Maximize Profits: 8 Email Marketing Campaigns Every Restaurant Should Use

Before I explore those emails, it's worth considering: Why bother?

I collaborate with restaurant owners daily. I understand they have limited time to dedicate to another marketing channel. Any new strategy needs to demonstrate a return on investment.

Despite this, I always emphasize to owners that email marketing is invaluable. Without a doubt. It can revolutionize your business.

This is because it offers three distinct advantages that other marketing channels lack:

There are only three ways to increase your restaurant's revenue:

• Expand your customer base

• Encourage repeat business

• Increase the average order value

Most marketing channels impact only one of these factors. We know restaurant SEO is crucial, as Google delivers 15 times more new customers than social media. That alone makes Google an invaluable tool.

When executed effectively, email marketing drives growth across all these areas: new customers, repeat orders, and higher order values.

Email marketing also boasts one of the lowest costs among all marketing channels. So every euro you earn translates to higher profit margins compared to other channels.

I recently met a restaurant owner at a trade fair who perfectly described the role of email in her business. "I view email as a bridge," she explained. "It helps potential customers become actual customers, and one-time diners become regulars."

It's an excellent analogy. Email guides customers from one stage to the next. Email enhances the value of your customers.

After deducting marketing expenses, many one-time customers aren't profitable. It's their second order (and subsequent ones) that make them profitable.

This is particularly crucial for fast-casual and takeaway-focused restaurants. These establishments typically have lower profit margins on dishes that customers order frequently. Repeat business is what sustains these businesses.

Email isn't influenced by the latest Google algorithm update. Or any algorithm update, for that matter. No single entity controls email, so no one can suddenly change the rules.

This is vital. Platforms like Instagram and Facebook constantly modify their algorithms. These changes can sometimes hinder restaurants' ability to reach their target audience.

For instance, Facebook now directs 80% less traffic to websites compared to 2021. Facebook posts were once an effective way for restaurants to attract customers. Now, not so much.

Email is a channel you control. The performance of your emails is entirely in your hands. If you send compelling emails to the right customers, email marketing will deliver results. It's that simple.

Many restaurant owners tell me their biggest marketing regret is not collecting emails from the very start.

You already know customer data gets locked away on delivery platforms like Lieferando and Uber Eats. These third-party apps still make it nearly impossible to access your customer information.

Don't overcomplicate this. Just make it a priority. You'll likely gather the most emails from the most obvious sources:

• Your online ordering system: Request emails at checkout to share order updates.

• Your mobile app: Collect emails during the customer registration process.

• Your loyalty program: Make providing an email address a requirement for joining.

• In-person orders: Include an email option on your POS system or train staff to ask for email addresses.

• Lieferando orders: Include a flyer offering a 15% discount if customers order directly through your website.

You can also get creative. But start with these methods first. A restaurant with a healthy order volume will build an email list much faster than you anticipate.

This allows you to reach a significantly larger audience with the email campaigns we'll discuss below.

Email marketing becomes much simpler when you recognize that there are two primary categories of emails.

Within these two categories, a small number of emails generate the most significant results.

In other words, we can maximize revenue by focusing on just a few key emails.

After assisting hundreds of restaurants with their email marketing, I discovered something important. The most effective emails focus on the key interactions a customer has with your restaurant.

At each crucial point, you can send an automated email to influence the customer's next action. That's what makes these emails so impactful: they reach customers at precisely the right moment. It's no surprise that some milestone emails generate 30 times more revenue than one-off emails.

I've analyzed data from hundreds of thousands of milestone emails sent through Foodamigos. I've seen firsthand which ones work.

In this next section, I want to help you set up the most profitable milestone emails for your restaurant. The data is clear: these emails drive the most revenue in the shortest amount of time.

Let’s start with our “almost-customers.” These are guests who add items to their cart without checking out.

It turns out, lots of guests do this: Data suggests more than 70% of carts are abandoned. Whatever the number, there’s no arguing that abandoned carts = money left on the table.

There’s two things I love about these campaigns. First, they work fast. My friends Mo and Omar, co-founders of Berlin Burrito Company (berlin-burrito-company.de), send great cart abandonment emails. They set these emails up in minutes with Foodamigos, and they now earn shy of €2,450 in new sales per month.

Second, these emails are simple to make. Your copy and visuals can be direct. Nothing fancy. Just remind guests what they left in their cart and show them a picture. Make sure it’s easy to complete the order right from the email. Preferably, in just a few clicks.

These emails work on me all the time. It makes sense. A million things can distract guests before they finish ordering—especially on mobile. Later, when they’re free, they might want the exact same order. All it takes is a reminder.

