Personalization has become one of the most sought-after tactics by marketers and consumers alike. In almost every industry. According to Sender, 63% of consumers say they will “stop buying from brands that use poor personalization tactics.”
And customers (83%) are willing to provide you with information so you can create those personalized experiences for them.
In marketing, personalization is about tailoring messages to individual customer preferences, based on data. In other words, it’s that ‘personal touch’ in your marketing efforts.
Personalization in restaurants - whether during the in-house experience or through marketing channels like email, SMS, or WhatsApp - helps F&B brands craft memorable guest moments and foster long-term customer loyalty.
However, you can’t just start your day saying ‘Let’s create personalization!’ Or ‘Let’s personalize everything we do!’
You need a strategy. A personalized messaging strategy.
You can implement this strategy through various channels, but mainly WhatsApp, SMS, and email. Make sure you choose the best channel for your guests so your strategy doesn’t fall flat.
You can create the best personalized messaging strategy for your business. But if it doesn’t include your guests’ preferred channel, it’s useless.
In this article, we’ll show you how to create a personalized messaging strategy for your restaurant.
Why is personalization important for restaurants?
There are several benefits to using personalizing the dining experience.
Apart from customers craving it, here’s why you should consider adding personalization to your in-house experiences and marketing efforts:
helps you understand customer needs and preferences
enhances the guest experience
increases guest loyalty and retention
allows you to collect guest information for personalizing marketing campaigns
contributes to increasing restaurant sales and can help boost direct reservations
allows you to tailor promotions and offerings to guest needs
helps you build rapport and guest relationships
helps you make data-driven decisions (marketing or operational decisions
How to create a personalized messaging strategy for your restaurant
There are a few points to consider while creating your restaurant’s personalized messaging and marketing strategy. Follow these tips to ensure a solid plan early on.
Ask for permission
The first step in any messaging strategy is to get permission to send messages. This applies to email, SMS, and WhatsApp messaging. You don’t want to be labelled as spam.
While asking for permission, ask guests about their preferred messaging platform. You may be surprised to learn some customers prefer SMS over WhatsApp.
Although WhatsApp is the number 1 messaging platform in over 63 countries, consumers in countries or areas with poor internet connectivity will be more responsive to SMS marketing.
In addition, some customers feel WhatsApp is for their personal connections like friends and family. Accordingly, they may not be willing to get promotional messages via the channel.
If you have a restaurant newsletter, you can take this opportunity to let guests know about it and subscribe. Or offer to add them to your list.
Define your intent
Next, you need to define what you want this messaging strategy to do.
Is it to re-engage guests? Build loyalty? Increase sales?
If you have multiple targets or intents, we suggest creating a broad strategy with smaller strategies under it. Each strategy needs to have its set of key performance indicators (KPIs) to see whether the strategy was successful or not.
Measuring KPIs is part of any strategy.
Your personalized messaging strategy should be part of your broader restaurant marketing strategy.
Segment your guests
You’ve got your guests’ permission to send WhatsApp messages, SMS, or emails and notifications. Now, you’ll need to segment those guests.
Guest segmentation means organizing guests into lists based on their behaviors or attributes. With restaurant reservation management software, like Servme, you can use auto-tags to automate this.
For example, guests who spend over $500 per visit are automatically tagged as 'VIP guests.' Similarly, those who redeem two or more offers are automatically added to an 'offer lovers' list.
This automated tagging (auto-tagging) simplifies targeted communication and personalizes future experiences.
Determine the pace of sending messages
One of the biggest problems brands struggle with messaging strategies is overdoing it with the messages. It’s important to know how often you’ll be messaging your guests.
Will you be sending messages on a weekly basis? Once a month? Once every other week?
Before setting your frequency, first consider the types of marketing messages you plan to send - this will help you build a thoughtful, effective communication rhythm.
Consider automated reminders
Note that you’ll be sending automated reservation reminders such as booking confirmations, guest reviews, pre-payments or cancelled bookings.
Create WhatsApp marketing templates, email marketing templates, and more for those and determine the number of messages in each flow.
Determine the campaigns you’ll send
Your strategy should cover the campaigns and types of messages you plan to send. This should include your regular messages, like confirmed or cancelled bookings, along with SMS, WhatsApp or email marketing campaigns.
Set KPIs to measure the impact of your personalized messaging strategy
The success of any strategy hinges on the KPIs and metrics you set to measure the impact and results of that strategy.
For your restaurant’s personalized messaging strategy, consider two types of KPIs. Messaging-related KPIs and restaurant metrics and KPIs.
