Use your email database to get lots more birthday bookings

As a reminder, restaurant revenue is calculated by the formula:

$ = Customers x Avg Total Visits x Avg Booking Size x Avg $pp

When marketing to your email database, you're marketing to existing customers, in an attempt to increase avg total visits. 

And when marketing for birthdays, you're often driving avg table size (birthday bookings are typically larger) and avg $pp.

This is just mathematical proof of what you already know. Birthdays are great - bigger tables & higher spends. 

So why are you not trying to get more of them...?

It's possible to create automatic emails (advertising a birthday experience) that are sent based on a specific time before someone's birthday, say 4 weeks.

But for this to work, your database would need the person's date of birth.

It's possible to create automatic emails, that request date of birth info, that are sent based on a specific trigger, say 2 weeks after they first dine.

Put them together and this is what we, marketers, call email 'flows';

Email #1 - Thank you for dining (1 day after dining)

Email #2 - Request date of birth (14 days after dining)

Email #3 - Advertise birthday experience (28 days before birthday)

Set up all the emails one-time, then let it run on autopilot.

Example

A restaurant gets 300 bookings / week

10% complete date of birth request

5% of those book a birthday

Avg value of a birthday booking is $700

52 x 300 x 0.1 x 0.05 x $700  = $54,600

But wait, there's more...

You can increase the rate of date of birth subscribers by building this offer into your sequence of service and capture people not on the database;

"Hey guys, thanks so much for dining with us tonight, I highly recommend to scan this QR code and sign-up to our VIP list because we often send cool invites and offers just to the people on our list"

Example

The same restaurant serves 900 diners / week

10% scan QR and sign-up

5% of those book a birthday

Avg value of a birthday booking is $700

52 x 900 x 0.1 x 0.05 x $700  = $163,800

Is this the easiest way to add $200k to your venue?

When we take on new clients, creating powerful email flows is something we do within the first 60 days.

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