Archive for January, 2009

REVERVICE

Applaud Revolutionary Restaurant Service Ideas

They don’t give a ding-dang if water is by request only, as long as nobody is wasting the valuable time they could be spending on bitching about how little they’re making to anyone who’ll listen.  These are the very same knuckleheads that will be the first to complain about how the guests are getting so cheap about tipping next month.  The boss is betting that the savings will translate into about $21.57 in additional bonus for himself too.

Stupid Management

Who do they think they are – members of congress?

Those that aren’t so short-sighted, the better restaurant owners,  servers and managers, will recognize that they’ve lost opportunities to convince the guest that there indeed is restaurant service at all, and another chance to show an “exceed the guest’s expectations” mentality resides in their place of business. The guest is smarter than you think (I know, hard to believe, isn’t it?).

Oh, by The Way, Nice Numbers Last Month.

1. -Review any policies that have been changed over the past year that resulted in a reduction of service and reverse them.  What have the guests complained about that they miss?  Re-instituting them will make you a HERO!
2. -Go on offense!  Barring any unaffordable added expenses, field suggestions to improve or upgrade the perceived service in your establishment.  Make as big of a deal as you can.  Drawing attention to say, for example, “ Umbrella escorts to your car on rainy days!”, when everyone else is sending the extra cashier/seater/greeter home early will cement your business as one that really cares about their guests, even AFTER you’ve taken their money.
3. -If you’ve ever considered adding Valet Service or a Coat Check, NOW is the time to do it!
4. -On slower days, have the crew polish the silver or glassware, even if it’s not common for your style of restaurant to do so.
5. -Place an increased effort on cleanliness, especially in the restrooms.  This is where you will stand out against the competition.  Their labor savings will show up there first.  Inspect the work that you have done in there, and DEMAND perfection.  Initially, it will take them more labor dollars to get it done right, but believe me – they won’t want to spend any more time in there than they have to, and will find a way to git ‘r done in the same amount of time as before.
6. -Don’t skimp on birthday or anniversary cakes or singing.  This would KILL you special occasion business.
7. -If you have linen napkins, research and implement a more intricate fold.  Impressive!
8. -Water service – if you automatically serve it, continue to do so.  If it is by request only, have your servers do the requesting for the guest by graciously offering it.  “May I bring water for everyone?” increases the perceived amount of service by drawing attention to the effort! Don’t make them ask for it – it’s a HUGE difference.
9. -Do not cut back on the tablewares that you set your tables with.  What would not setting that extra fork, spoon or wine glass really save you?  Bringing it only when it is needed is cheesy, and takes away from the WOW factor of your tabletop.  A wine glass on your table actually increases sales – try it.

The current restaurant management  model is archaic (Crap) I have literally worked for a chain concept that surprisingly is still in business that operated with the mentality, I am totally not kidding, the motto repeated often when ever the Regional VP came waltzing in talking about his golf game.

” Work Harder Do More”

I call this Stupid Management 101. This an archaic non competitive draconian mindset that says to  you as the manager / employee you are not relevent or valued in our business.

Typical seagull management style is used to get conformity to the systems and performance short term. The higher ups in at home office are essentially saying We are smarter then you and you are dependent on us for your lively hood and our leadership to make decisions. Stupid Management. Seagull management will inherently fail long term typically within 3-12 months you unit level managers will get burned out and move on. The threat of losing your job becomes less and less as a true american is forced to deal with short cited home office abusive style of management.

Image at the semi-annual general manager meeting when his replacement told the congregation that 50% of you will not have your jobs in 6 months. There is a real performance enhancing speech. Will call him Stewart, Stewart Pedaso, Stu for short!.

Well Stu went to far and got 86′d for taking an already struggling chain even further into the toilet. Did take the board to long to figure out hey maybe we need to throw the seagull some Alka Seltzer and save ourselves some HR headaches and find another replacement.

The downward spiral has not stopped check out mikes latest post entitled “Revolutionary Restaurant Service”

Restaurant Owners you are in a much better position to compete against the chains, do not ever doubt it, ever! You are entrepreneurs that have put your reputation on line and risked all, to work your butts off and do the seemingly impossible. The chains cannot hold a candle to your operation. Take risks, treat your people right be the employer of choice and you will only attract the best and brightest talent. Innovate the chains cannot, build Fans, the CFO’s get in the way. Have fun!

Building an Opt in E-mail List   

This topic is again vast and very broad we will focus on the strategies to actually increase opt in e-mails and build a stronger marketing base. Like always we need to develop a customer acquisition plan (marketing term for how are we going to get more customers. i.e. rule number one of marketing) If you have a list to begin with that is excellent the first objective is to pull it together. One question we all ask ourselves within the process is do I acquire the list first or create the newsletter e-mail campaign first? I do recommend that you have a general plan outlined for the year and have your thank you auto responder written for the first sign –ups you receive. Our focus for today however is the tactics we recommend to build your list from your site or blog.

