This Is Why SMS Marketing Is The New Email Marketing…

244,955 consumers recently got an SMS from Pizza restaurants. Diningcity used to do its marketing by email and via social media, but recently it started sending SMS messages to experience how effective the use of SMS is.

Last year Diningcity and Leadhike started a collaboration. Diningcity is an online platform where consumers can get a large discount on dinners at Michelin star and top restaurants.

The platform only recognizes the best restaurants and, in addition to ongoing promotions, action weeks such as the well-known “Restaurant Week” and “Dining with the Stars” take place several times a year.

High open rates
As mentioned earlier, Diningcity, like many other organizations, previously communicated by e-mail and via social media. Although the popularity of this method of communication is still increasing, messages through these channels are often “standard” and often not even opened or read.

On the other hand, with an open rate of 98%, SMS is far more effective, with 90% of the SMS being read within 3 minutes.

Diningcity project manager: “SMS is a lot more personal than other communication channels. It is really different from normal, which made it attractive for us to test what the effect would be ”.

The Results
The result of SMS is solid! During the tests 10% of all SMS messages led to consumer action. At the time, the link mentioned in the SMS was clicked 25,122 times. Ultimately, 19,000 reservations were made during the campaign and an average of 27 people booked per reservation.

This means that the restaurants were able to welcome an additional 50,000 people over the previous Restaurant Weeks, through the use of SMS.

Compared to the regular restaurant weeks, in which previously no SMS was used as a promotion channel, this means an increase in turnover of approximately 10%.

And all this through a simple but brilliant text message. The provisional figures of the current Restaurant Week look even better than last time. With 2,860 reservations, restaurants will receive more than 7,000 extra people in the coming weeks, just through reservations made in response to the SMS!

The significant increase in reservations due to the use of SMS is beneficial for local restaurants during these times.

“SMS is seen as something that really reaches people,” says the project manager.

No-show reduction
After four positive campaigns in the past year, Diningcity has decided to soon test with SMS for appointment reminders in order to combat no-shows in restaurants.

The no-show problem is an issue that affects many sectors and tackling this problem can save a lot of money.

SMS can offer a solution here. By sending a timely reminder of the reservation made, one prevents the appointment from simply being forgotten. In addition, the threshold is raised against not complying with the reservation unannounced and it is thus reminded to cancel the reservation in good time.
In addition, sending the appointment reminder by consumers is seen as an extra service and highly appreciated.

More efficient service
Could the SMS also be beneficial for your business? Leadhike is happy to work along with you to optimize your business processes in order to boost customer inflow, and avoid unnecessary costs or inefficiency.

If your company encounters similar problems, we would like to invite you to contact us today, without any obligation, at hello@leadhike.com

We are happy to setup a suitable solution for you!