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TableCheck EDM

Overview

Electronic Direct Mail (“EDM”) Marketing provides the means to engage with guests by email post-visit and gain repeat business. Use cases include:

  • Inform guests of new venue openings

  • Promote seasonal and holiday menu offerings

  • Invite guests to visit for anniversary and birthday

 

Core Concepts

  • Customer Data: The EDM feature only sends mails to your customers who have opted-in to receive marketing mails. The opt-in typically happens at the time they book a reservation, however, there are other opt-in touch points as well. Customers can unsubscribe (opt-out) from receiving mails at any time.
  • Opt-In Form: Configurable webpage where diners can opt-in for marketing, accessible by QR code.
  • Campaign: A marketing campaign which you wish to run, for example, “Spring 2022 Terrace Dining Promotion”. The emails sent are tagged by Campaign, and you will be able to see open-rate and booking success rate per campaign.
  • Mail Template: The contents of each marketing mail, including text, images, and links. In general, you will create a new Mail Template for each Campaign.
  • Mail Theme: Defines the brand colors, fonts, standard header and footer which is standardized across each mail you send. Mail Themes can also be controlled centrally by HQ if needed so that individual properties don't change them.
  • Audience: The target audience of your Campaign, i.e. to whom you wish to send mails. By default, Campaigns are targeted at all guests who have opted-in for marketing. You may create more fine-grained targeting, e.g. "Customers with VIP tag that spend over $100 per visit on average".
  • Blast: A batch of emails sent by the Campaign. Some Campaigns may be sent as a single-blast; others might be recurring ones set to send a Blast each month, for example to customers having a birthday or anniversary within the next month.

 

Step-by-step Instructions

The EDM feature consists of various components that are shown as different tabs on TableCheck Settings system. They are listed below:

  1. Email Templates

  2. Sender Address & Reply-To Address

  3. Audiences

  4. Campaigns

  5. Blasts

  6. Viewing Campaign Results

  7. Configuring an Opt-in Form

  8. Unsubscribing

Below is a guide on how to create & send a mass email through TableCheck.

1. EDM Themes & Email Templates

EDM Theme

EDM Theme defines the colors for the various components of an EDM. The theme components and a sample content block are shown below. 

 

EDM Template

This is where the actual email content is created & designed.

In order to create a new Email Template, go to EDM Marketing → Email Templates → New EDM Template

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Select the parameters as desired under the Basic tab.

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  1. Name - Give a suitable name to the template. The name is only for internal reference and will not be displayed anywhere in the email.

  2. EDM Theme - Select the desired theme from the drop-down list.

  3. Language - Select the language of your template content. You may add additional language variants for the same template after creating the initial template.

  4. EDM Reply Address - Select the Reply address from the drop-down list. When a guest replies to an EDM receive, the reply will go to this address.

  5. Subject - Enter the subject line of the email, which will be visible to guests. Keep it short & catchy. You can also have mail merge here (& anywhere else in the template). The fields that can be inserted & the commands for them are:

  • Customer Full Name: {{customer_name}}

  • Customer Last Name: {{customer_last_name}}

  • Customer First Name: {{customer_first_name}}

  • Unsubscribe URL: {{unsubscribe_url}}

6. Preview - This is the text that is displayed right after the subject in the same line.

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Next, go to the Content tab and click Add Section

You can add multiple sections in an email template by clicking Add Section.

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7. Layout - There are 4 options here as shown.

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Note: It is recommended to have images above 600 px. Images will be auto-resized hence extremely small images are not suggested. 3:1 ratio is idea, the aspect ratio will be preserved.

  • Image on Top: Displays the image above the text content.

  • Image on Left: Displays the image on the left and content on the right.

  • Image on Right: Displays the image on the right and content on the left.

  • 3-Column Card: Displays the image & text as a card in a 3-column layout. Cards always will display at the bottom of the the mail, below the other sections.

 

8. Image - Select the image as desired. The formats supported are jpeg, png, bmp, gif. The placement of the image is determined by the “Layout” parameter (see above). In addition, if CTA Link URL is set, clicking the image will also go to this link.

9. Title Text - Title for the section.

10. Content Text - Content for the section, displayed right below Title. Can be raw text or HTML.

11. CTA Button Text - The text on the button. Note that the button will not display unless “Link URL” below is also specified.

12. CTA Link URL - The URL to which the above Image and CTA button should be linked.

13. Show advanced options - Click it to enter parameters such as divider & UTM tags.

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14. Divider - You can check the relevant boxes to add a divider above and/or below the section. Adding dividers is recommended when there are multiple sections in an email.

The yellow highlighted parts are the dividers in the below image.

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15. Image Alt Text - This is the text displayed even if an image is broken/ not displayed in the email.

16. UTM Content Tag - Used for traffic tracking in Google Analytics, etc. Sets the utm_content tags for the image and button links respectively.

17. Add Section - Click to add more section and enter all the above parameters in the new section(s).

Click Create EDM Template when all the parameters are added.

The template is thus created as shown below:

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You can also add a flyer as as image, or also create a stack of images (by leaving all other fields empty). Examples are shown below.

