The best-run café in town, at the end of its best year, can name perhaps twenty regulars. Everyone else walked in, ordered, sat, paid and left, and nothing in the till has the faintest idea who they were. A card payment names a card, not a customer, and you cannot email a card.
And the ones who do cannot be read.
Your followers belong to whichever platform is having a good year, and the platform decides who sees your post.
They will not tell you a customer’s name, and they will happily sell that customer a discount at the place across the road.
Another download, another password, another conversation at the counter while there is a queue.
A list of people who have sat in your place, with their permission to write to them, is the only customer record you can take with you: to a new site, a second venue, or into a sale. It is the only one you own.
Signing in to the Wi-Fi is the one moment in a walk-in business when a customer volunteers their name, in exchange for something they actually want. It lasts about four seconds. Use it.
Swap the chalkboard password for a sign-in page carrying your name. Customers tap Continue with Google or Continue with Apple — which hands over a real name and a real address without them typing anything — or fill in a short form. Either way, every day you are open, the list grows. It happens while you serve.
A name, a working email address, and the times that person was in your place.
Their consent to be written to, recorded with the date it was given.
A spreadsheet you can export whenever you like, free, on every plan.
A large share of addresses typed on a phone at a Wi-Fi page are junk: mistyped, invented on the spot, or a throwaway account somebody keeps for exactly this. Two thousand addresses of which eight hundred bounce is not a list of two thousand. It is a list of twelve hundred, and a sending reputation you have quietly damaged.
So each address is checked as it arrives — the format, the obvious typo, whether the domain accepts mail at all, whether it is a known disposable service — and then confirmed by the customer clicking a link. Nobody is refused Wi-Fi over a bad address; it simply never reaches the list.
Wi-Fi marketing running on a list half of which does not exist is not marketing. It is postage.
Because your customer is a stranger to you, you get to ask something a hotel never can. Put one or two short questions in front of the sign-in: a birthday for the birthday email, which of your places they visit most, how they heard about you.
Make them optional where you want them optional. Keep it to one or two — this is a sign-in page, not a survey — and returning customers get the next question, not the same form again.
Collecting emails through Wi-Fi is legal when it is done properly, and it should only ever be done properly.
Marketing consent is a separate, unticked box — never a condition of getting online — and the record keeps proof of who agreed and when.
If someone unsubscribes, your mailing tool is told to stop.
Pick your country at setup and the right rules apply automatically; Indonesia, Thailand and Europe all have different ones.
The point of the list is a quiet Tuesday.
A weekend event, a new menu, happy hour, a win-back note to someone who has not been in for a month — sent to people who have been in before, which is exactly who comes back. And unlike a hotel, you are emailing someone fifteen minutes away who has to eat lunch today.
Export the list as a spreadsheet whenever you like — free on every plan, always — or connect the mailing tool you already use. If you do not have one, the marketing automation add-on sends welcome, win-back and birthday emails under your venue’s own name without you having to remember to do it.
Social and email sign-in, address checking, double opt-in and a free spreadsheet export are all in the Café plan at $30 a month per venue after a 14-day free trial. Marketing automation is $15 a month on top if you want it.
Set it up this week, or send us a photo of your Wi-Fi box and we will tell you what is involved.
Reviews are written by the annoyed unless everyone gets asked. How to ask, automatically, at the right moment.
The A-board faces the wrong way and Instagram showed it to eleven people. Get on the one screen everybody in the room is reading.
Every “what’s the Wi-Fi?” interrupts a sale. Take the sign down for good.
Yes, when it is done properly. Marketing consent has to be a separate, unticked box and can never be a condition of getting online, and you need a record of who agreed and when. Pick your country at setup and the right rules are applied for you; Indonesia, Thailand and Europe all differ.
Fewer than you would hope, unless they are checked. Addresses typed on a phone at a Wi-Fi page are routinely mistyped, invented or throwaway accounts. Each one should be checked on arrival and then confirmed by the customer clicking a link, so the bad ones never reach the list.
It is the only one you own. Followers belong to the platform, and the platform decides who sees your post. A list of people who have actually sat in your place goes with you to a new site, a second venue, or into a sale.
No. Export the list as a spreadsheet whenever you like, free on every plan, or connect the mailing tool you already use. The marketing automation add-on is there if you do not have one.
One or two short questions in front of the sign-in: a birthday for the birthday email, which of your venues they visit most, how they heard about you. Keep it short — it is a sign-in page, not a survey.
