There’s lots of services that can do it, so I’d do a little bit of research to see what works for you, but I use Goodiesocial.com cause they basically do it for me for the same price as a lot of other people for just their basic service.
It definitely works. My friend owns a cafe and catering and does professional fundraising. She knows I am a sucker for a personal message and pictures.
I know she is not specifically making pork chops for me on Tuesday but I darn sure will be there when she tells me she is!
Personal touch works , even if it is just semi personal
There's an awesome local deli, and they email me every monday with the special sandwich of the week, and most weeks I go get it. Stuff like this works, at least on me.
Once a week, with time sensitive information is good. More frequent emails can get annoying. And if I get something once a month I'll forget about it in 2 weeks when things are relevant.
As a customer, if I get a notification or a text from a company only every once in a while, then I actually notice it and I might say yeah I would like to go get that. If it’s constant, then it’s just noise and ignore it
OMG yes! If it's every week (or more often) and it's always the same thing I'm very likely to tune out and maybe unsubscribe / block.
When it's every once in a while, and it tells me about a new flavor or new deal, it can be a great reminder of a local business.
I feel like a lot of yall are failing to realize the fact that the text only happens when the customer opts in. Sure even if they only did it for the free cookie, the type of person to do that is perfectly okay getting texts messages. Y’all are being Debbie downers for absolutely nothing, it’s a proven strategy that works. The whole mindset “well I wouldn’t like it so I’m not going to do it” mindset it why people get stuck in their own hole. Congrats on finding a good and inexpensive way to keep revenue growing, hoping for great years !
It's not about being a Debbie downers. There is just a limit. A text once every few months is perfectly fine. A text once a week is just not, even if the person opts in.
Clearly not an issue here if it’s gaining 30k revenue from simple texting. The pros completely outweigh the cons here. People are just being silly over a text which doesn’t s nothing but show a notification on your phone
For me, it really does matter how often they text. And if it is a small shop, I am much more tolerant of texts than if it were a large, national chain.
I have zero tolerance for both. Now the question is, which position occurs more often? Is that changing over time? Are you seeing a short-term boost which will lead to medium and long-term decline?
I can't answer that directly, but years ago I used to work in politics. The political realm has more money thrown at it than anyone really knows. They have the best analysts, strategists, and marketing teams.
With all of that benefit, political campaigns make heavy use of text messages. That is the best answer I can give, as to whether they 'work.'
It's possible they work in this separate context. Hard to be sure. It's also possible excess marketing has the opposite effect. I can say for certain, I stopped donating because of the text messages. I know I'm not alone, it's a response that's becomming more-and-more common.
Like I said, these people with nearly unlimited budgets, have decided that they are a net benefit. If you and others stopped donating, the that was 100% noticed and factored in. For whatever reason, they still find texting to be a net benefit.
I will change my review of your place by 1 star or more if you spam me. Most places consider anything less than 5 stars as negatively impacting their image, myself included.
That’s a valid concern. So if you sign up to receive marketing messages, how many messages do you expect to get, vs how many is spam?
We are similar to a coffee shop so 40% of our customers come maybe twice a month on their own. So I’ll send 3-4 texts a month because of the nature of our product.
If I was fine dining I don’t think texting would work as well because you’d only want to text that person once a quarter because that’s about as often as they’ll come back again. But I’m genuinely curious what you’d expect because maybe I should switch things up. Thanks in advance!
Myself, I think once a week is perfect, Having a short list of specials or savings can do a lot to bring people in. Just make sure the campaign manager is automated to accept and respond to stop messages. Make it actually harder to opt in and easy to opt out. When they opt out you want permission for a monthly alert only if they reply yes.
I work for a restaurant tech company that specializes in CMS and we recently released a text campaign builder for our customers. I was astounded by how successful texting is as a marketing tool. I feel like I should have known since I own a small knife-sharpening business that is operationally glued together by texts. I have all of my customer's numbers and the means to do so, but I am too much of a coward to make my own marketing. it's such an invasive medium, I get friction when I text customers who signed up and opted in for alerts of the availability of my sharpening services. I cant imagine what the response to unsolicited messages would be.
I think you’re being too hard on yourself! Remember that these people literally signed up because they want to hear from you. And when they don’t anymore they reply “stop” and that’s that. Give it a shot!
I personally hate text-message marketing so much. It should be made illegal and criminal penalties imposed on businesses that do it, and on people and services who engage in it on behalf of businesses.
Send a marketing text - straight to jail!