When a guest shares their email with you, it’s important to set expectations upfront. That way, you make it clear why your emails will be worth opening in the future.

We can do this with a welcome email. These emails are sent in the first two days or so after a guest leaves their email with us.

Rahul at City Chicken (citychickennhas.de) sends a great one. His welcome email says, “Hey, I saw you just joined us. By the way, our newsletter gets you access to specials, new discounts, and more.” The benefits of staying subscribed are clear. And this helps increase open rates for future emails.

The welcome email starts with a win-win offer, too.

Rahul recommends guests try direct ordering from his app. He reminds guests his app has rewards built-in and it saves them money. Add to that, 20% off your first direct order is hard to resist.

No wonder this email alone drives over €1,000 in sales per month for City Chicken. And it keeps driving sales every single day, just like clockwork.

If you look at all your customers today, I bet a majority are single-order customers. As we covered, one-time customers aren’t super profitable.

First-time customer campaigns try to earn that initial reorder. The one that makes customers much more profitable.

These campaigns also have another job: to get feedback. That way, you can fix mistakes for future customers. This almost always improves your reorder rate over the long term.

To start seeing improvements here, focus on these two emails first:

The first 24 hours aren’t the time to nudge customers to order again. You’re not yet sure they enjoyed their first meal.

So let’s ask them. We can also use this email to hear about any issues they had. That gives us a chance to make things right and reduces the risk of getting a negative review. My friend Antoinette, owner of Da Pia Trattoria (dapiatrattoria.de), sends a powerful feedback email.

One hour after an order is delivered, an email goes out and asks guests to score their experience. If guests are unhappy, an automatic reply is sent saying, “We’re sorry we let you down. We’ll be in touch right away.”

If guests say they had a five-star experience, a follow-up message asks if they’d post it online. Guests are even given bonus loyalty points for taking the time to do so.

It’s simple but powerful because it accomplishes so many things at once:

• Earns more positive reviews. It catches happy customers at just the right time to leave positive feedback.

• Redirects unhappy guests. Usually, direct contact with unhappy customers helps you resolve their issue more successfully.

• RInvites guests to leave feedback. Feedback is a gift. Every restaurant owner should seek it out. And this email makes sure it’s always coming in.

• Shows guests that she cares. Antoinette really cares about her customer’s experience. And that shines through in her email.

Once we’ve gotten feedback and fixed any issues, now we can start staying top of mind with customers.

I’ve tested this extensively and found that showing happy guests what else is on your menu works wonders. Within the first week, send guests an email that recommends new menu items based on what they’ve ordered. You can also set this up in Foodamigos in just a few minutes.

Rahul from City Chicken (citychickennhas.de) sends another great email in this style. And it’s super profitable.

Rahul noticed in-person customers always asked him and his staff asked for recommendations. Then he thought to himself, “Well, what about guests ordering online?”

So, Rahul used Foodamigos to create a new campaign. Now, guests get two to three emails after their first order that recommends dishes they’d probably like. These emails also feature great photos and a button to reorder in one click. All sent automatically.

The results were almost instant. Rahul earned €4,000 in repeat orders just 30 days after setting these emails live.

We’ve set up emails for new customers. Now it’s time to stay top of mind with guests who’ve ordered multiple times—our regulars. This is the bread-and-butter of email marketing.

Discounts and special offers are a powerful way to do this. But we need to be mindful of profit margins and not train customers to always expect discounts.

I recommend using the discount ladder approach, created by business owner Drew Sanocki. Here’s how it works:

• Initial phase: after a short period of no orders (~30 days), the customer receives a small discount (e.g., 5%–10%).

• Intermediate phase: if the customer didn’t bite after the first offer (~60 days), the discount increases (e.g., 10%–20%).

• Final phase: as a customer begins slipping away (~90 days), the discount reaches its highest level (e.g., 20%–30%).

Let’s break this down by looking at examples from a single brand: Burger4Burger (burger4burger.de). That way, we’ll be able to see the full set of emails they send over time.

My reward points are shown at the top of the emails below. Note how they increase over time. The number of times I’ve ordered affects what emails I receive.

Burger4Burger leads with a €3 off coupon—a good example of the discount ladder in action.

It takes it further by promoting it in an interesting way: the discount is a reward for leaving a review. If you leave a review on Google or their website, the initial discount is sent to you.

This is smart. We don’t want to offer too large of a discount for only a little bit of inactivity. Guests could love your food and just be away on vacation.

Regulars that join your rewards program order 17% more often on average. If you run a quick-service restaurant, rewards programs are very profitable.

