Restaurant Reminders Get Customers 5x Faster

More reminders? Yes indeed.

Our results show that customers who sign up for reminders actually end up using the coupon more often.

Reminders are the hidden secret of building restaurant sales/marketing funnels. People are busy in their everyday lives and need to be reminded (whether they requested or not) especially if they want to be reminded but just haven’t set it up.

If we can show or portray value by having great service online via follow ups, people will translate that great service to the perceived value of the restaurant.

So what other reminders can we set up for people besides the 24 hour Facebook reminders we already have?

Well, we’re actually going to implement a way for people to sign up for the 24 hour Facebook reminder even though we have it pretty much installed in all the key places.

Because the sign up will remind them of the coupon where our automatic 24 hour Facebook reminders only remind them of the last message that they received.

There are 3 channels where we can send reminders with Manychat:

1. SMS (Text message)
2. Email
3. Facebook Messenger

We are going to build reminders for each channel within their limits (yes, we’re going omnichannel)!

But first, before we build the reminders for each channel, we need to : 

1. get the necessary contact information for each channel. 
2. We also need their consent to send reminders. 
3. Lastly, we need to let them choose which channels they want to be reminded on.

Let’s start by going into our {Offer Name} Reminder flow for the current offer you are working on.

This flow will serve as the start of the reminder signup process where the person will choose which channels they want to be reminded on.

Again let’s understand where the person is coming from and where we want them to go.

The person will go into this flow if they clicked on a “Remind Me Later” button or quick reply throughout all of our flows for this offer.

At that point, the person will be expecting to sign up for a reminder or automatically be enrolled for a reminder.

In our flow, we will have them sign up for the reminder.

The exit point of this flow will be to sign up for whichever channel reminders they want to sign up for (email, facebook, sms).

To start this flow off with meeting the person’s expectations, let’s get straight to business and ask them where they would like their reminders sent to.

Here is the copy I use for that:

Where would you like me to send reminders about your {Offer Name} coupon to?

Then I put in 3 quick reply buttons. Guess what they are?

They are Facebook, Phone/Text/SMS and Email!

After the person chooses which channel they want a reminder on, we are going to send them to the right place to sign up.

If they choose Facebook to receive reminders, we are going to create conversations and delays to make sure they get that reminder in this flow.

If they choose Email or SMS reminders, we are going to send them to another flow to make sure we have their correct contact info for either channel.

Let’s take care of the easy stuff and redirect the user from the SMS and Email options to your  respective {Offer Name} Email Reminders and {Offer Name} SMS Reminders flow.

Click hold and drag the open gray circle next to your Email quick reply. Release your click in an empty area to open up the list of options.

Click on +Start Flow to open up a list of all of your flows.

Then select your {Offer Name} Email Reminder flow.

Make sure that your Email Reminder flow shows.

Let’s do the same for the SMS reminders.

Click hold and drag the open gray circle next to your Phone/SMS/Text MEssage quick reply. Release your click in an empty area to open up the list of options. Click on +Start Flow. Then select your {Offer Name} SMS Reminder flow.

Now that those two are taken care of (for now), let’s see how we should continue the conversation if the person selects Facebook as their reminder method/channel.

When someone chooses a reminder method, we should always help set the expectation on how they will receive the reminders. This means that we should explain when they will get their first reminder and how frequent they will get following reminders.

In the case of the Facebook reminder, we need to let them know that Facebook will only let us send them reminders 24 hours from now. If they are okay with this, then we can continue setting the reminder for them.

So let’s tell them that Facebook only lets us remind them within 24 hours, then give them the option of continuing with setting up the reminder or not.

Click, hold, and drag the open gray circle next to Facebook Reminders. Release your click in an empty area to open up the list of possible next steps. Choose + Message.

This will open a Message box that you can put your message in. You can use the Message that I typically use below:

Facebook only lets me remind you within 24 hours of your response.

I can remind you within 24 hours after you click ‘Yes’. Is that okay?

