by Anees Mueller
April 16, 2024COVID-19 has been tough on the economy, but some industries have felt the pain of shelter-at-home more acutely than others. One of those industries is the restaurant industry.
For some, the impact began early. In New York, there’s generally an average uptick of 54% in searches for Chinese restaurants on the first day of the Lunar New Year, but for 2020, the increase was only 38%. With the coronavirus originating in Wuhan, China, this played an early role in causing problems for Chinese restaurants.
A few weeks later, February saw steep declines in consumer interest in Italian fare, with a more than 20% dip, as the coronavirus took a heavy toll on areas in Italy. The pain for restauranteurs became widespread when, by mid-March, eateries across the United States were ordered to close or offer curbside pickup or delivery only.
Now that many states are opening back up if you own a restaurant, how can you regain some lost ground and assure the public that your menu items can be safely enjoyed?
The simple answer is marketing, but a ready marketing budget may be hard to find.
As a result, DirectMail.io is offering a “freemium” service to restaurants. At zero cost to your restaurant, you can access the DirectMail.io omnichannel automated marketing tool that allows for a coordinated effort across social media, email, and other touchpoints with potential customers.
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When we say that it’s free, we mean free. No credit card information will be collected, your restaurant may utilize DirectMail.io’s services for 90 days at no charge.
This effort gives you the ability to conduct aggressive, results-driven marketing that brings people out to your site and keeps business going through the challenges of reopening.
Some of the features available include:
- The ability to easily create and publish content for a targeted audience.
- Data management and segmentation to ensure the right messages are delivered to the right people.
- Automated campaigns for hands-free marketing, allowing you to care for customers while DirectMail.io directs more traffic to your doors.
The free program was created for a select few restaurants as a beta test to see how it would perform. We’re very excited to see that they made a huge impact. You can read all about the strategy and how Daisy Duke’s restaurant in Louisiana used DirectMail.io to increase sales by 300%.
DirectMail.io wants to be sure that when it’s all over, we all have a solid model for how industries can help one another out during a crisis. We’re in this together, so let’s work together to get all of us through it.
