Tableseed.com
We get more customers to eat at your restaurant on their birthday using simple, well-timed email messages.
What we can do for you (explained in 10 seconds or less):
We design and operate simple, no-hassle birthday email clubs for restaurants. We can get more people to eat at your restaurant and – unlike most marketing services – we're willing to prove it.
What is a birthday email club?
Having a birthday email club means that a few days before their birthday your customers get an email with a special discount. Thanks to this well-timed offer, they'll decide to come to your restaurant and bring all their friends along too.
8 reasons why your restaurant needs a birthday email club:
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People rarely eat alone on their birthday.
If you can entice one customer with a birthday to come to your restaurant, you'll be rewarded with his or her group of friends tagging along (and ordering at full price.) -
People spend more money on their birthday.
If there's one day that people allow themselves to splurge on food and drinks, it's their birthday. -
People talk about their birthday plans to their friends, family, and co-workers.
Because of your birthday email club, the answer to the question "What are you doing for your birthday?" will include the name of your restaurant. This is extremely valuable "word of mouth" marketing. There will also be a second round of "word of mouth" when your customer talks about how much fun they had. -
Birthdays offer a rare opportunity to attract brand new, reluctant, or second-chance customers.
Getting brand new customers is one of the biggest marketing challenges facing a restaurant owner. Birthdays are great for getting these kinds of customers to eat at your restaurant. The guests of the birthday diner may have been unlikely to try your restaurant on their own, but because it wasn't their choice (the birthday diner decided on the restaurant) they will sample your restaurant. This gives you a golden opportunity to convert them into valuable regulars. -
Having a birthday email club is a competitive advantage for your restaurant.
For various reasons, the majority of restaurants do not have email birthday clubs yet. If a potential customer has to decide between eating at your restaurant (with a well-timed birthday discount) or eating at one of your competitors (at full price), he or she will choose your restaurant almost every time. -
You're building a long-term business asset.
In addition to the short-term benefits (more customers!), your birthday club email list has real, long-term value. If you ever decide to sell your restaurant (or open a new one), it will be worth substantially more with an email list of potential customers. -
Birthday clubs combine the power of discounting without negatively affecting long-term customer buying patterns.
Discounting can be a very powerful marketing strategy, but if used too often it can train your customers to wait for discounts before buying. Because birthdays are only once a year, you'll avoid this common marketing pitfall. -
Email marketing is the most cost effective way to advertise.
Sending targeted emails is a very effective – and inexpensive – way to get more customers. A recent study by the Direct Marketing Assocation showed that email marketing returned a whopping $43.62 for every dollar spent on it in 2009. That figure was even higher the year before. Not only that, but restaurants in particular enjoy some of the highest email open rates (the percentage of people who actually open an email.)
If birthday email clubs are so amazing, why doesn't every restaurant have one?
That's an easy one. The reason that most restaurants don't have a birthday email club is because they're a huge hassle. Restaurants that think about running their own birthday email club generally run right into
THE WALL OF HASSLES.
Ominous sounding, isn't it? The Wall of Hassles is what stands between you and the extra customers you need.
Signing up with Tableseed.com is like taking a WRECKING BALL to The Wall of Hassles.
We've identified the most difficult parts of running a birthday email club and designed the Tableseed service to get rid of them for you.
Hassle 1: Design A Professional Email Template
Your Problem:
You need to design a professional-looking email to entice customers to visit your restaurant.
Our Solution:
We're constantly improving our email template to make sure it attracts the highest percentage of customers. Plus, we customize our template for your restaurant.
Hassle 2: Maintain A Database Of Customer Birthdays
Your Problem:
You need to keep track of all your potential customers' birthdays.
Our Solution:
We keep everything up-to-date in your customer database without taking up any of your valuable time. Plus, our system automatically weeds out bad email addresses.
Hassle 3: Send Birthday Emails At The Right Time
Your Problem:
You need to send out birthday emails on time or you're throwing away customers.
Our Solution:
We're extremely flexible. You can send your birthday offer on your customer's birthday, 2 days before, 3 days after – whatever works best for your restaurant.
