Frequency Cap

Frequency capping came out of high-volume email and advertising software, where the same audience is targeted many times a week. Restaurants message far less often and still need it, for a reason particular to hospitality: the guest most likely to be over-messaged is the regular whose relationship the restaurant is least willing to spend.

How often should a restaurant message a guest?

There is no correct number, and the useful frame is not a monthly quota but a ratio to visits. A guest who comes weekly can absorb more contact than one who comes twice a year, and the twice-a-year guest is the one a scheduled newsletter hits at exactly the same rate as everybody else. Whatever limit a restaurant sets, SMS belongs well below email inside it, because a text interrupts and an email waits.

The number to watch is the total across all sends rather than the volume of any one program. A restaurant running a monthly newsletter, three journeys and an occasional event push has no single place where the guest’s whole week is visible unless something is counting per guest.

Why does the total add up faster than anyone expects?

The total climbs because segments overlap on the same people. A guest who visits often, spends above average and books private events qualifies for the high-value segment, the wine segment and the events list simultaneously. Each list was built by a different person for a different purpose and each looks reasonable in isolation.

Journeys compound this, because a journey fires on the guest’s timetable and nobody is watching the calendar when it does. A birthday message, a post-visit thank you and an event invitation can arrive within four days without any of the three being a mistake. The guest experiences one sender, and from the receiving end a restaurant that appears to be blasting is indistinguishable from a restaurant that is genuinely disorganized.

Can a frequency cap work across email and SMS together?

A cap only works across channels if one system holds both channels against one guest record. An email platform counts email sends, a texting tool counts texts, and neither can see the other, so a restaurant running two vendors has two caps and no ceiling. A restaurant CRM sends email and SMS from the same guest profile. A single per-guest count becomes possible at that point.

Where an enforced cap is not available, the practical substitutes are a shared send calendar and suppression rules that exclude anyone messaged inside the last few days. Both are manual and both work. The one thing that does not work is trusting each campaign owner to remember what the other programs sent.