In today’s digital scene, having a restaurant website isn’t enough as an effective marketing tool. Restaurant mobile apps are leading the way as the top way restaurants and coffee shops can communicate with guests.
Research has found 71% of consumers “prefer restaurant-specific websites or mobile apps over third-party solutions.” The reasons? Convenience, personalized loyalty benefits, and easier order tracking.
For restaurants, mobile apps are a direct sales channel, allowing customers to make direct orders without the need for third-party aggregators or extra fees or commissions. This helps restaurants increase their revenues and sales.
Data also shows that customers who use restaurant mobile apps can spend 3 times more than those who don’t use app.
However, when it comes to mobile apps, many business owners fail to realize the benefits of push notifications. These notifications, or messages, can boost customer engagement, remind customers of offers ending soon, among other benefits.
Leading brands, including restaurants, coffee shops, and e-commerce businesses, use push notifications to stay top-of-mind and enhance their sales and marketing efforts.
Why push notifications matter for restaurants & coffee shops
In the restaurants and cafes sector, push notifications are a powerful tool to boost communication, increase engagement, and boost sales. It’s also more direct and cost efficient compared to text messages (SMS), billboard ads, and TV commercials.
With push messages, you can create personalization and, unlike social media platforms, you don’t have to worry about algorithms.
In other words, you tailor when customers get your messages. At the same time, customers feel the communication is tailored to them and their habits, boosting engagement and response.
Another important benefit of using mobile push notifications in a restaurant is being able to schedule them based on needs. For example, you can schedule these notifications to coincide with meal times or when customers are more likely to order food online. This makes them more effective both as an engagement and sales tool.
You can also analyze the impact of your push notifications. See which times are better for sending and which notifications have a higher return on investment (ROI). Review the impact of your efforts and adjust accordingly.
Types of restaurant push notifications that work
Before you send out push notifications, you first need to understand the different types and when to use each.
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Promotional notifications
These are used for limited-time offers, such as daily offers or exclusive promotions. Promotional notifications are designed to encourage customers to make quick decisions and increase instant or on-the-spot orders.
It’s best to send promotional push notifications ahead of or during well-known meal times like lunch or dinner or work breaks.
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Reminder-based notifications
Brands use these messages to remind customers that their loyalty points are about to expire or to complete a purchase. Reminder-based notifications encourage customers to make decisions. They can be considered an opportunity to turn intent into a purchase.
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Behavioral and triggered messages
This notification is based on a customer’s behavior inside the restaurant’s mobile app like number of previous orders or visits. For example, you can send a triggered push message for customers who haven’t visited you in a week or 2.
Triggered messages are personalized and designed to increase customer engagement.
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Seasonal and event-based messages
These notifications are used during seasonal events and campaigns, like Ramadan, the Eid holidays, Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day, among others. You can also use them for customer birthdays and local events or seasonal offers.
Event-based notifications are used to create and enhance an emotional link with a brand. They are also an opportunity to boost seasonal or special occasion sales.
Some restaurants use these mobile push notifications to promote seasonal menus or dishes.
Crafting the Perfect Push Messages
To create the perfect mobile push notifications, consider the following tips to ensure effective messages that drive results.
Remember, you don’t want customers to disable their push messages!
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- Use personalization: Use push notifications for personalization and make customers feel as if every message is personalized for them. Use customer names or something about their behavior to enhance engagement and response.
- Timing is everything: It’s important to consider when you’ll be sending your push messages. For example, consider sending special offers at lunch time, during the weekends, or at the start of the month or after paydays. This increases the chances of boosting your sales as customers are ready to spend more.
- Consider design and tone: Your push messages need to be visually attractive and easy to understand. Your ton should be in line with your brand guidelines. You can use emojis to increase engagement. Consider using AI tools like ChatGPT for content creation and crafting your push notifications.
- Add a CTA: Make sure you add a call-to-action (CTA) to every message. A CTA informs customers about their next step. Some CTA examples include ‘Order Now,’ ‘Book Your Table’ ‘Grab today’s offer!’ among others.
Don’t Overdo It: Push Notification Best Practices
Here are our top best practices for creating and sending push messages for your restaurant, food truck, or coffee shop.
- Consider frequency and avoid fatigue: Sending too many push messages can cause fatigue and may prompt customers to disable them. Or worse, delete your app! That’s why effective messaging is an art. Create a clear personalized messaging strategy for your push notifications for effective results.
- Have clear opt-in/opt-out preferences: Make sure customers can control the push messages they receive. We suggest making it clear how to opt in or opt out of messages and include a means of unsubscribing whenever they want.
- Segment users based on preferences, interests, geographical location, or buying behavior. This will allow you to create personalized messages, boost engagement, and make messages more effective.
How to Launch Push Messaging Campaigns with Foodics Online
Foodics Online is a digital platform that is part of the Foodics restaurant management system, POS, and ecosystem. It’s designed to help all types of restaurants streamline marketing and website and mobile app development.
Using Foodics Online you can send push notifications easily.
How to create mobile push messaging campaigns via Foodics Online:
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- Create an account and activate Foodics Online. If you’re not a Foodics customer, you can create an account here.
- Determine campaign goals: Determine the main objective(s) of your campaign. It can be increasing sales, boosting loyalty, announcing the launch of a new branch, or something else.
- Create content: Create attractive and engaging marketing messages and notifications that’s in line with your brand’s tone. Focus on special offers, features and benefits, and others. Use ChatGPT to generate some content for your push notifications.
- Choose your target audience: Use data from your restaurant’s customer relationship management (CRM) system to segment customers. Consider their buying behavior, geographical location, or both.
- Launch your campaign and track results: Now, it’s time to launch your first push notifications via Foodics Online. Make sure you track the results of your campaign from your Foodics dashboard and enhance as needed.
Why use Foodics Online in your marketing campaigns?
Foodics Online provides you with
- A complete platform to manage online orders and engagement.
- The ability to send push notifications to attract and engage customers.
- Improve the customer experience and increase your conversion rate through smart marketing strategies.
Key Metrics for Tracking the Success of Restaurant Push Notifications
To ensure the success of your notification campaigns, you need to monitor several metrics, such as:
- Open rates and CTRs: Your notification open rates and click-through rates (CTRs) are critical indicators of how engaging your content is (or isn’t.) A high open rate means the message grabbed attention. Meanwhile, the CTR shows how effective the notification was in prompting users to take the desired action, like visiting your website or completing an order.
- Redemption rate and incremental sales: These metrics reflect how successful promotional offers are at attracting customers and encouraging purchases. The redemption rate indicates how many people responded to an offer, while incremental sales point to the actual revenue increase resulting from the campaign, whether through new orders or an increase in average order value (AOV). This helps measure your ROI.
- Customer reactivation and loyalty growth: These metrics help you assess how successful campaigns are at re-engaging inactive customers and encouraging them to interact again. They also help measure the progress and success of your restaurant loyalty program, which is gauged by an increase in repeat visits, signups, and the use of points and rewards.
Conclusion: Small Messages, Big Results
Used strategically, mobile app notifications can be a powerful tool for restaurants. They’re not just about sending a message; they’re about crafting content that grabs attention and prompts customers to take desired actions.
These notifications offer restaurants a golden opportunity to communicate directly and personally with their customers. This could be to offer exclusive deals, remind them about uncompleted orders, or make smart recommendations that enhance their experience and drive sales.
Want to create and implement effective push notification strategies to improve your restaurant’s profits and customer experience? Try Foodics Online now!
