What Is Marketing?
Akia’s marketing feature allows you to send one-time or recurring drip campaigns to guests and drive repeat bookings and additional revenue. By collecting guest’s contact information from your PMS and through Akia’s Mini Apps, we can send tailored email campaigns based on the guest’s stay information and encourage direct rebooking.
Make sure you’re receiving marketing consent from your guests, SMS campaigns only send to guests who have opted in to marketing promotions.
How Can I Collect Marketing Consent in My Mini App?
Akia makes collecting marketing consent in your Mini App very simple! All you need to do is add a checkbox in your Mini App allowing guests to confirm if they want to receive marketing promotions.
Step-by-step guide
- Go to the Mini Apps section: https://sys.akia.ai/mapps and click into the Mini App you want to add the promotional opt-in to
- Click Edit in the top right corner to begin editing your Mini App
- Scroll to the location you want to add the checkbox component to, and drag the component into the phone editor
- Optionally add an internal name (great if you want to create a Mini App Submissions Report) and add your opt-in verbiage in the label section
- IMPORTANT: Make sure you select Marketing Opt-In for the Store To Field option, this ensures Akia keeps track of who has opted-in to marketing promotions
- You can have this checkbox be default checked to encourage guests to opt-in
- We do not recommend having the checkbox be required, this would mean guests are required to opt-in to promotional messages
- After you have made any other edits, click Save Changes and Publish to begin collecting opt-in consent!
How Do I Begin Sending Campaigns via Akia?
Creating a campaign has 3 steps, creating the group of recipients, creating the content, and scheduling your campaign.
How Do I Create My Recipient Group?
- You will see a new group option for Rule Based Audience on the Records page, click on the + to create a new recipient group
- You will be able to provide the name of the audience and what conditions Akia should use to create the audience
- Similar to touchpoint configuration, you can add as many conditions as you want to filter your guests
- Give discounts to guests who rate their stay highly?
- Rating equals 5 (or whatever rating you’re looking for) in your rule based audience group.
- Keep track of guests who booked via an OTA?
- Booking Source in and list off the booking sources you consider OTA bookings.
- Note, this is PMS dependent, your PMS may leverage Booking Channel or Rate Code to determine which guests are OTA or not.
- Target guests who stayed during a specific time?
- Arrival Date Is In Month Of to select which arrival months you want to target. You can use Arrival Date Is Day of Week as well!
- Click Ok at the bottom to save the audience group, and Akia will begin filling in the guest data - refresh your screen to see the guest list
Rule Based Audience groups are dynamic, as guests stay at your property and are eligible for the Rule Based Audience group they are automatically added to the group - you do not need to recreate these groups.
How Do I Create a Campaign?
Click + Create at the top left of the Marketing page and choose how you want to create your campaign
Email Editor: Use Akia’s drag-and-drop editor to create your email template
The email editor is very similar to Akia’s Mini App editor, so we hope you feel right at home!
- Click Edit in the top right corner to begin editing your email
- Drag components from the right hand side in the editor, click on the component to edit or move it around
- If you have redirect links, be sure to include them with the button or image link components
- After you have finished editing, click Save Changes at the top
HTML Editor: Paste in HTML for Akia to use
- Click Edit in the top right corner to begin editing the HTML email
- Optionally edit the name and subject line before pasting your HTML code
Don’t forget to include the unsubscribe token in the appropriate location
- Once everything looks good, hit Save Changes in the corner to save (can take a few seconds for the email to be saved)
Saved Template: If you have saved an email or HTML as a template, you can create your campaign from that template
- In the email editor, click the three dots to save your design as a template
- Once the template is saved, you’ll be able to see it when you choose Saved Template
3. Choose the template you would like to use and click Edit to begin editing
Text Message: If you have SMS campaigns enabled, you have the option to create a text message campaign (Reach out to us in the Support Chat or at help@akia.com if you’re interested in SMS marketing and don’t see the option available)
- Click Edit to begin editing your message
- Akia automatically appends Reply UNSUB to end for carrier compliance
- There is a content limit on the message for carrier compliance, you are still able to use tokens
- Once you’re done making your edits, click Save Changes in the top right
How Do I Schedule a Campaign?
- After you are done editing a campaign, click the Schedule button in the top right
- Choose when to send it
- Send Once: Akia will send the campaign at the scheduled date and time (the campaign will send over the hour).
- Recurring Post Stay: Akia sends the campaign to departing guests x days after departure at the specified time.
- Select the contact group you want to send the campaign to
- Akia shows how many guests are in the group for your reference on how many credits the campaign will consume
- Recurring Post Stay campaigns can be sent to a contact group or all guests.
- Optionally Exclude Upcoming Stays so if the email/phone number has a future booking, Akia will not send the campaign to them
- Specify the date and time you want the campaign to begin sending at (starting from the following day) and hit Ok to finish scheduling
- If you’re scheduling a SMS campaign, it goes under review by the carriers and will only send if it’s approved - your team is notified if the campaign is approved or rejected by the carriers via the notification bell (top right corner).
How Do I Cancel or Pause a Campaign?
- Go to the Marketing tab at the top of your Akia navigation bar
- Click on the … button on the campaign you want to modify
- Pause will temporarily stop the campaign from sending until you restart it
- If the campaign is scheduled, Pause will prevent it from beginning
- Cancel will stop the campaign completely. You will not be able to restart it.
- If you have canceled the campaign, you’ll be able to duplicate it and create a new one.
How Do I Purchase More Credits?
Pricing for campaigns is based on the number of recipients - meaning the number of guests in your rule based audience group or the number of departures we sent the campaign to. Email campaigns have the pricing as 1 recipient = 1 credit, SMS campaigns consume 3x the number of credits so 1 recipient = 3 credits.
If you need to purchase additional credits, hover over the credit counter and select the number of credits you would like to purchase. Credits do not expire and will stay in your account until they are used.
Akia has an unlimited email marketing upgrade for $2/unit/month if you’re interested in upgrading rather than continuously purchasing more credits. Reach out to us in the Support Chat or at help@akia.com if you are interested in unlimited email recipients.
How Do I View My Campaign’s Performance?
- Go to the Marketing tab at the top of your Akia navigation bar
- Scroll down to the list of your campaigns and click on the campaign name to view the details page
Use Cases
- 💵 Discount Code: Offer a discount code to guests who previously stayed to encourage them to rebook.
- Include the discount code link or promo code in your email template so guests can easily rebook.
- 📰 Newsletter: Encourage guests to rebook by letting them know what’s happening around the property and any special events that might be held.
- If you have guests specify their travel purpose to your property in your Mini Apps, tailor your newsletter by filtering your audience based on their previous travel purpose.