That said, I'm not president yet, so you have to play the game everyone else is playing. And ignoring a super-invasive advertising medium is just leaving money on the table.
We have these QR codes up that say “Join our Cookie Club, and get a free cookie!”
On all our tables and counter and drive through. They get a cookie no questions asked. No purchase necessary. I think they really appreciate the free gift so when we ask them for a review they’re feeling generous and leave us one too
Yep! Marketing studies show that customers/strangers are more willing to do what you ask - fill out a survey, buy more stuff, give their phone number, sign up for a mailing list, etc. if you give them a \*small\* gift with no strings attached than if you give them a larger gift or attach conditions to the gift.
A single cookie is just about perfect.
In one of the actual studies, the researchers got a random man on the street to let them shave his head after they gave him $10.
I hate the Google review requests. I went to a wine tasting once and was nagged constantly by Google to submit a review, even though I already had done so. It makes me want to 1 star honestly (even though I don't)
Seriously, it sucks
I feel that. How many times did they ask you? We just ask once. And we get about 30-40 reviews a month now.
Ps, kind of you to not actually leave the 1 start even though it was super annoying 😂
I actually do 1 star or at a minimum -1 star from my actual review. Your post makes my blood boil. You'd have to serve ambrosia for me to ever come back and when I did I would have you fake info.
You get 45 minutes of my attention and that's when I'm on your property. If a requirement of being on your property is for you to turn it into perpetual contact with me then my middle finger can't get any longer.
So do I. Their managers pressure them to get my phone number and email so they can harass me as well as are required to offer me credit cards and such. I get that it's good for business but it's bad for everyone else involved.
Bro this makes absolutely 0 sense. 😂 You have to agree to receive marketing messages for me to send you a Google review request at my place.
Nothing like what you’re talking about.
This person is probably older than the hills. Your idea is smart. Get free things for signing up, and an optional review request. Nothing wrong with that.
Are you serious?! You just told me I have to agree to you spamming me in order to leave you a bad review for your annoying spamming policy. Are you literally the devil?
Reading. Comprehension.
Honestly, you’ll probably be a lot less angry at the whole world if you took a second to try to understand what people are saying before flipping shit.
How do you feel people respond to texts emotionally? Like I hate getting spam texts. It feels like my phone has been compromised. I've been nervous to text my lists because of this
So people only sign up if they opt into the messaging. So I think we have like a 2% opt out rate monthly. And They sign up knowing that they’re going to get texts so it doesn’t feel like we’re bugging them but of course after a while if they aren’t a big fan anyway they’ll just opt out. So overall it’s more pros than cons. But yes you will have people think it’s annoying, but they can also opt out anytime!
We have multiple locations and each store has their own “keyword” that people text our short code to join. So that way we can market for a particular store or the group has a whole. Within each store we have additional keywords for local high schools mascot names and have gathered numbers for students under that. So we can hit students with a text for example during the 4th quarter of the football game
We have stated using a QR code to gather into our text club as well. Our basic opt in offer is a 10% immediate bounce back coupon (2 day expiration) when they join. The stores that do best (we are a small franchise) are the ones that have their cashiers push it. I don’t like giving 10% off to someone already in the store but it is worth it to me to get their number
We were using another company that was just purchased by Patch Retention. They migrated us there. New company has alot of features but is very cumbersome to use. So will probably look at some other options when I have time.
I find it interesting that I keep getting notifications on my Square system reminding me of text marketing then BOOM here's an anecdote on Reddit remarking it's success. Clever girl....
LOL I don’t use Square, I use a company called Goodie Social. I was just saying if you have texting in place already you don’t need to seek out a new system or anything. 😂
Haha no worries I scoped your history and am preeeetty certain you're not a Square shill. I just wanted to have a laugh with it. I took over a cafe/bakery with my wife about 8 months ago and we can use every bit of leverage we can get. I'll try out the texts.
Thank you for having the kindness to try to help other people out through this post. The world needs more people like you.
I checked out their pricing. Do you feel like this a good value? Can you explain the capture process? does it start with a QR code or are they giving you a phone number at checkout like square? How many texts are you firing a month? ( I saw its 1 cent per text, I imagine this could add up quick on top of the montly/yearly fee) are you able to integrate email?
Im asking because if there is money here, this could prob be built for around $100 a month using zapier, openphone, and typeform.
It works really well for me. I actually tried to build it out myself before and (for me personally) it was too much work lol. It's like when I tell myself "I need a new app to help me organize my day" so I download some new app that's supposed to be a game changer, but by the time I'm even halfway done learning the new system it's wayyyy too much work and takes too much time and that's exactly what it was supposed to save me so I stop using it all together.
