On the menu: Restaurants reach out to customers through e-mail - The Business Review (Albany):

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picked it up and bounced it back foradultf content," Lamparelli said. Restaurant owners throughout the Capitalk Region are getting a taste for the power of the written word as theyuse e-mai to stay in touch with customers and entice them to keep cominhg back. These aren't mass electronic mailinge that get tagged as junk by a contengt filter and land in aspam folder. That approach can irritatew people and turn them off tothe Rather, these are sent to customersx who willingly hand over their e-mail address when they go out to eat (typicallyy on a request slip included with their bill). That make s them much more receptive when the messageas show up intheir in-box.
Some restaurant ownersw stick tothe basics, such as a briefc message, coupons and announcements about upcomingg specials. Others get more creative, and The 2,500 subscribers to the weekly newsletter sent by inSaratogw Springs, for instance, get an elaborate description of what chef Paul Parker is preparing in the kitchen as well as an insider's take on what it'a like to own a French restaurant and raise two childreb at the same time. Co-owner Cheryl Clarkm provides regular updates on the happenings ofnearly 4-year-olc Nicholas, or "Nico," as he'a called, and his 1-year-old Léo.
The triumphs and travails of thei daily lives are familiar to parents theworld over, such as Nico'sz penchant for playing with buttonsz in the car that he shouldn't touch and Léo'a first tentative steps at walking by herself. a former business reporter at , has been writinh the e-mail newsletters for the past five She got a sense forhow well-readf they are three weeks before Nico was born. The servee she uses had been shut downfor maintenance, so the e-maild didn't arrive as usual in subscriber mailboxes on a Fridau morning. She said she got 500 e-mails from people wonderin g if the delay was becausde she had goneinto labor. The reaction surprisee her.
"It's unusually well-read," she said. Clar added, "What makes it good for businessa is I have people who are voluntarily readingv my ads oncea week. The people choosing to do this are likelh to eat atmy restaurant." At Garcia's, 2,250 peopler are enrolled in the restaurant'sd e-mail club, Lamparelli said. He uses the messages to publicizs upcoming specialsand discounts. A recent newsletter offered a free coffee, latte or espresso to any subscribere who brought in a copy ofthe e-mail (Lamparelli had just purchasex a new espresso maker and wanted to get his staff in how it worked).
After the elections in November, he used e-mail to get the word out aboutf all those leftover campaign signs litteringthe roads. Brinf in an old sign, Lamparelli and receive a free appetizer. About 300 signz were turned in. "I just think it's a greart PR thing," Lamparelli said. "It constantly keeps the restaurant'se name in front of the While Clark creates the text files on her own and distributes them usingba listserv, Lamparelli and others rely on outsidw companies to provide a template in whichb they insert text and graphics. The companies handle other tasks, such as generating an automaticbirthdayh greetings.
There's a cottage industry of e-mail marketerse that cater to restaurants, including in Waltham, and Fishbowl in Alexandria, Va. Lauraw Gosse, vice president of , said the firm providexs e-mail newsletter services to 150 national and regionakl chains and nearly 200 independent and smallchain operators, for a totaol of about 12,000 locations. While Fishbowl has the singlde largest number ofrestaurant clients, it's still only a fractiob of the food service "There's a huge numbedr of restaurants that haven't done it," Gosse said.
Sincs the biggest stumbling blockm for most small restaurant owners is findinfg the time to come up with the Fishbowl provides a template that can befilled in. Sandhy A.G. Pogue, a partner in The Epicureah at Sterup Squarein Pittstown, said it costs him $125 for six monthsw of service through Constant Contact. Pogue and his Claire Lussier-Pogue, have been building up thei r mailing list for the pastthrewe years. They now have more than 450 e-maio addresses. They started e-mailing newsletterse after opening a culinary club at the restauranttin July. The newsletters feature a photograph ofthe restaurant'sz rustic interior and describes the weekend menu for the culinaryg club.
Pogue said he can tell whetherthe e-mails were opened, if any linkws were clicked or if the message was forwardec to someone else.