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Is "The Black Book" still relevant or is there a new go to?

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Integraoligist

New member
I know “The Black Book” was created years ago and wanted to know if it’s strategies are still relevant to the way the world is now when the internet takes priority instead of print material.

Has there been a new comer for our industry to look to for help in the marketing scene or stick with the Karington book?

Thanks all!
 
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In my opinion the Black Book has some aspects that are no longer the best practice for marketing but other things still hold their own. Most of the information in the book has been discussed here on Think Tank and it was FREE.
 
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VAScotty said:
I used Repeat Returns and to say I was unsatisfied would be an understatement.
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I see that is made by Karington as well… which version are you using of their system, the200-250-300 version and what all do YOU actually have to do to keep it functioning? And what kind of response do you get from it?
Daddio said:
In my opinion the Black Book has some aspects that are no longer the best practice for marketing but other things still hold their own. Most of the information in the book has been discussed here on Think Tank and it was FREE.
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So basically starting from scratch for a new pickup/delivery shop… only been open for 3.5 months… What all do we need to do? I’ve got a website with online ordering, have a Facebook and Twitter operating but only have a couple of posts so far… did an EDDM on one side of a flyer 11x8.5" (another company had the other side) for the entire 5k homes in town… Have a sign on the road above the neighboring stores sign (liquor store). Have a small sign on the front of our building as well… ah yes we also put our menus as a inserted flyer in the Free paper that everyone in town gets… got pretty much no response from the paper and very little from the EDDM.

My thoughts are from what I’ve seen on here:
-Box Toppers and bag stuffers (but what do we put on them?)
-Car Toppers for the delivery cars.
-Huge banner with our logo to hang on our roof (we have a very high red roof that is prime for some type of ad), should I just put the logo or add “Now Open” or something of that nature?
-this is all I have so far.

I’ve been searching or more info that was discussed via the black book on the forum and thats pretty much all I could gather.

Thoughts, ideas?

Thanks all!
 
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I still refer to the meat of the BB on a daily basis…but all marketing is only opportunity that most operators fail to take full advantage of when they get ROI from anything they use.
 
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Integraoligist said:
I see that is made by Karington as well… which version are you using of their system, the200-250-300 version and what all do YOU actually have to do to keep it functioning? And what kind of response do you get from it?
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I want to say the version we used was $199/mo. The idea is great, the execution is terrible, IMO. The emails they sent on our behalf were cheesy and reflected none of the brand we are trying to build. Furthermore, the emails came from a generic @myrewardsprogram.net which I found kinda unprofessional yet they claimed it necessary. We were aggressive with our initial offer to get people to sign up, 50% off, and there were some customers who would come in any time they got an offer, but I just took the email program over myself.

What POS do you have? I bet you can handle everything RR does with your POS and mailchimp.
 
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Lol, it’s funny you say that. I just found mail chimp and sent the first mass email last week. I think we get a decent response from it… Only have 100 emails so far so it will take a while to grow.
We use Point of Success… We do have loyalty cards that we’ll be starting shortly so that’s a step for the repeats.
 
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We capture emails from our online sales and export the info to Mailchimp. At this point we have collected about 3500 email addresses over the last several years. Considering that we do not generally get online orders from tourists and we live in a town of 12000 people we have a pretty good sample. Over the years with unsubs our list is down to about 2900. We have that divided into two lists to stay on the free program with mailchimp.

Our average open rate runs in the low to mid 20s.
 
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