🤔 What is email segmentation?
Email segmentation is the same principle as offer segmentation; instead of one email that all guests receive, you could have two emails of the same type (eg. upsell email) sent to different types of guests which have different content.
Some example situations where email segmentation might be used
A classic example of a scenario where you may want varying email content is business vs leisure guests
You might wish to have different email content being sent to OTA guests vs non-OTA guests
You could potentially have differing email content depending on the package the guest booked, which may be based on Rate Code
Different emails being sent based on length of stay
An email which is only sent to locals, not tourists - or vice versa
Email content that is based on the room type - for example, some properties have both traditional hotel rooms and also self-contained apartments
Segmentation can be applied to all scheduled emails - pre, during, and post-stay.
Sounds good, right?
Not necessarily 🙃
🤨 Just because you can, does not mean you should
At first glance, the idea behind having multiple emails with their own segmentation seems nice enough.
But a word of caution: going down the path of email segmentation could get very messy, very quickly. As a guiding principle, you should use email segmentation only if you know that you have always wanted to have email segmentation.
For most customers, just having the one upsell email, the one confirmation email, and so on, is enough. The concept of having multiple emails with segmentation would perhaps make things unnecessarily difficult or complex.
It might seem strange that we release such a feature, but then try to convince you to not use it - but actually, we're just trying to make it clear that it should be seen as an advanced feature that most customers probably don't need to use 🙂
✅ Key considerations for email segmentation
👉 Not every email needs it
If you feel that you do want to use email segmentation, remember that you don't need to do it for every scheduled email you have in Guest Engagement.
For example, you might only want one of your emails to have multiple versions:
👉 Remember who you haven't selected
It's important that when you add segmentation to an email, you need to remember that all the reservations NOT included in that selection will NOT receive an email - is that your intention? Or do you need to ensure you have another email which includes the guests you have not selected?
👉 Offers already have segmentation
If you're just concerned about which offers you want different types of guests to see, but are fine with the same email text for all guests, then remember that offers already have their own segmentation.
Only the offers which have segmentation that matches each individual guest will be featured in your upsell emails.