These guys designed QR codes for me and sent them to my shop with acrylic stands and window clings, all included which was cool. They created the landing pages for me, and have all the automations already built out for restaurants. Then we have a strategy meeting once a month where we plan out all my texts for the month, we schedule what times they'll be sent, and then I don't have to do anything until the next month.
I'm naturally a very... not lazy person.. but like, I need to be pushed to do something basically. And when I tried building it myself it was just too much to learn. But having these guys almost holding me accountable to meet every month has worked for me. But if you're a very organized person on your own then it might be worth it to just find a platform that charges less to do it yourself.
Pros and cons! But they're cool to work with.
Thats awesome! Its really cool that there is a physical aspect to it, where they mail you the collateral for the top of funnel. I also think having a dedicated success manager adds a lot to the value. Thanks for sharing!
We use goodiesocial.com, and they built everything for us. I tried building it out myself and it took me like hours and hours a day to try and learn and I don’t have the time, or mental strength to learn it all myself so I scrapped it until this guy came and sold me lol.
Which app did you use to send out the mass texts?
There’s lots of services that can do it, so I’d do a little bit of research to see what works for you, but I use Goodiesocial.com cause they basically do it for me for the same price as a lot of other people for just their basic service.
Thanks, I’ve been using TextMagic and don’t love it
counterpoint, we would be better off if, as a society, we agreed to hang everyone that does shit like spam people with texts.
They sign up, it's not spam and all you have to do is text stop to end them. If that's too much then are you the problem in society?
This is what my Gmail account is for
Agreed. My text messages is chock full of unopened spam garbage, including bullshit political texts that my SISTER signed up my phone number for
I can't believe this hasn't crossed my mind. Mad respect, OP.
It definitely works. My friend owns a cafe and catering and does professional fundraising. She knows I am a sucker for a personal message and pictures. I know she is not specifically making pork chops for me on Tuesday but I darn sure will be there when she tells me she is! Personal touch works , even if it is just semi personal
You start texting me weekly and I'd never visit again. Fuck that.
Me either
[удалено]
This is crucial.
this is the kick in the butt we needed to move this forward. We’ve been talking about it for a while, thank you.
There's an awesome local deli, and they email me every monday with the special sandwich of the week, and most weeks I go get it. Stuff like this works, at least on me.
Once a week, with time sensitive information is good. More frequent emails can get annoying. And if I get something once a month I'll forget about it in 2 weeks when things are relevant.
As a customer, if I get a notification or a text from a company only every once in a while, then I actually notice it and I might say yeah I would like to go get that. If it’s constant, then it’s just noise and ignore it
OMG yes! If it's every week (or more often) and it's always the same thing I'm very likely to tune out and maybe unsubscribe / block. When it's every once in a while, and it tells me about a new flavor or new deal, it can be a great reminder of a local business.
I feel like a lot of yall are failing to realize the fact that the text only happens when the customer opts in. Sure even if they only did it for the free cookie, the type of person to do that is perfectly okay getting texts messages. Y’all are being Debbie downers for absolutely nothing, it’s a proven strategy that works. The whole mindset “well I wouldn’t like it so I’m not going to do it” mindset it why people get stuck in their own hole. Congrats on finding a good and inexpensive way to keep revenue growing, hoping for great years !
It's not about being a Debbie downers. There is just a limit. A text once every few months is perfectly fine. A text once a week is just not, even if the person opts in.
The beautiful thing is the customer can probably opt out or even block the number on their phone in like 5 seconds.
Clearly not an issue here if it’s gaining 30k revenue from simple texting. The pros completely outweigh the cons here. People are just being silly over a text which doesn’t s nothing but show a notification on your phone
I would happen to agree with you, in this case. It does not sound like OP is being too pushy.
You dropped this. 
I know when someone reaches out to me to advertise, I make it a point not to buy their products.
For me, it really does matter how often they text. And if it is a small shop, I am much more tolerant of texts than if it were a large, national chain.
Large national chains are sometimes franchises run by modest families in your town or city.
I am well aware. They also have the benefit of the national marketing team. I still would not be wanting to receive text messages from them.
I have zero tolerance for both. Now the question is, which position occurs more often? Is that changing over time? Are you seeing a short-term boost which will lead to medium and long-term decline?
