Your Local Restaurant Is Getting your Name (and You Love It)

Subject: Building a database of your customers
Principle: Get the names of your customers to communicate with them.
Who should be read on: Every business that is not yet asking personal information to its customers.

There are 6 billion people in the world, and only a little handful is giving you its money… Wouldn'’t you want to know who these kind people are...

To my great delight I found a restaurant that is doing something about this: it still is not perfect, but at least they are moving in the right direction.

La Madeleine is a chain of French casual restaurant in Texas. The atmosphere is cordial and people are friendly: a good place where to go for a calm but not formal meal.

At the counter, they now have the form you can see in the picture: “Join our Café eClub”. Hmm, cool name, dandy and trendy.

Notice that they put an incentive very self serving, in my own interest: a certificate for a soup or Cesar Salade.

Very elegant the fact that they will send the certificate to the email, and not give it on the spot: in this way they are sure you are providing a real email address.

Nice also the remainder that the email could be appearing as bulk (=trash/spam): that should allow a certain percentage of subscribers to avoid losing it.

And the best for last: they ask for the birthday date !!!!!!!! They are my new hero.

La Madeleine, c’est parfait !

Mau in Shanghai

PS Weather here: very hot and humid. I have been visiting customers today and I was sweating like a pig. It feels almost like summer in Texas...

They keep building everything everywhere: they build highways 7 days a week, night and day.

They are breaking ground for the biggest building in the world: last year Taiwan got it thanks to Taipei 101, but now Mainland China wants the number 1 spot!