For emails, SMS, and WhatsApp, messaging-related KPIs include:
Number of messages sent vs Open rate
Response rate
Deliverability rate
Restaurant-related metrics include:
Value of deposits collected (if applicable)
Number of bookings made
Number of cancellations (via WhatsApp or other messaging platforms)
Number of guests booked during special events
Personalized messaging strategy: Ideas for your restaurant
Now, it’s time to explore some examples of personalized WhatsApp messages you can send using WhatsApp Business for Restaurants.
Grab templates for each of these personalized messaging examples and more here.
Birthday campaign
One of the best ways to create personalized messages is to create birthday campaigns. They’re a great example of personalization and they make guests feel remembered and appreciated.
You’ll need to have your guests’ information in your restaurant’s CRM. Then, you can automate a campaign to be sent on or ahead of the guest’s birthday.
Take the opportunity to make the campaign memorable. Include a special offer, like a free dessert or special discount. You can still increase your revenue with this type of campaign.
One idea is to offer a special 20% off. You can notify the guest that this offer is only redeemable if they’re a group of 4 or more. Or during a specific time, like their birthday week. You can also send a payment link to collect an upfront reservation deposit.
In the UAE, many dining concepts have a birthday week with a variety of ideas to celebrate their guests’ birthdays.
Ideas include, 50% off the bill, birthday guests getting a free buffet and cake, a free all-you-can-eat buffet, AED 300 in credit for the birthday guest, among others.
Some concepts aim to increase their reservations and footfall by offering a free birthday brunch or free beverages packages if a guest brings 5 or more people to dine with them.
Further reading: 21 Restaurant Marketing Ideas to Entice Guests in 2025
Anniversary campaign
Another example of a personalized message that can be part of your personalized messaging strategy is an anniversary campaign.
A simple question by one of your hosts about why guests are in can help you add this information to your CRM. Alternatively, if guests make an online reservation and mention it’s an anniversary lunch or dinner, the information will be automatically added to your CRM.
Past order-based recommendations
Personalization begins in-house. You can use your various restaurant reports to create personalized dining experiences. You can also use this data to share personalized emails and messages.
Using POS reports, you can learn more about your guests’ behaviors including their previous orders. Consider sending a personalized message about past orders, an invitation to take a guest survey or for a re-engagement campaign, or simply an invite to revisit the venue.
Post dine-in guest surveys
Another important campaign that should be part of your personalized messaging strategy is automating post dine-in guest surveys.
Customer surveys can help you understand customer concerns, measure and improve your guest satisfaction, collect feedback about your menu, foods, events, and even plans.
They also help you maintain your level of service at your venue at all times. If you manage multiple restaurant locations, surveys help restaurant managers ensure top notch service across multiple venues.
Personalized discounts
Aside from birthdays and anniversaries, you can also send personalized discounts via WhatsApp. If you have a tag in your CRM for ‘promotion lovers’ or ‘discount lovers,’ you can send personalized messages notifying guests about current or upcoming special offers.
Alternatively, you can create a re-engagement campaign with a personalized discount based on previous orders or buying behavior.
Invitations for special dining events
If you run special events at your dining concept, make sure you log in who attends these events.
Events can vary from dining events like Mexican Nights, Halloween menus and parties, Valentine’s Day events, musical events, among others.
Using this information, you can personalize invitations based on past behavior.
Consider creating an ‘Event lovers’ tag in your CRM for regular attendees. Send a personalized WhatsApp message, or SMS or email, to these guests when your event calendar is ready.
Holiday greetings
Sending holiday greetings is a great way to send personalized messages to your guests.
For example, if a guest previously came to your venue to celebrate Mother’s Day, you can send them a personalized Mother’s Day greeting with a special update or offer for Mother’s Day.
You can do the same for Valentine’s Day, Easter, Ramadan, or even Halloween.
Further reading: 7 Valentine’s Day Ideas for Restaurants [+11 Preparation Tips]
Re-engagement campaigns
We’ve talked about re-engagement campaigns a few times. This option is for guests who have not visited your venue in 6 months or more.
Use your CRM to see which guests haven’t visited your restaurant in 3 or more months.
Note: You can choose the duration based on your needs. It can be 3, 6, 8, or even 12 months.
Final words
Your restaurant guests are craving personalization. And what better way to keep them coming back than to give them exactly what they need.
Creating personalized messages used to be a time-consuming process.
However, restaurant reservation management software, like Servme, simplifies marketing and personalization.
It offers reservations, guest surveys, auto-tagging, and personalization through restaurant-focused marketing campaigns, making personalization easier and faster than before.
Get in touch with Servme to learn more about our personalization features for restaurants, including WhatsApp messaging.
Nada Sobhi
Marketing
