Whether you’re familiar with text marketing or the concept sounds totally foreign to you, it’s absolutely worth exploring for your restaurant. Text marketing gives you a direct line to your customers’ most personal devices. Needless to say, it’s a powerful resource when used effectively.

Here’s eight text marketing tips made specifically with restaurants in mind.

  1. Have a call-to-action (CTA). Every text message to your customers should serve a purpose. Do you want them to redeem an offer? Come to an event? Let them know.
  2. Value is king. Customers have given you their number for a reason. They expect value. Otherwise, they’re going to opt-out or unsubscribe. Value doesn’t always necessarily mean a free appetizer or 20% off dinner. Value can be informational as long as it’s relevant.
  3. Timing is key. One of the greatest benefits text marketing holds for restaurants is the timing factor. Being able to strategically promote events, specials, Happy Hour, and more with the immediacy of a text message is unmatched. Sending out quick reminders is a great way to get some impulse visits.
  4. Personalize. Not every offer should be for every customer. Assuming your restaurant is set up with customer profiles (you can generate those easily and automatically with CoGoBuzz… more on that later), you can segment your audiences to ensure you’re not sending a Happy Hour reminder to 16-year-olds. Oh, and birthday texts are great too.
  5. Integrate your loyalty program. Text loyalty is more popular than ever. It’s easy for both you and your customers. It avoids the hassle of forcing your customers to download an app, while totally simplifying the engagement method.
  6. Don’t annoy your customers. If you’ve got their number, respect that they’ve given it to you. Don’t bombard them with multiple messages a day (or even week). Don’t repeat the same information.
  7. Keep it simple. Messages should be quick and to the point. No need for long paragraphs.
  8. Spice things up with polls, contests, giveaways, and more. Contests and giveaways are excellent for getting customers more engaged with your restaurant, while polls are great for collecting information. A good poll idea is to give customers the choice between two potential specials. Whichever special wins will be discounted next week. This type of poll will give customers a more personal reason to come in, because they’ll feel like they’re part of the reason why the special is happening in the first place.

Do it with CoGoBuzz

Here’s a bonus tip for you. If you want to really take your restaurant’s text marketing capabilities to the next level, you’ll want to do it with CoGoBuzz. Our state-of-the-art service sets you up with a fully digital, mobile-based loyalty program, letting you intuitively run contests, polls, automated messages, and more.

Leveraging powerful WiFi, SMS, and Email solutions, CoGoBuzz redefines your restaurant’s entire digital presence. With our advanced in-store WiFi platform, we enroll customers to your marketing lists automatically, making it easy to engage wherever and whenever. On top of that, we’ll get you Facebook followers automatically, more repeat customers, and so much more.

Want to learn more about CoGoBuzz? Check out the rest of our site!

Has your restaurant ever tried text marketing? Sound off in the comments!