Add and manage contacts for Campaigns
Import and manage contacts in your CMS as recipients of your Campaigns messages. There are four different ways to add contacts, during which you can create various segments. Segments are the basis for your audiences.
Segments
Before you start adding contacts, it is recommended to find out whether there is an existing segment that you would want to add these contacts to, or whether you need to create a new segment.
Go to 'Contacts' and click the 'Segments' button to see a list of all your segments, which also shows the segment type and number of contacts in it. If you have many different segments, you can search and filter by type.
Click the segment name to gain insight into the segment details, criteria, and individual contacts that it contains.
Read more about how segments work: Segments for Campaigns
Adding contacts
Go to 'Contacts' and click '+New'. You will see the four options for adding contacts.
Be sure to use 'From bookings' for all contacts that would receive booking-related messages. The other methods do not pull any information from BEX PMS, even if the contact does exist there as a booker.
From bookings
You select this option to import booker contacts from your PMS to your CMS. Because this is often a large number of contacts with a lot of variation, this screen offers filtering options to import your PMS contacts per segment. These segments are the basis for your audiences, so take a moment to think about which segments you want to create here.
The available segment filters center around labels, reservation dates and periods, accommodation types, and guest group.
In the preview on the right, you’ll see which contacts would be in your booker segment based on the filters you are setting.
Add manually
Select this option to enter individual email addresses, either by typing them into the text box or by uploading a CSV file. You do this per language in which these contacts should be addressed. You can optionally add these contacts to a new or existing segment.
If you decide to create a new segment, you have to select a consent segment as well; at least 1, but more is possible. This refers to the type of communication that these contacts have given consent for. Don't forget to confirm at the bottom of the screen that the contacts have given consent to receive messages!
You are explicitly asked to confirm the contacts’ consent. This means you should not add email lists you bought or exported from PMS without checking consent status. Instead, focus on organic growth through reservations and forms.
From forms
You can use forms to collect contacts. First, create and place a suitable form, and then choose this 'Via form' option to ensure that these contacts become available for Campaigns.
Read more: Create a form , Showing a form on the website
Select the correct form. Select the consent field in the form if applicable. This ensures that only those who have checked the consent box are added to your Campaigns contacts.
Next, you link the appropriate consent segment; at least 1, but more is possible. Don't forget to confirm at the bottom of the screen that the contacts have given consent to receive messages!
The number of contacts in forms segments always start out as zero, because contacts have to add themselves by way of the published form.
Add owners
If you select this option, you follow the same steps as when 'Adding manually', described earlier. The difference is that the data you enter here always ends up in the Owners segment.
Managing contacts
From the overview of your contacts, you can search for contacts via the search bar, or by filtering on status, language, or segment.
Synchronization of contacts from PMS
Contacts in booker segments are automatically updated and synchronized according to the filters set for that segment. This means that the number of contacts in your booker segments may change when reservations are added or edited in BEX PMS, or when the booking-related consent lapses after checkout.
Booker contacts in BEX PMS may have given permission to be sent newsletters and other marketing messages. If so, they are automatically added to the 'Marketing messages' consent segment. This permission continues to exist after the separate consent for booking-related messages lapses.
However, the booker contact synchronization does not register whether this permission setting has since been retracted in BEX PMS, and keeps it active. The booker must unsubscribe themselves via an unsubscribe link in one of the marketing messages.
Owner contacts are not synchronized in this manner. To update your owner contacts, you need to export the relevant contacts from BEX PMS and add them into BEX Campaigns as described above.
Contact status
The status of a contact can change, for various reasons. One of this reasons is consent. Consent that is related to a booking lapses with time, and will automatically result in a status change. Contacts can also unsubscribe themselves.
By editing a contact, you can manually change an active status to unsubscribed, or blocked. Manually re-instating an unsubscribed or blocked contact will require you to confirm that explicit consent has been given.
Viewing and editing an individual contact
Click on an email address to view the details of this contact. This includes contact information, which segments this contact is part of, and which messages this contact has received.
If it is a booker, the related information from the PMS is also displayed. You can edit an individual contact to manually change their status, if necessary.