Growing Guest Loyalty With Marketing Automation

Event driven marketing gives physical venues an edge many online businesses cannot match: you know when a real person has walked through your door. In this guide, we look at how to use automation to grow guest loyalty through personal, event driven marketing.

Here is what you will learn:

• One off campaigns. How to send a single email campaign to all your guests, or to a specific segment, with messaging tailored to that group.
• Triggered emails. How automated messages respond to what guests do, for example a welcome email after a guest's first visit, so they feel welcomed and appreciated.
• Birthday promotions. How to send an automatic birthday offer ahead of the day, a personal touch that brings guests back to celebrate.
• Personal touches. Why using a guest's first name and visit history makes emails more engaging and relevant.
• Reusable templates. Why saving your best emails as templates makes the next campaign faster.

Related Guides in This Series

1. How to collect guest data with your WiFi
2. Using segments to take control of your guest list
3. Growing guest loyalty with marketing automation (you are here)
4. Getting more Google reviews with automation

Making Automation Simple

Automation can sound complex, but it already runs quietly in the background of tools you use every day. For a venue, marketing automation simply means setting a rule once and letting it run, with a clear view of what was sent and when.

A popular example is the birthday email campaign. It shows how automation can deepen relationships without manual work:

1. The guest joins your WiFi. When a guest connects at your venue, they log in through your portal and can choose to share their birthday (day and month) and agree to receive offers by email.
2. Their details are stored. The guest's details and consent are saved in your guest list, so you can segment and contact them later.
3. You set the rule. You create an automation that sends an email a set number of days, for example seven, before each guest's birthday, inviting them to celebrate with an offer.
4. The email sends itself. When the day arrives, the email goes out automatically. You do not have to remember a thing.

Guests receive timely, personal messages that make them feel valued and encourage them to come back, and you save time while still delivering a personal experience.

With automations doing the routine work, you can focus on running your venue while staying in regular, relevant contact with guests.

Automations Worth Setting Up First

If you are starting from scratch, these four cover most of the value:

• Welcome email within a day of a guest's first login. See the WiFi welcome email sequence.
• Birthday email about a week before the day. See send your guests an email before their birthday.
• Win back email when a regular has not visited for a month or two. See lapsed guest win back campaigns.
• Review request a few hours after a visit, sent to every guest who has agreed to hear from you.

For series of several emails, see our guide to WiFi drip campaign automation.

Automate Your Guest Marketing

VoqadoWiFi captures guest emails through a branded WiFi portal on Omada and UniFi networks, keeps marketing consent separate from WiFi access, and includes email campaigns and automations on the Growth plan, plus Mailchimp sync if you already use Mailchimp. Starter is free forever for one location and 25 guest logins a month. Create a free account or compare plans.