Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Email continues to be the preferred mode of communication between consumers and the brands they support. So you've got consumers, you just call them diners. And you are a brand that your diners love to support your restaurant. So you need to be leveraging email, you need to be utilizing it, nurturing that list. On today's episode, I'm going to share by the numbers, all the numbers, all the metrics you need to keep in your mind to run a successful email email marketing strategy. Don't go anywhere. There's an old saying that goes something like this. You'll only find three kinds of people in the world. Those who see, those who will never see, and those who can see when shown. This is Restaurant Strategy, a podcast with answers for anyone who's looking.
[00:00:59] Hey everyone, thanks for tuning in. My name is Chip Close and this is Restaurant Strategy, a podcast dedicated to helping you build a thriving, more sustainable, more profitable restaurant business. I work with owners and operators from all over the world in seven different countries to help them level up and get better at what they're doing. We target consistent, predictable 20% returns because what you do is way too difficult and way too important to not make money doing it. Listen, if you got a busy restaurant and you struggle with single digit profits, if you're ready to level up and target 15, 20, 25% returns every month, you're not crazy for wanting that and I would love to chat with you. The best way to get started is to visit our website. Restaurant strategypodcast.com schedule grab time on the calendar. You'll chat with me or someone from my team and let's see if you're a good fit for the program. Right? We're going to ask you a ton of questions, you're going to ask us a ton of questions and we will go from there again. RestaurantStrategyPodcast.com Schedule as always, that L is in the show Notes.
[00:02:01] What's the food cost for your third best selling entree? With Margin Edge, you could know instantly. Margin Edge is a complete restaurant management software that I recommend to all of my clients. Cogs and inventory management. When you get a handle on that, you will dramatically improve your profitability. With Margin Edge, you just snap pictures of the invoices as they come in and you get real time data for every area of your business. You can see plate costs in real time. You can get a daily P and L. Your inventory count sheets are automatically updated. It saves you a ton of time and it lets you make really informed decisions. My client gather brewing they were a member of the P3 mastermind. They started using Margin Edge and within one month, I'm not kidding, 30 days, their food cost went from 38 to 28%. That's real savings. That dropped all the way to the bottom line. There's a reason I recommend Margin Edge to all of the P3 members. It's because it works. It works better than anything else out there. If you're interested in learning more, or if you want to see how Gather brewing went from 38 to 28% food costs, head over to margin edge.com chip again margin edge.com chip that link is in the show notes and you can go watch a quick video to learn about what they did and how they leveraged Margin Edge.
[00:03:18] Now In Kind is the largest and only dual sided app based marketplace offering low cost capital investments for restaurants paired with exclusive dining rewards for restaurant goers. To date, In Kind has provided over $200 million in capital giving restaurant operators alternative funding anywhere from 10,000 to 10 million to its over 1 million users. In kind is a free app to pay your restaurant tab and you earn rewards while dining out on the other side to the over 1800 US restaurant owners who have been funded by In Kind. It's a source of capital that takes a lot of the pain out of starting a restaurant and running a restaurant. Ultimately, In Kind has helped their dreams come true and showing that accessing capital for your restaurant does not have to require paying back lenders or splitting profits with investors or pledging your assets. Enjoy 15% back at thousands of restaurants and access exclusive dining perks and offers by downloading the Ink Kind app. Yes, you can go and use it, visit in kind.com and and download it or you can see how you can benefit as a restaurant owner and operator. Restaurant strategy listeners can redeem a special offer by visiting in kind.vip/restaurantstrategy. And yes, that link is also in the show Notes okay, so we're going to talk about email marketing today. Why? Because it is the preferred mode of communication between consumers and the brands they support. So your consumers are called diners. Love to join you. They love to go to a lot of places, right? Because there are a lot of great places out there and what you need to do is stay top of mind. You need to be in the consideration set when they get hungry, so they need to think of you when it matters most. The way you do that is by talking to them over and over and over, by becoming a key piece of their lives, by providing value in all kinds of unimaginable ways. What you may not realize is that your favorite sports teams, right, your favorite concert venues, your, your, you know, the brands, you are constantly doing that. And maybe some days you ignore them. Maybe some days the messages hit you at just the right time. Right? That's what we're doing. What I want to do over the next few minutes, I want to share with you the numbers that matter, the only things you need to focus on. And this will help you dial in your marketing strategy for the year ahead. Okay, first number, 22%. What is that? What's 22%? That is the industry average for open rate. On average, restaurants have a 22% open rate. So if you are beating that, you are beating the average. You're doing Great. Next number, 2%. What's 2%? 2% actually shows up on two times in a row. 2% is the typical average click through rate. Average click through rate is less than 2%. So if you're getting a larger open than 22%, you're already, you're already winning. If you are getting more than 2% of the, of the your list to actually click and go do what you want them to do, you are winning. 2% is also the unsubscribe rate. When you send emails. And you shouldn't feel bad about sending a lot of emails. You send as many emails as you possibly can to stay top of mind and continue the dialogue with your people. Until you see the unsubscribe rate go over 2%, that's a really good benchmark to keep track of. Know that there are always going to be people unsubscribing and often it has nothing to do with you. It's because they went on a diet, they're not going to eat your food, they moved out of town, they're never going to come back to your place, right? For a million reasons. For a million reasons, they may not want to follow you anymore. And that's okay. When they unsubscribe, then you get to fine tune your messages just to the people who actually want them. So the first three numbers are 22, 2 and 2. The industry average for open rate is 22%. If you're beating that, you're winning. Average click through rate is less than 2%.
