As marketing becomes increasingly digital and personalized, restaurants are rethinking how they connect with guests.
Collecting and using emails, phone numbers, or both can transform your restaurant communication strategy and strengthen both your restaurant customer loyalty program and broader restaurant customer relationship management efforts.
Let’s unpack the pros, cons, and compliance considerations.
The Pros and Cons of Sending Emails
Is Email Marketing Effective for Restaurants?
Email remains one of the most cost-effective ways for restaurants to reach customers. Email outreach is the cheapest and most direct form of digital marketing. Done correctly, email marketing can provide the highest ROI (return on investment) of direct outreach.
Email works especially well for:
- Brand storytelling
- Loyalty program updates
- Longer stories or visual content
- Less urgent promotions
Together, these strengths make email a natural fit for supporting a polished, consistent restaurant communication strategy.
Email Marketing Still Works for Restaurants
For full-service restaurants or brands that lean heavily on ambiance and concept, email is a natural fit. It encourages deeper engagement over time and helps build loyalty in a relationship-driven way.
- Tell your story: Share brand updates, chef highlights, and events that engage guests.
- Showcase your brand visually: Use images and design to make emails feel polished and on-brand.
- Personalize with ease: Integrate with your restaurant customer relationship management system to send targeted messages.
- Respect your guests’ time: Email lets customers engage at their own pace without feeling interrupted, as opposed to texting or other direct customer outreach.
Email also provides a stable, owned channel for nurturing long-term loyalty, making it a powerful complement to any polished restaurant communication strategy or restaurant customer loyalty program.
Challenges of Building and Using a Restaurant Email List
When it comes to email, it’s important to have realistic expectations. Don’t expect a large rate of engagement. Email open rates are usually between 17 and 28 percent, with click-through rates of about 2–5 percent.
To make the most of email marketing despite these numbers, you should:
- Craft thoughtful messaging: Make every email meaningful by aligning content with guest interests, promotions, or events.
- Use segmentation: Send targeted messages to the right audience based on preferences, behavior, or loyalty tier, such as promoting weekday lunch specials to nearby workers.
- Stay consistent: Maintain a regular schedule so guests know what to expect without being overwhelmed.
- Quality over quantity: Avoid blasting too many unfocused promotions to keep your audience engaged and protect your brand reputation.
By following these practices, email can be highly effective for restaurants. But it’s important to remember that it’s not an instant-response channel. For that, you need SMS.
The Benefits of Doing SMS Marketing
SMS stands for Short Message Service – you probably call it texting. It’s a fast, highly engaging way to reach customers directly to share promotions, daily specials, or order updates.
Why SMS Marketing Delivers High Engagement for Restaurants
While email allows for detailed storytelling, SMS connects with guests immediately.
SMS boasts a 98 percent open rate and a 20–36 percent click-through rate, making it arguably the most direct customer communication method available.
SMS is ideal for:
- Flash sales
- Limited-time offers
- Order updates
- Takeout and delivery reminders
- Fast, simple calls to action
This level of immediacy directly supports strong restaurant customer relationship management, especially for restaurants with high volume or heavy delivery demand (including third-party delivery).
Why SMS Offers Higher Open and Click-Through Rates
SMS is effective because the customer sees the message right after you send it, and usually takes action just as fast.
This immediate visibility and high engagement make SMS particularly valuable for quick-service and fast-casual restaurants, where speed, convenience, and quick customer decisions — like ordering takeout or checking daily specials — are central to the guest experience.
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Risks, Compliance, and the Downsides of SMS Marketing
You don’t want to bug your guests. Irritating your customer is one down side to SMS, because messages almost always cause a notification of some kind that will interrupt the customer’s day.
And the legal requirements for SMS are stricter than they are for email. In the United States, you must:
- Obtain prior written consent: Make sure customers explicitly agree to receive SMS messages before sending.
- Clearly communicate terms: Let recipients know what kind of messages to expect and how frequently they’ll receive them.
- Always include an opt-out option: Give customers an easy way to stop receiving messages at any time.
Regulations in Canada are even stricter.
As you can see, SMS is more heavily regulated than email, and overuse or mismanagement can quickly annoy guests or even lead to compliance issues. Depending on your region, there may be anti-spam laws to prevent mass marketing to personal devices. Consequences can include fines and lawsuits.
Done right, however, it can be a highly effective, high-engagement channel.
Email vs. SMS: Which Works Best for Your Restaurant Type?
Understanding the strengths and limitations of each channel is one thing, but knowing which channel fits your restaurant type is key to driving real engagement and results.
I see clear patterns in how different restaurant types benefit from email versus SMS:
- QSRs and restaurants focused on takeout or delivery → SMS performs better
SMS works well in these settings because it’s fast, casual, and action-oriented. Guests can immediately see promotions, place orders, or respond to time-sensitive messages, which aligns perfectly with the quick-service experience. - Full-service or upscale restaurants → Email tends to deliver stronger results
Email is better suited here because it allows for richer storytelling, elegant visuals, and brand-building messages. It supports a thoughtful, consistent restaurant communication strategy and helps nurture long-term loyalty through a carefully managed restaurant customer loyalty program.
There’s no universal “better” channel. Success depends on your restaurant concept, guest expectations, and the type of interaction you want to foster. The key is matching the right channel to the right context.
How to Balance Email and SMS in Your Restaurant Communication Strategy
Avoid Guest Fatigue With a Smart Messaging Cadence
Communication is all about being strategic and delivering a consistent message across all of your outlets. Overcommunication leads to unsubscribes and mistrust, no matter the channel.
Use AI Tools To Improve Restaurant Marketing Personalization
I recommend leveraging AI-driven marketing platforms like Dyne to automate segmentation, timing, and frequency, especially as part of a larger restaurant customer loyalty program.
AI helps restaurants deliver relevant content without overwhelming guests, while ensuring that every message supports good restaurant customer relationship management.
Best Practices for Using Customer Emails and Phone Numbers Responsibly
Generally, these are the three main best practices:
- Transparency: Make consent, especially for SMS, crystal clear.
- Easy opt-out: Always offer a simple way to unsubscribe.
- Moderation: Don’t overload the market with promotional messaging.
It’s no longer about blasting a billboard-like message to as many people as possible. It’s more effective to deliver the right message, to the right person, at the right time.
To achieve this, restaurants need to group their guests based on behaviors and preferences, a process called segmentation. That could look like identifying weekend regulars or guests who always order delivery, for instance. Pairing segmentation with guest data analytics helps you send more relevant and effective messages.
You can do this manually, but it's time-consuming. That’s where using a tool or working with a partner helps. Como and Froogal offer platforms that enable this kind of personalization.
Bringing It All Together
Both email and SMS can be incredibly powerful when used strategically.
Whether you focus on brand-building through email, high-engagement SMS promotions, or a balanced approach, the key is integrating both channels into your restaurant communication strategy.
The most successful restaurants use every tool strategically — email for storytelling, SMS for immediacy — so every message works together, not against each other.
Doing this strengthens your restaurant customer loyalty program and lets you leverage smart restaurant customer relationship management practices.
Take Your Restaurant Marketing to the Next Level
If you’re ready to elevate your restaurant communication strategy, I can help. Schedule a consultation with me today to get personalized insights on collecting guest information responsibly, engaging customers without overwhelming them, and turning every message into a meaningful connection.
