Advanced Guest Segmentation: VIP Tiers, Birthday Campaigns, Win-Back

Moving Beyond Basic Campaigns

Most venues send the same email to everyone. Segmentation lets you treat guests differently, because someone who has been in twelve times in three months deserves a different message from someone who came once six weeks ago. This tutorial builds three kinds of message: recognition for regulars, birthday notes, and a win-back series.

Campaigns and automations go to guests recorded as opted in to marketing, meaning guests who ticked the separate, unticked marketing box on the login. Auto Marketing Opt-In is off for every venue. Email campaigns are a Growth plan feature and are not live yet, and automations such as the birthday note switch on venue by venue as guest email goes live; you can build and save everything now.

Step 1: Define Your VIP Criteria

VoqadoWiFi keeps ready-made segments based on visit counts. In CRM, guests are labelled VIP at 10 or more visits and Regular at 5 to 9. The campaign audiences use their own cut-offs: Regular is 6 to 14 visits and VIP is 15 or more, alongside New, Returning, At-Risk and Birthday Month. Look at how many guests fall in each. If the VIP audience is tiny, use Regular as your recognition group to begin with.

If you want different rules, such as "3 or more visits in the last 90 days", export your guests from CRM and filter the Visits and Last visit columns in a spreadsheet; custom segment rules are not built into the dashboard.

Step 2: Create the VIP Recognition Email

In Campaigns, click New Campaign and choose the VIP (or Regular) audience. Subject line: "You're one of our regulars: a small thank you". In the body, acknowledge their loyalty specifically ("You've been coming in for a while now and we notice"), then offer something exclusive: an early taste of a new menu, a dish on the house, an invitation to a staff tasting. Keep it out of your general emails, or it stops feeling special. Use `{first_name}` so it reads like a note, not a mailing.

Step 3: Build the Birthday Campaign Segment

You need birthdays first (Step 8 covers collecting them). Then there are two routes. The Birthday automation, under Portal Builder, Automations, sends each guest a note at 09:00 your venue's local time on their birthday, once guest email is live at your venue. Or, for a monthly mailing, choose the Birthday Month audience in a new campaign and send it near the start of the month, so guests have time to plan a visit.

Step 4: Write Birthday Campaign Copy That Converts

Birthday emails work best when the offer comes first, not after a long warm-up. A simple structure:

• "Happy birthday, {first_name}!"
• "We'd love to celebrate with you."
• The specific offer, for example "Come in this month and dessert is on us."
• "Just show this email to your server."

Keep it under about 80 words. A birthday image is fine; keep it small so it loads quickly on a phone.

Step 5: Build the Win-Back Sequence (3-Stage)

Open Automations in the sidebar and go to the Lifecycle tab. Two win-back messages are built in: We miss you, 30 days and We miss you, 60 days, each sent when a guest has had no visit for that long, at 11:00 venue time by default. Switch them on per venue.

• 30 days, the soft nudge: "It's been a little while, {first_name}." Warm, no pressure, no offer.
• 60 days, the offer: "{first_name}, here's something for your next visit." A specific, time-limited offer, with a code your till can record.

For a third stage, send a campaign by hand to the At-Risk audience every few months: a short, graceful note saying you will keep their seat warm, and a reminder that they can stop emails at any time.

Step 6: Set Automation Exit Conditions

The lifecycle messages follow the time since the last visit, so a guest who comes back is no longer due a "we miss you" email. Every guest email carries an unsubscribe link, and lifecycle emails also link to a preference page where guests can stop emails from your venue, unsubscribe from all, or ask for their data to be deleted. VoqadoWiFi also caps lifecycle messages at one per guest per venue in any 7 days and four in 30, and holds them during quiet hours (21:00 to 09:00 venue time by default), so a guest is not flooded when several triggers land together.

Step 7: Lifetime Value Scoring

Each guest in CRM has a Loyalty Score from 0 to 100. It is a simple visit count scaled to 100 (8 points per visit, so 13 visits reaches the top). It says nothing about spend, because VoqadoWiFi is not connected to your till. Sort by it to find your 50 most frequent guests. Share that list with your front-of-house manager each quarter so staff can recognise these guests in person.

Step 8: Birthday Data Collection Strategy

To collect birthdays, open Portal Builder, Form, Required Fields and switch on Birthday. Guests pick a month and a day; no year is asked, which feels less intrusive and is all you need for a birthday note. Expect fewer completions with an extra field on the login, so consider leaving it off until your list is established. Say why you are asking ("so we can send you something on your birthday"), and only ever use it for that.

Step 9: Multi-Site Operators: Filtering by Location

With more than one venue, every campaign should name the venue it is about. Use the venue picker in New Campaign so guests only hear about places they have visited. Guests who visit several of your venues appear under each, and the CRM export shows their Favourite venue and Venues visited. The Growth plan covers three locations; Enterprise covers more.

Step 10: Measuring Sequence Performance

After a month, open Automations and look at the Activity tab to see which lifecycle messages went out and when. For campaigns, the Campaigns page shows open and click rates. For the result that matters, return visits, export your guests from CRM and check the Last visit dates of the people you emailed against a similar group you did not email. If the 60 day offer brings few people back, the incentive may be wrong for your guests; try a different one before giving up on the sequence.