Then we want to give them the option of saying Yes or No. If they click Yes, that means they are okay with getting the reminder in the next 24 hours, then we will confirm that we have set up the Facebook Messenger reminder for them.

Then we will set a delay and send the reminder before 24 hours.

If they say No, then we should go back to giving them the option of either getting the reminder through Email or SMS.

Let’s set this up by creating two quick reply buttons – one that says Yes and one that says No.

Let’s take care of where the No button goes first because it will just go to a message and loop back towards the beginning of this flow where we re-ask where they want to receive their reminders.

From the No quick reply, click and hold on the open gray circle. Drag and release towards an open area to see a list of possible options. Click on +Message to add a Message box.

In the Message box, we are going to let them know that they can receive reminders a different way. This is what I write:

Okay, we can send the reminder through email or text message instead.

From here, we can give them the option to get reminders through Text or Email, then continue each option towards the Text or Email Reminder flows.

Create two quick replies in this Message box, one being “Get Text Reminders” and the other being “Get Email Reminders.”

For the Get Text Reminders quick reply, connect it to your {Offer Name} SMS Reminder flow.

For the Get Email Reminders quick reply, connect it to your {Offer Name} Email Reminder flow.

That’s it for the No quick reply!

From the Yes quick reply, continue the conversation with a message that confirms they will receive the reminder. 

This is the copy I use to confirm the reminder with them:

Okay! I will send you a reminder about your {{gaf_1706812}} coupon in just under 24 hours.

After they get that confirmation message, we are going to set a delay of just under 24 hours and send them a message that serves as a reminder.

Click and hold on the open gray circle next to “Next Step” in your Reminder Confirmation message. Drag and release in an empty area to open up a list of possible next steps. Choose Smart Delay.

I usually set my Smart Delay for a 24 hour reminder at 23 hours just in case the 24 hour timer is 1-2 seconds off and gets blocked my Manychat.

After the Smart Delay, we want to send them the message that serves as the reminder. Continue the flow with a Message:

Then type in your reminder message into the Message box.

This is what my reminder text looks like:

Just sending you the reminder you requested! Your {{gaf_1706812}} coupon is still available for use!

In every reminder, I like to give the person two options:

1. View/Use Coupon
2. Get Reminder

In this case, this is their reminder so for the 2nd option of getting a reminder, we are going to rename it as “Get Another Reminder.”

This is going to be a really cool loop (one loop that we actually do want) where customers can assign a 24 hour reminder to themselves every day!

In the Smart Delay box, click and hold on the open gray circle next to the “Next Step.” Drag and release in an open area to open up a list of possible next steps. Click on +Message. Write your reminder message or you can use mine:

Just sending you the reminder you requested! Your {{gaf_1706812}} coupon is still available for use!

Then create two quick replies, one being “View or Use Coupon” and the other being “Get Another Reminder.”

If they choose, “View or Use Coupon,” we want to lead them back to the Coupon flow where they can see the coupon and use the coupon.

If they choose “Get Another Reminder,” we want to loop them back to the start of this Reminder flow where they can choose their next reminder option.

From the View or Use Coupon button, let’s continue that to your {Offer Name} Coupon flow. Click on the open gray circle next to the View or Use Coupon quick reply. Drag and release it in an open area. Select + Start Flow. 

Click on the area where it says “Click to Select a Flow” to open your list of flows.

Then choose your {Offer Name} Coupon flow.

From the Get Another Reminder button, let’s continue that to the beginning of this reminder flow where they can choose where they want their next reminder. Click drag and release the open gray circle next to “Get Another Reminder” towards the beginning message of this flow. You should see that the button now connects back to the beginning of this flow.

We have the foundation setup for giving your customers the option to remind themselves of your offer. I’m so excited for you because this is just a valuable tool that not many restaurants, or businesses in general utilize. And my numbers show me a x% increase in offer usage when reminders are sent.

The next thing we want to do to this flow is to record any data we need (how do you think I got the stat for increase in offer usage from reminders?) hehe.

1. Apply tags and write data to CRM

Now that we have added value to our customers by giving them the option to get reminders, it’s now time to add value to the business by getting the data we need from these reminders.

