Automations

Automations are ready-made messages that send themselves when a guest reaches a moment worth marking - a birthday, a first visit, a big milestone, a spell away from your venue, a new event, or a loyalty reward. You turn on the ones you want, set a little timing, and Sidedoor takes care of the rest. You’ll find them in the client portal under Marketing → Automations.

Where a campaign is a one-off broadcast you send, an automation is always on - it keeps watching for guests who hit the moment and reaches them without you lifting a finger.

Think of each automation as a recipe: a trigger (the moment), a message (what the guest receives), and a channel (how it reaches them). Once it’s on, it keeps working in the background - you don’t have to send anything by hand.

How automations send

Sidedoor checks for guests who match your automations once a day (early morning, UTC), and sends that day’s messages in one sweep. A guest only ever receives a given automation once for a given moment.

Reminder automations - the ones that send a set number of hours before a booking or event - are checked every hour instead, so a reminder set for a few hours ahead goes out on time. Their timing is measured in your venue’s local time, and each guest is still reminded only once per booking or event.

Every send follows the same rules as your other guest messaging:

Consent is respected. Guests who haven’t opted in to a channel won’t be contacted on it.
Suppression is respected. Anyone who has unsubscribed or been suppressed is skipped.
It counts toward your messaging allowance, just like a campaign.

Turning one on and tracking it

Each automation has a Status toggle - flip it on to start sending, off to pause. Alongside the toggle you’ll see two running counts so you can tell at a glance how it’s doing:

Sent - how many messages this automation has sent.
Opened - how many of those were opened.

The recipes

There are eighteen automations to choose from, each with its own timing setting and its own on/off switch, so you can run any mix of them. They fall into a few families:

Visit-based - triggered by a guest’s visit history (birthdays, first visits, thank-yous, review requests, milestones, no-shows, cancellations and lapsed guests).
Reminders - sent a set number of hours before a booking or event.
Event automations - triggered when an event is published, opens a guest list, or is attended.
Voucher - a nudge before a purchased voucher expires.
Loyalty - triggered when a guest reaches a new loyalty tier or unlocks a reward.
Pre-order - invites a guest to pre-order ahead of an upcoming reservation.

Every recipe below lists what it fires on, the timing you set, who it reaches, and a few handy merge variables for its message.

Visit-based automations

Birthday reward

Wish guests a happy birthday with a little treat on their day.

Fires on: the guest’s birthday.
Timing: nothing to set - it goes out on the day.
Who it reaches: guests who have a birthday on file and have booked or visited one of your venues.
Handy variables: {{first_name}}, {{birthday}}.

Welcome first-time guest

Greet guests shortly after their very first visit and help turn them into regulars.

Fires on: a set number of days after a guest’s first visit.
Timing: Days after the first visit (default 1).
Who it reaches: each new guest once, when their first visit lands that many days ago.
Handy variables: {{first_name}}, {{last_venue}}.

Post-visit thank-you

Thank guests shortly after they visit and invite them back.

Fires on: a set number of days after any visit.
Timing: Days after the visit (default 1).
Who it reaches: guests whose visit was that many days ago.
Handy variables: {{first_name}}, {{last_venue}}, {{days_since_visit}}.

Review request

Ask guests for a star rating and review a little while after they visit.

Fires on: a set number of days after a visit.
Timing: Days after the visit (default 1).
Who it reaches: guests whose visit was that many days ago.
Handy variables: {{review_link}}, {{last_venue}}, {{days_since_visit}}.

Milestone reward

Celebrate a guest reaching their Nth visit with a special reward.

Fires on: the day a guest reaches their Nth completed visit.
Timing: Visit number - the milestone to celebrate (default 5).
Who it reaches: a guest once, when their completed-visit count reaches that number.
Handy variables: {{first_name}}, {{visit_count}}.

No-show win-back

Gently re-invite guests who missed a booking.

Fires on: a set number of days after a guest doesn’t show for a booking.
Timing: Days after the no-show (default 2).
Who it reaches: guests who no-showed that many days ago.
Handy variables: {{first_name}}.

