Email marketing for franchises

Restaurant owners, and most small franchise companies, tend to miss out on one of the most important parts of the advertising mix: email marketing.

I've seen lots of reasons for this. Fear of technology, or ignorance in it's usage; lack of understanding as to the benefits or email; unrealistic expectation of results; lack of money.

As a stable part of your marketing mix, email marketing provides regular contact, more impressions, and should play more of a supporting role to your other efforts. It gives you a chance to contact your existing customers one more time (or two more times) about your special price point, your new entree, your community involvement, or your expanded daypart. It's a chance to remind customers, to incentivize them, to call them to action.

Too many small franchises, selling to single-unit operators, don't even mandate that a computer and Internet connection be present in the unit. Many of their Z's don't check email, or have an AOL account. Often franchisors know the value of email advertising, but can't get their franchise partners on board.

The next few posts will help to make the benefits of email marketing clearer, and offer some solutions to getting set up to be easy and automatic, getting franchisees on board, and increasing the value of your company.