Text messaging on the menu for local restaurant
London, June 2002: James Hedges, chef and proprietor of Jamiesons Restaurant in Binfield Village near Reading, has seen a significant increase in bookings since he integrated SMS(text messaging) into his marketing campaigns, with mkodo as his mobile relationship enabler.
Jamiesons has a loyal core of customers who dine there frequently and new customers who hear about it through friends and colleagues. The restaurant, which is highly regarded for its Modern British food, great service and relaxed atmosphere, is mostly fully booked at weekends. There are times, though, as with any restaurant, when Jamiesons experiences a lull, and Hedges saw this as an opportunity to increase his business. He did some research and decided text messaging would be well received among his target audience: once the preserve of 'yoof' marketers, text messaging is now growing most strongly among 25-54 year olds.
He selected mkodo to enable his text messaging activities because of their expertise and their proven ability to deliver reliable, cost-effective solutions through a completely managed service, which meant he didn't need any technical know-how. mkodo now enables Hedges to communicate with is customers in a individual and non-intrusive way.
"The beauty of text messaging," says Hedges, "is that it's dynamic, and you can react to situations quickly and test demand. It's also an incredibly cost effective way of increasing brand awareness (every message carries the Jamiesons name) and turnover.
"mkodo's approach made it really easy to run the campaigns. They take care of all the technology; all I had to do was input my customers' mobile numbers into a database," said Hedges. The hosted and fully managed service is accessed through mkodo's secure Internet site; text messages are delivered to customers in a timely and accurate way, with response data available to the client in real time for action and analysis.
The timing is important - because text messaging is such an immediate medium, and decisions are made accordingly, messages for lunchtime bookings are sent in the morning, dinner promotions in the afternoon. Customers are given a reference number, which they quote when booking one of the promotional offers.
The results are encouraging. Jamiesons' first campaign offered 'two for one' (two people eat for the price of one) and generated a 24% response rate, which essentially meant that the activity more than paid for itself.
"I am really pleased with the way customers have responded to my SMS communications; many tell me they are eagerly awaiting the next promotion - they see it as individual, forward thinking, and rewarding them for loyalty to the restaurant." Hedges is now looking at ways of attracting new customers to his restaurant using text messaging as the communications medium, eventually making it possible to book and confirm a table using text messaging - "Quite advanced for a restauranteur!" he laughs