So it’s smart to advertise your rewards program as part of your repeat order emails. Focus on the benefits of joining: the rewards themselves and how guests earn them.

I really like how Burger4Burger frames things. Every two orders should earn you a free side or drink.

That helps make rewards feel concrete and simple. Guests think, “Hey, I get burgers twice a month. So that means I’ll earn rewards fast!”

Discounts work best with menu items that already have high margins. This way, the customer still feels great. But you don’t lose money or eat into the margins for your higher-ticket items—like meat-based dishes.

Here, Burger4Burger offers a free (high-margin) drink, but sets a minimum order size. This is to ensure guests at least consider an entree to reach the minimum.

Even if the customer skips the burger, Burger4Burger still doesn’t lose much money over the drink.

A guest’s reward progress must be easily visible. In the mobile apps that Foodamigos builds, for example, we display progress right on the homepage.

You can take this even further. Send targeted emails to guests once they unlock the next reward or level in your rewards program. Or right when they’re about to unlock a reward. This ideally happens whether they order in your app or online.

The key with these emails is to visually show guests what rewards they can claim. High-margin sides are best because they get guests to “complete” their order with an entree.

Restaurant mobile apps are wildly effective. Foodamigos’ data on apps is clear:

• Restaurants with apps get 85% more return customers than restaurants without an app.

• Regulars who use a restaurant’s app order two times more on average than non-app customers.

Burger4Burger is willing to offer a generous discount to get guests to use their app. Especially after they’ve seen guests order enough to be considered a regular.

If you have the data, base discounts for first app orders on what app customers are usually worth. It may make sense to break-even on their first order—app customers are that valuable.

Your “VIPs” make large or consistent purchases from you. These customers are worth a lot.

I used to think the loyalty program campaign covered it. But I’ve since learned that some restaurants have VIP guests who are in a whole different league. Sometimes, only 2% to 3% of their customers are VIPs.

You’ll have to define when a guest reaches VIP status based on your numbers. Maybe it’s five times the average number of orders. Whatever you use, create discounts that appeal to these valuable guests:

• Special combo offers: VIPs order a lot of food. So they’re the most likely to order a large combo. Send them an offer that discounts a group of items with a high check size.

• Rewards for feedback: How can you get more VIP customers? Ask them! VIPs are so valuable it’s worth sending them a discount in exchange for feedback.

You might be thinking, “Artur, these are great. But will I end up sending too many emails?” Yes, that is possible! But, I guarantee that “too many” is much higher than you think.

We’ve been looking at Burger4Burger emails. Here’s what it sent me in under a month:

Now, this is every email they sent. Seasonal offers, local specials, etc. I don’t recommend this many emails. But I’d bet you can send more than you are now.

Sometimes, customers stop ordering from you just because they got busy. This is actually good news in disguise: these “inactive” regulars are a goldmine.

Inactive regulars already enjoy your food. You just need to give them a reason to return.

Phillip Hang, founder of Smash Berlin (smash.berlin), runs a super profitable win-back campaign. He uses Foodamigos to automatically message regulars who are starting to slip away.

Every customer receives an email sequence after reaching these milestones:

• Once the customer has placed an order at least 3 times

• Once the customer hasn’t ordered in the past 45 days

These guests are sent an email that shares their past orders and a special discount to reorder. That helps Phillip ensure that he’s reaching regulars who already enjoy his menu. And he emails them just as they’re beginning to lose interest.

This email brings a lot of regulars back in. Phillip increased repeat orders by more than €1,500/month just a few weeks after setting it live.

Using these metrics, you can find any key moment in the customer journey. This helps you find moments that are important to your unique business. Then you can email customers at exactly the right time.

Of course, not every email fits neatly into the customer journey. Some campaigns work best as a one-time promotion. Or when automatically sent based on a seasonal event.

I call emails in this category promotional emails. These emails you don’t want to fully automate, because they work best with your voice and personality.

There’s a small set I’ve found that does really well. They’re campaigns that promote something you want all of your guests to see.

Just remember, you only want to send promotional emails to active guests. These are guests who have ordered in the past 90 days or so. Sending promotional emails to inactive guests will hurt your open rates and waste money. So only target active guests.

With that in mind, now I want to share the most profitable promotional emails I’ve seen:

Promotional emails are based on actions you take. That’s what makes them powerful.

My friend Timarie Shibley, the owner of Ciao Ciao (ciaociaopizza.de), sends one of my favorites. She and her team create a new special for the menu that’s available just for that week.

They’d been looking for ways to get regulars to return more often. So Timarie thought, “Why don’t we just take our specials menu online and email it to guests?” She now sends out a weekly campaign to every subscriber sharing the week’s special.

