Case Study: Legal Sea Foods and High Impact eMail

   Background 

New England-based seafood company Legal Sea Foods has set the standard for quality   and freshness in the restaurant business for over 50 years. Renowned for fresh fare   and providing an outstanding dining experience, Legal Sea Foods has built a loyal   following of customers who keep coming back year after year to its 26  restaurants   in America.

  
Dick Syatt – Legal Sea Food’s Director of Guest Relations – manages the Legal Sea Foods VIP Program, an ambitious, customer-focused program with approximately four thousand members. VIP members receive news updates, invitations to VIP parties and other special offers.

Legal Sea Foods Goals
Mr. Syatt is something of a promotional savant, having spent years as a radio talk show host and nightclub promoter. His initial email communications to VIP members were composed as plain text email. Unsatisfied with the look and feel of the text email, Mr. Syatt started to look for an email software package that would allow him to compose and send HTML email (with images, colors and hyperlinks) with a more promotional look and feel.

Mr. Syatt’s primary goal was to create eye-grabbing email that would get noticed, look professional, stand out and be read by the VIP people. He had two secondary goals. First, he had to find a system that would be compatible with his contact management database ACT!, where all of his VIP member contact information is stored. Second, he needed to make sure his recipients would be able to view the HTML email, regardless of the email program they were using.

High Impact eMail Gets the Job Done
Compatible with ACT! contact management software, providing dynamic and professional HTML email template designs and compatible with nearly every email program on the market, High Impact eMail met each of Dick Syatt’s high-level goals.

Within days of installing High Impact eMail, Mr. Syatt was sending out promotional email to his VIP members. These emails typically took the form of party invitations, news updates about restaurant openings and special VIP-only dinner offers.

Mr. Syatt also created default HTML email stationery using High Impact eMail. This enabled him to leverage the program as a one to one branding vehicle, as well as keeping in touch with the VIP members as an entity. Each email Dick Syatt sent included the Legal Sea Foods logo and distinctive color scheme. He was on a roll.

Because High Impact email templates are compatible with ACT!, Mr. Syatt was able to segment his VIP member list, for sending email campaigns based on target restaurant or geographic market. After organizing a grand opening party for a Legal Sea Foods restaurant in South Florida, he was able to send a High Impact eMail invitation to VIP members local to Florida.

Within the company, many of Legal Sea Food’s 400 employees have expressed interest in Syatt’s new, branded email stationery. In the restaurant industry, where word of mouth and buzz can be huge components of success, Mr. Syatt knows High Impact eMail has given him an edge on the competition. His co-workers also recognize the value. In fact, the COO of Legal Sea Foods will soon be using HTML email stationery from High Impact eMail in all of his email communications.

Looking Forward
Dick Syatt is even more excited about High Impact eMail now that a new version has been released (version 3.0). He plans to incorporate a new, regularly sent VIP Program newsletter into his email campaign calendar. He also has plans to include more images in his emails (party recaps, for example), now that ReadyShare makes it so easy to upload and insert images into emails. 

The Happy Customer
"In the time I have been using High Impact Email, I have amazed and amused Legal Sea Food’s VIP guests with great looking invitations, professional stationery and gotten a great response while doing it. I can’t recommend High Impact eMail highly enough to event planners or customer relations professionals."

- Dick Syatt, Director of Guest Relations for Legal Sea Foods