There are a couple of stats that we want in this flow including:

1. How many people choose/prefer email/text/fb
2. How many people actually receive the reminders
3. How many people request extra reminders after the first
4. How many people click from reminders to get back into flow
5. How many people use coupon after gettings reminders (same day as reminder or how many days after reminder)

We are going to get all this data because it will give us the knowledge we need to make great decisions for your restaurant business.

The first piece of data we are going to implement is how many people signed up for the Facebook reminder.

After they confirm that they want the Facebook reminder, we are going to tag them with {Offer Name} Facebook Reminders.

This data will then go into your Google Sheets Restaurant CRM as a timestamp which we can then use two ways.

First, we can count how many people confirmed that they want the Facebook reminder. Second, we can do some math to see the average length of time it takes someone to use the coupon after they get the Facebook reminder. 

You might already be thinking ahead, and to give you peace of mind, yes we are going to do this for all types of reminders. =)

First, let’s apply a tag for {Offer Name} Facebook Reminders after they confirm that they want to receive the Facebook Reminder.

In the message where you ask them if it is still okay that you send a Facebook reminder within 24 hours, we want to reconnect the “Yes” quick reply to add the Facebook Reminder tag. 

Then connect that Action back to the Reminder confirmation message.

Now we have the {Offer Name} Facebook Reminders tag setup where we know if the person signed up for Facebook Reminders.

Next, let’s set up a Google Sheet action to record the time that they actually received the Facebook reminder.

After the message where you send them the reminder about the coupon via Facebook Messenger, add a Next Step for a Google Sheets action. Click on the open gray circle next to the “Next Step” text. Then drag and release to an empty area to show a list of possible next steps. Finally click on +Actions to add an action.

Click on the Actions box to open the Actions editor on the left side of the screen. Click on +Action to add an action and choose Google Sheets Actions.

Once you Google Sheets action is created, click on “Select action” to start configuring your Google Sheets interaction.

Setup your spreadsheet so that you update the row for any person whose User Id matches the current person’s Use Id. Then write the User Id to the MCID column and the Last Interaction to the Facebook Reminder column for this specific offer.

Then click on “Save” to save your settings.

Now you have two pieces of data:

1. If someone signed up for the Facebook reminder
2. When they received the Facebook reminder

I’m going to show you how this translates into actionable data later on.

This is what your {Offer Name} Reminders flow should look like right now:

Let’s move to enhance this flow!

2. Personalize The Experience To Prevent Extra Steps

We are going to add a feature where people will only see the option to sign up for a reminder if they haven’t signed up for it before.

For example, if they already signed up for Email Reminders, they won’t see the option to sign up for Email Reminders again and will only see the options to sign up for SMS Reminders and Facebook Reminders.

To achieve this, we are going to use conditions by checking tags. In the section above, we tagged the person if they confirmed that they want to receive Facebook Reminders.

So guess what we are going to do here?

We are going to check if they have that {Offer Name} Facebook Reminder tag for this offer. If they do, then we will not show them the option to sign up for Facebook Reminders.

If they don’t, then we will show them the option to sign up for Facebook Reminders.

At the beginning of the flow, disconnect the start step from the starting message that we already have.

Then reconnect it to a brand new Conditions step.

In this conditions step, let’s check if they are already signed up for Email Reminders first. Add a condition for checking if the person has the Email Reminders tag.

If they aren’t signed up for Email Reminders, we are going to give them all three reminder options. If they are signed up for Email Reminders, we are going to check what other reminder methods they are signed up for.

From the Email Reminders condition step, click on the open red circle (which means that they don’t have the Email Reminder tag) and drag it towards the original reminder method message that we have.

If you did it correctly, you can see that they are connected.

From the same Email Reminders condition step, click on the open green circle (which means that they do have the Email Reminder tag) and drag it towards an empty area. Click on + Condition to add another condition.

This time we are going to check if they are signed up for SMS Reminders.

Add a condition in this condition box to check if they have the {Offer Name} SMS Reminders tag for this specific offer you are building.

