With the advent of smart-phone apps, enhanced mobile websites and scannable 2-D bar codes, marketers can easily get overwhelmed trying to keep up. But restaurants don’t always have to chase the next big thing in mobile marketing to succeed, operators and experts say.

Many restaurateurs praise the simplicity and high return on investment of text coupons, the understated workhorse of mobile advertising. Mobile experts note that text messaging andSMS already reach a broad base of consumers, with plenty of room for growth.

Consider the case of Scotty P’s Hamburgers. The Dallas-based operator of seven casual-dining restaurants in Texas has been using a text message platform run by mobile marketer Call-Em-All for the past month and already reports redemption rates of 12 percent.

The burger brand’s founder and president, Scott Pontikes, said advertising options in the mobile channel beyond text coupons would require too big an investment in time and money.

“The smart-phone apps and even mobile ordering would be cost-prohibitive for us,” he said. “Texting is low-tech, simple and quick, and the response rate is probably three times what it is for e-mailing. Our e-mail program has a larger list, but we’ve seen a 12-percent adoption rate on 25-word messages that take a few minutes to prepare.”

Pontikes said text message offers valid for a three-hour window during a typically slow Monday lunch daypart have produced incremental revenue of about $1,000 a day. When subtracting the food cost of discounted items and comparing the revenue to the price of the offer, which he said was 7.5 cents per text in a batch of 500, Pontikes calculates his ROI at more than 1,600 percent.

http://www.pocket-promo.com/restaurants-find-the-simple-text-a-powerful-tool