Building and managing an e-mail campaign involve these four basic parts.

· Decide who you want to reach

· What type of content will your email provide

· What is your competition doing?

· Identify tactics to build your list

We will learn of course how to target our market and the strategies then to acquire the customer. First of all who is your market who do you want to reach, how do you want to acquire your customers what are the touch points (within the site) Also how much are you willing to spend to acquire each new customer.

How do we determine what type of content to offer. This requires a whole other call to cover and will be another topic. We need to of course offer a benefit to the customer. Creating a clear cut annual plan is key to keeping your e-mail campaigns effective. I recommend all of my students to at least register for these e-mail campaigns. www.gmarketing.com from Guerilla Marketing and www.marketsherpa.com the group that helps us learn anything we need to know about e-mail campaigns. These are two groups are focused on

I do recommend that you register for competitors campaigns and follow their message as an FYI. This helps us keep in the industry loop but also gives us ideas to begin testing layouts and messages. When you begin to get all of these e-mails into your inbox you do not need to read all of them, set up folders and store them we will analyze them over 30-60-90 days increments

Identify your specific tactics to build an opt-in This will be our focus for todays topic.

Identifying your market prior is the basis of all customer acquisition strategies, where will the customers opt in? (Touch Point) How are you going to entice customers to opt in?

As you’re no doubt aware, subscribers are an essential element of a successful blog. They read more, comment more and return to your blog/site more than more passive visitors do. So it’s in your best interest to encourage people to become subscribers. One way to do this is by offering an RSS feed. (A link to the what is RSS is a great idea)Another way that many successful internet marketers use is the blog newsletter.

Below are four strategies A-Weber (a e-mail campaign management company) uses and have found effective in growing their own blog newsletter. In fact, these strategies are responsible for over 50% of their blog newsletter subscribers!

#1: Offer Subscribe Options At The End of Blog Posts

The idea behind this is that if someone reads to the end of an article (especially if it’s a long/detailed on), s/he must have been particularly interested/impressed with the content.

So why not see if s/he wants more like it?

Additionally, if you’re writing a series of posts on a topic, someone reading an early post in that series may want to be notified when the next post in that series is online.

Over 24% of web signups to our blog newsletter come from forms at the end of posts.

And they don’t even do it for every post! In 2+ years and 100+ posts on there blog, They claim they have only did this a handful of times. And many of the posts they have done it on are nowhere near the main page of the blog anymore, yet the signups keep coming in.

Think of your blog posts like sales letters for your blog, with each new subscriber as a successful conversion. Remember to ask for them to subscribe!

#2: The Single Subscribe Page

Adding a dedicated subscribe page to the A-Weber site and blog seems simple however they said they forgot to do it at first! But once they did, the page started to bring in the many more subscribers. Two excellent examples of a subscribe page are www.copyblogger.com and www.chrisg.com

There dedicated subscribe page is responsible for over 30% of their active subscribers!

Why? it gives you a great opportunity to “sell” people on the value of your blog.
How Will People Get To This Page?

Some people will get there from another post or page of your blog (provided you give them the opportunity).

Link to your subscribe page from near the signup form in your sidebar. That way, people who aren’t sure if they want to subscribe can see why they should before taking the plunge. (Copy Blogger does this very well)

Others will get there from links in:

* Guest posts you write for other blogs
* Comments you leave on other blogs
* Your blog newsletter itself (we’ll talk more about this in a later post)

Also, if you’re not going to put a subscribe form at the end of a post or page put a byline with a link to your subscribe page. This can be an effective alternative to the embedded form, and it’s far subtler.

#3: Get Readers To Share Your Newsletter

Your blog targets a certain group of people with a similar need or interest. And even if you only have a handful of subscribers, each one probably knows at least one or two other people who share that need or interest. Asking your current subscribers to share your blog/ site newsletter

36.5% of A-Weber’s active web subscribers come directly from links in their emails!

In other words, many of our email subscribers sign up after clicking a link in an email sent to another subscriber.

It gently encourages readers to pass the email along to someone they think would benefit from it. When someone gets the forwarded email, they can read the article as if they were a subscriber, and they have the option to subscribe via the link in the email. The subscribe link goes to the blog’s subscribe page – another reason that you need to create a subscribe page for your blog.

Difference between encouraging people to forward the email directly, rather than use a “send to friend” function.

* It’s easier – people know how to use email. There’s little chance for confusion compared to “send to friend” forms.
* It’s more accurate – most email programs will auto-suggest contacts as you type them, saving time and reducing misspellings.
* It’s more likely to be opened – your subscriber’s email address is in the “from” line of the forward.
* What do you open first, emails from people you know or emails from 3rd-party services?