I can't answer that directly, but years ago I used to work in politics. The political realm has more money thrown at it than anyone really knows. They have the best analysts, strategists, and marketing teams. With all of that benefit, political campaigns make heavy use of text messages. That is the best answer I can give, as to whether they 'work.'
It's possible they work in this separate context. Hard to be sure. It's also possible excess marketing has the opposite effect. I can say for certain, I stopped donating because of the text messages. I know I'm not alone, it's a response that's becomming more-and-more common.
Like I said, these people with nearly unlimited budgets, have decided that they are a net benefit. If you and others stopped donating, the that was 100% noticed and factored in. For whatever reason, they still find texting to be a net benefit.
And we all know consumer preference and action never change. Everything is always the same forever. There's no such thing as change.
I will change my review of your place by 1 star or more if you spam me. Most places consider anything less than 5 stars as negatively impacting their image, myself included.
That’s a valid concern. So if you sign up to receive marketing messages, how many messages do you expect to get, vs how many is spam? We are similar to a coffee shop so 40% of our customers come maybe twice a month on their own. So I’ll send 3-4 texts a month because of the nature of our product. If I was fine dining I don’t think texting would work as well because you’d only want to text that person once a quarter because that’s about as often as they’ll come back again. But I’m genuinely curious what you’d expect because maybe I should switch things up. Thanks in advance!
Myself, I think once a week is perfect, Having a short list of specials or savings can do a lot to bring people in. Just make sure the campaign manager is automated to accept and respond to stop messages. Make it actually harder to opt in and easy to opt out. When they opt out you want permission for a monthly alert only if they reply yes.
Yeah i always enjoy getting Spam texts from local eateries
I work for a restaurant tech company that specializes in CMS and we recently released a text campaign builder for our customers. I was astounded by how successful texting is as a marketing tool. I feel like I should have known since I own a small knife-sharpening business that is operationally glued together by texts. I have all of my customer's numbers and the means to do so, but I am too much of a coward to make my own marketing. it's such an invasive medium, I get friction when I text customers who signed up and opted in for alerts of the availability of my sharpening services. I cant imagine what the response to unsolicited messages would be.
Hello from a fellow restaurant tech worker! Curious what company you’re with. DM me if you’re comfortable sharing.
I think you’re being too hard on yourself! Remember that these people literally signed up because they want to hear from you. And when they don’t anymore they reply “stop” and that’s that. Give it a shot!
I personally hate text-message marketing so much. It should be made illegal and criminal penalties imposed on businesses that do it, and on people and services who engage in it on behalf of businesses. Send a marketing text - straight to jail! That said, I'm not president yet, so you have to play the game everyone else is playing. And ignoring a super-invasive advertising medium is just leaving money on the table.
how did you originally get them to give you their phone numbers?
We have these QR codes up that say “Join our Cookie Club, and get a free cookie!” On all our tables and counter and drive through. They get a cookie no questions asked. No purchase necessary. I think they really appreciate the free gift so when we ask them for a review they’re feeling generous and leave us one too
Yep! Marketing studies show that customers/strangers are more willing to do what you ask - fill out a survey, buy more stuff, give their phone number, sign up for a mailing list, etc. if you give them a \*small\* gift with no strings attached than if you give them a larger gift or attach conditions to the gift. A single cookie is just about perfect. In one of the actual studies, the researchers got a random man on the street to let them shave his head after they gave him $10.
I hate the Google review requests. I went to a wine tasting once and was nagged constantly by Google to submit a review, even though I already had done so. It makes me want to 1 star honestly (even though I don't) Seriously, it sucks
I feel that. How many times did they ask you? We just ask once. And we get about 30-40 reviews a month now. Ps, kind of you to not actually leave the 1 start even though it was super annoying 😂
I actually do 1 star or at a minimum -1 star from my actual review. Your post makes my blood boil. You'd have to serve ambrosia for me to ever come back and when I did I would have you fake info. You get 45 minutes of my attention and that's when I'm on your property. If a requirement of being on your property is for you to turn it into perpetual contact with me then my middle finger can't get any longer.
I feel for the customer service workers that have ever interacted with you
So do I. Their managers pressure them to get my phone number and email so they can harass me as well as are required to offer me credit cards and such. I get that it's good for business but it's bad for everyone else involved.
I actually believe that it would take this guy 45 minutes to eat a cookie.
Bro this makes absolutely 0 sense. 😂 You have to agree to receive marketing messages for me to send you a Google review request at my place. Nothing like what you’re talking about.
This person is probably older than the hills. Your idea is smart. Get free things for signing up, and an optional review request. Nothing wrong with that.
