For Delhi Brasserie & Rishi

My Email Dated 4th April

 

I’ve now received the contact details of everyone who has made an online reservation since Sept 2020 and attached it below.

There are nearly 9000 entries on the csv sheet, so it’s going to take a lot of work for someone to go through and try and evaluate which ones are worth adding to a mailing list.

I’m not sure if you suggested the idea to them or if it’s their idea, but it will obviously need a discussion about the practicalities of what’s involved.

They already have a Mailchimp account but the costing for up to 10,000 contacts is £88 pm for the 1st 12 months and then £105 pm after that – and for up to 15,000 is £150 pm initially, and then £176 pm after that. So costly if not used, or successful.

If you do decide to go with MailChimp, then the Online Booking software has an Addon (for a one-off cost of just 60 Euro) to add future diners into the list.

In my emails to the developer, I expressed my concern about creating a list from the previous contacts, regarding messages being very quickly identified as Spam and not delivered.

He said…

 

Quality might be ok, but there some other aspects:

* Is it legal to send emails in UK without consent? In EU, GDPR says no.
* If they will not use any tools, they will be either in blacklist or in spam
* If they use their domain email, then if it will be in spam, good luck to recover.

I have experience in sending mass emails, there is few tips

* Need new domain
* Need a tool to handle mass sending
* Need to warm up domain for 2-4 weeks
* Need several email addresses
* Need a strategy of emails and follow up emails
* A/B testing

I can offer that as well but need more information about campaign.

 

I’ll leave it with you, but please feel free to give me a call if there’s anything else you need to consider.

 

My Email Dated 28th April

 

I’ve had a response back from the developer now and this is what he has said. Please bear in mind the initial advice he gave in our original email series about this on Friday, 4th April.

 

Hi Alan

This is what we can do to send emails to restaurant emails that will guarantee delivery* and not compromise the main domain:

* we follow the best recommendations to make delivery happen, but there are factors that we can not control or foresee.

Work package:
Setup: Domain, Email Workspace, Email accounts
Configure: MX, SPF, DKIM, DMARC, Tracking Domain (used by Instantly)
Prepare email scripts
Verify email list
Instantly: set up
Instantly: configure email campaign
Instantly: (re)format and load email list
Instantly: warm-up, manage contacts

Note (for 1 email account):
– It is needed 3-4 weeks warming before sending the real emails, not to get blocked
– Max 30 emails per day / 800 monthly

So in order to send 9000 emails, I’m going to setup 10 email accounts.

This work would cost 2000 EUR and will take 2 months time to complete.

There will be fees on top of the work package: domain ~12 EUR, Instantly ~100 EUR/mon, Email validation ~70 EUR

Let me know if you have any questions or concerns.

 

After receiving this I replied with…

Hi Sergie,

Many thanks for this, I will share it with the business, but I fear this cost may be prohibitive as it’s not exactly a ‘warm’ audience they’ll be sending to.

However, I feel that there is room for some refinement with the list, so I’m not sure what difference this may make to the costing?

They have already got the original list of nearly 9000 down to 6000, but what difference would it make if they were even more selective and got this down to 2000 – 3000, as a starting point?

Plus, we would like to begin adding new online booking contacts to the list on an ongoing basis. Is this included in your costing?

I take it that you would be using Instantly rather than MailChimp to manage the list and send the emails?

If you can quote on this please, then I will present it to the local marketing guy, who can then present it to the business owners.

Many thanks once again Sergei, it’s much appreciated.

 

And his last response to this was…

Hi Alan,

The volume does not much reduce the costs. It will require less accounts to be created and monitored.
Offer was only for sending emails to past customers.

Next logical step after that is to transfer customers who reacted somehow to those emails (opened or replied to email) to Mailchimp account and setup reservation system to send emails to Mailchimp and then setup campaigns there. I can setup this part for 100 EUR + costs of the maiclhimp, that is about 90 EUR per month.

This step is better to do when email warm up is done in instantly, but existing email account can be used, as it is less risky. We will ask customers consent to contact by email.

https://mailchimp.com/pricing/marketing/?currency=EUR

 

I’m not sure what your initial thoughts are, but I do think that this is a lot to pay for what will primarily be a very cold list.

I wonder if it’s best to start with collecting diners’ details via the Online Booking Software – as the basis for an ongoing list and campaign – and possibly adding fewer on the past database into this list more gradually. Say a few hundred at a time – and only after further refinement and then running them through an email verification checker service too, first. I’ve used this one before, but there are plenty of options.

I’m away until the 19th May after tomorrow, but please feel free to give me a call if you need clarification on anything before discussing things with Jabar & Bor, when you next get the chance.