You know the emails you ought to be sending. A thank-you to the family who came for the first time on Saturday, or a nudge to the regulars you haven't seen since the summer holidays. You also know they don't get written, because by the time the doors close nobody has the energy to build an audience and write the copy.
So we've written them for you. MarketingNinja now has ready-made automations. Pick one and read through the email. Once you switch it on, it sends by itself whenever a guest fits.
Pick one from the list
Open MarketingNinja → Automations and the top of the page is a set of cards under Start with a ready-made automation. Each card says in one line what the email does and who gets it. Press Use this and BookingNinja saves a complete automation for you: the audience, the schedule, how often a guest can get it, and an email in your brand.
The cards come from the parts of BookingNinja you use. Every venue gets the visits group. If you sell gift cards, run memberships or have a loyalty programme switched on, their ready-made emails appear too. There are 16 in all.
Check it before anything is sent
Everything you start from a card is saved switched off. Nothing goes to a guest until you've looked at it and flipped the Active switch.
At the top of the editor, a box called How this ready-made automation works explains in plain words who gets the email and when. Below it is the email itself, already in your Brand Kit's logo and colours. Change the subject, rewrite a paragraph, add a photo or remove the discount: it's an ordinary email in the editor, and you can change any part of it.
Underneath sit the schedule and the audience. The schedule says when it runs (daily at 10:00, say). The repeat rule says how often one guest can get it, either once ever or at most once every so many days; leave it open and they get it whenever they match. The audience shows exactly who matches today, so you can see the email has somewhere to go before you switch it on.
The everyday ones
- Welcome after a first visit. Two days after someone's first visit, a thank-you with what's on next. Each guest only ever gets it once.
- Thank returning guests. The day after a returning guest visits, a short thank-you. First-timers get the welcome instead, so nobody gets both.
- Celebrate a fifth visit. The day after their fifth visit, with a code of their own: 10% off, working for 60 days.
- Win back guests after 60 days. For guests whose last visit was two to three months ago and who haven't booked since, with a 10% welcome-back code.
- Finish your booking. For guests who started a booking yesterday and didn't finish it.
- Monthly what's on. On the 1st of each month, your upcoming events, filled in from your booking pages when it sends.
The codes are unique. Each guest gets their own single-use code, made when the email sends, so a code passed around a parents' WhatsApp group works once and then stops.
If you run memberships, two more appear: one invites lapsed members back with your plans in the email, the other tells regulars who aren't members yet what a membership would save them. Gift cards add a reminder to holders who still have money on a card, and a nudge to buyers about a year on, in time for the same birthday. Loyalty adds a points-balance reminder and a "your reward is waiting" email.
New: fill tomorrow's quiet times
Every venue has slots that go out mostly empty, like a Tuesday morning or the session after a busy weekend. Fill tomorrow's quiet times finds them for you each morning and offers them to guests who already know you.
At 10am it looks at tomorrow's times the way your booking page does: opening hours, special dates, closures, capacity limits, tables and ticket stock all count. A time is quiet when it's a quarter booked or less and has at least six spaces free. Times that usually fill up late are left out, so you're not discounting a slot that would have sold anyway. It looks at how the same session, day and time filled over the last eight weeks to tell.
The email lists those times as buttons. Tap 10:30 and your booking page opens on tomorrow, with 10:30 highlighted. It goes to guests who've visited in the last year and have nothing booked in the next two days, and each guest gets it at most once a fortnight.
The 15% code only works for the times in the email. Try it at 2pm on a busy Saturday and the booking page says the code is only valid for the times it was sent for. It runs out at the end of tomorrow, because by then the times it was for have gone.
On days with no quiet times, it sends nothing at all. Guests never get an empty email or a list with nothing in it: that day's run is skipped and it tries again the next morning.
The Quiet times section is also a block on its own. Drag it into any email, choose tomorrow or the next three or seven days, and it fills itself in when the email sends. The same list is on your website too, as a Last-minute availability block.
New: rainy day plans
If you run a soft play centre or a board game café, you already know what rain does to your bookings. Rainy day plans gets in first.
At 4pm each day it checks tomorrow's forecast for your venue's location, between 9am and 6pm. If rain, drizzle, showers, sleet or snow look likely (a 60% chance or more), and tomorrow still has quiet times, it emails guests with the forecast and those times. If it's going to be dry, or you're already busy, nothing goes out.
It comes without a discount. On a wet day plenty of families are already hunting for somewhere to go, so the email's job is to remind them you exist before they've made other plans. You can add a code if you want one.
The forecast comes from your venue's address, so check yours is filled in under your venue settings. The card appears for soft play, board game café and activity venues, but the Tomorrow's weather block is in the editor for everyone, if a wet day changes things for you too.
Who gets them, and how often
Only guests who have agreed to hear from you by email, the same rule as every campaign. On top of each automation's own repeat rule, the frequency cap still applies: nobody who has had a marketing email from you in the last four weeks gets another, unless you change that in your settings. Switching on five automations doesn't mean a guest hears from you five times in a week.
What it costs
Nothing extra. Ready-made automations come with BookingNinja plans that include marketing tools, like the rest of MarketingNinja. The only cost is the discount on any booking that uses one of the codes, and you choose whether an email has one.
Find them under MarketingNinja → Automations. Tell us which email you'd like us to write next.