The integration between Hospitable.com and Mailchimp allows you to use Mailchimp's excellent features for marketing campaigns to your previous guests.
How it works
Hospitable will capture the guest's email address and automatically adds it to a specified mailing list in Mailchimp.
For Airbnb and Booking.com, the email address needs to be provided by the guest in a message to the host since these platforms do not automatically share the guest's personal email.
Update: Please review Airbnb's Off-Platform Policy related to soliciting guest contact information to avoid account suspension.
For VRBO, Manual, and Direct bookings, the email address is captured directly from the reservation data, which means we'll automatically import their email address to Mailchimp as soon as a reservation is placed. However, the host should still ask guests from these platforms for permission to subscribe them to a mailing list.
No retroactive checks for messages
Our system only captures email addresses for Mailchimp after the integration is set up. This means that messages sent by guests in the past are not scanned for any email addresses.
A special note for VRBO: existing guests who booked prior to the integration being set up may still get sent to Mailchimp if there is any correspondence between the guest and host after the setup.
No limit to the number of email addresses per guest
We will send all email addresses detected in a guest's message to Mailchimp.
This is also applicable for VRBO, Direct, and Manual bookings. If a guest provides other email addresses in a message, we'll send those in addition to the actual email address tied to their reservation.
How to set up the integration
On Mailchimp:
You need to have a functioning Mailchimp account. It is free to signup.
You need to have at least one audience on Mailchimp. If you haven't, you should create an audience on Mailchimp before integrating with Hospitable.com.
Choose to add contacts via copy and paste and add your own email as the only contact. You can remove this later.
This list should include at least the required Merge Fields below. MailChimp only pre-creates some of these by default for new mailing lists; you will need to add the rest as required:
FNAME, text field, first name of the guestLNAME, text field, last name of the guestPHONE, text field, phone number of the guest, if provided.LISTING, text field, listing name on AirbnbADDRESS, text field, the full address of the Airbnb listingCHECKIN, date field, formatted MM/DD/YYYY, the check-in date.CHECKOUT, date field, formatted MM/DD/YYYY, the check-out date.
Hospitable.com will automatically populate those fields for your new guests' contacts so that you can adapt your messages. Only created merge fields will be populated.
Please note that any error in the type of those merge fields will result in the failure to add email addresses to your mailing list on our end.
On Hospitable.com:
After completing the steps above, you can integrate your list with Hospitable.com and have it populated on the fly for new messages containing email addresses.
Go to Apps
Click on Mailchimp
Click on Connect with Mailchimp
You will be prompted to login on your account and authorize our application to have access to your account data.
Select the mailing list from the dropdown.
Setting up your campaigns on Mailchimp
From here, you need to create your marketing campaign with Mailchimp. Here are some instructions to get you started:
On Mailchimp, click on Campaign
Click on "Create Campaign"
Select Email
Enter the name of your campaign
Click on "Automated", then "Date based", and select "Specific date".
Click on "Single email" or "Email series" depending on your use case.
You can set up your campaign from there, design your emails, and schedule them depending on the date you have selected (either CHECKIN or CHECKOUT).
Setting up an automated message in Hospitable
You can create a new messaging rule specifically asking your guest to provide their email address, as well as get their consent to receive future emails from you.
Alternatively, you can add this message to an existing rule, such as your New reservation message or a message sent before/after the check-out time.
Go to Guest experience
Click on Messaging rules
Click on +Add new to create a new rule, or select an existing rule from the list to update its template.