What exactly is evergreen marketing? 

Evergreen campaigns are in essence timeless—they require little-to-no upkeep, they have a consistent message, and they are created with content that stays consistent with the brand regardless of the time of year. Unlike a “flash sale” or a seasonal promotion, an evergreen campaign stays relevant and remains valuable long after its initial launch. 

Why should restaurants do evergreen campaigns?

Evergreen campaigns provide a variety of benefits: 

• Keep in continuous touch with your audience. Evergreen campaigns allow you to maintain communication with your customers and prospects even in down seasons or periods during the year where you don’t have sales campaigns actively running.

• Get campaign learnings all year longs on. One major challenge with start-and-stop campaign tactics is the ramp-up phase; new campaigns require a couple of weeks to collect enough data as a basis for optimization. Evergreen campaigns, however, continue to maintain (or improve) performance over time because you have continued learnings within a single campaign.

• Maintain a constant revenue stream. When you have an always-on evergreen campaign live, you always have revenue being generated for your business. Usually evergreen campaigns have a baseline goal of 2:1 return on investment, so they’re continuing to generate income for your business even during times when you aren’t running ad hoc promotional campaigns. 

Evergreen Marketing Tips for Restaurants

Setting up a successful evergreen campaign is actually pretty easy. Here’s our list of evergreen marketing tips for restaurants:

• Ensure long-lasting relevance by selecting images, themes, or topics that you predict will still be relevant in two or more years from now. 

• Avoid mentioning any dates, times, or events that would either expire or indicate when your creative was developed.

• Exclude promotions, coupon codes, or offerings that won’t be relevant in two or more years from now. 

• Don’t swap out the evergreen campaign for sales or promotions—rather, launch new campaigns so you can evaluate the success of those campaigns independently from your evergreen initiatives. 

• Work smarter, not harder, with automation: Take advantage of marketing platforms like Adentro that let you automate email sends based on guest visit behavior. This is a great way to continuously promote evergreen campaigns.

Here are a few examples of evergreen campaigns that restaurants can run:

• If you have a popular cocktail that is always on your menu, you could run a campaign where you offer first-time visitors 50% off this cocktail. This promo can continuously run since the cocktail is always available, and it’ll help you bring in new customers all year long.
• If you offer a brunch that is available year-round, you could take photos of the menu items that don’t change and then promote those throughout the year. Since your brunch is always available, these promos will be evergreen and can be used anytime.

Evergreen campaigns can provide many benefits to restaurants and are a default recommended strategy regardless of seasonality. Make evergreen campaigns part of your marketing strategy today and drive continued performance to start the new year off right.

Are you ready to take your marketing strategy to the next level? Download The Ultimate Restaurant Marketing Guide.

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General Marketing