goes to somebody who chose you several times and then went quiet for about six weeks. That guest likes your food, something got in the way.

Put what they ordered before in the email, because that is what they think of when hungry. One reason to come back, and one button.

If you have time for two things this week, switch on these two.

Three emails you send yourself

Not everything hangs on a moment. A special, a new dish and a promotion work better when you write them.

One rule covers all three: only send them to people who ordered in recent months. Somebody who has opened nothing for six months ruins your numbers and your deliverability.

6. The special of the week

One dish, one good photograph, a short description and a button. That is the whole email. The power is in the repetition: the same time every Thursday, and after Sunday it is gone.

Build up a stack of specials that performed, keeping the photograph and the copy. After that you rotate through them and the email costs you ten minutes.

7. A new dish

A new dish is the easiest subject you will ever have. Announce it before it reaches the menu, and give a reason to try it in the first week: double loyalty points or something small alongside it.

8. Recurring and seasonal promotions

Recurring promotions live on their fixed spot in the week. Say which dishes are included, and that the offer runs on your own ordering site.

Seasonal promotions work better as three emails than one: an announcement beforehand, a reminder on the day and a thank-you afterwards. Think of Koningsdag, Sinterklaas, Christmas or Mother's Day.

What to measure, and what to ignore

Once these emails are switched on, post goes out every day without you. Then you want to know whether the credit belongs to the emails or to the weather.

• Revenue from email, in euros and as a share of your online sales
• The growth of your list per week, and how many people unsubscribe
• Opens and clicks, set against your own emails from last month
• The share of guests who order again within three months
• What a guest is worth: order value times orders per year times the number of years somebody stays

The percentages email vendors publish are global averages across every industry. Useful as a direction, useless as a target. Your only sensible comparison is your own figure from last month.

Where to start on Monday

Switching everything on at once is the fastest route to doing none of it. Five steps, in this order.

1. Turn on the email field with a consent tickbox at the checkout on your own ordering site
2. Write one welcome email and switch it on
3. Switch on the abandoned order email, with a photograph of what was in the basket
4. Pick this week's special and send it on Thursday
5. Write down three numbers: how many addresses you have, how many online orders you took last month, and your average order value

In a month you compare those three numbers. That is the whole measurement.

The hunt for new guests never stops. But every guest an email brings back is a guest you do not have to buy again, and that saves more margin than any promotion.