Updated: Jan 31, 2020
How does Text Message Marketing work? How can you utilize this powerful tool to make your restaurant successful and grow your sales?
The open rate percentage between text message and email messages are remarkably far.
Why does this matter? If people do not open to see and read messages, whether it's email, texts, or social media, what's the point of communicating it, right?
Open rate is a very valuable metric that we always look at when we are evaluating different tools, especially in marketing.
Text messages have nearly five times more open rates than email messages. Over 90% of text messages are seen within the first ten minutes when received, while email is only about 20%. That's 90% versus 20%.
For instance, if you communicate a message to a thousand people, over 900 of them are going to see your message when you send it through text. While maybe only 200-300 of them are going to view the email that you have transmitted.
What do you think is the percentage of people who do not mind receiving a text message from a brand or business?
Statistics say that there are about 75% of people who opt-in or choose to be part of a text messaging campaign.
Text messages are less intrusive because of the way it works. Customers must opt-in, choose, and select to receive text messages from you, ideally, every week.
Text messages are very concise. You have a limited number of characters (only 160) to communicate your deals, offers, events, reminders, etc.
Text messaging offers a sense of urgency. People are so busy. They usually don't have the time to read long messages like emails that also involve a lot of clicking.
With texts, first of all, they get the notification. They can immediately see most of the message by just glancing at it.
So let's go over three things you need to know to have a successful text message marketing strategy:
1. A list of phone numbers of your customers
2. A Text Message Marketing platform
3. An effective Text Message Marketing strategy
Text messaging is a tool, just like a knife. A strategy is going to define how to use it and will also determine its effectiveness.
Just like a Michelin star chef who may be using the same knife in their kitchen as we do.
But applying their "secret recipe," they can sell a Fettuccine Alfredo pasta dish for $150, and at your restaurant or mine, it maybe $50.
So it's not just the tool that is going to make it a success, but how we use it in a strategy. You must understand the following:
1. A list of phone numbers of your customers
You must have a phone number database. You either have some phone numbers on your POS system or maybe, you are starting from scratch and don't have any.
If you accept online ordering, pick-ups, phone orders, or delivery, you most likely have a lot of phone numbers in your POS system.
You can export all the phone numbers from your database into a text messaging platform and start texting them instantly.
Perhaps you are now wondering if you can send a message even without their permission.
So the first text message that you must send is this:
"Thank you so much for being our customer. Would you like to receive weekly EXCLUSIVE deals from our restaurant via text? Reply with a YES or a NO."
Those who reply with a YES (or Y ) will be added automatically to a new list. These are the people who are going to receive text messages from us every single week since they opted-in.
The truth is we only want to market to those who like to hear from us. Those are our loyal customers. We want to give them a reason to come back again, and again, and again.
Don't worry about all the technicalities involved because the text messaging platform streamlines this whole process. It is not complicated at all.
What if you have no phone numbers? That was precisely where we at when we started our restaurant five years ago. We had zero phone numbers when we opened and began Text Message Marketing.
Here's what we have done. We painted our walls with chalk paint, and we wrote on it:
"Want free zeppole donuts? Text the word CHEESY to 40691 to receive EXCLUSIVE deals at your fingertips. And as THANK YOU for JOINING, we'd love to treat you to a FREE order of our world-famous zeppole donuts."
We have collected over 4,000 phone numbers in the last five years, and we've been texting these customers every week.
2. A Text Message Marketing platform
You can't just use one cellphone dedicated to your business and upload all the phone numbers you have from your POS system.
You can not use your cellphone number and start mass texting them.
That is not allowed by the law because there must be a way for the customers to opt-out anytime.
You have seen that in emails where customers can just hit the unsubscribe button the moment they decide not to receive emails anymore.
You may be familiar with MailChimp, Constant Contact, AWeber, etc. These are platforms for businesses to use in sending mass emails.
Similarly, you need a third-party platform for your Text Message Marketing.
It is required by law to have this because the system enables customers to opt-out quickly. Anytime that they reply with the word STOP, they will be removed from the list and will no longer receive emails.