[00:07:20] So know that it's very hard, it's very hard to get people to click and do what you want them to do. If you're at 3, 4, 5%, you are winning. If you're sending emails and your unsubscribe rate is below 2%, which I'm guessing it's probably well below that. And I want you to check, obviously after you listen to this episode, go and check and make sure. But if it's under 2%, you are fine. Those are the first three numbers I want you to know. Here's the next numbers, right? 2 hours, 10 to 12, 3 to 5. Those are the hours that typically have the best response rate when it comes to email marketing for restaurants. Now why? Right? 10 to 12. It's when people start getting hungry for lunch. 3 to 5. It's when people start fading from their workday and start thinking about dinner, right? They realize they got nothing in the fridge. They realize that they really just want to go out. They realize that whatever it is, right? 10 to 12, 3 to 5. Those two two hour windows are incredibly impactful when it comes to, when it comes to sending emails, right? Five. Now what does five mean? Five is, I think the minimum number of data capture points for you to be growing your email list. Now what's a data capture point? It just means a way for you to capture people's emails, right? List growth is one of the most important metrics that you can be measuring. It's what all of the big groups and chains care so deeply about, right? The ability to remarket to you, the ability to put another offer in front of the consumers, right? Because maybe they don't like this offer, but maybe three emails from now they are gonna see an offer that they very much like. So 5, I think is the minimum number of data capture points, meaning you have to be gathering information from a lot of different sources. Now let me make it easy for five may sound crazy to you, it's not. It's not. Your reservation system captures email addresses. That's number one, right? If you take online orders, that's number two. If you have now maybe you've got a full service restaurant, but you don't take reservations. You should be using a wait list system. Now you can do it with the clipboard, right? I don't recommend it. But if you're going to do it by clipboard, make sure you get name, email and phone number and then you input that later manually. Better, I think to have a digital solution to that. And there's tons of them out there. A lot of reservation systems have a digital wait list software. They have a feature for this, right? So your reservation software, your online ordering platform, your wait list management, gated WI fi. If you are offering free WI fi in your dining room, just gate it right it's totally free, but you got to put in your email, know that when you go to the airport it's gated wi fi. When you go to Starbucks, it's gated WI fi. When you go out to most hotels, it's gated wifi. Right. So it's nothing new. I just think you should be doing that there. And those become incredibly valuable emails to collect that if they come in that way, make sure you're tagging them so you can segment the list and speak to just them when you want because those are the people you know have already been there, have already, are already customers. That's incredibly powerful. That's number four. Number five on your website, probably in a couple of places in the footer, definitely in a pop up probably. Right. Your loyalty program is a capture point, right? If you are doing any sort of like community events, charity events, these are all opportunities. Now I've given you like seven or eight. You only need five of them and most of them are low hanging fruit because it's probably stuff you're already doing. But if you're not harvesting the data from those capture points and using them to actually send communications to them, then that's a red flag. And let's, let's have today be the last day that you're going to do that because you're going to start gathering all of those emails into one collected point. Right? So number five. Four. What is, what do I mean by four? You have to send at least four emails a month. You do the math. That's weekly. You should be sending weekly emails at least the more casual brand you are, the more emails you could send. You could send seven, eight, nine emails a month. Totally fine. I've worked with brands where we've sent 10 to 15 emails a month because they're casual and we just have to keep reminding people about them because they get hungry for salad or tacos every, every day or every other day. That becomes crucial. Okay, recapping here. We're almost to the end of the list. I told you this is going to be short and sweet. 22%. That's the industry average for open rate. 2%. Right click through rate. Industry average is less than 2%. 