Wi-Fi marketing is the plain idea that the free Wi-Fi you already give away can tell you who came in. Guests sign in through a page with your name on it, you gain a list of real customers you can write to, and the internet works exactly as it did before. This page says what it takes, what it costs, and when not to bother.
Cafés, bars, restaurants, beach clubs, and the public side of a hotel. From $30 a site a month.
Every vendor in this market sells the same shape. It is worth seeing it plainly before anybody sells it to you.
A guest joins the Wi-Fi and sees a page with your name, your colours and a way in: a tap on Google or Apple, or an email address. It replaces the password on the chalkboard, which gave the internet to everyone and told you nothing.
Every sign-in adds a person who was physically in your place. Not a follower, not a delivery-app customer whose name the app keeps. Yours, with their permission to write to them, exportable as a spreadsheet whenever you like.
A thank-you the same evening. The new menu. A note to the people you have not seen for two months. This is the part that makes the other two worth anything, and it is the part that most venues never get round to.
The case against is easy to state and worth stating. A list nobody writes to is a spreadsheet. A sign-in page in an empty room collects nothing. And a guest with a generous data plan may never join your Wi-Fi at all. Wi-Fi marketing is not a thing you switch on; it is a thing you do, and the software only makes the first half automatic.
So three questions, before the price. Do people come in, in numbers? Is there a reason to sign in rather than use their own data, which usually means the signal is better than the mobile one or the promo screen offers something? And will somebody, you or a member of staff, send the email once a fortnight? If the answer to the last one is no, buy a better router and keep the $30.
If the answers are yes, the rest of this page applies.
There is footfall · the Wi-Fi is worth joining · somebody sends the follow-up
the list is the goal and nobody writes to it
We have installed this kind of sign-in page in a number of hotels, and somewhere between a third and a half of the email addresses collected were junk. Mistyped, invented on the spot, or a throwaway account somebody keeps for exactly this. A list of two thousand with eight hundred bounces is a list of twelve hundred and a sending reputation you have quietly damaged.
Two things follow. An email address is checked as it arrives, for the format, the obvious typo, whether the domain accepts mail, whether it is a known disposable service, and then confirmed by the customer clicking. Nobody is refused Wi-Fi over a bad address; it simply never reaches the list. And a tap on Google or Apple skips the problem, because the address comes from the account rather than from a thumb on a wet phone.
Ask any vendor what proportion of their captured addresses bounce. It is the most useful question in this market and the least often asked.
Google, Apple, an email address, a printed QR code, or a named account. For a hotel, room number and surname as well. A venue can offer more than one on the same page. The features →
A full screen of yours, off by default: a photo or a short video, a headline, one button. Tonight’s band, the sunset session, the new menu. See it on a phone →
How long a session lasts, how fast, how many devices, whether it can be renewed. Generous on a wet Tuesday, firm on a Saturday night. Enforced by the equipment, not promised on a page.
Welcome, win-back and birthday emails, and scheduled campaigns to people who really came in. $15 a site a month on the Café plan, through your own email provider. What it costs →
HubSpot, Mailchimp, Omnisend or Klaviyo as a connector at $10 a site a month, or the spreadsheet export, which is free on every plan and always will be.
Marketing permission is its own tick, never a condition of getting online, kept with the wording the guest saw and when they agreed. Data protection →
Signing in is the one moment a walk-in customer volunteers who they are. Every venue on this list has that moment; what it does with it differs.
The list, the time limit that empties the window table, and the promo screen for Friday. The page most of this site was written for.
Diners connect while they wait for the menu. The follow-up goes to somebody fifteen minutes away who has to eat again on Thursday.
Day guests tap Google; sunbed regulars are remembered; the list fills all season. The catch is coverage, which is why we design the network as well, from your plans, for a local contractor to fit.
A different page, on purpose. Room guests sign in with room number and surname and are asked nothing. The list is built at the public outlets, not at the desk.
Members and visitors on different rules, on one network, under one login.
How to stop the all-day laptop, how to build a list people open, how to get reviews without gating them. Written for the owner, not the network engineer.
Using the free Wi-Fi a venue already offers to build a list of the people who came in. Guests sign in through a page with the venue’s name on it, with an email address or a Google or Apple account, and the venue gains a customer record it owns and can write to. The Wi-Fi is the same; what changes is that the venue learns who used it.
Only if three things are true: people come in, there is a reason for them to sign in rather than use their own data, and somebody will actually send the follow-up. A café with all three builds a list of real customers for $30 a month. A café with nobody to send the email should spend the money on a better router instead.
Fewer than you would hope. We have installed this kind of sign-in page in a number of hotels, and somewhere between a third and a half of the addresses collected were junk. That is why each email sign-in here is checked and confirmed before it reaches the list, and why a tap on Google or Apple, which brings a real address with it, is the better door.
For the day visitors, yes: the beach club, the restaurant, the spa. A hotel guest signing in with room number and surname is asked for nothing and captures nothing, because the front desk already knows them. The hotel’s list is built at its public outlets, not at reception.
$30 a site a month on the Café plan, with the sign-in page, the list and the spreadsheet export. The automated emails are an add-on at $15 a site a month on that plan, sending through your own email provider. A connector to HubSpot, Mailchimp, Omnisend or Klaviyo is $10 a site a month. Every plan has a 14-day free trial.
Set it up yourself this week on the 14-day trial, or send us a photo of your Wi-Fi box and we will tell you exactly what is involved.