The design is beautifully simple. First, a crisp photo of the food up top. Then, a rich description under it sharing what goes into the dish, how it’s prepared, and so on. Finally, a button to order the special for dine-in or takeout.

During a typical week, this email drives €500 in additional sales. That’s €2,000 a month, or €24,000 a year, minimum. Sometimes, these specials are a huge hit and the extra sales are multiple times that.

This is one email that can’t be fully automated. But Timarie does something smart to save time. She rotates between 20 to 30 different specials during the year. These specials already have her photographs and written descriptions. And she knows they’re popular from previous order data.

Timarie’s email has all the great traits of a promotional campaign: scarcity, urgency, and a consistent schedule. Guests know these dishes won’t be available past the week, which encourages them to act.

New menu items are a magnet for regulars and new customers alike. It also takes a lot of effort to introduce a new menu item, so you should always promote them.

There are a lot of approaches you can take. Let’s run through what that might look like if CTR Chicken (ctr-chicken.de) added “vegan nuggets” to their menu:

• Exclusive preview. A pre-launch for a new menu item? You bet! Imagine an email that says, “🌱 Coming Friday: New vegan nuggets.” Then you share how guests have been asking for this dish, why you’re excited about the recipe, and so on. Then, the next step…

• Limited time offer. We’ll give rewards members two times points for ordering vegan nuggets in the first week. Maybe we’ll also offer a discount for first-time customers. I’ve seen the normal discounts work twice as well when they’re tied to a new menu time.

• Positive review. One week after launch, we’ll send a follow-up email with positive reviews from guests who tried the vegan nuggets. If we have a hit, social proof is a great way to get people excited. In this follow-up, we might offer a free high-margin side for all orders of vegan nuggets this month.

All that is to say, new menu items give you lots of options to send promotions over email. You just have to get creative.

There are two types of restaurant promotions that work well over email: recurring promotions you run on a schedule, and seasonal promotions that appear during events. Let’s cover both now.

Of course, you can’t create new menu items every week. So how about a special that celebrates your flagship menu item?

Speaking of pizza, my friends at Pizza Nostra (pizzanostra.de) handle this perfectly. They automatically email guests every Wednesday afternoon to remind them about their "Pizza Wednesday" deal. This is a promotion where they offer 20% off pizzas and pizza meals.

This reminder email lists all the relevant dishes. It also highlights the savings from ordering directly from their website and app. That’s where guests must order to get the discount. Their strategy earns more than €500 every single Wednesday. But there are even more reasons to love this approach:

• It gets guests to order directly. The Pizza Nostra promotion is only valid on the brand’s website and app, not on Lieferando. I recommend you do the same.

• It helps keep guests engaged. Regular promotions get more engagement than random specials guests aren’t anticipating. Regular specials become part of guests’ routines. Like a Pizza Wednesday lunch break with co-workers.

• It can create local buzz. Regular specials can also take on a life of their own outside of emails. Most local spots I know get a huge chunk of the neighborhood to show up for the famous specials.

• It gives you a reason to email. Simply put, a recurring special gives you a good reason to message guests every single week.

Seasonal events draw people out looking for something to do. Targeted emails and promotions can drive them to your restaurant as a solution.

Campaigns for seasonal events don’t have to be one-offs, either. In the example below, we’ll send a before, day-of, and follow up broadcast for Valentine’s Day.

You know the playbook. Draw in guests with event-specific dishes or themed menus. Sweeten the deal with a discount to encourage higher spending or attract couples.

Here’s how I like to take these campaigns to the next level:

• Run an in-person contest. Events are all about community. Themed contests are perfect for standing out in a sea of similar promotions that day. For example, on Valentine’s Day, you could have a "most romantic couple" contest. The winning couple gets a free bottle of champagne or a discount on their next visit.

• Reward your regulars with points. Reward bonuses are great for getting regulars in the door and building some initial buzz. Regulars order a lot and they bring friends. So offering two times points during the event is a bargain to get them to show up.

• Run last-minute promotions. Plans can change last minute; we’ve all been there. I’ve found last-minute deals work especially well for events where guests go out. “Valentine’s Day dinner plans fell through? Come join us tonight for a complimentary glass of Prosecco with every main course.”

Great local spots almost always have a few event experiences to look forward to per year. So make these events show up in your community and in guests’ inboxes.

Everyone loves a compelling story. If you can find one from your business or life, it’s amazing material for a marketing email.

One that applies to every restaurant is the origin story. And one of my favorite examples comes from the founders of Happy Fingers Fried Chicken (happyfingers.foodamigos-storefront.com).