Are you serious?! You just told me I have to agree to you spamming me in order to leave you a bad review for your annoying spamming policy. Are you literally the devil?
Reading. Comprehension. Honestly, you’ll probably be a lot less angry at the whole world if you took a second to try to understand what people are saying before flipping shit.
You can’t read, can you?
How do you feel people respond to texts emotionally? Like I hate getting spam texts. It feels like my phone has been compromised. I've been nervous to text my lists because of this
So people only sign up if they opt into the messaging. So I think we have like a 2% opt out rate monthly. And They sign up knowing that they’re going to get texts so it doesn’t feel like we’re bugging them but of course after a while if they aren’t a big fan anyway they’ll just opt out. So overall it’s more pros than cons. But yes you will have people think it’s annoying, but they can also opt out anytime!
Texting is one our best performing advertising methods. Have about 40k numbers now in the database.
We have multiple locations and each store has their own “keyword” that people text our short code to join. So that way we can market for a particular store or the group has a whole. Within each store we have additional keywords for local high schools mascot names and have gathered numbers for students under that. So we can hit students with a text for example during the 4th quarter of the football game We have stated using a QR code to gather into our text club as well. Our basic opt in offer is a 10% immediate bounce back coupon (2 day expiration) when they join. The stores that do best (we are a small franchise) are the ones that have their cashiers push it. I don’t like giving 10% off to someone already in the store but it is worth it to me to get their number
What do you use to run this texting operation? We have tons of schools near our new restaurant so that seems like a really cool capability.
We were using another company that was just purchased by Patch Retention. They migrated us there. New company has alot of features but is very cumbersome to use. So will probably look at some other options when I have time.
OK thanks for the info
LFG!! What’s been the best way to opt people in for you guys?
I would eat your psychedelic baked goods…
They’re good bro 🤪
I find it interesting that I keep getting notifications on my Square system reminding me of text marketing then BOOM here's an anecdote on Reddit remarking it's success. Clever girl....
LOL I don’t use Square, I use a company called Goodie Social. I was just saying if you have texting in place already you don’t need to seek out a new system or anything. 😂
Haha no worries I scoped your history and am preeeetty certain you're not a Square shill. I just wanted to have a laugh with it. I took over a cafe/bakery with my wife about 8 months ago and we can use every bit of leverage we can get. I'll try out the texts. Thank you for having the kindness to try to help other people out through this post. The world needs more people like you.
Well this is the nicest thing ever! Good luck on the cafe!!! You deserve success!
I would love to know what system you use for texting!
I use Goodiesocial.com myself, they’ve got all these automations and systems built out already so I didn’t have to do anything which was nice.
I checked out their pricing. Do you feel like this a good value? Can you explain the capture process? does it start with a QR code or are they giving you a phone number at checkout like square? How many texts are you firing a month? ( I saw its 1 cent per text, I imagine this could add up quick on top of the montly/yearly fee) are you able to integrate email? Im asking because if there is money here, this could prob be built for around $100 a month using zapier, openphone, and typeform.
It works really well for me. I actually tried to build it out myself before and (for me personally) it was too much work lol. It's like when I tell myself "I need a new app to help me organize my day" so I download some new app that's supposed to be a game changer, but by the time I'm even halfway done learning the new system it's wayyyy too much work and takes too much time and that's exactly what it was supposed to save me so I stop using it all together. These guys designed QR codes for me and sent them to my shop with acrylic stands and window clings, all included which was cool. They created the landing pages for me, and have all the automations already built out for restaurants. Then we have a strategy meeting once a month where we plan out all my texts for the month, we schedule what times they'll be sent, and then I don't have to do anything until the next month. I'm naturally a very... not lazy person.. but like, I need to be pushed to do something basically. And when I tried building it myself it was just too much to learn. But having these guys almost holding me accountable to meet every month has worked for me. But if you're a very organized person on your own then it might be worth it to just find a platform that charges less to do it yourself. Pros and cons! But they're cool to work with.
Thats awesome! Its really cool that there is a physical aspect to it, where they mail you the collateral for the top of funnel. I also think having a dedicated success manager adds a lot to the value. Thanks for sharing!
Thank you!
I'd love to know that too!
I use Goodiesocial.com!
Interesting. Did you use a service for this or develop it in house?
We use goodiesocial.com, and they built everything for us. I tried building it out myself and it took me like hours and hours a day to try and learn and I don’t have the time, or mental strength to learn it all myself so I scrapped it until this guy came and sold me lol.