Cancellation follow-up

Reach out after a booking is cancelled and invite the guest to rebook.

Fires on: a set number of days after a booking is cancelled.
Timing: Days after the cancellation (default 1).
Who it reaches: guests whose booking was cancelled that many days ago.
Handy variables: {{first_name}}.

Lapsed-guest reactivation

Reconnect with guests who haven’t been in for a while.

Fires on: a guest going a set number of days without a visit.
Timing: Inactive for (days) - how long since their last visit (default 90).
Who it reaches: guests whose most recent visit was at least that long ago (each guest once).
Handy variables: {{first_name}}, {{days_since_visit}}, {{favourite_venue}}.

Reminders - hours before

These three recipes are reminders. Instead of sending a set number of days after a moment has passed, they send a set number of hours before something coming up - so you can nudge a guest a few hours ahead of their table, or remind everyone attending an event before it starts. You set the lead time with an Hours before field (rather than the Days after used by the other recipes), and that timing is judged in your venue’s local time. Each guest is reminded once per booking or event.

Upcoming booking reminder

Remind guests a few hours before their table reservation.

Fires on: a set number of hours before a reservation.
Timing: Hours before the booking (default 2).
Who it reaches: guests with a reservation coming up within that window.
Handy variables: {{first_name}}, {{upcoming_booking}}, {{upcoming_venue}}.

Guest-list reminder

Remind guest-list bookers a few hours before the event.

Fires on: a set number of hours before an event.
Timing: Hours before the event (default 24).
Who it reaches: guests on the guest list for that event.
Handy variables: {{first_name}}, {{upcoming_venue}}.

Event reminder

Remind everyone attending an event a few hours before it starts.

Fires on: a set number of hours before an event.
Timing: Hours before the event (default 24).
Who it reaches: everyone attending that event.
Handy variables: {{first_name}}, {{upcoming_venue}}.

Event automations

These fire on an event’s lifecycle - when it’s published, when its guest list opens, and after a guest attends - so they go out on the day the change happens, with no days-after delay.

New event announcement

Tell your past guests whenever you publish a new upcoming event.

Fires on: publishing a new upcoming event.
Timing: nothing to set - it goes out on the day the event is published.
Who it reaches: the venue’s past guests.
Handy variables: {{first_name}}, {{operator}}.

Guest list is open

Let past guests know when a free guest list opens for an event.

Fires on: a free guest list opening for an upcoming event.
Timing: nothing to set - it goes out on the day the guest list opens.
Who it reaches: the venue’s past guests.
Handy variables: {{first_name}}, {{operator}}.

Thanks for attending

Thank guests after they attend one of your events and invite them back.

Fires on: a guest attending (being checked in to) one of your events.
Timing: nothing to set - it goes out after they attend.
Who it reaches: the attendee (once per event).
Handy variables: {{first_name}}.

Voucher automations

Voucher expiry reminder

Nudge guests before a voucher they bought is about to expire.

Fires on: a set number of days before a purchased voucher expires.
Timing: Days before expiry (default 7).
Who it reaches: guests holding an active voucher they bought, expiring that many days out (once per voucher).
Handy variables: {{first_name}}.

Loyalty automations

These two recipes are driven by a guest’s Sidedoor loyalty - the points and tier you can see on a guest’s Dashboard, in the Sidedoor loyalty strip. A guest earns points at each venue, while their tier (Bronze, Silver or Gold) is a network-wide standing across all Sidedoor venues. See Score & loyalty and Membership for how points and tiers work.

Instead of a days after delay, each loyalty recipe has a Within the last (days) setting. That’s a recency window, not a wait: only guests who’ve been active at one of your venues within that many days are considered - so switching the recipe on won’t blast your whole guest book. Each guest is messaged once when they cross a tier or threshold, not every day they stay above it.

Loyalty tier upgraded

Congratulate guests the moment they reach a new loyalty tier.