#4: Find Outside Subscribe Opportunities

In the past week, how many people have you talked to face-to-face (either in a business or casual setting) where your business came up? On the phone? There are plenty of opportunities to ask people to subscribe to your blog newsletter.

A-Weber began to promote sign-ups for webinar attendees, and have seen an increase of 15.97% in our readership. Now we do not all have or offer training webinars at this time but this is an example of others ways to encourage readership
Where Can You Find These Outside Subscribe Opportunities?

Here are a few possibilities:

* In Person Whether it’s at a trade show/conference, a Meeting at your office, or any other appropriate setting, “face time” is a great time to offer up your blog and newsletter.

If you exchange business cards with someone, bring up your site or blog in the conversation and ask for them to subscribe. Write his/her response (”yes blog newsletter” or “no blog newsletter”) on the back of his/her card, so you know who to set up and who not to.

* On teleconferences, webinars, training calls, etc. If you provide value on the call, attendees/callers are likely to want to get more value. Where better for them to get that than on your blog?

Your webinars/conferences/etc, like your blog posts themselves, are sales letters for your blog.

* In your email signature There’s no law that says you have to put your site’s homepage in your email signature (well, unless you work for a company that mandates it).Your blog, or even your blog subscribe page, may be a more useful landing page for people clicking from your email signature, and may lead to more subscribers.

This isn’t likely to bring in as many people as the other tactics discussed here, but every subscriber counts, right?

* On articles or guest posts you write for other blogs Typically, when you write an article (either for an article site or a news publication) or a guest post on another blog, you’re allowed a signature at the end of your article.
* Just as you should add subscribe opportunities within posts, you should give people who read your articles and guest posts the chance to easily join your blog newsletter too.
* Other business communications

Do you ship physical products? Take a recent post (or highlights from several recent posts) and print a one-page insert that exposes customers to your blog and encourages them to subscribe.

Do you give away or sell digital products (such as ebooks/whitepapers)? Include references to your blog and blog newsletter on the “about” section or in the footer of each page.

Can customers/readers reach you by phone? Mention your blog in your outgoing voicemail message, or in your phone menu.

Maximize Signup Conversions by Asking for Less

Does your form ask for just the information you need to build and engage a list of subscribers, or does it go above and beyond that?

As MarketSherpa has pointed out, “above and beyond” in this case may lead to signup conversion rates and information quality that fall below your expectations.

In the latest Chart of the Week, they illustrate why name and email should typically be all the information we ask for in our email newsletter sign up forms. Take a look:

Name and email are the two fields most likely to be provided accurately, and still, even these fields are “fibbed” sometimes (i.e. 32% of respondents to the survey said they didn’t always provide an accurate email address).

That’s one of a few good reasons to use confirmed opt-in for all of your campaigns. The fact that respondents were generally less willing to give other information accurately (and presumably *at all* in some cases) is a convincing reason to ask for only what you need from your website visitors.

List Building: How To Get Valid Email Addresses

Is it a good idea to ask them to enter their email address twice to prevent typos?

After all, you don’t want to get just any old email address, but rather an address where you can reach your subscriber (not to mention where they’ll see and read your emails).
Two Email Boxes Isn’t a Good Idea

I don’t feel that asking people to fill out their email address twice is a good idea for a few reasons:

* Typically, for any signup form, about 5-20% of the submissions are invalid.

However, this isn’t always because people mis-type their address — it also includes intentionally bogus data (people trying to get to your thank-you page without entering their address) and maliciously entered data (i.e., bots).

Asking people to enter their address twice serves, at best, a small minority of your visitors.

* Not everyone will be willing to take the time needed to enter their email address twice.

By asking them to do so, you cut off a portion of your potential subscriber base.

* Of the people who do fill out their address twice, many will simply copy-and-paste whatever they entered in the first email box into the second one.

So while the entries will match, they may both be wrong.

* Similarly, there’s no way to know, even if both entries match, that the address actually belongs to the person filling out your form.

How Do I Make Sure I’m Getting A Valid Email Address?

The best way to do this is to use Confirmed Opt-In have subscribers validate their addresses after they sign up. The key is to let them know they have to opt in 2xs’.Confirmed Opt-In has the advantage of making sure that the email addresses subscribers provide you are indeed valid ways to reach them.
Use Confirmed Opt-In

Not only can you use Confirmed Opt-In to validate the addresses of subscribers who fill out your web forms accurately, you can also leverage it to “save” those subscribers you might potentially have lost due to typos. Here’s how:

On your, when you inform your subscribers of the confirm email and show them how to confirm, point out to them that if they don’t get that email, it might be due to them mis-typing their email address — in which case they should return to your sign up page and enter their address again