The team at Paul Ainsworth at No.6 were ecstatic to discover they had been short-listed for ‘Best Restaurant Outside London’ in the Food and Travel magazine awards. This award is particularly prestigious, with the final awards evening showcasing some of the best names in the restaurant industry.

The Objective

• To share exciting news about award nomination with the restaurants’ customers
• To invite customers to vote for Paul Ainsworth in award nomination
• To increase brand awareness of Paul Ainsworth at No.6

The Plan

The marketing campaign had to be more personal than a social media campaign and more memorable than an e-newsletter. I decided to trial an SMS campaign to reach out to existing customers to share news of the award and appeal for votes.

The Message

“I’m so excited to share some news with you. Here at No.6 in Padstow we’ve been short-listed as one of the best restaurants outside London! As a cherished customer, I wanted to politely reach out in this one-off message to see if you would mind voting for us here: http://goo.gl/9XRFo Thanks! Paul Ainsworth x”

The Results

The message was sent to 16,643 people on a Tuesday lunch time, a few weeks before the vote closed.

Within seconds of the message going out the link started receiving clicks and within 24 hours this had reached over 3,000.

The campaign exceeded expectations with an overall click through rate of 22.4% and a whopping total of 3,732 clicks. One person asked to be removed from the database out of 16,643. On the other hand, it generated dozens of supportive emails and calls, plenty of social media messages and restaurant bookings as a result of the direct marketing. Overall, guests seemed to warm to the restaurant more since sending the text out, possibly due to writing it in Paul’s own voice.

To top it off, we enjoyed a luxurious awards evening at the Savoy Hotel and were delighted to win the award of Best Restaurant Outside London.

Not only that, but as a wonderful surprise we also won the overall category of Best Restaurant of the Year!

A very successful campaign all round.