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Flyer as an image

 

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Stack of images/ flyers

Note: Kindly note that flyers should be designed according to brand guidelines. TableCheck does not provide an image editor.

Click Add Language if you want to add more languages for the email.

Select the desired language and then enter the content as shown earlier for English.

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Note: When the EDM template is configured in multiple languages, guests receive the email in the language as indicated in their TableCheck profile. If the indicated language in the guest profile is not a configured language, they will receive the template in English (or whichever language template you have created.)

You can preview the email template thus created by clicking the eye icon.

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Details such as Sender & Reply-to addresses, Subject etc. are also shown in the preview along with the mail body.

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Within the preview, you can (and are recommended to) click Test button at the top right to send a test email to yourself to ensure the email looks how you expected it to be.

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2. Sender Address & Reply-To Address

You can create as many Sender & Reply Addresses as you want.

In the Senders tab, click New EDM Sender/ New EDM Reply Address.

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Enter the name that you want to be displayed and the Email ID. Click Create EDM Sender/ EDM Reply Address.

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Note: Once you have created the EDM Reply Addresses, you can go back to the Email Template and select it under EDM Reply Address. 

Also, if you don’t set a reply address, replies will go to the sender address by default.

 

3. Audience

This is where you can create the audience based on certain criteria.

To create a new audience click Please create a new EDM Audience.

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The audience can be filtered based on many criteria such as tags, likes, events, visit history etc. Below samples shows filtering audience based on VIP tag.

Click Create EDM Audience once the criteria is selected.

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The filtered audience is thus created and the number of customer profiles that matches the criteria is also displayed.

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4. Campaigns

Click Please create a new EDM Campaign.

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Enter the parameters as shown below and click Create EDM Campaign.

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Enter the parameters as shown in the below sample:

  1. Name - Give your campaign a unique name internal reference. This name will not be displayed anywhere in the email.

  2. UTM Campaign Tag - (Required) The utm_campaign tag which will appear in link URLs for tracking purposes (e.g. Google Analytics.) This should a unique tag for the campaign, e.g. “summer-2022-staycation”.

  3. Email Template - (Required) Select the template to use in the campaign.

  4. EDM Audiences - (Required) Select the audience.

  5. Type - One-off / Recurring

  6. Start Date - The date on which you want to send the campaign.

  7. Time of Day - The time at which you want to send the campaign.

  8. End Date - (*Recurring campaigns only) The date to end the campaign

  9. Sending Interval - (*Recurring campaigns only) The frequency at which to send blasts, e.g. “Every 2 months”.

  10. UTM Source Tag - The utm_source tag which will appear in link URLs for tracking purposes. Defaults to “tablecheck_edm”. Recommended to leave this as-is, unless you have specific tracking requirements otherwise.

  11. UTM Medium Tag - The utm_medium tag which will appear in link URLs for tracking purposes. Defaults to "email". Recommended to leave this as-is, unless you have specific tracking requirements otherwise.

The campaign is now created.

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5. Blasts

Already completed campaigns and scheduled campaigns are displayed under Blasts.

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6. Viewing Campaign Results

Once the campaign is sent, the results are sown under Campaigns → Results tab.

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For a recurring campaign, you will be able to see the results of each blast by clicking the campaign name.

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  • Recipients - Number of messages successfully sent. Includes any delivered message, including ones which went to spam folder.

  • Opens - Number of people who viewed the email at least once.

  • Clicks - Number of people who clicked at least one CTA button/image in the mail.

  • Reservations - Number of reservations booked due to the email.

  • Pax - Number of covers booked due to the mail.

  • Spam - Number of messages which were delivered but were put in the recipients spam folder.

  • Bounced - Number of messages which were sent but failed to deliver to the user’s inbox.

  • Skipped - Number of receipts who were skipped, for example, due to not sending to the same email address twice.

  • Failed - Number of mails which failed due, e.g. to system error.

 

7. Configuring an Opt-in Form and QR Code

Click Please create a new EDM Opt-in Form.

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Most of the parameters have default values as shown below but they also can be customized. Click Create EDM Opt-in Form.

The first tab, Basic has the following parameters.

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  1. Email Input - Required by default, can be made optional/ hidden but strongly recommended to keep it as a mandatory field.

  2. Phone Input - Hide by default, can make it optional/ required.

  3. Title -The heading of the form

  4. Content -The text just under the Title, can be a short description of what the form does.

  5. Fine Print - The lighter text that appears right above the CTA button.

  6. CTA Button Text

  7. Success message - The message displayed after the user clicks the CTA button.

  8. Success CTA Button Text - Optional CTA button that can be displayed on the Success page.

  9. Success CTA Link URL - The URL for the above Success CTA Button.

 

A URL as well as QR code are generated for the created EDM Opt-in Form.

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If you want to create multiple links/ QR codes for opt-in via different channels, click the Links tab and then click Add EDM Opt-in Link.

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Enter the details as desired. The URL links and QR codes are generated as shown.

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Clicking the URL will show the below (default) example page.
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8. Unsubscribing

The unsubscribe from marketing option is a part of the footer by default. You can also test it by clicking Unsubscribe Form under Opt-in Forms.

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A page like below will be displayed. You can also copy the URL of this page and add it anywhere on your website etc.
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