You Can Average a 3600% Return for Every $1 Spent

Imagine it’s Friday night. Your restaurant was poppin’ and you've had a fantastic sales day. The equipment and floors have been scrubbed. The registers have been balanced. The lights are off, everyone is gone, and you’re done for the night.

But what if you weren’t?

What if sales could keep rolling in after you’ve closed the doors for the night?

Your secret weapon?

Emails.

It’s safe to say that 99% of email users out there check their emails at least once a day.

How many times do you?

• Emails are ideal for reaching out to your audience in a way that feels like you’re only talking to them.

• It’s a channel to send promotional materials to people who are already fans of yours.

• It’s a means for potential customers to trust you’re the person for the job before they’ve even tried you.

If that’s not incentive enough to start writing then I don’t know what is.

I could end here.

I’ll keep going, though, just in case.

Personalisation

There are 3 main types of emails you can send to your readers:

1. A newsletter (like this one) to inform or keep your readers up to date with industry or local news

2. Promotions for special events

3. Special deals just for email subscribers

These don’t all have to be in the same email.

But we don’t want to feel like we’re getting a mass email that was blurted out to a bunch of people. Makes us feel less important.

Dear [valued customer]… Blech!

Delete.

But send me something specific to what I’m interested in and now you have my attention.

Your email list can be segmented and targeted based on a variety of factors. You can write headlines that appeal to me. Include images that you know I’ll resonate with.

Different segments could be by:

• job title

• occupation

• where they live

• marital status

• kids/no kids

• pets

The easiest way to do this?

You guessed it: having your detailed buyer personas set up so that you know everything you can about your customers and others like them.

Without this information, you’re only guessing that they care about what you’ve written in your email.

Bespoke promotions

Email is more likely to drive sales than social media marketing because it’s more personal.

You can send promotional materials to people who already like what you offer.

It’s also right in their inbox, so they don’t have to search for it.

Which way sounds easier?:

A customer opens an email already in their inbox and clicks the ‘buy now’ button in the message you’ve sent?

Or…

A customer types in your URL.

Then they have to find your sales page.

Then they have to find the action you wanted them to take…

You lost me at types?

Why not make it as easy as possible for your customer to purchase from you?

Trust Exercise

Email is great for building trust with people even if they’ve never visited your restaurant. They can sign up from anywhere. All they’ll need is quality content to draw them to you.

You need to talk about subjects around what you do. Don’t promote your offer in every email.

If you know your customers—and you should from your buyer personas— you’ll know the topics they’re interested in. This is the time to talk about upcoming events, or how-to guides about supplementary topics.

• The history of pizza.

• How to serve wine at home.

• Top 5 yoga studios in town

• Urban gardening

If your customers aren’t interested then don’t talk about these. They’ll tell you what they want.

Conclusion

When you start sending emails make sure you stick to 3 important rules:

1. Be consistent as fuck. If you’re doing weekly emails. Make sure one goes out every single week. Daily? Monthly? The same. You’re building trust. Don’t lose it. (ironically, this email is a bit late)

2. Create a permission-based email list that includes a checkbox for users to opt-in to your mailing list. This tells your customers which emails they’re signing up for, and how often they’ll be receiving emails from you.

3. Add your personality. You’re a person and so is the reader. Write what a person would want to read. No one is going to read a whole email if it’s nothing but cold corporate speak. Don’t be afraid to be casual. Your audience prefers it.

Happy email marketing.

P.S. Emails can be turned into blog posts or YouTube video scripts. Both are great for SEO optimization. They can then be chopped into LinkedIn posts and tweets. Or even Instagram captions. Those Youtube videos can be chopped up into Shorts, reels, stories, TikTok, you name it.