It’s no secret that we are in the era that the need for mobile marketing is increasing on a daily and has a major impact on revenue. If your restaurant has its own mobile application, having Push Notifications in place is crucial to ensure the growth of your customer-base and effective engagement. Statistically, prompting varied promotional notifications could tempt users to order through the mobile app and look forward to future promotions and offers.

Because of this, it is important that you, as a restaurateur, identify the different types of notifications that can be used to arouse the need for purchase from your app by optimizing your restaurant’s smart opt-in push notification strategy.

Let’s take a look at five ideal promotional notification strategies to help boost your restaurant sales.

1. How to use Product Promotion for more sales?

Direct promotion of a specific or new menu item in your restaurant menu in the form of a push notification, is one of the most common mobile marketing tactics used by many restaurateurs today; this is known as product promotion. The message you send, can be coupled with a promo code or coupon to convince customers to interact with the mobile app. By doing so, a customer is more likely to view other menu items and purchase more items.

Your promotion could be something similar to “Hey Sam, Craving Pizza? Order any medium pan pizza and get $5 off!”

2. How to use Order notifications to boost sales?

Have you noticed that you forget a lot of things when you’re busy? Likewise, your customers can also be busy and they might have to leave important work just to come and pick up their order. It is natural to use a pre-ordering method for convenience, ease of use and efficiency. As such, using push notifications to confirm an order and update your customer on the order status, will enhance the chances of a returning customer.

Remember, although you can decide how many notifications you send out per order, too many alerts can annoy your customer. Now you wouldn’t want that, would you?

You can make sure your order notifications have simple and crisp messaging. Some short and simple push notifications are:

“Your order is confirmed” for order confirmation.

“Preparing your order” as soon as the order is under preparation.

“Your order will be ready in 5 minutes” 5 minutes before the order will be ready for pickup.

“Your order from Papa’s pastry is ready for pickup” when the order is ready.

How to make use of Events and Holidays?

Generally, everyone celebrates the few special days on our calendar and not all like to be in the kitchen cooking for their family and friends. Your customers are more prone to ordering their seasonal favorites on these days. So, notifying them on seasonal offerings such as Christmas day discounts, Thanksgiving dinners, Veterans day and New Year’s Eve can increase the probability of more takeout orders, catering and also pre-orders which would eventually lead to increased sales and therefore, more money. Don’t forget to place a cherry on top by offering them a seasonal promo code, a digital gift card or even a discount!

A great example of a seasonal message on Christmas would be as follows:

Ho! Ho! Ho! Misty’s Delicacies offers you the best roasted Turkey for just $19! Add a dessert and get an additional 5% off your order!

3. How to utilize a Price Drop sensibly?

“Price drop on the Christmas Pudding until the 31st of January! Don’t miss out, buy now!”

Doesn’t that sound like what you’d want to buy? Unlike the older days, people take food, drinks, and desserts when they visit a friend or a family member and this, could help your restaurant grow. Surprisingly, tempting notifications such as price drops on best-selling products during a season can boost sales of a restaurant because people tend to panic-buy or bulk-buy a lot of promotional items for consumption and also for gifts. Who doesn’t like to get something at a cheaper price, right? You can choose special items from your menu and give a shout out to your customers. This strategy can help you gain some extra orders!

4. How to use Conversion Campaigns to boost sales at your restaurant?

Another effective push notification type is the ones you send to your new users or daily users to make their purchase who have shown purchase intent. For instance, if a customer has added items to his/her shopping cart but have not yet completed their purchase, a reminder could trigger a customer to complete their purchase.

For example, a message like “Hi Lisa, have you forgotten to order your dinner? Order now and we will have it prepared for pickup” could remind a customer and encourage them to eat-out and might purchase the item.

5. How to use Risk of churn notifications?

Identify the customers who’ve been inactive for a while through analytics. Then, send through a limited time offer to encourage them to revisit your app and make purchases.

E.g. “Hurry! Last day to use the promo code QLPRO20 to get 45% off 5 orders. Order now.”

Start notifying now!