The Brickery Grill and Bar Serves up a Winning Combination of Humor and Hospitality with Listrak Email Marketing
By Megan Ouellet, Director of Marketing for Listrak
June 14, 2007
The Brickery Grill and Bar has been one of Atlanta’s leading neighborhood family-friendly restaurants for the past 16 years. And by family restaurant, we are not talking about a large redundant chain you can find on any city street. The Brickery offers southern hospitality where the atmosphere is similar to a casual barbeque at your best friend’s house, if your best friend happens to be a gourmet chef. The Brickery specializes in southern comfort foods such as catfish, fried chicken, and ribs, hardy down-home favorites like enormous gourmet burgers and beef brisket, inspiring lighter fare such as jumbo lump crab cakes and made to order salads, and delectable desserts like homemade blackberry cobbler.
If you think the food sounds good, visit the website and look at the pictures. Bruce Alterman and his wife Sally, the owners and proprietors of The Brickery, and David Nerquaye, the General Manager, took the pictures themselves of actual mouth-watering dishes being served to their guests. Their motto is “casual dining…serious food” and The Brickery lives up to that promise. The combination of the great food, fair prices, and the welcoming, fun, family-friendly atmosphere has made The Brickery a neighborhood favorite, and Bruce and Sally’s generous natures and positive attitudes have helped turn patrons into friends, and very loyal customers.
Getting Started
Two years ago, Bruce and Sally Alterman were like a lot of other proprietors of family-owned restaurants. They realized the value of collecting patron’s email addresses from reservation lists and business cards and they knew that, through clever promotions and frequent email marketing, they could encourage patrons to make The Brickery part of their regular routine. Their first email went out to about 500 patrons, but in order to ensure delivery, they could only send out up to 10 emails at a time. Any more than that and their ISP would block the emails from being sent to specific email clients. In particular, they noticed that emails were not being delivered to bellsouth.com email addresses, and, as a Bell South customer, they knew they needed to find a better way. However, while it was cumbersome and time-consuming at first, the Altermans had made the commitment to email marketing and they knew that, in time, they would see positive results.
The Brickery’s first few email campaigns included information on weekly kid’s nights, all you can eat specials, and discounts on popular items. The emails mimicked The Brickery’s postcards from their direct marketing campaigns. For a company just getting started with email marketing, Bruce and Sally understood that branding and repetitive messaging was the best way to build name recognition and their hard work soon paid off.
Within the first few months The Brickery added an opt-in form to their website so patrons could join its Preferred Customer list. The Brickery sends a welcome message that includes at $10 gift certificate, and it clearly states that each future email will include a special discount so preferred customers know exactly what to expect from future email communications.
The Brickery also signed up with bCentral so it could better manage its email campaigns. Using an email marketing solution helped with the deliverability issues and it gave The Brickery the ability to track results. The Altermans were able to determine the right schedule for sending emails as emails delivered on Monday morning announcing the weekly special had the highest open rate. They were able to test different subject lines and learned that “From the Brickery” worked best for their contacts as emails with subject lines such as “Free dessert from the Brickery” were being delivered to the junk mail folders because the word “Free” set off the spam filters, and emails with subject lines such as “25percent off crab cakes from the Brickery” would be deleted automatically by the contacts that did not care for the food being offered. Keeping the subject line simple ensured that their preferred customers opened the message to read what the weekly special was, and based on the open rate, The Brickery was able to estimate the number of patrons that would take advantage of the offer.
Over the next two years The Brickery was able to fine tune and perfect its messaging, and it has grown its list to over 3,700 contacts. The emails now feature enticing visuals of their appetizing food and a tongue-in-cheek humor that encourages the recipients to open the emails week after week. While the generous offers are still the same, the messaging has turned into a friendly banter that promotes interaction. For example, one recent email stated, “Have you been to the gas pump lately? Have you watched the news? We’re waiting to hear some good news, so if you come in and tell us something good, you’ll receive 20 percent off your entire bill.” And the response was great. Not only did The Brickery see an increase in business over the next week, but the wait staff was interacting with patrons on a much more personal level. Patrons would tell their waiters good news about themselves, such as acceptance to college, marriage proposals, or new home purchases, and suddenly the mood in the restaurant turned into an ongoing celebration. The staff got to know their customers better, and even other patrons were able to learn something new about their neighbors. The Brickery became the place to meet to catch up with old friends, and to meet new ones.