Hassle 4: Track The Effectiveness Of Your Birthday Club Program
Your Problem:
You need to make sure that the birthday email program is effective at attracting customers.
Our Solution:
Since you're only charged for the customers that our system generates (see below for more information), we have a powerful incentive to make your program as effective as possible. There's no need to interpret any data, the proof will show up directly in your bottom line.
Hassle 5: Print Birthday Club Sign Up Cards
Your Problem:
You need to print and maintain a stock of birthday club sign up cards.
Our Solution:
You won't have to design your own sign up cards or negotiate with a printing company. We print professional-looking sign up cards, offer them to you at a great price (1000 cards for $20 or 2000 cards for $30), and ship them to you for free.
That's great, but how much does it cost?
We have a unique pricing structure that puts the pressure on us to deliver on our promises. We only charge for the customers that our program generates for you and our price is only $1 per customer.
There are no monthly fees. No contracts either. If we don't send any extra customers your way, you don't pay anything.
To use the service you just need to buy credits (as a new customer, you get 10 free customer credits to start with.) Any unused credits are 100% refundable if you ever decide that this service isn't for you. Each credit is $1.00 and for each dollar we'll send you a customer. $20 will get you twenty customers, $100 will get you 100 customers, and so on.
That means you'll never be stuck paying a high monthly fee like you would with any of the do-it-yourself email marketing services. With the Tableseed.com service, your birthday email club will always pay for itself.
Okay, but how can you tell how many customers you're sending to my restaurant?
The best way to explain how our system works is with a story from the perspective of one of your potential customers.
Let's say there's a man named Bob who decides to eat at your restaurant for dinner one night. After he finishes his meal (which was delicious by the way – nice work!), the waitress asks him if he would like to join your birthday email club and leaves a small sign up card with his bill.
The card says "Join our birthday club and get a great deal on your birthday!" Bob likes great deals – who doesn't – so he writes down his email address and birthday and leaves the card on the table.
It's a few months later now and Bob's birthday is coming up. He hasn't made plans for dinner yet, but he knows that he wants to go out with his friends and family. He decides to check his email and sees a message from you offering him a free meal on his birthday. Plans made!
He clicks a personalized link in the email to reserve his discount and fills out a short form (more on that later) that lets you know when he's coming and how many guests he's planning on bringing along.
This part is the key to our whole system. Because your birthday club members have to fill out this form to get the discount, you'll know exactly how many customers our program is generating for you. You'll also know when to expect them and how big of a group they're bringing with them.
Back to the story... Bob eats at your restaurant for his birthday and brings along several friends (who all eat at full price.) Some of his companions had never tried your restaurant, but they left impressed. The next day, everyone tells their friends what a great time they had at your restaurant.
Congratulations, you just landed yourself a few more regular customers! And as an added bonus, you also get a whole bunch of positive word of mouth.
Sounds pretty smooth on the customers' end, but what do I have to do as the restaurant manager?
Since we deal with the technical side of things (email delivery, design, campaign and customer tracking), you don't have to do very much at all. To be more precise, you only need to do these two things:
1) You need to offer your customers the opportunity to join your birthday club.
The easiest way to do this is to have your waitstaff drop the sign up card on the table with the bill. Easy enough, right? We can print the sign up cards for you and keep you stocked up so you never run out.
2) You need to enter your customers' data into our system.
This is easy too. Simply login into your account dashboard (it looks like this) and click "Add Customers To Your Birthday Club List" (which will take you to a page that looks like this.) Then just enter the information in to the simple form on that page.
Or you can enter the new customers into the program of your choice (Microft Excel, Microsoft Word, Lotus, etc. – we'll take any format) and then just email us the file. Once we have the file we'll transfer the new customers into your list for you.
And that's all you have to do!
Outside of those two tasks, we take care of everything else. You just need to make sure your account has enough credits and then sit back and watch the customers roll in. Literally.
Our system lets you see the customers as they come in (it looks like this.) If you want, we can even send you an email notification whenever a new customer comes in or changes their plans.
Frequently Asked Questions
What does your email template look like?
