When sending marketing campaigns or automated emails (confirmation, survey bring-back, etc.) Guestfolio allows you to segment your guest and reservation database into subcategories and send targeted communications to those categories of guests.
To do this Guestfolio uses what we call conditions, these are filters that can be applied to an email that restricted who that particular email is sent to. Guestfolio gives you a host of options and ways in which conditions can be applied, this can make setting up conditions a tricky process to begin with.
Conditions can be found in the edit screen of any automated email or also in the edit screen of any subscriber list.
Condition statement construction
Condition statements are always made up of three things.
- Field: This is the part of the reservation that the condition will be applied to (rate code, source, country, market segment, etc.).
- Predicate: This tells you how the field will be looked at (e.g., "is equal to," "contains," "is blank," etc.).
- Value: The specific thing the condition is looking for to filter by. In the screen shot below the value is "BAR" meaning the email will only send to reservations with a rate code of "BAR."
Predicate options available in Guestfolio
| Predicate | Opposite | Example usage |
|---|---|---|
| equals | not equal to | Rate code equals BEST Will only match rate codes with the exact value "BEST" |
| matches | doesn't match | Source matches OTA Will match any case insensitive source that equals "OTA", e.g.: "ota" or "oTA" |
| in | not in | Room code in KING, QUEEN This allows you choose multiple values that will be checked and will match room codes "KING" or "QUEEN" |
| contains | doesn't contain | Market segment contains BUS Will match any market segment that contains the value "BUS" e.g.: "BUSINESSBEST", "ALLBUSINESS" |
| starts with | doesn't start with | Stat starts with Wa Will match any string that starts with "Wa" e.g.: "Washington", "Washington State" |
| is present | is blank | Room code is present Will match any value as long as there is a value Is Blank will allow negating conditions to work if the field is empty |
| is true | is false | With family is true Will match where there are children in the group |
Condition boxes - "All" vs "Any"
Conditions are grouped into boxes with the statement "Matching ALL or ANY conditions" at the top left of every box. This means that inside a condition box either all the conditions have to pass for the email to send or only one (any) of the conditions have to be pass for the email to send. You can have multiple boxes with different conditions nested inside each other.
In the example screenshot below the top matching condition surrounding all the conditions is set to "All" meaning that all the condition boxes below have to pass in order for the email to send. Inside that there is another condition box with its matching condition set to "Any" meaning that either but not necessarily both of the conditions inside the sub box have to pass for the email to send.
Overall for this email to send the market segment would have to be "FSR" and either the rate code would have to be "BAR" or the source would have to be "OTA." Because the matching condition for the sub box is set to "Any" this will pass if either one or both of the rate code or source conditions is met.
Using negative conditions
All conditions in Guestfolio have a negative version, for example "Rate code equals BAR" would mean an email would only send to reservations with a rate code of BAR. The opposite of this "Rate code not equal to BAR" would mean the email would send to every reservation except those with a rate code of "BAR."
Important!
When using negating conditions, it is required to add a field Is Blank condition in a sub-group with an any condition, otherwise a reservation with a blank field will not pass the conditions and an email will not send. See below.
Note
The matching statement for this condition box must be set to "Any." Having it set to "All" would mean the email would never send because a rate code can never be blank and have a value at the same time.
Date specific conditions
For more information about how to set up conditions to filter for certain dates, click the link below:
Building date specific filter conditions
Filtering by repeat or first time guests
To filter your emails by if a guest has stayed at your hotel previously, click below:
0 comments
Please sign in to leave a comment.