3 Simple Hacks That Will Increase Your Email Open Rates

The best way to increase retention AKA return trips / repeat purchases from guests? Top marketers will all agree, its email.

Email marketing is the fastest, cheapest, easiest, most scalable way to stay top of mind with your guests and get them coming back for more.

Compare that to social media for a second:

You spend hours and hours creating content that requires a flowing river of unique ideas, taking and then editing pictures or videos, writing captions, researching hashtags, best time of day to post and then scheduling to go live. Plus then you have to engage, reply to comments, share to stories, etc, etc etc .. only to have less than 10% of your followers see the message ...

Social media vs email:

You create a template, drop in an image (or gif), write a subject line, a couple lines of copy with a CTA and link and then hit send and have at least 33% of your subscribers see it.

Which sounds faster, cheaper, easier and more scalable?

Yeah, it's email.

According to the latest stats from Mailchimp, average open rates for the restaurant industry are actually 40%!!

Are you getting open rates that high? Most of my clients are. So what is our trick? How do we do it?

Here are 3 ways to improve the performance of your restaurant marketing emails:

Number 1: Great Content

First and foremost, you have to have great content. Be helpful, be creative, offer value. Pretty straight forward.

Emails don't always have to have offers, but they do help with engagement. Promote menu items, run a contest, share an event. Its not hard to be interesting.

Number 2: The Right Frequency

Secondly, don't over send. Too many emails will get you into the friend zone.

What is the right frequency? The real answer is you should test. But here's where to start...if you are quick serve or high frequency, try to send every 7-10 days. If you are full service, try to send every 14-21 days. You're trying to match the average frequency of your top 50% of guests.

Number 3 - Optimize that Subject Line

The single thing that drives the most opens is a good subject line. A great subject line gets people interested on what's inside.

Great subject lines are provocative, engaging, offer value or drive fear of missing out. Cheat code: use ChatGPT to write your subject and make sure your query has the above direction. What's our hack? Include an emoji at the start of the subject line. This will make it stand out in an inbox.

David "Rev" Ciancio is a co-owner of Handcraft Burgers & Brew and also a Brand, Customer & Technology Evangelist. Rev helps tech and software companies generate more leads, quicken the sales cycle, create memorable customer journeys, all while building fervent brand ambassadors and growing business & sales. He helps restaurants to make tech decisions and to create guest acquisition and retention marketing that works. Get more marketing tips from Rev at #revsmarketingtips. If you ever have questions about restaurant marketing, just email me.