We are currently in the midst of one of the worst recessions the world has ever seen. In the current climate, restaurants need to do whatever it takes to bring customers in.  Advertising for new customers can be expensive and relying on customers to come back can be quite risky.  A popular tried and tested marketing strategy to bring people back to your restaurant is to send personalised birthday messages to customers.

 Birthday marketing is a simple way to make sure people return to your restaurant. Also, with every birthday celebration at your restaurant comes a whole host of new potential customers. Sending out birthday messages on a customer’s birthday is really simple with a web site like Sendible.

Step 1: Collect information from the customer

You just need two bits of information to start scheduling birthday reminders to your customers.

1. Their email addresses or cellphone numbers (or if you use Facebook, just their fullnames so that you can add them as a friend).
2. Their date of birth.

Gathering their email addresses and cellphone numbers is easy. Simply provide a small card with the bill to dining customers and ask them to fill in their details – or on your website, you can simply add a field to your signup form asking for birthday information.

Add a new restaurant customer

Step 2: Schedule Annual Birthday Emails/SMS Text/Facebook Messages

After collecting this information, add the contact details to Sendible and schedule a message to be delivered on the date and time specified. This message can contain a voucher that the customer can print out or just an sms message with a voucher code that they can show to you when they come in to dine. 

Schedule a birthday email

Over the past few months we have focused on improving our website performance and enhancing our user experience. We’ve recently moved to a new web hosting environment and have also added a new services page which can be used to import your Social Network and Email accounts.

This page allows you to add new services or update and resync your existing services. See below:

We’ve also made it possible for you to select the contacts you’d like to import:

Sendible is a messaging service that integrates with a variety of platforms and services  including SMS, Email, Twitter and Facebook. Sendible is also great for backing up all your online contacts and accessing them from one central messaging platform.

Sendible is a free messaging tool that enables you to schedule emails and sms messages to be sent in the future. Sendible allows you to import your Facebook friends’ birthdays, schedule an email or sms ahead of time and send it at a predetermined time on your friend’s birthday. Sendible can also be used for appointment reminders which can be set up months before the appointment takes place.

How to schedule an email:

Log in to sendible.com. You will then be taken to your Newsfeed where you will see your messages that have previously been sent or are going to be sent in the future.

Click on Create New and then you are provided with choices either Email, Multi Message or Sms Text Message. In this case, click on Email.

Schedule an Email

Enter the address in the To box, these can be retrieved from your contacts by clicking on To. Choose the Send Date and time using the drop-down boxes or the calendar. You can now choose to make your email recurring or once-off. Add the subject, type your email and click Create. If you would like a notificiation of its delivery then click Notify me when the message has been sent. Very useful when scheduling!

You also have the option to Attach a File (up to 5MB) and insert an image.

Sendible also allows you to import all your Gmail, Yahoo and Hotmail contacts.

We’ve revamped the Sendible home page and added a cool new pigeon-mail logo.

Let us know what you think…

We recently launched a great new feature on Sendible that makes updating your status across multiple social networks simultaneously and at a time you choose a snap!

In so doing, we’ve also extended the number of email, blogging and social network services that Sendible now works with:

• Gmail
• Yahoo
• Hotmail
• Bebo (status updates)
• Blogger (blog posts)
• Facebook (status updates, wall posts, private messages)
• Friendster (messages)
• Hi5 (messages)
• LinkedIn (status updates and messages)
• Myspace (messages)
• Plurk (updates)
• Pownce (updates)
• Twitter (updates)

Sendible is a simple service that makes it possible to access all your contacts from one place and send them messages (now, or scheduled for later) using Email, SMS or your Social Networks.

For more information, and reviews of Sendible.com, check out the following sites:

• ReadWriteWeb
• Mashable
• MakeUseOf
• LifeHacker
• ProgrammableWeb
• RotorBlog
• StartupMeme
• TodaysBestTools
• DemoGirl

We’ll be adding more social network services all the time, so be sure to let us know which ones you’d like to see added next!

The internet has changed the world, mostly through big sites like Google, Amazon, MySpace and Facebook.

But other smaller sites can, if anything, be even more useful, if only you can find the right ones.

Check out TechRadar.com’s list of the top 20 lesser-known sites you never realised you needed. Sendible is listed at number 9.

http://www.techradar.com/news/internet/web/20-websites-you-never-realised-you-needed-478989

With Sendible, you can import all your contacts from various destinations, such as your Gmail, Hotmail or Yahoo mail accounts as well as your Social Networks – such as Facebook, Myspace, Twitter, LinkedIn and more.

Sendible will merge all the details relating to one contact into one entry, allowing you to message your contacts using any platform (Email, SMS or Social Networks) from one place.

Take a look…

We have been quiet on the blogs lately as we’ve been extremely busy making Sendible better!

One of the new features we’ve been working on is the ability to update multiple social networks simultaneously. Now, you can update your status on (multiple) Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn accounts at the same time. Update your status using recurring schedules ahead of time!

Check it out, by visiting http://www.sendible.com and clicking on Status Updates.

Now you can post messages on your Facebook friends’ walls at any time you choose, using Sendible. 

It’s simple. Just choose the date and time you want the message to be posted, and hit the create button. Sendible will take care of the rest. You can even write on multiple contacts’ walls at the same time – with one message!

Great for being the first to wish that special someone on their birthday!