WiFi Drip Campaign Automation: Set It Up Once

The 80/20 Rule in WiFi Marketing

You will see claims that a fixed share of email revenue comes from automations. Treat "80/20" here as a rule of thumb for your time, not a revenue split.

The idea is simple. Some emails are the same every time and depend only on what the guest did: a first visit, a long gap since the last one, a birthday. Set those up once and let them run. Everything that depends on what is happening in your venue this month (a new menu, an event, a quiet Tuesday) stays manual.

Two things to settle first:

• Consent. Only guests who agreed to marketing should go into any of this. Ask for that as a separate, unticked choice on your portal, not as part of accepting the WiFi terms. Every VoqadoWiFi login page asks this way.
• Where the emails run. You can build these in your own email tool (this guide uses Mailchimp as the example) or use the post visit messages built into VoqadoWiFi. Pick one home for each message. If you run a welcome in both, the guest gets two.

VoqadoWiFi guest email is switching on venue by venue as email goes live. Until it is live for your venue, its messages are held rather than sent, so check before you rely on them.

Automation 1: Welcome Sequence

Trigger: a guest joins your list after a WiFi login Emails: one to three over the first week Purpose: turn a first visit into a second

In Mailchimp: on the VoqadoWiFi Growth plan, guests sync to your Mailchimp audience with their name and phone, tagged "wifi-guest" and "location:" plus your venue name. Only guests who ticked the marketing box are synced. If your audience also holds contacts from elsewhere, filter or tag the ones with marketing consent on record before you send. Mailchimp has a "Tag added" trigger that adds a contact to a flow when a specific tag is applied (Mailchimp, flow triggers).

1. Click Automations and create a new automation flow.
2. Set the trigger to Tag added, tag "wifi-guest". With several venues, use the location tag instead so each venue gets its own welcome.
3. Add the emails with a delay between each.

Check your plan before you design a long sequence. Mailchimp allows up to 4 steps in a flow on Essentials and up to 200 on Standard or higher (Mailchimp, automation flows).

In VoqadoWiFi: the first visit thank you message goes 10 minutes after the visit. It is off by default; turn it on in the venue's message settings.

What to put in it: thanks for coming in, what they will hear from you and how often, and one reason to come back. Leave the hard offer out of the first email.

Automation 2: Re-Engagement Sequence

Trigger: a set number of days without a visit Emails: one or two Purpose: reach guests who have drifted before they forget you

This one needs visit data, which lives in your WiFi platform, not your email tool. VoqadoWiFi does not sync visit dates to Mailchimp, so build it where the data is.

In VoqadoWiFi: the "we miss you" messages go at 30 and 60 days without a visit. They are off by default and send at 11:00 venue local time. Because the trigger is "no visit", a guest who comes back simply drops out. There is no extra branching to build.

We have no reliable recovery rate to quote. Measure your own: compare the At risk and Lost segments in the dashboard before and after you switch these on.

When not to use it: if your venue is seasonal (a beach bar in winter, a ski lodge in summer), a 30 day "we miss you" goes to people who could not visit if they wanted to. Leave it off for the closed season.

Automation 3: Birthday Campaign

Trigger: the guest's birthday Emails: one, on or just before the day Purpose: a personal reason to visit, often with friends

You need the birthday first, and you only have it if the guest chose to give it.

In VoqadoWiFi: the birthday message is off by default, sends at 09:00 venue local time, and only reaches guests who gave a birthday.

In Mailchimp: the Birthday trigger uses the birthday field in your audience (Mailchimp, flow triggers). VoqadoWiFi does not sync birthdays to Mailchimp, so you would collect that field yourself, for example with a short Mailchimp form linked from your welcome email.

Make the offer easy to use: valid for the whole birthday week, not just one day.

Automation 4: VIP Thank You

Trigger: a guest becoming a regular Emails: one Purpose: say thank you to the people who keep you going

VoqadoWiFi does not have a visit milestone message, so this one is semi manual. In the dashboard, the Regulars segment is guests who visited on 3 or more days in the last 60, most recently under 30 days ago. Once a month, send a short campaign to your regulars from the dashboard, or export your guest list as CSV (it includes visit count and last seen date) and filter it in your email tool.

Subject line idea: "You've been here a lot lately, [Name]. Thank you."

What to put in it: real thanks, and something that is not available to everyone, such as first booking for an event, a dish before it goes on the menu, or a drink on the house. Do not promise a "VIP status" you do not intend to keep up.

We have no measured effect on churn to quote for this. Judge it by whether your Regulars segment holds up month to month.

Revenue Projection: Full Automation Stack

We are not going to give you a revenue projection. The figures that usually appear here are not backed by data we can show you. What we can give you is the stack, where it runs and what it costs.

Limits that shape the stack in VoqadoWiFi: a guest gets at most 1 message per venue in any 7 days and at most 4 in any 30 days, and nothing sends during quiet hours (21:00 to 09:00 venue local time by default; messages wait rather than drop). If a guest qualifies for two messages in the same week, one waits.

Cost: VoqadoWiFi Starter is free for one location and 500 guest logins a month. Mailchimp sync and email campaigns come with Growth at $49 a month. Your Mailchimp plan is billed separately by Mailchimp. See pricing.

To see whether it is working, give each automated email a code or link of its own and count redemptions against your till. VoqadoWiFi has no POS integration, so that last step is yours.