Bluesky Local Helps Restaurants Increase Sales by Manipulating Time & Controlling Weather (Almost)

Sept. 15, 2009 - PRLog -- Preliminary survey results of more than 130 restaurants show that a majority of respondents report that weather, seasonal changes and events individually cause sales drops of 20 percent or more. For example, on a rainy day certain restaurants will see a direct relationship between the weather condition and a sharp drop decline in customer traffic. Over the course of only one year a small restaurant will lose $30,000 or more in potential revenue because of non-ideal external conditions such as this!

Bluesky Local (http://www.blueskylocal.com) seeks to address this problem with its automated restaurant marketing web-service that continually tracks the major factors impacting a restaurant's sales, such as weather, time-of-day, seasonality, day-of-week, months, events, and more. After a business owner links slow sales conditions to promotional offers the service will automatically respond to these sales conditions in real time by delivering promotional offers instantly to local consumers via email, text-messages, and Twitter.com.

The service offers a win-win value proposition. Customers are given money-saving offers that they opt-in to receive and restaurants benefit from an increase in customer count and sales. So far offer redemption rates stand at an impressive 14% percent. In addition the service provides several options for importing or quickly building a customer database of email and mobile phone numbers. Included in the service is the option to outsource cumbersome data entry for customer contact information to the Bluesky Local support team.

One Subway franchisee was able to grow her opt-in customer list from to 250 in just two weeks from existing customer traffic. Within five days of the distributing her first promotion she saw 50 offers redeemed, which is a 20% redemption rate and at least $250 in additional sales.

“Restaurants have long accepted sales drops caused by the weather and other external factors as simply part of doing business,” said Matt Ackerson, CEO and co-founder of Bluesky Local. “Bluesky Local offers business owners a unique and powerful tool to counteract that assumption.”

Bluesky Local is continuing to expand its restaurant marketing offering. It plans more advanced tracking features as well as auto-cleaning and auto-targeting of customer lists to maximize redemption in the near future.

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About BlueskyLocal.com:

The Bluesky Local (http://www.blueskylocal.com) service was formally launched in September 2009. Bluesky Local offers a one-of-a-kind automated marketing solution for restaurants that works to attract customers on days when business is typically slow due to factors beyond a restaurant’s control, such as weather, seasons, and events. The company was founded by two May 2009 Cornell University graduates, Angel Villegas and Matt Ackerson. To date the business has been completely bootstrapped.