A guide to integrated marketing communication with Mark Sudweeks of MyGuestlist

In the Creative Little Soul’s latest podcast episode, we picked the brain of one of our favourite digital marketing gurus to get an insider’s guide into integrated marketing communication strategies. Mark Sudweeks has over 15 years’ experience in the hospitality industry, in both operations and as a supplier. He has been one of the silent champions behind the growth of Australia’s best restaurants and hospitality businesses. He joined us to discuss how businesses can build and grow their marketing database, including the all-important email list, and use intelligent automation to their advantage.

In his current role as head of sales for MyGuestlist, Mark helps those in the hospitality industry run better and more successful businesses. If you’ve not heard of MyGuestlist before, this powerful online marketing tool allows for multi-channel smart automation and champions intelligent messaging. The team of specialists at MGL are our knights in shining laptops. Their platform allows users to promote their venues and to communicate with their patrons in new and exciting ways. Whilst created as a digital marketing management platform for the hospitality industry, their list of clients now includes everyone from the Australian Government to Woolworths to the Big Banana. 

How to build an email list and grow your database

Marketing experts, including the staff here at CLS, have long espoused the virtues of email marketing as one of the most effective and powerful, albeit one of the most underutilised and undervalued weapons in any marketer’s arsenal. But where do these magical email lists come from? How can business owners and marketing professionals grow their databases and make sure their campaigns are sent to those truly interested in their products or services?  Furthermore, how can business owners and marketing professionals find data on their existing customer base to better their marketing strategies and allow them to craft intelligent customised messaging?

Unearthing hidden data

We asked Mark where businesses may look to gain insights into their customer base.

“If we’re talking about the hospitality industry, it would be their reservation system. Reservation providers offer a checkbox when customers make an online booking. If a customer has ticked that box, their data can be used. Some online order platforms offer the same,” he said.

“Other venues run things like free Wi-Fi services whereby a patron sign-ups with an email address. Enquiry forms on websites require email addresses too. I talk to venues that will say they have email data from a competition they ran. When I ask what they’re doing with it they say ‘nothing, it’s sitting on a spreadsheet somewhere.’ There’s information for venues to use, sometimes they might have to go back through their records a little bit to find them, but we can also steer them in the right direction and teach them how to do that.”

Chrissy, our managing director here at CLS, also offered some sage advice on the topic.

“I’m still a sucker for an old-fashioned business card bowl. Yes, they’re old school but they still work. Anytime anyone thinks they may get something for free, boom! They’re totally cool to offer their contact information,” she said.

Mark enthusiastically concurred.  “I encourage venues to keep the business card bowl all the time. Obviously, you want to convert that data to digital sooner rather than later, but yes 100% that works. Paper slip forms still work well too. Coming out of the pandemic, QR codes seem to be on the rise a bit more, but I think venues will start introducing more sign-up opportunities where patrons scan to win something or go into the draw for a voucher. Those sorts of initiatives can work.”

Building an engaged marketing database

Size isn’t everything when it comes to a business database. It is important to ensure that treasured list of names and emails are truly engaged and interested in your products and services, as Mark confirmed:

“Just because you have the name and email of someone, does not mean you know anything else about them. You don’t know their age, where they live, what they’re interests are and so on. Therefore, running campaigns to get people to update their information in the form of a competition is usually a good start to grow a detailed database. If you’ve got people on your list who maybe dined with you 1 or 2 years ago maybe they’re not engaged with you now, so you can quickly strip them of your list. This means you’re working with a true database.”

“If you send an email to someone 5 times and you can see that they’ve not opened it, through our automation platforms, you can send an SMS to let them know you’re trying to reach them to gift a voucher or notify of an upcoming sale, and ask them to update their details. If they don’t respond, then it’s time to delete that contact from your database. Platforms like ours mean you are paying to have that person sit on your database, so you may as well get rid of contacts that are not active or engaged anymore. There’s no need to have ten thousand people on your database if only one thousand actually open your emails.”

We also discussed further ways in which businesses might grow their treasured email lists. “You can arrange a message to be sent out to someone after they have dined to gather an extra bit of information, and wrap that around a ‘refer a friend’ campaign. You could for instance say, ‘share this with your friends and family. For every person that joins you’ll get a voucher.’ Competitions are a really good way to grow your database. Creating a short form around enquiries and events, and ensuring all those data catching points are in place is vital.”

How to personalise your marketing with Intelligent automation

Automation is a word that gets thrown around a lot in terms of marketing strategies but what does it mean? How can we use automation effectively and leverage our database to ensure business owners are getting bang for their buck?

According to Mark, “Automation is the idea of making something happen with data. Sending a post dining feedback form is an example of automation. It can be sent via email or via SMS. Most businesses will have an automated message sent out around a birthday. Some really great examples I’ve seen is where businesses take the information around birthday data to determine how old someone is, and if they are coming up to a milestone birthday like a 21^st  30^th or 50^th An automation trigger could be sent to that person 3 or 4 months before to promote their function space.”

One of the most important elements of intelligent automation and personalised marketing is tailored copy. This includes adjusting the tone of voice to match the generational market. If you know you’re sending an email to someone about to turn 60, it’s best not to use acronyms or slang they may not be familiar with.

These forms of personalised, intelligent automation are a fabulous and cost-effective way to maintain open lines of communication and brand awareness. These types of systems also allow businesses to build rapport with their patrons, all of which make automation a highly valuable commodity.

SMS marketing is cheap but is it effective?

We discussed the somewhat divisive realm of SMS marketing with Mark. SMS marketing has long been offered by My Guest List and is considered a vital element of any integrated marketing communication strategy. We discussed some of the benefits of SMS marketing and how it can be used to maximise return on investment. Mark sited an example to illustrate some of the benefits of SMS marketing. 

“A campaign was sent out by a company a few years ago. Ten thousand messages at 10 cents a message, so they spent a hundred dollars which means they only needed 1 person or 2 people to apply to make that money back.”

“This doesn’t mean blasting everyone. It is best to sift through your database and stagger your communications. If you have a database of five thousand, you could send five hundred tonight and then five hundred tomorrow night. If you have 5, 10 or 20 people respond every night, you’re covering your costs very quickly. Sporadic targeted messaging can work very well.’

Chrissy reiterated this point, arguing that when SMS marketing is used intelligently as part of a coherent integrated marketing communication strategy, it can be incredibly effective.  “When the weather is shit, sending out an SMS campaign reminding customers of the delivery options available is a great idea, this can also be accompanied by an email campaign.”

Many businesses are reluctant to use SMS marketing because they believe it irritates people. In response to this, Mark urges businesses to track the return on their campaigns whether it be email or SMS. By doing so Mark argues:

“You can begin to trace and discern how many reservations you received from people who received the campaign. There will always be a few people who opt out and the odd person who may challenge the SMS message, and negative responses can deter a business owner. But if you have stats which suggest you sent out 500 SMS messages that cost $50, with 10 people who redeemed the offer, then you’re not going to be worried about the one or two negative responses. That’s why tracking RMI’s are so important and it’s fairly easy to do that.”

Interested in seeing how the team at MyGuestlist can help you create your own stellar integrated marketing communication campaigns? MGL will enable you to grow your marketing database and knock the socks off your customers. We certainly couldn’t recommend the MGL team highly enough. Their in-built all-in-one social media management platform called Sprout is designed to help you better understand your audience, engage with your community and measure performance.

Enjoy Mark’s wealth of marketing strategy knowledge and learn about some of the marvellous initiatives the MGL team has implemented to assist their clients through this challenging time by listing to our full interview with Mark here