Why Every Bar, Restaurant & Hotel Should be Using Text Messaging

In this article, I’m going to share with you the top reasons why every restaurant should be using text messaging. I think that you will find these strategies useful and that they’ll save you thousands of dollars when you start using SMS Text Messaging.

With the Holidays around the corner, this is the best time for you to start thinking about promoting your restaurant to capture the always elusive customers.

But before you start spending your hard earn money in ads, I would suggest that you think about a new way of attracting new customers and bringing back your existing ones using the one tool that all of them always have at their disposal.

The tool that I am referring to is their phones, and the new way to attract them is to use the power of Text Messages (or SMS)

If your restaurant has not begun to use SMS marketing yet, you are probably giving away extra holiday income to your competitors who do use mobile marketing.

Placing ads in newspapers and magazines is not only expensive but pretty much a waste of money. Email campaigns aren’t effective anymore because of the email overload and abundance of spam with an open-rate of marketing emails between 10-20% on average.

Text messages, on the other hand, are opened 97% of the time… and 83% of them within the first hour!

This means that if you are not using SMS mobile marketing to promote your restaurant, you are not getting your information, offers, discounts, etc. in front of your willing customers.

But there is a caveat on using SMS marketing. Because reading a message in a phone is a more personal experience than reading an ad or even an email, users are very sensitive about receiving unwanted messages. This is the reason why you should NEVER hire a company that provides you with a pre-existing list of customers or you will risk to alienate them so that they’ll never visit your restaurant again.

The best way, the only way is for you to create your own list of volunteer SMS customers by having them enroll into your SMS system. You need to find ways to accomplish this, but don’t worry it is easier than it sounds.

So how can your restaurant harness the power of text message advertising in time for the holiday rush?

• Start by signing up with a reliable and trustworthy SMS services company (I will suggest you one in a bit) to start your mobile campaign as soon as possible so that you have time to build your list during these important months and to generate more sales in the coming months.
• Offer incentives and discounts for the consumers who opt-in to your restaurant SMS club. Most people these days are looking for great deals – and if your texts deliver on your promise, your holiday opt-in rates will skyrocket.
• Promote your SMS Mobile program on your social media sites, in your restaurant with signs and banners, on your website, on YouTube, and get the word out now.
• Think about how powerful would it be to send out text message incentives to your customers to tell them about your extra discounts and the perks they will get when they are out holiday shopping and need to have lunch or dinner? You have the power to literally divert more traffic to your restaurant.
• If your restaurant sells gift certificates, you can promote them via SMS text marketing and give your loyal customers extra incentives to buy gift certificates at a discount, or ask them to drop by after a long day of holiday shopping to have a free drink?

The possibilities are endless…

I hope that you can see why investing in SMS (Text Messaging) marketing makes sense for your business, but to help you out more, I’ve created a simple calculator that will help you estimate your return of investment:

You can use your own numbers instead of the ones in this example. The 7% of customers coming back to your place because of your Texts with enticing offerings is based on our own experience.

In the calculator below, you can change the number of subscribers, the number of texts that you send monthly, and the average spend per visit to come up with your estimate of additional sales.

As you can see, paying a monthly fee for a good and robust SMS system is a worthy marketing investment. An SMS system gives you trackable and measurable results.

You just need to track how many customers come back to your place (or how many new ones you can sign up once they come and visit your restaurant for the first time) and multiply that number by their average spend. This will give you the additional sales that you’ve captured thanks to SMS and it will prove to you, without any doubt, that your investment in this great marketing tool is worth every penny!

I hope that by now you are convinced of the great marketing investment that a robust Text Messaging system can bring to your business, now the question is What system should YOU use?Well, if your business is located in the USA, then I recommend that you use TextBait.

At this point, I have a disclaimer for you. I am partnering with TextBait to offer this service to my readers. The reason for this is that TextBait is an extremely flexible SMS system that follows my personal philosophy of “Customer is number One” so I can whole-hardly endorse it knowing that you will be very please with its performance.

Because of my partnership with TextBait, that sells only using a reseller model, I will be able to offer a discount to my readers.

However, I can’t publish your special rates here.

If you are interested, please fill in the Contact form and I’ll get back to you soon with the special offer (US ONLY FOR NOW!).

So go ahead and click the happy phone to visit TextBait website, learn about the company and its offerings, try the demo and then fill in the Contact form to get more information and your special prices.

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