Serving up a Customer Loyalty Email Campaign

ASSESSING SPECIFIC NEEDS:

Though Shiraz has always enjoyed new guests on a regular basis, the restaurant struggled to remain in touch with these customers after their initial visits. Facing a deficiency in repeat business, Shiraz had to rethink the way it communicated with its clientele and kept them up to date on upcoming events, offers, events, and other news.

Additionally, with over 50% of emails now being opened and viewed on mobile devices, it was clear that a new website—reimagined for seamless compatibility with tablets and smartphones—would be needed in order to maximize the efficacy of a dedicated email campaign.

The restaurant’s previous website was Flash-based, the worst possible choice for mobile compatibility. Our team recommended a custom WordPress site that would not only offer specialized features but also future-proof the restaurant’s online presence for years to come

“Kobe Digital worked with us every step of the way, really taking the time to learn everything about our business and our patrons. When the time came to launch the email campaign, that effort made all the difference.”

—Majid B., Shiraz Owner

STAYING TOP OF MIND:

Kobe Digital was quick to understand Shiraz’s pain point—an inability to remain in contact with customers is a common trend among small businesses, and one that our marketing experts were familiar with reversing.

Our strategy was to implement an email newsletter that would allow the restaurant to continue to stay in touch with its patrons long after their initial visits.

At the same time, these emails kept customers up to date with news, events, and special offers, providing the business with an easily scalable method of delivering targeted messages to its best prospects.

Our email marketing experts provided Shiraz with email signup slips to give to its customers and crafted custom email templates to be managed on a weekly basis

SERVING UP A NEW SITE:

Research by Google has shown that 53% of smartphone users abandon sites that take over 3 seconds to load; with its foundation in Flash, it was likely that for many smartphone users, Shiraz Restaurant’s original website may not have loaded at all.

While it was clear that an email campaign was the best option for overcoming the Shiraz Restaurant’s particular marketing challenge, an outdated website would render these efforts wasted, with patrons receiving emails only to visit the website and be unable to view content.

Kobe Digital’s web design team stepped in to create a new website that would not only resolve the mobile responsiveness issue, but also drive increased sales by giving patrons the ability to make reservations or purchase gift cards directly from the website.

TYING IT ALL TOGETHER:

As a result of its email marketing recommendations, Kobe Digital’s partnership with Shiraz was able to help the restaurant build a healthy email subscriber list of over 800 unique customers. By creating custom-tailored email templates, the open rates on these messages—and subsequent click-through rates of the links therein—were significantly higher than the average for the industry.

In total, at the end of four months, distributing engaging email blasts on a weekly basis resulted in more than 700 unique customer visits for the restaurant, in addition to countless referrals.

The new website also had an immediate impact, with the restaurant experiencing a threefold increase in reservations in the first month of the website’s launch. While the restaurant always accepted reservations made over the phone, this had not been advertised effectively, and may have caused Shiraz to previously miss out on profitable opportunities for large group dinners and special events.

The improved customers engagement observed through the new website design underscores the importance of having a full-service digital marketing partner: it’s often not enough to run an effective marketing campaign through a single channel alone; all aspects of a business’s digital presence need to integrate seamlessly to maximize the efficacy of any campaign. The most brilliant email newsletter in the world will fall flat if it isn’t anchored by a thoughtfully designed website that offers a functional, intuitive user experience.

With this in mind, the new website was built in WordPress, a widely used and highly adaptable CMS. WordPress controls nearly 60% of the CMS market, and consequently offers the best support and the most robust integration capability of any platform. As a result, the move to a WordPress website not only enabled opportunities such as the reservation booking tool for Shiraz, but also served to create a foundation that is certain to meet all of the restaurant’s needs—expected or unforeseen—for the foreseeable future.