What this helps you do
Audiences group your guests so a message reaches the people it fits. You always have one All Guests audience that reaches everyone connected and cannot be deleted. Onboarding seeds a small set of starter audiences you can rename, archive or replace, covering the groups most rooms have: your regulars, a VIP list you curate, an events and tastings list, a private-dining and catering list, and your staff. Open audiences appear as choices on each guest's preferences page; closed ones such as VIP and staff are yours to assign and are never shown to guests.
When to use it
Use audiences whenever a message fits some guests and not others: first access for VIPs, a wine dinner or live-music night for the events crowd, holiday tray pre-orders for catering clients, a shift note for staff, one location's news in a group, or a wait-list opportunity for the guests who asked to hear when seats open.
How to do it
- Open Audiences.
- Create audiences named the way guests would pick them: Brunch Club, Wine Dinners, Live Music, or one per location.
- Choose how people join each one: guests choose it themselves, the restaurant assigns them, or either. Set VIP and staff to restaurant assigns.
- Let guests pick the open lists on the preferences page, and use Bulk assign from Connections to build your VIP list.
- To group guests inside an interest, set Inside audience to a parent, for example Wine Dinners inside your events list.
- Decide per audience whether replies to its Blasts are allowed; leave replies on for anything guests reserve from.
Example
You plan a chef's table for twelve. You assign your best 80 guests to VIP and send them the seats first; 48 hours later the remaining seats go to the events list. Your VIPs hear it from you before anyone else, and nobody finds out from social media after it sold out.
Good to know
- VIP is a list you curate, not a spend rule: there are no rule-based or dynamic audiences, and the Hub does not read your POS. Assign the guests you want there.
- Sending to All Guests asks for a step-up confirmation first.
- A guest can be in several audiences at once: regulars, wine dinners and VIP.
- Managers can be limited to their own location's audiences on the Team screen, both for sending and for reading replies.