2% also refers to the unsubscribe rate. If you are sending emails and your unsubscribe rate is below 2%, you're totally fine. Right? 10 to 12, 3 to 5, those are the best times to send emails. In my experience. 5, 5 is the minimum number of data capt ways that you are growing Your list every single month. 4. You got to send at least four emails a month. You do the math. That is weekly. I want to introduce you to something called the one to one to one principle. So the number here is one. You send one email, it has one message. There is one call to action. This is an email about catering. Here's information about catering. Click this button to go order catering. If you have three things to talk about, you have three emails to send. I want you to embrace this one to one to one principle. It's not 1997. We don't send a newsletter. We don't send all the information we have to talk about. Right? Again, if you got three things to talk about, you have three emails to send. I can't tell you how important this one is. Now, 50. Next number is 50. I want you to follow at least 50 other restaurants and their email program. You learn from them, you see what they're doing. You look at the format, the structure, the voice they use, the promotions they run, and you steal the things that are worth stealing, right? Maybe you're gonna adopt, you know, promotion that you see and you're gonna adapt it to your restaurant, right? Follow competitors, follow similar brands in other markets. Follow other brands in your market that have nothing to do with you. Meaning if you're a fast casual burger joint, follow some fine dining restaurants. You will learn something from watching them. Make sure at least five or 10 of those 50 are big chains. Why? Because Chipotle, McDonald's, Wendy's, Capital Grill, they all spend millions of dollars a year on marketing. They've already spent the money to learn the lessons. All you have to do is follow what they're doing. You'll learn a valuable lesson. So 50, you got to follow at least 50 other emails, right? You got to subscribe to at least 50 email programs for restaurants. The last one is minimal. Bare minimum 250 net new subscribers. You should be adding minimum of 250 new subscribers to your email list every single month. And for most of the restaurants that I used to market, for most of the restaurants that I work with, that number is between 500 and 1000. So bare minimum 250. If you do that, you do the math. 250 times 12. That ends up being a meaningful amount of new people that you're growing every single year. And it is a quantity game. Absolutely crucial. Those are the numbers. Email numbers to live by.22%. That's the industry average for open rate. 2% click through rate in our industry is typically less than 2%. As long as you're keeping your unsubscribe rate under 2%, you are good. You are not pissing people off. 10 to 12, 3 to 5. That's in my experience the best times to send emails. As an asterisk here as a caveat to that. If you have an e commerce product between 8 and midnight, right? 8pm and midnight at night and on Saturday mornings, that's typically what I found are the best times to send e commerce emails. We could talk about why that is, but just know that that is it. Five, right? Five is the minimum number of capture points, different channels that you are using to capture data for your guests. 4. That's the minimum number of emails you can be sending every month. Do the math. You gotta be sending them at least weekly. The one to one to one principle. One email, one message, one call to action. That one's crucial. I want you to Follow at least 50 other email. Other restaurants subscribe to their email list and 250, 250net new subscribers every single month. That's I think a bare minimum to be able to be a player in the year 2025. That's it. Numbers to live by. Email marketing is absolutely crucial. If you felt like you were in a fog, it was fuzzy. Here we go. I'm drill down. Chisel that stuff in stone. I appreciate you guys being here. If you wouldn't mind taking a quick second. If you get any sort of value from this show, go over to Apple Podcasts, leave us a five star rating and review. I mean logger review, Tell other people what you got out of the show. We've gotten out of the show. Why you think they should listen to the show. There's a ton of great podcasts out there and this community is so important to me. I want to make sure that we keep growing it because I try to provide tons of value every single week. Remember, two episodes every single week, every Monday and Thursday. If you get any value out of it, please go leave us a review on Apple Podcasts. Thank you very much guys. I will see you next time.
[00:16:50] Sa.
