We’ve seen creative SMS campaigns work for all sorts of businesses over the years. Our recent campaign with Paul Ainsworth’s No.6 restaurant in Padstow was particularly unique and exciting – which is why we wanted to share it with you.
In June this year the team at No.6 were ecstatic to find out they had been short-listed in the ‘Best Restaurant Outside London’ category by Food and Travel magazine. Public Relations Director, Harry Wild, tells us how they used SMS to spread the news.
The Objective
- To share exciting news about award nomination with Paul’s customers
- To invite customers to vote for Paul in award nomination
- To increase brand awareness of No.6 restaurant
The Plan
They wanted to share the exciting news with all of their customers and after exploring their usual methods of communication, decided they needed something bespoke and personal as it was such a prestigious award.
It was really important that the message was friendly and demonstrated the restaurant’s business ethos, the customers at No.6 have been extremely supportive of both the restaurant and Paul’s journey as a chef so Harry wanted to ensure that the votes they received were on true merit of their food service and experience, not because they created a press and marketing buzz, this is why they chose to reach out to their existing customers only.
Embarking on a new marketing tool during the height of their busiest period was daunting for Harry, however she found it wasn’t much more taxing than sending a text message off her own phone.
“The website is very easy to use and the FireText team were on hand to guide me through each step of the way; from writing the message to exporting our database in the appropriate format. I didn’t expect the level of support that we received – that was a real bonus. Now I know that I can schedule in a message as a part of my daily tasks – it only takes a moment to do.”
The Message
“I’m so excited to share some news with you. Here at No.6 in Padstow we’ve been short-listed as one of the best restaurants outside London! As a cherished customer, I wanted to politely reach out in this one-off message to see if you would mind voting for us here: http://goo.gl/9XRFo Thanks! Paul Ainsworth x”
The Results
The message was sent on a Tuesday lunch time, a few weeks before the vote closed to 16,643 people.
Within seconds of the message going out the link started receiving clicks and within 24 hours this had reached over 3,000.
The overall click through rate was 22.4% with a whopping total of 3732 clicks.
Harry tells us why the SMS campaign exceeded her expectations:
“Using SMS was completely new to us, so we really didn’t know what kind of response to expect. My main thoughts before sending the message was that we would have a significant proportion of people who would see our message as spam and we would ruin the good relationships we have built up with our customers over the years. I should not have worried about that. Only one person asked us to remove them from our database out of 16,643 people. On the other hand, we had thousands of click throughs, dozens of supportive emails and calls, plenty of social media messages and even made lots of bookings as a result of jogging people’s memories that we’re here. If anything, our guests seemed to warm to us more since sending the text out. The SMS campaign was even more successful than we could have imagined.”
The team from No.6 at the Savoy Hotel
To top it off, the team travelled to the Savoy Hotel on Monday and were delighted to win the award of Best Restaurant Outside London.
Not only that, but as a wonderful surprise they also won the overall category of Best Restaurant of the Year!
A very successful campaign all round.
If you need inspiration on how to use SMS in your restaurant click here.