What is a good offer?
Do not lose your shirt by failing to build a solid ROI into your offer, no matter how many guests show up with your coupon in hand! Your campaign margins should grow simply due to economies of scale as your offer is passed around. If you lose money on the first coupon, you will lose money on the 10,000th. Likewise, if you make money on the first, you will make it no matter how many get passed around. Contrary to popular opinion, a good campaign does not plan to lose money with a single coupon.
Planning is crucial for all offers of this type. I wish I had a nickel for every time I get a call or email about trying to stop the hemorrhaging from coupon fiascos that were poorly planned - or not at all – and afterwards it was necessary to reorganize entire marketing efforts in an attempt to recapture lost ground and momentum.
Knowing the margins of your menu items is critical too. You must use items where the margins are large enough to still be able to make money with your offer. In addition, since these items have a positive ROI also, they will tend to be items that have above average demand and that means the guest sees value in the offer.
Bundling is a good type of offering that works well with this type of event. The chains have used this to great advantage. Choose from 2-5 of your value items from each section of the menu to put together for the guest to have a complete 3 course meal – appetizer, entrée and dessert. Price them appropriately so that the value is clear. If you have items with margins that can be trimmed $1 each, you could run a “Save $3 on a 3 Course Meal!” or some such offering.
If you know the numbers when it comes to your menu, you should be able to plan an offering that has good value for the guest, will create some really good word-of-mouth and give you a good ROI on the effort.
Abuse issues.
If you are concerned about abuse, then expire the offer or place a sign-up notice for the offer on your web page. Also note only one offer per person/per table per visit. We all know the people who will try to ask to get away with whatever. If your codes are displayed properly then there should be no question. These people will always be a small portion of those redeeming the offer and as we all know, you will have these guests no matter what offering you employ.
Require their participation in signing up for your newsletter or whatever, as a prerequisite for the coupon. This will allow you to track people and not allow them to download it more than once. A corollary to this is for people who have already signed up for your free offer and whose name will already be in your database, for them you can simply have them log in or re-direct them to a different page.
This can get complicated fast if you insist on screening 100% of all possible abuses schemes. My suggestion is don’t even try. You have bigger fish to fry than to play coupon police every time you do one of these offerings. Create the best offer you can, put it out there, measure the results, then plan you next one based on your results. Over time you will get really good at it.
Tracking from your website.
Go to SiteMeter sign-up and get an HTML tracking code for free that you can put on your coupon pages and then you will be able to track numbers. Constant Contact also offers several key metrics for your email campaign including noting how may times your email was forwarded and to whom.
If you really want to get creative, send out you offer to you data base list, then offer them a “reward” for forwarding it to as many people they can AND who sign up on your website for the offer. The more people they get for you, the bigger their reward. I have utilized this type of campaign for new store openings and it works really well!
Auto-responders.
If you are looking to send a response to your guests who request the offer, an “autorespoder program” will do what you need. Constant Contact and others, offers this service in their packages and is extremely cheap to utilize. They also have a free 60 day trial program that you can use just to try it out first.
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Jeffrey Summers
About Me
- Jeffrey Summers
- I am the expert you call when you need to learn how to increase top line sales, lower your operating costs, increase your profit margin, hire and train better managers and staff, evolve your operation into more and better ways of doing business, buy or sell a restaurant, improve your service, engineer (or re-engineer!) your menu, market your business better and less expensively, keep yourself from going nuts because you have no life anymore, open more and better restaurants, don't want to have to give up your first born child to pay a consultant and have more fun! My mission is to enhance the quality of life for my clients by providing the best products and services to help them achieve their personal and professional goals. I take great pride in my clients, my company, my commitment to service and the products I sell. I am a recognized expert in the hospitality industry with over 24 years of success at planning and executing strategies for delivering dramatic results, a former "GM of the Year" for 2 major, full-service, franchises, an Award winning Multi-Unit Executive with 2 of the largest restaurant chains in the U.S., published author, husband and father of two.