Running a restaurant in 2026 is a balancing act. Food, staffing, and insurance costs keep climbing — and smart owners are responding by taking control of their marketing. Instead of relying on social media posts or paying steep fees to delivery apps, they're building their own marketing platforms. At 88 Restaurants, we use AI to streamline and automate restaurant email marketing. This post outlines a strategy that any restaurant can adapt for their preferred email platform.

The Featured Dish Model
Keeping email content fresh is one of the hardest parts of managing your own marketing. At 88 Restaurants, we solve this by creating 10 rotating "featured dish" emails — each one built around an eye-catching food photo and a fun, compelling dish description, paired with an AI-generated subject line designed to earn the open. Below the featured dish, each email includes dynamic content with clear calls to action like Book Now, Order Online, and View Menu. For clients using online ordering, we recommend including a promo code — typically 10%, 15%, or 20% off. A strong offer does two things: it increases ROI on every send, and it keeps your unsubscribe rate low, because customers stay subscribed when they know something valuable is coming.

 

Promo Panels Highlighting Key Features
Below the featured dish, we use AI to create engaging promo panels that spotlight your restaurant's best offerings — each one linking directly to the relevant page on your website. Here are some of our favorite panel ideas, with examples of our creative work below.

Automated Holiday Marketing
Holiday menu promotions have always been one of the higher value uses of email marketing. When we build a campaign, we create custom graphics for each holiday promo and load them into the promo distributor. For holiday menus, we assign a date to each graphic. Our smart automation then takes over — automatically inserting that graphic at the top of the promo panels section for the full month leading up to the holiday. No manual scheduling required. We also use these same graphics with our website pop-up manager, running the promotion on the client's site and scheduling it to end the day after the holiday passes.

 

 

Many email platforms automatically click the links in your emails to check for phishing. The result? Every link in your email gets a bot click, quietly corrupting your click tracking data before a real customer ever opens it. That's why we use Google Analytics UTM tracking links to record all traffic that lands on your website. Google Analytics filters out bot clicks, so your data reflects real customer behavior. As a bonus, it lets you compare your email marketing ROI directly against Google Ads, Facebook and Instagram Ads, and other channels — all in one place.

Simple, Transparent Pricing

Our automated email marketing is $99/month + $3.50 per 1,000 emails sent — and we offer the first month free. That free month serves two purposes: it demonstrates ROI before you're billed, and it cleans your list by removing bounces and unsubscribes before your fee is calculated. Below we highlight a real example.  This client lost over ~ 1000 contacts in their first four segment sends due to bounces and unsubscribes. It's common for email lists to lose more customers in the initial sends than they do over time. We start billing based on their cleaned list size after the first month. This client started out with 4 segments of 4400 and after the first send ended up with segments of about 3,700 active subscribers. That's about 14,800 emails. When calculating their invoice we round down to 14,000. Their monthly invoice: $99 + (14 × $3.50) = $148/month. Reviewing the graphic above, their email marketing delivered over 4200 user sessions to their website which translates into 3.5 cents per user.  We've yet to find a marketing channel that delivers stronger ROI for restaurants than automated email marketing from 88 Restaurants.

Schedule a Demo to Learn More

Curious how 88 Restaurants stacks up against your current email marketing platform? Schedule a demo using the links on this page. We'll walk you through our platform side by side with what you're using now — comparing both cost and ROI so you can make an informed decision.