Toast Email Marketing is a fully integrated marketing solution designed for restaurants. Through smart segmentation and automated campaigns, you can send targeted emails to the right guests to drive repeat visits, increase revenue, and improve guest loyalty. This article answers the most common questions about setting up Email Marketing, building and sending campaigns, managing your subscriber audience, troubleshooting emails that don't send or deliver, and measuring campaign performance.

To learn how to subscribe and build your first campaign, see Get Started With Toast Email Marketing and Launch Your Toast Email Marketing Campaign.

You can add Email Marketing to your restaurant by subscribing to the Marketing Essential Suite, which is available in Toast Shop. Once you subscribe, follow the steps in Get Started With Toast Email Marketing to set it up.

Email Marketing is turned on for all of your restaurant locations at once, so there is no separate step to enable it for an additional location. To send targeted messaging for a single concept or location, use a one-time campaign. For more information, see Launch Your Toast Email Marketing Campaign.

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The list of guests you can email is built automatically from guest emails collected across Toast, including Online Ordering, Loyalty, online gift card and eGift card purchases, digital receipts, the Toast Local app, and Toast Tables. When you first start with Email Marketing, Toast imports guests who gave their email address and visited your restaurant group within the last six months, because older addresses may be inaccurate or may be marked as spam. After that initial import, all new guest emails are added to your audience automatically.

For one-time campaigns, you can also send to all guests in your restaurant group's database or to a single location's audience. For more information, see Launch Your Toast Email Marketing Campaign.

The number of emails in your Email Marketing dashboard differs from your loyalty database because Email Marketing only imports guests who gave their email address and visited within the last six months when you first start. Toast limits this initial group because older email addresses may be inaccurate, out of use, or marked as spam. After the initial import, all new guest emails are added automatically. To grow your audience, share your marketing signup page link on your website or social media. You can find this link under the Settings section of the Subscribers page.

Yes, you can upload a list of email addresses from a previous service. Select Subscribers at the top of your Email Marketing dashboard, then add your contacts. For more information, see Manage Your Email Marketing Audience.

Note: Uploaded subscribers are added to your audience, but the automated Welcome and Miss You campaigns are only triggered when a guest places an order. Uploaded subscribers who have not placed an order will not receive Welcome or Miss You emails. To reach uploaded subscribers, send a one-time campaign instead.

Yes, you can send an email to certain groups of guests. Automated campaigns send to a preset segment based on each guest's visit history. For example:

You can also create a custom list of guest emails for a one-time campaign. For more information, see Manage Your Email Marketing Audience.

Note: Any guest who received one of the automated campaign emails above in the past 28 days cannot receive another automated email until that window passes.

Email Marketing removes hard-bounced and unsubscribed email addresses from your sending audience automatically, so you do not need to clean these up yourself. To manually remove subscribers, select Remove Subscribers from the Actions dropdown menu on the Subscribers page. For more information, see Manage Your Email Marketing Audience.

Note: A guest can only unsubscribe themselves by selecting the unsubscribe link at the bottom of an email they received. Toast cannot unsubscribe a guest on their behalf.

You can export your guest contact information from the Guestbook in Toast Web. Navigate to Guests > Guestbook, then select the arrow to export to Excel. This downloads your guest information into a usable file that you can use to send campaigns on your own, through a third-party vendor, or through Email Marketing. For more information, see Manage Your Email Marketing Audience.

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Yes, for one-time campaigns you can choose the audience you send to and send on behalf of a specific location. You can send to a custom-curated audience list or to guests of specific locations, and you can customize the one-time template to reflect a single concept's brand and messaging. Automated campaigns send to preset segments and cannot be limited this way. For more information, see Launch Your Toast Email Marketing Campaign.

If your custom list does not appear in the Sending to dropdown, first confirm the list was fully created and saved on the Subscribers page. The Sending to selection appears when you start a new campaign; if you have already made changes to the campaign, editing this field may prompt you to confirm and reset the audience selection before your lists appear. You can select one custom list per campaign, but you cannot select multiple custom lists at the same time in the campaign builder. If your saved custom list still does not appear after confirming these steps, contact Toast Customer Care.

To make sure your emails don't send too often, Toast applies a frequency rule: if a guest has received an automated marketing campaign from you in the past 28 days, they cannot receive another automated one until that window passes. One-time campaigns are not subject to this rule.

For example, say you set up your Welcome and Repeat Guest campaigns, and a new guest visits every day starting December 1:

Because the rule does not apply to one-time campaigns, you could send a holiday hours email any time in December and this guest would still receive it.

No, you cannot recall, edit, or revert an email campaign once it has been sent to guests. Before sending, use Send Test and Preview & Test to review the content, sender name, and reply-to address. If a sent campaign contained an error, create and send a corrected one-time campaign to the same audience. For more information on previewing and testing, see Launch Your Toast Email Marketing Campaign.

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Mailbox providers, such as Gmail, decide where to place each email after it is sent. Toast sends campaigns through its email sending infrastructure, but mailbox providers place an email in the primary inbox, Promotions folder, or spam folder based on their own filtering systems.

These systems may consider factors such as sender history, recipient engagement, list quality, and email content. For example, campaigns sent to large lists of guests who have not recently opened, clicked, or engaged may be more likely to be filtered outside the primary inbox.

To help improve inbox placement, keep your subscriber list up to date, send to engaged guests, and create campaigns with clear, relevant content and calls to action

Uploaded subscribers do not receive automated emails because the automated Welcome and Miss You campaigns are only triggered when a guest places an order. Subscribers added by upload, rather than by ordering, will not receive these automated emails until they place an order. To reach uploaded subscribers, send a one-time campaign, which sends to the audience or custom list you select regardless of order history.

