The joy of text
Restaurants are beginning to see text messaging as a lucrative marketing tool. Yet the problems of junk mail could be doing more harm than good. Mick Whitworth reports.
It's a club anyone can join: you just need a mobile phone and access to the Internet, and within seconds you can become a "text member" of Ditto. This 72-seat restaurant in Wandsworth, south-west London, is among a small but growing band of bars, clubs and restaurants that see text messaging as the coolest way to build business.
Just go to the Ditto Web site at www.doditto.co.uk, find the reservations section and click on the link labelled "ditto text member". Give your name, postcode and mobile number, hit "submit" and you're in. Then, every three or four weeks, you can expect to receive text alerts of special offers and events at this "modern eclectic" eatery sent directly to your mobile.
Moving with the times
It's a new venture for Ditto, which is still assembling its database and has just 400 numbers so far out of a target of 1,000 potential text members. Co-owner Giles Cooper has already used text messaging to pull in full houses of rugby fans for breakfasts in front of a video screen during the British Lions tour of Australia. "It's hard to gauge how much of that was down to the text messages and how much was our blackboards and street signs," he says, "but it's something quirky, and it's moving with the times."
That's certainly true. August was the first month in which more than one billion text messages were sent in the UK. The medium has even spawned its own trade body, the Wireless Marketing Association. The WMA represents about 30 companies in the UK industry, including infrastructure providers such as Experian and Logica, as well as marketing firms such as Brainstorm, which acts as the group's secretariat.
In February the WMA launched a code of practice for the sector, a key purpose of which was to clamp down on "spamming", the wireless equivalent of junk mail. "The WMA's aim is to get best practice happening so the industry takes off more rapidly," says Steve Wunker, chief executive officer at Brainstorm. "We've seen the harm that has been done to e-mail marketing because of the amount of spamming, so our goal is to limit the spam and persuade operators that wireless marketing has to be ‘opt-in' [by the consumer]."
At present, marketers can buy mobile phone numbers from database suppliers just as easily as they can buy postal addresses. This means that consumers who habitually provide their mobile numbers when filling in forms, without ticking the "no junk mail" box, risk being bombarded by unwanted promotional text messages.
Companies such as Brainstorm try to offer a halfway house. They work with the mobile networks to persuade mobile users to accept "sales alerts" from companies that fall inside their broad range of interests.
"There's a big risk of killing the golden goose if you don't handle it properly," says Martin MacMillan, chief executive officer of Mfinity, a WMA member whose business is firmly driven by the "opt in" notion. "Right now we're pretty unique," he claims, "because we take more of a relationship marketing approach."
Launched this summer, Mfinity has been trialling its text messaging system with a number of independent bars and restaurants in London and is also in talks with "half-a-dozen" chains, believed to include Regent Inns, Massive Pubs and the SFI Group.
Rather than buy mobile numbers en masse, Mfinity helps its clients build their databases from existing customers. Typically, diners will be asked to fill in a card at the table, perhaps while settling the bill, giving just their name and phone numbers. Alternatively, the restaurant might rely on customers picking up point of sale flyers. Once a stack of completed cards has been accumulated, the restaurateur logs on to Mfinity's Web site, enters a user name and password, then types in the new customer details. "You just keep putting in name, number and ‘go' until you've worked through the stack," says MacMillan.
The customer, too, has a degree of control - provided they can access the Internet. By logging on to Mfinity's Web site, www.mfinity.com, they can see all the establishments they have signed up to and can change their preferences to limit the number or type of messages received. Alternatively, they can withdraw from the system.
"We wanted to keep it simple," says MacMillan. "It's a low-intensity way for people to sign up. From the restaurant point of view, they can pinpoint people who're already committed to them. These messages are about as highly targeted as you could hope to get."
To send a message, the restaurateur again logs on to Mfinity.com, then types in the message, the number of people to receive it and the date and time when it should be sent. It can be organised days or weeks ahead if necessary, but one attraction of text messaging is its immediacy. The theory is that if it's Tuesday afternoon and bookings for that evening are looking thin, the restaurateur can arrange for a message to be sent out within minutes - offering a free bottle of wine, perhaps, or 10% off between 6pm and 8pm.
"The most important thing is that it's something your target customer will be interested in," says James Lohan, creative director at the White House bar and restaurant in Clapham, London, another Mfinity user. "It might be a new menu or the fact you've got a new DJ playing that night. Or you can use it as a teaser. For example, we're just starting to do Sunday lunches, so we might put out a message saying, ‘From the 16th, Sundays will never be the same again.' That way, people become inquisitive."
But it could be a while before texting becomes a mainstream medium for restaurants. At Bristol-based Text Marketer, a bulk-messaging service whose clients include Virgin Radio, spokesman Nick Rich says that bars and restaurants outside London are less proactive and have been slow to latch on to the opportunities presented by texting.
At Brainstorm, Wunker agrees that text messaging is only just starting to be picked up by restaurants, although the pub sector has been there for a while. He says that the relatively low cost of entry makes the format particularly suitable for independents. "Unlike other media, there's no high cost of creative, so there are no real economies of scale," he says. "The great thing from the restaurateur's point of view is that you can reach people when you want to. If you need to reach people working in the City at 12 noon, you can."
Contacts
Mfinity
0870 050 4000
www.mfinity.com
Wireless Marketing Association/Brainstorm Marketing Solutions
020 7074 7000
www.brainstorm.co.uk
Text Marketer
0117-924 9207
www.textmarketer.co.uk
Flytxt Mobile Marketing Solutions
020 7841 6400
www.flytxt.com
Mobile messaging: the costs
Compared with the cost of local newspaper advertising, the cost of using Mfinity's targeted text-messaging service looks low - provided it works.
Clients pay a monthly subscription of £50. For that, Mfinity hosts the client's database as well as operating the messaging system and providing point of sale material to gather names and numbers.
The £50 charge also includes 200 "free" messages per month. Further messages cost 10p each for most users, although the major chains might achieve bulk discounts of as much as 3p per message.
According to Mfinity's Martin MacMillan, even assuming the "doomsday scenario" where 100 messages brought only two responses, if those two were couples spending £20 a head, the client should still be well in pocket. He claims that a typical one-off quarter-page advert in a door-drop magazine or local paper would cost £470, compared with an annual Mfinity subscription cost of £600.
"It's very cheap," adds James Lohan at the White House in Clapham, London. "If you were to send a letter out, you'd be looking at 50p a time."
