How to craft subject lines your guests can’t help but click
If you are wondering whether an email marketing strategy for your restaurant could help you attract more guest, the answer is definitely yes.
Email marketing is one of the most cost-effective ways to grow your business: it allows you to connect with both existing and potential customers, and for every dollar you invest, it is estimated that you’ll get 44$ in return. Not bad, right? Read How to create a successful newsletter: 5 most important rules to discover other benefits of email marketing for your business and get your first campaign rolling!
In this blog post, we’ll help you start from the very beginning: the email subject.
There are so many junk emails that we all get, and you certainly don’t want your valuable email to get dispersed among all the spammy ones. You want your customers to open your email right? Here’s the thing: they won’t open your email unless there is a strong, consistent, appealing reason. And that reason needs to appear in your subject line.
It’s important to craft subject lines that are compelling enough to get people to click through: they are indeed the very first impression you have on recipients, and arguably the most important part of your emails. With the perfect subject line, you ideally give customers a reason to open your email. With the body text, you reward them for doing so.
Here are some tips to help you get the creative juices flowing and boost your emails’ open rate.
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Create fear of missing out.
Including a sense of urgency and scarcity in your subject line helps enforce readers to click. For example ‘Autumn is coming! Last chance to enjoy our summer menu specials ?’.
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Stimulate curiosity.
Put simply, subject lines that demand to open the email to get more information can lead to higher open rate. An example? ‘This month’s promotions are insane! Discover them here.
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Personalize…
People like the sound of their own name, especially in email subject lines. In fact, research has found that emails that contained the first name of the recipient in their subject line had higher click-through rates than emails that did not. Ok, you think you can’t definitely name all your customers. And you’re right, all by yourself. But with an email marketing tool such as SO Connect, it’s a piece of cake. Data collection from your guests comes fully automated, starting from their email.
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…and contextualize.
Make your emails perfectly timed. Use the season, time of the day, even the weather as a reason to reach your guests. In case of chilly forecasts, for example, use something like ‘Brrr! ❄️ Come enjoy our hot soups.
In between personalization and contextualization, there is your customers’ birthday: a joyous day and an occasion for celebration. So…why don’t you use this as a golden opportunity?
Don’t forget to send them an email on this special day (if you use an email marketing tool, you won’t: birthdays and other relevant data are automatically taken from the emails, eventually processed to build personalized messages): your guests will feel important and incentivized to party at your place! Speaking of which…
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Use the psychology of exclusivity.
Not only on their birthday: make your people feel special, always. Your emails have to convey a sense of belonging that will make your guests feel like they’re on the inside. For example, ‘For our loyal customers only’, ‘Here’s a limited offer for you’ or ‘Private invite’.
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Put an emoji on it!
If you’re wondering whether you should include emojis in your subject line, the answer is yes. Emojis help your content stand out in an inbox dominated by text and, when used well, they definitely increase the chances of your email being read. Make sure you don’t overdo that, though: too many emojis and your email will look spam-like (read here some other tricks to avoid landing in the junk folder).
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Keep it short.
Last but not least: your subject line will be cut off if too long, especially on mobile visualization. And with 85% of the Web traffic happening through mobile devices…you really want you subject line to be the right length – generally, that’s fewer than 50 characters.
Want to learn more about restaurant email marketing? leave your email below: we will get in touch with you.