If they don’t have the tag (which means they are not signed up for SMS Reminders), we should give them the option to sign up for both SMS reminders and Facebook reminders.

If they do have the tag (which means they are signed up for SMS Reminders), then we are only going to show them the Facebook Reminder option.

In the conditions box where we check to see if they have the {Offer Name} SMS Reminders tag, click and hold the open red circle. Drag it towards an empty area and start a new message. In this message, you can copy and paste the exact text that you had for asking where the customer would like to receive reminders.

In this message, however, you only want to give the person options for sending reminders to Facebook and sending reminders to SMS/Phone.

Just like before, you can add these options as quick replies. Once you do, you can connect them to their respective next steps, continuing “Send to Facebook” to the Facebook confirmation message and continuing “Send To Phone” to the {Offer Name} SMS Reminders flow.

From the condition box where we checked if the person has the {Offer Name} SMS Reminders tag, let’s click and hold the empty green circle, then drag and release the click in an empty area. Click on +Message to start a new message here.

Copy and paste your text from the other reminder option messages. For this message, only make a quick reply button for “Send To Facebook” since, at this point, we know the person is already signed up for both SMS and Email reminders and the only reminder they can sign up for now are Facebook reminders.

Continue the “Send To Facebook” quick reply button to the Facebook Reminder Confirmation message.

Now we have some personalization set into this flow where people will not see options that they have already completed.

3. Prevent double reminders

What we need to do next is to stop the flow and redirect the person in case they went to a previous coupon message or other reminder method and used the coupon.

To do this, we are going to set up conditions throughout the flow to check if they Validated the coupon or not.

If they did validate the offer, we are going to send them a message that tells them they used the coupon already and that they can get their next offer or stay tuned for future offers if you don’t have other offers.

If they didn’t validate the offer, they can continue with this flow.

The first time that we are going to check this is immediately after the person enters this flow.

From the starting step in this Reminder flow, reconnect towards a new condition box. In this condition box, we are going to check to see if the person validated (used) this offer already.

If they did use the offer, we are going to send them to a message that tells them they used the offer.

If they didn’t use the offer, we are going to let them continue on in this reminder flow.

Make sure that the conditions box shows that “Tag isn’t {Offer Name} Validated.”

From this conditions box, click and hold on the open green circle. Then drag it towards your condition box that checks if the person is signed up for {Offer Name} Email Reminders. Connecting these two condition boxes will let the flow continue if the person has not validated the coupon.

From the same conditions box, click and hold on the open red circle. Drag it towards an empty area and choose Start a new flow. Choose your {Offer Name} coupon flow for this coupon.

Where else in this Reminders flow do we want to check if the person validated the coupon already?

We should check after they choose a reminder option.

We should also check after each time they have the opportunity to choose a button or quick reply.

Implement this same condition box after each button or quick reply. Then continue the flow if the person didn’t validate the coupon. Also discontinue the flow if the person validated the coupon by connecting that condition to the {Offer Name} Coupon flow.

4. Remind every 24 hours

Reminders within the reminder flow, huh?

It’s like stacking your investments. The more of these you have (that are good intent and set/demanded by the customer), the higher chance people won’t get stuck in your conversations.

Where in our Reminder flow would we want to automatically send a reminder message? The first place that I think is very necessary is immediately after they are presented the choice of where they want to send themselves reminders.

Sometimes, people see the list of options and never choose so its best to set up a reminder here.

It’s also best to set up reminders after every message where the ball is in the customers court. This means that we should implement it as the “Next Step” for every option that they don’t answer. (update october 2020, there’s an option to continue to a next step if they don’t reply. Crazy story: i was chatting with Manychat support about this for 2 hours. Then next day I refresh my manychat flow builder and see it as an option. I’d like to think that I helped push to implement this feature. Not likely, but i’d liek to believe it!)

We are going to implement the same Add {Offer Name} Stopped tag and Remove {Offer Name} Stopped tag to implement these reminders to ensure that they don’t get reminders when they have already continued and they only get reminders if they haven’t continued!

