Email Newsletter Strategy is Key to Startup Food Franchise Success

In today’s world, remaining competitive can be difficult as the new owner of a food franchise start-up. With twenty-four hour celebrity chef cooking content flooding the airwaves, a crowded market for easy online meal delivery, and a veritable fleet of food trucks parked on every conceivable big-city street corner, food franchise success requires a certain level of technological innovation and industry insight. Whether you are speaking to old loyal customers or seeking fresh faces, one of the most effective means of informing your customer base of new menu items, promotions, and locations is through a focused email newsletter strategy.

Unfortunately, the email newsletter approach is about as competitive as the food world is. The average person’s inbox is cluttered with marketers’ messages, click-baiting titles, special offers, and competitor’s subject lines crafted specifically to grab user’s attention. Billions of e-mail are sent each day, a testament to the effectiveness of email newsletter marketing strategies. Still, it is easy to get lost in the shuffle. Supposing you can evade the ever-tightening conditions of spam-mail blockers, how are start-up food franchise owners expected to compete with a sea of competition? How do you separate your specific signal from the industry noise? The key is to craft a compelling message with a concrete bottom-line. Read on for some simple and effective tips to enhance your e-mail newsletter strategy.

•  Avoid standardized e-mail templates with name-specific greetings.

There is no quicker way to ensure your newsletter ends up in the trash bin, or worse still, marked as “junk” mail, than to open with a direct mention of your customer’s name. Though including the potential customer’s name may seem like a way to distinguish yourself from a sea of e-mail automatons and grab the reader’s attention, the reality is that personalized emails that include the user’s name are not very effective. The current internet landscape is teeming with security threats, as phising websites threaten users with the prospect of identity thefy or credit card fraud. For this reason, many users are extremely untrusting of unfamiliar e-mails that address them personally. It comes across as a violation of privacy, and has the opposite effect that is desired, causing the user’s hackles to rise rather than endearing the newsletter to the reader.

•  Personalize newsletters by minding the user’s product purchase history.

Much less suspicious than an automated greeting on a first-name basis, tailoring your newsletter content to the user is best achieved by marketing specific useful products towards them. Whether you gain this information through knowledge of their purchase history, or by simply marketing towards their specific demographic, marketing useful and well-liked food items to the buyer will elicit a positive response much more frequently. This is a much more meaningful kind of personalization that does not set off warning bells in the user’s head.

•  Make your subject lines shine.

One of the most fundamental flaws that email newsletter strategy-makers commit is to over-extend their subject lines. Many people aim for between 60-70 characters, locked into the character parameters set by website meta-descriptions. This is much too long, however; marketers refer to this character length as a “dead zone.” Short and sweet is the way to go when it comes to subject lines. The user is likely combing through hundreds of back-logged e-mails, and a wordy subject line is muh more likely to be glazed over.  The shorter the subject line, the more likely the chance that the reader will open the e-mail. Conversely, longer subjects line are correlated to improved clickthrough ratings. Ultimately, you need to decide on your newsletter objective, but a good rule of thumb is to always keep shy of 60-to-70 characters.

•  Target prime time with your e-mail blast.

Many business owners and marketers struggle with this fundamental guideline. E-mails sent between 8PM and midnight consistently perform better than those sent outside of this window, and yet marketers consistently err by sending them earlier. The reason for this mistake is understandable. Many marketers craft their e-mails during business hours, and make the mistake of immediately sending their message out between 9 and 5. Marketers would be best-advised to sit on their newsletter for a few hours, and target prime times so that the most eyes are paying attention.

•  Make it worth their while.

No matter how eloquently you have phrased your food franchise newsletter, the best way to engage audiences and generations conversions is to offer them something. A call-to-action is great, but actions always speak louder than words, and the best way to convince your audience to take action is to give them something for their trouble. E-mail newsletters are the best place to attach your coupons, discount codes, and special offers.