Email marketing has a return on investment of around €36 for every €1 spent across industries. For restaurants, the numbers can be even higher — because your audience has already opted in and already likes what you do. They just need a reason to come back.
The foundation of effective restaurant email marketing is segmentation. Sending the same message to everyone on your list is a waste of your permission and their attention. MealApp’s customer database allows you to segment by recency (when they last visited), frequency (how often they visit), and value (how much they spend).
Your most valuable segment is recent, frequent, high-value customers. Don’t discount them — they already love you. Instead, give them exclusivity: early access to a new menu, an invitation to a tasting evening, or a personalised note from the chef.
Your most important segment is lapsed customers — those who visited two or three times but haven’t returned in 60 days. An automated re-engagement sequence triggered at the 30-day mark, the 45-day mark, and the 60-day mark will recover a meaningful percentage of these customers before they’re lost permanently.
Keep emails short, visual, and action-oriented. One clear call to action per email — book a table or order now — consistently outperforms emails that try to communicate multiple messages at once.