If your restaurant’s email sign-up form is like most other restaurants’, it may simply say something like “Sign up for our newsletter!” and then ask for the user’s name and email address.
No offense, but that is so boring and not effective in attracting sign-ups at all.
People almost always need to be incentivized to share their email address, and you can do so by giving them a small freebie (also known as a lead magnet) in exchange for it.
Here, we’ve whipped up five restaurant lead magnet ideas you can use for getting more email sign-ups—and with your subscribers’ consent, because you don’t want to fall afoul of email marketing laws.
Bon appétit!
1. Offer free food
Since free stuff will never go out of fashion, you can easily attract more email subscribers by offering free food (or drinks) in exchange for their email addresses.
Look through your menu to identify dishes or drinks that are relatively inexpensive to make. Such menu items will be good candidates for offering for free in exchange for email sign-ups.
That’s because you don’t want to be too generous with your freebies. Give away too much food for free, or food that costs quite a bit to make, and you could go out of business!
You can also tack on conditions to your offer of free food or drink.
For example, Albion’s Restaurant gives email subscribers a whole bottle of wine for free if they spend at least £50 on their meal.
Each subscriber is entitled to just one free bottle of wine, and only one bottle can be redeemed per meal.
These conditions help Albion’s Restaurant limit the bottles of wine it gives away for free. After all, it isn’t as if the restaurant can turn water into wine…!
2. Provide a discount
If you find yourself balking over the idea of giving away free food, an alternative restaurant lead magnet you can consider is providing a discount off your menu. This way, you can encourage more email sign-ups without losing as much revenue in the process.
Table Table has carried out this very tactic for growing its email list, where new subscribers can get 25% off their food bill:
How can subscribers redeem the discount when they dine with you?
One option is to send subscribers a special coupon code upon sign-up. When they head to your restaurant, they can quote the coupon code to your staff to have their bill discounted.
Alternatively, create a discount voucher that subscribers can save to their phones and show to your staff. If you aren’t confident of designing such a voucher from scratch, try customizing these restaurant discount voucher templates:
3. Dangle a birthday gift
What is a birthday without gifts? Your restaurant can join in the celebrations for your customers’ special day by giving a birthday gift to those who have subscribed to your email list.
Just check out how Roast Restaurant offers a “special birthday present” to subscribers on their birthday:
This birthday gift you offer could be a special discount off the bill, a free slice of cake, or perhaps a handful of chocolate. Feel free to go with whichever option that makes the most sense for your restaurant.
And since you can’t celebrate a customer’s birthday if you don’t know their birthdate, be sure to request this info in your email form!
You don’t need to do anything fancy—just adding a simple birthday field to your form will do the trick.
After that, when a subscriber tells you it’s their birthday, and your staff has verified this against the subscriber’s identification card, they can savor their sweet birthday treat right away.
4. Start a loyalty program
If your restaurant doesn’t already have a loyalty program, why not use this opportunity to reward your regulars and grow your email list at the same time?
Have customers sign up for your loyalty program using their email address, where they also consent to being added to your email list. The more regularly they patronize your restaurant, the more exclusive perks they stand to enjoy!
For inspiration on structuring your restaurant’s loyalty program, take a look at 3 Restaurant’s rewards program.
It is pretty straightforward: customers will earn one point for every dollar spent with the restaurant. Every 250 points earned grants the customer $25 off their next bill.
And when customers sign up, they also consent to joining 3 Restaurant’s email list and receiving marketing offers from it!
5. Share your recipes
Gasp—did we just suggest giving away the recipes you use to prepare your dishes? Yes, we did!
If customers love your food, they may be interested in cooking it themselves. So you could just see an increase in your newsletter sign-up rate if you share your recipes with your email subscribers!
For instance, That’s Amore Restaurant organizes regular “Fabiolous Cooking Day” workshops where participants can shop for ingredients and cook dishes with help from the restaurant staff. They can also get hold of the recipes used during these workshops by subscribing to the restaurant’s newsletter.
This isn’t to say you need to share the trade secrets that you’ve taken weeks and months to perfect. You can always distribute less confidential recipes that are no less delicious.
Sharing your recipes can also have the unexpected boost of having customers return to enjoy your dishes. This could happen when they see how challenging your dishes are to make, and then would rather have expert cooks—your staff, in other words—prepare the dish for them.
Turn your restaurant customers into email subscribers
Using the above tried-and-tested evergreen lead magnet ideas, we’re confident you’ll start getting more email subscribers for your restaurant than ever before!
From there, keep up the momentum by working on other aspects of your restaurant marketing—and these articles on the Gradient blog can help with that:
- 12 tips to promote your restaurant
- Your recipe to effective restaurant video marketing (+ examples)
- Key restaurant marketing event ideas to attract customers
- How to promote your restaurant using an email creator
And if you need a platform for creating and sending beautiful emails, check out PosterMyWall’s all-in-one Email Marketing Platform.
We serve up a wide range of restaurant email templates that you can turn into gorgeous emails with the help of a drag-and-drop Email Maker. Afterward, send out your emails and review their open rates, click rates, and other vital stats from a convenient dashboard to track your campaigns’ performance. Create your first email here to see how easy it is to manage your restaurant email marketing with PosterMyWall.