Follow this guide to implement these automatic reminders 

5. In Conclusion

So now you have a flow that lets the customer pick where they want to receive reminders. This flow also serves as a looped Facebook reminder (since Facebook reminders can only be sent within 24 hours and we usually want to send reminders for the life of the offer), then we give them the option to keep requesting reminders every 24 hours until the offer expires.

One thing you may have noticed in the flow is that there are continuations to the Email Reminder flow and SMS Reminders flow.

In these flows, we are going to get the necessary contact information from each person and set up a sequence of automatic reminders until the offer expiration date.

1. Setup Email Reminders

There are two ways you can set up email reminders with Manychat.

The first way is if you already have an email marketing system. Then you can link Manychat’s data with your own email marketing software’s data via Zapier.

Manychat does have a direct integration with Mailchimp, but it only shares the email address and no other information. That doesn’t really help us much if we don’t have the full data. So we have to use Zapier when it comes to integration Mailchimp with Manychat too.

The second way is to send emails straight from Manychat.

Which one is right for you? You can find out here.

Factors:

1. Pricing – manychat charges per email. If you already have an email marketing software, all you have to do is pay for zapier
2. Send trust – if you have a high send trust score with your email marketing software, you should send from there

If you plan on integrating your email marketing system, I will tell you where you can connect it. Then I will continue on and also show you how to send emails via Manychat.

Let’s go into our {Offer Name} Email Reminder flow.

In this flow, we want to accomplish 2 things:

1. Make sure we have their preferred email address for receiving reminders
2. Send reminder emails to that email address every x days, and only if they haven’t used the offer or if the offer didn’t expire. You can choose how many days apart you send your emails.

We also want to know how the person will be starting this flow and how the person will be ending this flow.

Someone can usually only get into this flow if you redirect them when they press a button or a quick reply button from a message.

For instance, in the previous flow we built (the reminder flow), we gave options to set up email reminders and led the conversation to go into this flow if they chose email reminders.

This flow will end when all the email reminders are complete. But each email reminder will have a link or button that goes back to the coupon flow.

The very first step we want to take in this flow is to check if we have the person’s email address.

If we do, we will confirm the email address that we have with them. If they confirm that the email address we have is correct, then we can continue the signup process.

If we don’t have their email address, we will ask them to input their email address.

In most cases, we should already have their email address from when they signed up for the coupon.

Once we have the correct email address, we want to start sending the email reminders.

After we confirm that we have the correct email address, we want to start sending the emails right away.

Connect the email confirmation message to a Send Email action.

Click on the Send Email box to open the email editor on the left side.

In the email editor, you will see a couple of fields that you need to fill out in order to send a successful email.

Remember, the purpose of this email is to get them to come back to the coupon and actually use the coupon.

One thing you also have to make sure of is that you have email sending turned on in Manychat.

You can do that in Settings > Email. Then make sure that your Email Channel is enabled. Input your sender’s name and reply-to email. You should definitely turn off ManyChat Branding because it adds an extra image to your email, which risks the email not being received by the recipient.

In your {Offer Name} Email Reminder flow, you have to fill out 5 different things in your email:

1. Subject
2. Preheader
3. Sender Name
4. Edit Design
5. Links

When someone receives your email, this is where each field will show:

[show gmail receive email]

So you can see that the Subject line is very important in getting the recipient to open your email. If they open your email, then they will see the Design of your email.

Since they requested the offer, I usually put “Your {Offer Name} Is Here!” This is very straightforward and let’s them know that the item they just requested in their email inbox… is now in their email inbox!

The Preheader is optional and just adds a description to your Subject line. If you don’t want to add a Preheader, then the first couple words of text in your Email Design will show instead. I usually like to put a Preheader to be as relevant as possible to the recipient without changing my Email Design to do so.

For Sender Name, you can put the name of your restaurant. You should put the name of your restaurant that shows on your Facebook page, which should also match your restaurant signage.

Before you edit the email design, you should add the link that you want to show at the end of the email. This will help you realize the clear objective that your email has, which is to send the person back to your coupon.

