How a local restaurant like Nardelli's could grow their email list by 1000 new subscribers per day.

It is clear that gathering customer information is very important to restaurants for many reasons. Some of those reasons include:

• Marketing Automation
• Distribution of Special Offers
• Increased Brand Awareness
• Customer Surveys & Customer Feedback

Nardelli's does a great job collecting this information by doing awesome giveaway's such as the "great grinder giveaway"

Also day-to-day giveaways like the iWatch give-away which is held four times a year.

In the effort to gain customer information, giveaways are a great solution to get this done. As a restaurant digital marketer, every time I walk into a Nardelli's shoppe and order that amazing Italian Combo with extra hot-sauce & the irresistible cannoli I can't help but think how successful these campaigns would be if they were implemented digitally.

Nardelli's is a local shop across Connecticut & is very known because of an honorable sandwich. In this article I encourage you to keep an open mind and take a look at what I recommend as I have seen this strategy very successful with every restaurant I've worked with. For only $100 of digital ad spend using Facebook ads, Nardelli's can expedite their email list efforts.

Before I show you how you can make this possible you may be wondering a few things.

Q: We've tried Facebook ad's and they didn't work well?

A: I've tried making a Nardelli's sandwich and it didn't work well either. Your sandwiches are made with complex ingredients that cant just be made by just anyone. Just like Facebook ads, can't just be optimized by everyone. There is a specific strategy that is beneficial to restaurants.

Q: Can't we just market our giveaways on our website? Can't we just collect email addresses in the store?

A: You definitely can there is just a small difference. According to "www.semrush.com" Nardellis.com has three thousand visitors per month. Facebook currently has 1.8 billion visitors, so you're in front of a much larger audience/potential customer base. You can also just collect emails using the "iWatch giveaway" in the store, but i've personally seen how many people fill that out, and its not as much as you would hope it to be. It is also tedious to take all of that information that is handwritten and enter it into a database like Mailchimp, constant contact, or even drip.

I hope those questions put it into clear perspective as to why Facebook ads are the most effective for a restaurant. So lets get to the good part. This post was initially designed to show a restaurant like Nardelli's how they can use promotions that are already in place to collect hundreds of emails/numbers which can convert to customers. Lets start:

1: Target your audience locally. For this example I will be using the location In Naugatuck. As you can see in the image below, a Facebook ad within 10 miles from that location has a reach of 230,000 people. What would 230,000 emails mean for your business? This is a ton of traffic that can be used to increase your email list.

2: Create an irresistible offer that entices customers to enter phone/email information. In this case, use your free iWatch.. even better your sandwich for a year program. It should look something like this.

This should be created within Facebook Ad manager. This offer is irresistible, and the Facebook user has to click "learn more". Once the customer clicks learn more, Nardellis can then capture email address and SMS information to create a life term customer.

3: On the "learn more" page it is important for the page to look something like this.

Where then the customer is prompted to click "I want to win" and the restaurant then collects email/SMS and any other information they request. These are also all customer within a 10 mile radius within the restaurant so it becomes a serious asset to the business.

4: Send dedicated text and email campaigns with special offers from the restaurant to your newly added list. Here is a good example that was sent to about 1,000 new phone numbers on a list that Taberna in Fairfield added.

The current SMS open rate is 97.9% so this becomes extremely important to restaurants.

In Conclusion

The benefits are very clear on why Facebook advertising remains king for restaurant promotion.

• You can get in front of hundreds of thousands of people locally.
• You can create a SERIOUS awareness for your restaurant
• You can easily attract new customers using an email list

I hope whomever is reading this takes this email back with them and puts it to good use. Social Media is the evolution of small business and you must be armed to use it to attract new customers.

You can schedule a FREE consultation with me to go over your restaurants marketing strategy by:

• Calling me at 203-490-7575
• Emailing me at [email protected]
• Or inmailing me using Linkedin

We are exclusive to restaurants and I look forward to hearing from you.

Ruan M. Marinho