If your active automated campaign isn't sending to all eligible subscribers, first confirm that the subscribers placed an order, since automated campaigns trigger on guest orders rather than on uploads. Next, confirm that no eligible guest received another automated email in the past 28 days, because the frequency rule prevents a second automated email within that window. Also confirm the campaign was active at the time of the guest action: automations send once daily to qualified guests from the previous 24 hours. If eligible guests who placed an order still are not receiving the campaign after you confirm these conditions, contact Toast Customer Care.

The number of emails delivered does not match the number sent because some emails do not reach the recipient's inbox. Emails can be blocked, soft bounced, or hard bounced. A soft bounce is a temporary issue such as a full inbox, and Toast automatically retries for three days before marking it as a bounce. A hard bounce is a permanent error from an invalid address and is blocked for ninety days. Blocked and bounced emails are not counted as delivered, which is why delivered is lower than sent. For full definitions of each campaign status, see Launch Your Toast Email Marketing Campaign.

If your campaign still shows Scheduled shortly after you select Send Now, this is usually a normal sending delay rather than an error. Email Marketing campaigns can experience delays when handling a high volume of subscribers, and many restaurants may be sending at the same time. Allow some time for the campaign to finish sending, then refresh the dashboard. If the campaign remains stuck on Scheduled well past its send time, contact Toast Customer Care.

If you opted to send a test email under Preview & Test but have not received it, check your spam filter and, if you use Gmail, your Promotions folder. Test emails are sometimes filtered there.

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To duplicate an email campaign, follow these steps:

Note: Only campaigns that use Toast's pre-made templates can be duplicated. Custom email campaigns cannot be duplicated at this time, and some global text styling may not carry over when duplicating a campaign.

The font changes in your email when it is viewed in the Gmail app or Outlook app because those apps alter fonts in ways Toast does not control. The font may look different from the one you chose when viewed in these apps. When the email is viewed in a web browser, the font appears as you chose it.

PNG, JPG, and GIF formats are supported. PNG performs best. Images and gifs must be under 2MB and are recommended to be under 200KB, as larger media files can cause deliverability and display issues for end-recipients.

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You can correct your sender name, street address, logo, and reply-to address from the Settings page. If you have more than one location using Email Marketing, select the correct location from the dropdown before changing this information. Updating a Location's sender name also changes the Location List name visible on the Subscribers page.

For more information, see Email Marketing Campaign: Update Your Restaurant Name.

Note: In the campaign builder, the Sender name and reply-to-address are pulled from settings and cannot be changed directly in the campaign builder.

No, changing the sender's email address is not available at this time.

To upload a high-resolution logo, use a square .PNG file that is at least 180px by 180px. Upload it through the Restaurant Info page in Toast Web. This is the image used for your email marketing campaigns. If your logo appears blurry, upload a higher-resolution image.

If the Save button is missing while you add content, your employee profile is likely missing the required publishing permission. Make sure your profile has permission 6.4 Publishing, then try again.

No, DKIM signing is not supported for Toast Email Marketing at this time.

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For multiple locations, a guest with Marketing Info permission can manage contact lists, change sender settings, and send campaigns on behalf of the entire restaurant group. This means that even if your access is limited to a single location for Toast POS, you can still send campaigns on behalf of other locations in your group.

The permission needed to update marketing settings and send email campaigns is 4.7 Marketing Info (Restaurant Admin > 4.7 Marketing Info). Unlike most location-specific permissions, if an employee is assigned 4.7 Marketing Info at their location, they can access and manage marketing features for all locations in the group.

For example, a group has locations A, B, and C. An employee at location B who is assigned the Restaurant Admin > 4.7 Marketing Info permission at location B can access the Marketing > Email Marketing page for locations A, B, and C, change marketing settings, manage contact lists, and send emails to guests of any or all locations.

As a best practice, limit the number of users with this permission so that a single location does not affect the entire group's information.

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To limit how often a promo code is used, note that standard Toast promo codes are multi-use, so there is no guaranteed way to prevent a guest from using one multiple times. To limit your liability, set your promo code to expire on a specific date. For more information, see Get Started With Discounts.

Yes, you can create single-use promotion codes. For more information, see Use Single-Use Promotion Codes.

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To see if your campaign is performing, wait at least 24 hours after sending before reviewing metrics; for automated campaigns, wait three to four days depending on your number of contacts. From the Email Marketing dashboard in Toast Web, select Details within any campaign to view metrics such as open rate, click rate, and unsubscribe rate. If you added a promo code, you can view its performance in the sales discount summary report. To learn more about each metric, see Launch Your Toast Email Marketing Campaign.

You can see the impact of your campaigns at the top of the Email Marketing dashboard, which shows the total emails delivered, how many were opened, and the combined sales of guests who made a purchase within fourteen days of receiving a marketing email. To view this, navigate to Marketing > Email Marketing > Campaigns in Toast Web.

Yes, you can see the impact of a specific campaign in the Sales column on your dashboard, which appears three days after the campaign is sent. The number of orders placed and the total number of guests attributed to a campaign are not available at this time.

Estimated sales is the total dollar amount attributed to orders placed as a result of your recent campaign. Toast attributes an order to your campaign if the guest places an order within fourteen days of receiving your email and provides their email address with the order. A guest may provide their email by requesting a digital receipt, paying with a credit card linked to their Toast rewards account, signing up for a Toast rewards account, or placing an online order.

A campaign's estimated sales first appears at least seventy-two hours after sending and is recalculated once a day to capture new revenue. Because not all orders count, your actual sales are likely higher than the estimate. An order will not count toward estimated sales if:

Note: Toast does not estimate sales generated by emails sent before 7/17/2020.

A successful email campaign varies by restaurant, but the hospitality industry benchmarks below show a good response. These were compiled from reports produced by third-party email service providers.

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