How and when do I send notifications to locals?
This notifications overview will help you understand when you send notifications, who gets them, and how they receive them.
Who gets my notifications?
Whenever you update your menu there's a high likelihood you'll automatically send notifications to locals (and possibly non-locals, e.g. tourists) with BeerMenus accounts. These are the kinds of notifications you trigger:
- Menu update notifications get sent to everyone who follows your business.
- Beer update notifications get sent to locals who follow a beer you add to your menu, but don't follow you directly.
- New event notifications get sent to all locals whenever you add a new event to the BeerMenus event calendar.
They're sent either instantly to a local's phone or email and/or included in their daily or weekly digest email. (More on that below.)
Note: In order to send menu update notifications to followers, your business needs to have followers. If you don't have very many, then follow this guide to start recruiting them now!
Where do they get my notifications?
Locals receive notifications in the form of push notifications on their phone (pictured above) or as emails (pictured below). Locals can enroll to receive emails instantly, daily, or weekly. 
Locals choose how they want to receive their notifications via their general settings. They can also enroll in direct notifications for particular businesses by following those businesses.
By following a business, locals enroll in receiving notifications every time that business updates their menu.
Of course, as a business you want to have as many followers as you can, so check out this guide to getting more followers on BeerMenus.
Locals can also enroll in direct notifications for individual beers, so that they get notified whenever any business near them adds that beer to BeerMenus.
When do they get my notifications?
It depends on the type of notification sent and on user settings. Here are some general guidelines:
- Instant email notifications and phone notifications get triggered as soon as you add a beer to your menu.
- Daily digest emails are sent everyday around noon EST and include all your updates from the previous 24 hours (since that user's previous digest email).
- Weekly digest emails are sent every Thursday around noon EST and include all your updates from the previous 7 days (since that user's previous digest email).
How many notifications do I send?
Your Insights page holds this information. From your update menu page, click “Insights”:
And then train your attention on the "Customer Notifications" tile:
Why can't I send notifications?
Notifications are part of our Online Marketing Pro plan. If you don't have access but want to use notifications (and a bunch of other nifty marketing tools 😄) at your business, give us a call at 347-927-1574. As always, we're happy to help you out!