Sometimes, you get further in life by just being direct. And this is exactly the sentiment that restaurant direct mail marketing holds. It works on the premise that businesses can send mail, digitally or physically, to an exact point of contact. You aren’t just sending marketing mail off and crossing your fingers.
The benefit of this direct communication is enormous. You can relax knowing that your valuable marketing content is in the right hands. You also get better opening rates, as you can personalize your marketing better to target your recipients. If you know who is receiving it, you can tailor it to them.
In this guide, we’ll introduce you to the basics of a direct mail campaign. We’ll provide all the juicy details on the leading benefits of this marketing technique.
What Is Direct Mail Marketing?
Direct mail marketing is when potential customers directly receive marketing material. To facilitate this marketing campaign, you must either have a physical or email address for customers. It can be physical mail, like posting flyers, or digital mail, through mailing list marketing.
Whether digital or physical, the most crucial factor is the business owner delivering the material directly to the customer.
When running a restaurant, direct mail is pretty easy to set up. You could run flyers around your local area; many pizza businesses post menus through doors. Or, you could offer free WiFi and use a captive portal to build a mailing list over time. The latter is better if you want to invest in a customer loyalty program.
Building up a direct mail marketing strategy is easy. All you need to do is collect the necessary details after you decide whether to use digital or physical mail. For physical mail, this is just a question of researching zip codes and email addresses for digital mail campaigns.
Top 5 Benefits of Direct Mail Restaurant Marketing
The benefits of direct mail restaurant marketing include building a better connection between customer and business. It is all about streamlining the process of how your marketing material reaches the right people in the right way.
Check out these top five benefits, and you’ll see why 64% of businesses invest in direct marketing.
1. It Is Cost-Effective
Do you know what’s not cost-effective? Sending off millions of emails to email addresses you bought off data collection services. You are going in cold, and chances are, straight to spam. Who knows if these email addresses are even still active?
Recipients ignore 91.5% of cold emails. You don’t want to be part of this statistic, so go in “lukewarm” instead. It’s incredible what targeting customers with some brand awareness already does.
Target those in your local zip codes who have heard of your restaurant and past customers who left portal information. This way, your investment in copywriting and printing won’t go to waste.
2. It More Likely To Build Long-Lasting Relationships
When you target people directly, you are naturally whittling down your target audience to a specific niche. This could be people living in your local area or people already interested in your restaurant.
Why is this good? You’re more likely to build long-lasting relationships with people with a pre-existing positive bias towards your business.
If you buy a takeout pizza, will you travel 50 miles to get it or 5 miles? If you book a birthday meal at a restaurant, will you try a new place? Or will you return to where you had a fantastic time last time and who just sent you a birthday discount?
That point of contact with the right people in the right places is an excellent strategy for long-lasting relationships. You are whittling your target customers down to people more likely to want to engage in the long term. Think of it like fishing in a better pond.
3. You Can Personalize Direct Mail Easily
Of course, this leads us to a significant benefit: personalizing direct mail is easy. When you know who the mail is going to, you can do better research and personalize it. This could be as simple as automating the recipient’s name or as clever as birthday marketing in a long-term strategy.
Being able to personalize your direct mail campaign is a surefire way to drive engagement positively. Who doesn’t want to feel special, seen, and heard when receiving marketing content? It’s a better way to build authentic connections. Direct mail pieces can be pleasant to receive when you do your marketing savvily.
4. Increased Open and Reply Rates
When you target specific groups, it’s no wonder that response and opening rates are fantastic. Direct mail is straight to the point, meaning it has a greater chance of being opened and engaged.
This is especially true with physical mail, which doesn’t have spam “out of sight, out of mind” pile. People physically sift through it.
Even digital mail is effective when sent directly, as you’re going in “lukewarm” with a pre-existing relationship of some form. Direct mail gives customers a reason to open their mail.
5. It’s Simple
Last but not least, direct mail is amazing because it is simple. It reliably gets information to the right customers and is a fabulous way to drive brand awareness for your restaurant. You’ll get tangible results fast.
You can include information like restaurant opening times and menus. It is all about informing your customers; with the right customer targeting, they’ll reel in.
Beambox: How To Utilize WiFi for Restaurant Direct Mail Marketing
As you already know, utilizing captive portals is a great way to collect email addresses for direct mail marketing. When offering guests free WiFi, make it work for you.
Adding a captive portal can take as little as 30 minutes; it’s a question of effective software and automated designs. Whatever your knowledge of WiFi marketing, you can create an impressive-looking portal system through our software.
Let’s properly introduce ourselves. At Beambox, we offer an all-in-one WiFi marketing software; our favorite thing is to help create captive portals.
We know the difference collecting email addresses can make to businesses, and we want to empower you to market better. Our software has everything you need to customize and create your perfect captive portal.
Start your Beambox free trial today and get all the email addresses you need for digital restaurant direct mail marketing.
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