Food truck owners across the globe are seeking ways to increase profits, improve sales, and reach more consumers.  One of the easiest and least expensive way to do this, is through building an email marketing strategy for your food truck. If this sounds familiar, it should. We’ve discussed email marketing tactics for years, yet we’ve not seen much change within the industry.

Building An Food Truck Email Marketing Strategy That Works

Email marketing means more than just sending out mass emails to everyone who has ever bought something at your food truck. A properly conducted email marketing strategy includes building campaigns. The problem most vendors quickly find out is that this task can be complicated, but if you know what you are doing, the rewards can be great.

Spam

You should have explicit permission from everyone you send marketing emails to. This is about more than trying not to upset them; a recipient who considers your email spam can cause trouble for you with your service provider.

  • Don’t send unsolicited email marketing messages. If you send emails that are unsolicited, people will think you are a spammer. This hurts your reputation, but even worse, your IP may be blocked by some internet service providers. Build up your email list with website software such as MailChimp or AWeber.
  • Do what you can to make your email go into your customers’ inbox. You must work to get your email to pass ISPs and not get tagged as spam messages. If they get tagged as spam, your recipient may never see them. Check with customers to see if they are getting your emails, or if they’re no longer interested.
  • Provide a way to unsubscribe. Your email marketing strategy will be more effective if you make it easy for customers to unsubscribe. This may seem paradoxical, but people will tend to trust you more if you make them feel as if they are in control. Post the unsubscribe link in an obvious place so they can find it easily.

Design

  • Follow your branding parameters. The color scheme used in your emails should be consistent and should reflect your food truck brand. If your colors are all over the board, you will appear amateurish and your efforts may not achieve the results that you desire.
  • Design for mobility. As time passes, smartphones will become the medium that your subscribers use to read your emails. These mobile devices have lower screen resolution than traditional computer screens and provide much smaller screen size. Know the limitations that you have when it comes to these small displays, and ensure your emails can be read on a phone screen.

Content

  • Develop content that is interesting and informative to your customer base. The message should be engaging, and not filled with dry, boring content. The recipients are more likely to read it all the way through if it is not too long. As they see that your content is relevant, your reputation will grow.
  • Fonts matter. When sending a email as part of your marketing campaign, do not use a casual font. You want customers to take your product or business seriously, and they probably will not do that with an uncommon font. Pick out a font that is well known, such as Times Roman Numeral, Arial or Verdana.
  • Testing. Test and design your messages to be readable and functional even if the images and graphics get blocked. Many email clients do this automatically. Make sure that any images you do use have descriptive text substituted via the Alternative attribute that should be available in your email composition software interface.
  • Do not worry about anti-spam filtering when composing your food truck marketing emails. You do not need to avoid any particular phrases or use exotic spelling and punctuation in words like “free.” As long as you are not sending out unsolicited emails, you have already cleared the spam filter hurdle. Write for people instead of algorithms.
  • Get help with content. If you run out of ideas for your email marketing campaign, try allowing your customers to assist you. Do things like write down questions that you receive from customers. Then when you go to send the next email, you have a topic. Make sure to include the customer’s name for credit too.

RELATED: Food Truck Email Ideas Your Customers Love To Receive

Email List

  • Expand your email list. Offer a bonus, such as a coupon, discount code, or other freebie, in exchange for signing up for your email mailing list. People love receiving free things. An email address is low in value to the customer but high in value to your email list. People will gladly trade their contact information in exchange for a 10% discount off their next purchase.
  • Consider offering your existing customers a surprise bonus. Include a link in your email that tells them to click on it. This link will drive them to a special website page that shares a recipe or even gives them a discount the next time they visit your truck.
  • Segment your list. As email marketing marches on, the good old newsletter has become largely obsolete. Instead of sending out a general circular for all of your subscribers, spend some time to tailor emails to specific demographics within your list of subscribers.

The Bottom Line

Marketing via email is cost-effective and can dramatically increase sales in your food truck business. We hope this article showed you a simple way to get started. Building a great email marketing strategy can seem like a daunting prospect, but do not let your fears prevent you from getting started. As you have seen, it does not have to be onerous.

If you have not already employed an email marketing strategy into your marketing plan, what are you waiting for? Try out these ideas immediately to increase the impact of your food truck business!

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