Fires on: a guest reaching a new network-wide loyalty tier (Bronze → Silver → Gold).
Timing: Within the last (days) - the recency window (default 30).
Who it reaches: recently-active guests who’ve just moved up a tier.
Handy variables: {{first_name}}, {{loyalty_tier}}, {{loyalty_points}}, {{next_tier}}, {{points_to_next_tier}}.

Reward unlocked

Tell guests the moment they’ve earned enough points to claim a reward.

Fires on: a guest’s loyalty points reaching a threshold you choose.
Timing: Points to unlock - the points needed (default 250) - plus the Within the last (days) recency window (default 30).
Who it reaches: recently-active guests who’ve reached the points threshold.
Handy variables: {{first_name}}, {{loyalty_points}}, {{reward_name}}.

The name of the reward you’re offering is set on the recipe and fills the {{reward_name}} variable in the message.

Pre-order automations

Pre-order request

Invite a guest to pre-order or add extras to an upcoming table reservation, without you having to send anything by hand - see Sending a pre-order request for the same thing done one booking at a time.

Fires on: a set number of days before a table reservation.
Timing: Days before the reservation (default 3).
Who it reaches: reservations whose access rule offers pre-order or add-on items, and that haven’t already had a pre-order request sent - by your team or by this automation. Reservations past the venue’s Pre-order cutoff (Settings → Tables → General) are skipped.
Handy variables: {{preorder_link}}, {{booking_date}}, {{booking_time}}, {{party_size}}.

Choosing your channels

An automation can reach guests on more than one channel at once. The editor has three sections - Email, SMS and Push - each with its own on/off switch. Turn on any combination; a guest receives the automation on every channel you’ve enabled (and that they’ve opted in to).

Email

Email content comes from a saved email template (built under Marketing → Templates, where the template designer handles all the layout). In the automation you simply:

Write the subject line.
Pick the template to send.

The template’s design is snapshotted when you save the automation. That means editing the template later won’t change an automation that’s already live - your running automations keep sending exactly what you set up until you open them and choose a template again.

SMS

A plain text message. Keep it short and to the point - SMS has no layout or images.

Push

A plain text message delivered as a push notification to guests who have the app installed and notifications switched on.

Personalising your messages

Any message - an email subject, an SMS, or a push - can be personalised with merge variables: {{tokens}} that Sidedoor swaps for each guest’s own details when the message sends. For example:

Happy birthday, {{first_name}}! 🎉

…arrives as “Happy birthday, Alex! 🎉”.

Fallbacks

If a guest is missing a detail, you can give a variable a fallback so the message still reads well:

{{first_name | default: "there"}}

If the guest has no first name on file, this sends “there” instead of a blank.

Available variables

Variable	Example
`{{first_name}}`	Alex
`{{operator}}`	your venue
`{{last_venue}}`	The Sidedoor
`{{favourite_venue}}`	The Sidedoor
`{{upcoming_venue}}`	The Sidedoor
`{{upcoming_booking}}`	3 August
`{{days_since_visit}}`	14
`{{visit_count}}`	12
`{{venue_count}}`	3
`{{lifetime_spend}}`	£420.00
`{{loyalty_points}}`	1240
`{{loyalty_tier}}`	Gold
`{{next_tier}}`	Gold
`{{points_to_next_tier}}`	60
`{{reward_name}}`	a free drink
`{{birthday}}`	14 July
`{{review_link}}`	https://thesidedoor.co/review/a1b2c3 (a personal review-page link)
`{{preorder_link}}`	https://thesidedoor.co/preorder-request/a1b2c3 (a personal pre-order link)
`{{booking_date}}`	3 August
`{{booking_time}}`	7:30pm
`{{party_size}}`	4

Merge variables work in every channel, so the same personal touch carries across email, SMS and push - and in campaigns too.

Campaigns - one-off broadcasts, using the same channels, templates and merge variables.
Segments - reusable audiences you can narrow an automation to.
Score & loyalty - the loyalty points and tiers that power milestone rewards, the loyalty automations and merge variables like {{loyalty_tier}}.
Membership - how the network-wide loyalty tiers work.
Guests & CRM - the guest profiles and history that automations draw on to decide who to reach and when.