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[textmarks4u]

Has anyone ever tried SMS texting to pull more customers to their establishment, or keep the regulars coming back? Pros? Cons? Just curious.

Mac

[henrykretchmer]

I have a few friends of mine that own restaurants and they say that they use SMS texting but only with customers that agree to accept messages from them. They do not just text blindly which may alienate an existing customer.

One of the best ways to pull more customers is through social media. Twitter, Facebook, Blogging etc. To me setting up a word press blog is the best way to draw in customers because you can target your customers by keywords searches. Get to page one on Google, Bing and Yahoo and you will increase your customer base. If you have a website just add a blog to it.

[jguev003]

Hi Mac,

SMS Texting is an excellent way to get customers to come back and tell their friends about you. Almost everyone you know has a cell phone and will check their text messages within 10 minutes of getting them.

You can start by placing posters and table tents in the restaurants announcing a "VIP Text Club - i.e. just text 7777 to 305305 number and receive $10 off your next meal (or anything you want) to get started. By them texting you they agree to receive VIP specials.

If you already have a following on Facebook or Twitter, let them know about your Text Club as well. This will entice people who haven't been back in a while.

The beauty about SMS messaging is that once you get a big subscription list going, you can send out a mass message and remind people of what's going on in your restaurant. This is especially great for slow days or to let people know ahead of time about any specials or events you have going on.

To add to Henry's comment, yes social media platforms do help as well. Video in particular is one of the best media platforms you can use because it is ranked highly on search engines and if done correctly can increase your online exposure in your local market tremendously!

Hope this helps a little. If you need more details, feel free to ask.

[flyingdog]

There have been two services our restaurant has used very effectively to show our customers appreciation and relational promotions via Text messaging.

The text service is called Textagram (http://textagram.com/). It's pretty neat what they allow us to do. We started collecting our clients cell phone #'s and birthdays through promotional forms and then input that list into our account at textagram. Then when our clients birthday comes up textagram sends them a text message that we customize automatically the morning of their birthday. Our message tells them that if they come in within 3 days of their birthday we'll give them a 50% discount on their meal. They almost always come in! We can also schedule a promotion we do once a month and send a blast to all of our clients cell phone's informing them. We've found this form of promotions to be a lot more effective and personal than emails. Every once and awhile we'll have a client that doesn't want to receive texts from us so we just remove them from the list.

Something else we use is The Birthday Company (http://birthdayco.com/). With this service we enter our clients names, addresses and birthdays into our account and The Birthday Company mails them a card and or small chocolate gift that appears as if it were sent by us, with our own signature, logo, etc. We receive great feedback from our long returning customers with this service.

We've been a lot of work into keeping our clients and these two services have proven to be the most effective of the non standard methods.

[RowdySMS]

We work with a lot of restaurants and are happy to report great results. We love social media when done and used right, as well as the speed at which you can reach your customers in real time with text messaging.
All in all, SMS will never replace social media or vice versa. They're two separate tools that when combined can yield huge results.
If anybody is interested in trying it out, please send me a message and I can give you a free trial period.

[fabenzo]

I have a friend that owns a restaurant and their POS system has an integrated texting program that works with their pos, they can text all or selected customer groups with specials. Also for table service and waiting lists, they can text their customers sitting at the bar to let them know their table is ready. Pretty slick set up, I set up a demo with the a guy that works for this POS company. Ill let you know what I think after the demo. Heres the guys info if you want to talk to him directly

Joe - 253-468-4980

The company's name is Auphan Software, from what my friend tells me they are pretty good.

[BostonsPizza]

I own a restaurant in the Twin Cities and had been using traditional advertising methods for years up until about January when we started using SMS marketing.

I was quite skeptical about it having much of an impact, but in the end I was quite surprised. Our sales went up about 15% and have slowly climbed to just below 20%. We have been running a pretty steady campaign as of late sending out all of our food and drink specials.

We went with Briightmedia.net for all of our SMS marketing stuff. With them it is really easy to get setup and get going with your first campaign. I started off with a free trial, just put in the promo code "trial" when you sign up.