They credit storytelling as a big reason for their success. They tell their story everywhere, especially in their emails. A week after someone joins their email list, they send a message sharing how Happy Fingers Fried Chicken came to be.

Here’s the thing: Their story fits the brand they want to project. Happy Fingers Fried Chicken prides itself on using high-quality, locally-sourced ingredients and creating a fun, family-friendly atmosphere.

And their story is one of passion, dedication, and a commitment to quality. They share how they started with a small food stall at a local market and grew into a beloved restaurant chain. Their story fits their brand.

These emails might not have the instant sales impact like others I’ve shared. But I believe it has a massive sales impact over the long run. Even if they’re not measurable right away.

Once you’ve set up even basic marketing automation for your restaurant, you’ll send many dozens of emails per day. So, how do you know if they’re working?

You’ll hopefully see sales and revenue climb. But we need to go deeper to determine if that’s due to your emails, or something else.

Once again, there are a million things you can track. But if you want a clear view into what’s driving sales, here are the metrics I recommend:

Marketing’s bottom-line metric is always revenue. It’s the same for email.

I’ve shared a number of campaign results with you in this post. Modern marketing platforms, including Foodamigos, make tracking revenue per email easy. That’s not the only thing that makes an email campaign successful. But it’s the most important one.

There’s another way I recommend you track revenue, though. And that’s the percentage of your restaurant’s revenue coming from email marketing. This is a great “health check” that shows if email is working for your restaurant.

I’ve seen successful restaurants earn 10% to 20% of their total revenue from email marketing. The type of restaurant you run affects this a lot. But if you currently drive less than 5% of sales from email, that’s a sign there’s more work to do.

Growing your email list grows your business. New emails aren’t revenue, but they’re the next best thing.

Pair this metric with the total amount of revenue you’re earning from email. If revenue is outgrowing the number of emails, your campaigns might be over-performing. Great! If it’s the opposite, that’s a sign to make some improvements to your existing email campaigns.

It’s easy to get distracted over the many engagement metrics for email marketing.

Instead, I aim for “green light” engagement. Once you reach a minimum for a specific metric, you give yourself the green light to move on. You can always revisit these numbers later.

I recommend the following green light benchmarks for restaurants:

• 35% open rate, which shows you’re sending relevant emails to the right people. Open rate tells you how many emails in a campaign were opened by people who received it.

• 1.2% click-through rate, which shows the content in your emails are compelling. Click-through rate tells you how many opened emails drove at least one click.

• 0.2% hard bounce rate, which shows you have a good list of active emails. A hard bounce is an email that’s returned to the sender because of an invalid address.

Remember, the campaign type has a big impact on what “good” performance looks like. An order confirmation email will have a much higher open rate than a promotional email.

The next two metrics measure whether email marketing is getting repeat customers. Since that’s its most important job, we need to measure it separately.

YFirst up, repeat order rate is the percentage of customers who make a second order in any given period of time, like a month or quarter.

You can calculate your repeat order rate for a given period with this formula:

(Number of customers who ordered more than once / Total number of customers) x 100

But what you really need to do is compare how this number is improving over time. For example, this month versus last month or quarter over quarter.

Most benchmarks I’ve seen say you have a “good” reorder rate at these percentages:

Customer lifetime value, or CLV, is the total revenue you expect to earn from a customer across all of their orders with you.

It’s a rough gauge on how much the typical guest is “worth” to your restaurant, in total. Here’s how to calculate it:

(Average order value x Average order frequency x Customer lifespan)

CLV is a little bit tricky. The ranges of a “good” CLV vary quite a bit even within restaurants of the same type depending on the cuisine.

If you’ve already looked at your prime costs, then some back-of-napkin math may be all you need. You really just want CLV to be higher than how much you pay to acquire the average customer.

One of the first times I helped a restaurant with email marketing, they said, “Artur, I’m hoping email helps me off the new customer treadmill.”

We’ve all felt that. Chasing the next new customer, never feeling like we can catch our breath. With such slim margins, that’s a serious problem for too many restaurants.

Email marketing is the solution. It does so many important jobs for restaurants:

• Email catches one-time customers we otherwise would have lost.

• Email is the best channel to stay top of mind and turn customers into regulars.

• Email is a direct line to our customers that no platform can cut.

• Email marketing makes your current customers more valuable. So you don’t always have to chase after new customers.

I’ve shared all the email marketing tactics I know. What’s left is getting the right marketing tool and putting them into action.

If that sounds good, schedule a demo to check out Foodamigos. We can partner up and help you set up the automatic campaigns I shared above in just a few clicks.

Read more: Ordering software for restaurants