Click on the button just below the Links text and click on Open in Messenger. Then choose Start another Flow, and choose your {Offer Name} coupon flow for this respective coupon that you are building out email reminders for.

Lastly, let’s design the email. Don’t be intimidated here because I am going to make it very simple for you. We are literally just going to copy and paste the coupon text into this email. And it will magically become a good-looking email.

Copy your coupon text and paste it in the text area of the email.

Then add a picture.

And now you have a legit looking email!

One thing we may want to do is to ask the person if they received the email. Sometimes we have experienced that the person typed typos in their email address so we want to confirm that they actually received it. If they didn’t we want to lead them back to the sign up process. If they did get the email, we will continue the sequence of reminders.

So let’s connect this email action to a message. In the message, let’s ask the person if they received the email by saying “Did you get the email?”

Put in quick reply buttons of Yes and No. If they click No, then we want them to go through the signup process again so they can edit their email address. Connect the No quick reply back to the beginning of the email sign up.

If they click Yes, then we want to continue with sending the sequence of emails, but we want to let them know first. So let’s connect the Yes to a new message that says “Great! We will email you another reminder in 3 days if you have not used the coupon by then.”

In order to send the sequence of email reminders after that, let’s continue the next step of the previous message. Before we send the email reminders, we want to execute what we promised which was:

1. Send the reminder 3 days later
2. Send the reminder if they haven’t used it yet

So let’s start a delay step and set it to 3 days. Then let’s continue the delay to a condition step where we can check to see if they used the coupon already. In the condition step, let’s check if they have the {Offer Name} Validated tag. If they do, then let’s not continue to any step. If they don’t have the {Offer Name} Validated tag, let’s continue to an email step to start our email reminder sequence. 

One more thing we want to do in the conditions box is to check if the coupon is expired already. In our coupon terms, we put that the coupon expires 7 days from when they claimed it. So one more condition we can put is to check if the current date/time is before 7 days after their claim date/time!

Add a condition and choose Current time. Then choose before Custom Field date. In the Custom field, choose {Offer Name} Signup. Then check the Offset box and put + 7 days. This will add 7 days to the signup date, which equals the expiration date. So this condition will check if today’s date/time is past the expiration date. If it is, it will not continue to the next step. If it is not, it will continue to the next step which is the first email in the email reminder sequence.

Continue this condition to a new Send Email action. Actually, scratch that. Let’s save some time and copy the first email we already wrote/designed and paste it into the flow. Put the pasted email next to the Conditions box. Then connect the conditions box to the pasted email.

Now, we have a good foundation of what we want this first email in the email sequence to say including the consistent button whose objective is to get the person back to the coupon so they can use it and become your customer.

In this email, all we really need to do is change the Subject of the email so its not too repetitive for the customer. We also want to change the greeting to match the subject line.

In this first email, I usually make the first subject line say “Your First {Offer Name} Reminder.”

After you adjust the subject line and greeting for this first email in your email reminder sequence. You can actually copy the delay and condition before this email, then paste it 3 more times to create a full-on sequence!

Once you paste it 3 more times, all you need to do is adjust the emails so that they are relevant to the time that you send them.

For example, if you want to tell them how many days they have left, you would have to adjust that.

After you have copied and pasted the amount of emails you want in your email sequence, you are done creating email reminders for your customers!

Now, we want to create SMS (text message to phone) Reminders for your customers. Because we already created a reminder sequence, you will see that the next step is going to be very easy (more copy/paste!)

2. Setup SMS Reminders

If you have already set up Email Reminders for your Offer, then this step won’t take up much time. You will be copying and pasting the entire flow fo the Email Reminders into these SMS reminders, then adjusting the messaging and data collection for SMS.

The structure is the exact same as the Email Reminders, but the messaging and data are just different.

If you have Email Reminders already set up, go here and I will show you what to adjust so you can leverage the work you already did.

If you don’t have Email Reminders set up, you can continue ahead and I will show you how to create SMS reminders for your customers, step by step.