Using Suppression and Inclusions

Understand how you can use suppressions and inclusions when sending email campaigns ad

Lorna Fox avatar
Written by Lorna Fox
Updated over a week ago

Inclusions -

Defining your search criteria by inclusions is a great way to target existing table bookings about what’s going on in your venues or to target customers who have visited and ask them for feedback.

  • Make sure you’ve done a test send first before sending the email.

  • Once you are happy with the email and you are ready to send the email, click Email Campaigns > Broadcast > Create new

  • You will then need to click on ‘Narrow Search by Inclusions’.

***An example of how you might use this feature is if you wanted to send emails to customers who have booked during December letting them know what you are doing for Christmas.

  • You can do this by navigating to ‘Booking Seated Date:’ and choosing the dates you would like to include. Alternatively you can select customers who have booked in the next X number of days.

  • Count the results and if it’s over 1500 we would recommend doing a split test send.

  • Select your previously saved email and send to your customers!

If we collect known spend for your account you can also target your guests based on how much they have spent with you over a certain amount of time - like below.

Suppression -

This is the same process as inclusion except this time you are excluding data to stop emails going to the customers who fit the selected criteria. For example:

  • You could exclude contacts who have a table booking over the weekend . This means you can send a booking driving email without annoying customers who have already booked. You just need to exclude the weekend dates in ‘booking seated dates’ under ‘Narrow search by Suppressions’.

  • Click next and load up your email.

You can then follow the steps as you normally would to send your email.

Suppression and the birthday journey -

  • Creating a birthday journey is great to drive party bookings but if someone has already booked you don’t want to spam them with more prompt emails.

  • Once you have sent the first birthday email, customers may then book for their birthday. When sending a second birthday email you can suppress anyone who has enquired to book since the last email was sent. See our birthday support article on how to do this!

Suppression and feedback emails -

  • Sending emails after a customer has visited your venue is a great way to receive feedback, however, if a customer has booked a table with you and also logged into WiFi during their visit you don’t want to send them two emails asking for feedback.

To do this you’ll need to set up two emails:

  • 1 email triggered on the WiFi interaction date
    AND

  • 1 email triggered on the Booking Seated date

Select WiFi interaction date from the drop down field and add in when you would like this to be sent, e.g 1 day post WiFi interaction date.

Next select “add simple search criteria: and go to ‘Narrow Search by Suppression’. If the email is going out post 1 day from WiFi interaction, you should suppress anyone with a ‘Booking Seated Date’ in the last 1 day -

You may also wish to suppress any customers who have given feedback in the last 7 days. Click create email to ensure all of the criteria is saved and your email will start to go out the next day (you can check this by heading to date triggers > scheduled email).

Next, create the ‘Booking seated date’ trigger email in the same way, this time you don’t need to add any suppressions, unless you wish to exclude anyone who has given feedback in the last X of days.

Tip: Use different subject lines for each email so you can easily tell them apart in your reporting.

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