We occasionally test different versions of our template to see if we can improve the customer conversion rate, but the email that will go out to your customer will generally looks something like this.
What does the customer see when they click the link in the email?
Each email has a personalized link that allows them to reserve their discount, the page that the customer lands on after clicking the link looks like this. This is the form that was mentioned earlier. If a customer changes their mind later, they can cancel their plans or change them to a different date simply by clicking the same link in the original email (which will then take them to a page like this.)
What if a customer says that he or she is going to show up, but doesn't?
If a customer fails to show up on the day they said they would, you simple mark them as a no-show and your credits will be refunded. We trust our customers not to abuse this feature which is why it's done on the honor system. If you say that they didn't show, then they didn't show.
What if a customer shows up, but they bring fewer guests than he or she said?
If a customer brings along fewer guests than expected, you can easily change the number of guests to the correct amount and any difference in customer credits will be refunded to your account immediately. If they bring along more guests than they said, consider those extra guests a gift from us to you. In other words, there's no need to adjust the number of guests upward.
What if want to offer something other than a free meal?
That's perfectly fine. Your birthday offer can be whatever you want – it's completely up to you. You choose the birthday offer, any restrictions on that offer, and the timeframe that the offer is available to your birthday club members. This is all editable at any time so you even can try different offers over time if you want.
Will you sell my customers' email addresses to third parties or use them for your own gain?
Never. Your email list is a valuable business asset and it belongs to you, not us. We will never use the information sent to us for any outside purposes and we will never, under any circumstances, withhold your email list from you. We take every precaution to safeguard your customers' information.
I want to let people sign up for my birthday club on my website. Can I do that with your system?
Absolutely! We even provide a simple piece of code to copy and paste into your website. We're also willing to help you customize the sign up form's appearance.
If I switch to your service can I import my existing email list?
As long as the email addresses were collected with the permissions of your customers, we will import any existing lists into our system. We will not import purchased email lists or participate in anything we would consider spam. Spamming your customers will hurt your business in the long run and it's a terrible, ineffective way to do business. Permission-based email marketing is the only way to go.
Can multiple people sign up for my birthday club using the same email address?
With our service, each birthday club member must have a his or her own email address. This helps prevent opportunistic customers from claiming multiple birthdays in the same year. We also have additional protections built in to our service to prevent this from happening.
Will you start sending emails out to my customers immediately after I sign up?
No, we won't start your campaign until you approve the initial design. We put together each campaign manually (usually within 1-2 business days after signing up.)
Will you send emails out to my customers that make my restaurant look unprofessional?
We know you don't take communications with your customers lightly and neither do we. We will never send anything to your customers that could be seen as unprofessional. As mentioned above, you'll be able review any major changes to your email messages.
Do you just do birthday email clubs? Can you also help out with other types of email marketing campaigns?
Our focus is birthday email clubs, but if you need help finding a more full-featured email marketing firm down the road we would be happy to help point you in the right direction. We are capable of running anniversary campaigns (or any other once-a-year type campaigns) but with our current system each campaign would require a separate account from your main birthday email club campaign.
Can I hear more about your company before I sign up?
Tableseed.com was founded in late 2009 by Aaron Quinn. We're located in Madison, Wisconsin. We're currently a tiny startup company but don't let our small size discourage you! What we lack in size, we make up for in personal customer service. We're committed to improving our service so that it brings the most value possible to your restaurant. That's the main reason why we made sure our business model aligned our incentives with yours. If you get more customers, our business will grow and we'll both be happy. If we don't get you any more customers, you will have lost nothing in trying us out. We've made sure all the risk falls on us.
If you made it this far and we still haven't piqued your interest, we would love to hear from you. If there's anything holding you back from signing up, please send an email directly to the founder of Tableseed.com, Aaron Quinn, at aaron@tableseed.com. Who knows, we may already have what you're looking for!
This is where the fine print would normally be. You know, the place where companies usually slip in some kind of catch or hidden downside to using their service. You won't find that here because we know our service will be useful to you. We're a "no fine print" kind of company. Just give us a try and we'll prove our value to you.