How to leverage SMS marketing campaigns to increase return visits

Welcome to the Purple Intelligence Podcast. I'm your host, and today we're getting into something that sits right at the intersection of your WiFi infrastructure and your marketing stack - SMS marketing campaigns, and specifically, how to use them to bring visitors back. Let me set the scene. You've invested in guest WiFi. Visitors connect, they get online, and then they leave. Most venues stop there. But if you're on Purple's Engage plan, that login moment is actually the start of a relationship - not the end of a transaction. You've captured a verified phone number. You have explicit consent. And you have behavioural data: when they visited, how long they stayed, whether they've been before. That's the raw material for an SMS campaign that actually works. Now, why SMS and not just email? The numbers are pretty stark. SMS achieves a 98% open rate. Email averages around 20%. Ninety percent of text messages are read within three minutes of delivery. And the average return on SMS marketing sits at 71 dollars for every dollar spent, according to Forbes. For a venue operator trying to drive return visits, that immediacy is the whole point. You're not waiting for someone to open their inbox on a Tuesday morning. You're reaching them on their phone, right now. So let's talk about the technical architecture. The flow starts at the captive portal - that's the branded login page guests see before they get WiFi access. Purple's captive portal runs as a cloud overlay on top of your existing hardware. Whether you're running Cisco Meraki, HPE Aruba, Ruckus, or Juniper Mist, the portal sits on top without requiring hardware changes. At login, the guest provides their phone number - or it's captured via social login and cross-referenced. That number goes through verification. Purple uses SMS OTP - that's a one-time passcode - to confirm the number is live and belongs to that person. No dead numbers, no typos. Verified first-party data. The consent layer is where a lot of venues trip up. Under GDPR in the UK and EU, and PECR - the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations - you need explicit opt-in consent before sending marketing texts. That means a clear, unbundled checkbox on the login form. Not pre-ticked. Not buried in terms and conditions. The guest actively chooses to receive SMS messages from you. Purple's captive portal handles this natively, with consent records stored and auditable. If the ICO ever comes knocking, you have the paper trail. Once you have a consented phone number attached to a visitor profile, the segmentation work begins. And this is where the real value sits. Not all visitors are equal, and a one-size-fits-all SMS blast is a fast route to high opt-out rates. The segmentation matrix I'd recommend thinking about has two axes: recency and frequency. First-time visitors who connected in the last seven days - send them a welcome message with a reason to come back. Something like: Thanks for visiting. Here's 15% off your next visit, valid for the next 30 days. Lapsed visitors - people who haven't been back in 90 days or more - get a win-back campaign. Something with a stronger incentive, because you're competing with inertia. Regular visitors, people who come every two or three weeks, get early access or VIP treatment. High-frequency visitors - your most loyal segment - get invited into a loyalty tier or a referral programme. The trigger logic for these campaigns runs through Purple's automation engine. You define the rules once. When a visitor's profile matches the criteria - say, 45 days since last login - the system fires the SMS automatically. No manual intervention. The message goes out via an SMS gateway integration. Purple connects to over 400 platforms, so whether you're using Twilio, Vonage, or a CRM like Salesforce or HubSpot, the data flows through. Let me give you two real-world scenarios to make this concrete. First, a hotel group. Think of a mid-scale hotel brand - 80 properties, mix of business and leisure guests. They deploy Purple Engage across all sites. At check-in, guests connect to the guest WiFi and provide their phone number for SMS verification. Consent is captured at that point. Post-stay, the automation fires a message 48 hours after checkout: We hope you enjoyed your stay. Book direct for your next visit and get a complimentary room upgrade. The click-through goes to a direct booking page, bypassing the OTA. The hotel tracks return bookings attributed to that SMS link. Over a 12-month period, they see a 23% uplift in direct repeat bookings from SMS-captured guests versus the control group who didn't opt in. The cost per SMS is roughly two to four pence. The incremental revenue per returning guest is in the hundreds of pounds. The maths is not complicated. Second scenario: a retail chain. Think of a fashion retailer with 40 stores. They run Purple on Cisco Meraki hardware already deployed for network management. The captive portal is turned on - no new hardware, just a configuration change. Shoppers connect to the in-store WiFi, opt in to SMS marketing. The retailer segments by visit frequency and purchase history, pulling data from their POS system via a CRM integration. Lapsed shoppers - those who haven't visited in 60 days - receive an SMS with a time-limited offer: We've missed you. 20% off this weekend only, in-store. The campaign drives a 31% redemption rate among the lapsed segment. Footfall on that weekend is up 18% compared to the same weekend the previous year. That's a measurable, attributable outcome. Now let me flag the pitfalls, because there are a few that catch people out. Frequency is the big one. The 98% open rate that makes SMS so attractive also makes over-texting unusually punishing. If you send four to six messages a month, opt-out rates climb sharply. The rule of thumb: two to four messages per month maximum, and every message needs to earn its place. If you can't articulate the value to the recipient in one sentence, don't send it. Message timing matters more than most people realise. Midday sends - between 11am and 2pm local time - consistently outperform early morning or evening sends for venue-based campaigns. Avoid anything after 8pm. It's not just bad practice, it's a compliance risk under PECR. Link tracking is non-negotiable. Every URL in your SMS should be shortened and UTM-tagged. Without that, you can't attribute return visits to the campaign. You're flying blind. Purple's analytics dashboard shows you click-through rates, conversion rates, and return visit uplift by campaign. That's the data your CFO needs to see to justify the programme. And watch your sender ID. In the UK, you can use an alphanumeric sender name - so instead of a random number, recipients see your brand name. That alone lifts open rates and reduces spam reports. Set it up properly from day one. Let's do a quick rapid-fire on the questions I get asked most often. Do I need new hardware to run this? No. Purple runs as a cloud overlay on Cisco Meraki, HPE Aruba, Ruckus, Juniper Mist, Ubiquiti UniFi, Cambium, Extreme, and Fortinet. If you already have enterprise WiFi, you're likely already compatible. What's a realistic opt-in rate? Across Purple's network of 80,000-plus venues, opt-in rates on SMS at the captive portal typically sit between 25% and 45%, depending on the incentive offered and how the form is presented. A clear value exchange - opt in for 10% off today - pushes that toward the upper end. How do I handle multi-site data? Purple centralises visitor profiles across locations. A guest who visits your Manchester site and your London site is recognised as the same person. That cross-location data enriches your segmentation significantly. What about RCS? Rich Communication Services - the next generation of SMS - is worth watching. RCS campaigns produce 58% more site visits and 74% more revenue than traditional SMS, according to MessageFlow's 2026 benchmark data. Purple's roadmap includes RCS support. For now, standard SMS delivers strong results and works on every handset without requiring a specific app or OS version. Right, let's bring this together. The core principle is simple: your guest WiFi already captures the moment of physical presence. SMS marketing converts that moment into a long-term relationship. The technical components - captive portal, phone verification, consent management, segmentation, automation, and analytics - are all available today on Purple's Engage plan. The compliance framework - GDPR, PECR, ICO guidelines - is built in, not bolted on. The three things to do this quarter: first, audit your current captive portal login form and confirm you're capturing phone numbers with explicit SMS consent. Second, define your four audience segments - first-time, regular, high-frequency, and lapsed - and build one automated campaign for each. Third, set up UTM tracking on every SMS link so you can report return visit uplift to your leadership team within 90 days. If you want to see how this looks in practice for your specific venue type - whether that's hospitality, retail, transport, or a public-sector environment - the Purple team can walk you through a live demo. The link is in the show notes. Thanks for listening. I'll see you on the next one.