How to leverage SMS messaging marketing to increase return visits

How to leverage SMS messaging marketing to increase return visits - A Purple Technical Briefing [INTRO - approximately 1 minute] Good morning, and welcome to this Purple technical briefing. I'm going to spend the next ten minutes walking you through something that a lot of venue operators are sitting on without realising it - a verified, consented, first-party phone number database that they could be using to drive measurable return visits. We're talking about SMS messaging marketing. Not the spray-and-pray bulk texts of fifteen years ago. We're talking about behaviour-triggered, consent-based, segmented SMS campaigns built on data you already collect when guests connect to your WiFi. If you run a hotel, a retail estate, a stadium, or a conference centre, and you have Guest WiFi in place, you are already halfway there. This briefing will tell you exactly how to close the gap. [TECHNICAL DEEP-DIVE - approximately 5 minutes] Let's start with the data problem, because that's where most venue operators get stuck. The fundamental challenge with SMS marketing is that you need a verified phone number. Not a guessed one. Not one scraped from a loyalty card sign-up three years ago. A number that belongs to the person standing in your venue right now, attached to a real consent event, with a timestamp and a source you can prove to a regulator. Guest WiFi solves this. When a visitor connects to your network through a captive portal, Purple's Capture plan collects their phone number as part of the login flow. The consent checkbox is displayed inline, the language is GDPR-compliant, and the timestamp is logged automatically. You now have a verified number tied to a real venue visit. This matters because phone numbers collected at the point of WiFi login have a verification advantage that other channels cannot match. The person typed their number to receive a one-time passcode. They proved they own the device. That is a quality of data signal that a web form or a loyalty card cannot replicate. Now, let's talk about why SMS outperforms every other re-engagement channel at this stage of the funnel. SMS messages carry a 98% open rate, compared to roughly 20% for email - that is according to Forbes and independently validated by Infobip's 2026 messaging trends data. The click-through rate for SMS sits at around 18%, versus 2.5% for email. And critically, 90% of SMS messages are read within three minutes of delivery, compared to around 90 minutes for email. When you are trying to drive a return visit - especially a time-sensitive one - that speed of read is the difference between a filled table and an empty seat. The architecture behind a well-run SMS programme at a venue has three layers. Layer one is data capture. Purple's captive portal, deployed across Cisco Meraki, HPE Aruba, Ruckus, Juniper Mist, or any of the other supported hardware platforms, presents the login screen. The visitor enters their phone number, receives a one-time passcode, and ticks the SMS marketing consent box. Purple logs the consent event with a timestamp, the venue ID, and the visitor's profile. That data flows into the Purple Engage platform. Layer two is segmentation. This is where the intelligence lives. Purple's analytics engine segments your visitor database by behaviour - visit frequency, time since last visit, visit duration, and venue zone if you have indoor mapping deployed. You can build audiences like: visitors who came once in the last 90 days and have not returned; or guests who visited three or more times in a quarter and then went quiet. These are your highest-value re-engagement targets, and you can reach them with a message that references their actual behaviour. Layer three is automation. Purple Engage fires SMS campaigns based on triggers you define. A guest who has not visited in 30 days receives a win-back message. A guest who visited last week receives an event reminder for the following weekend. A fan who attended a stadium fixture receives a pre-sale offer for the next match 48 hours before public sale. None of this requires manual intervention once the rules are set. Now, compliance. I want to spend a moment on this because it is where teams get nervous and sometimes do nothing as a result. GDPR, in the UK and EU context, requires a lawful basis for processing personal data and explicit consent for direct marketing by electronic means. The key word is explicit. Pre-ticked boxes do not count. Bundled consent buried in terms and conditions does not count. Purple's captive portal presents a standalone, clearly worded opt-in checkbox for SMS marketing, separate from the WiFi access terms. That is a conscious-choice opt-in. The consent record is stored with the visitor profile and is available for audit. Every SMS you send must include a clear opt-out mechanism. In practice, this means appending "Reply STOP to unsubscribe" to every message. Purple Engage handles this automatically and suppresses opted-out numbers from future sends. You should also cap message frequency - we recommend no more than four messages per month per subscriber as a starting point, adjusting based on your unsubscribe rate data. For US venues operating under TCPA, the requirements are similar in spirit but different in mechanism. You need prior express written consent for marketing messages, and A2P senders must complete 10DLC registration with US carriers. Purple's platform supports 10DLC compliance workflows. [IMPLEMENTATION RECOMMENDATIONS AND PITFALLS - approximately 2 minutes] Let me give you the three things that separate a successful SMS programme from one that burns out its list in six months. First: segment before you send. Sending the same message to your entire database is the fastest way to drive up unsubscribe rates. A guest who visited yesterday does not need a win-back message. A visitor who came once two years ago needs a different message than a regular who comes every fortnight. Purple's segmentation tools let you define these audiences precisely. Use them. Second: time your sends correctly. SMS has a 98% open rate, but that does not mean every send time is equal. Sends between 10am and noon, and between 5pm and 7pm on weekdays, consistently outperform other windows across hospitality and retail verticals - this is based on industry benchmarks from Klaviyo's 2024 SMS benchmark report covering over three billion messages. Avoid sending after 9pm or before 8am. Aside from the regulatory quiet hours requirements in some jurisdictions, it is simply bad practice and it damages your brand perception. Third: measure return visits, not just clicks. The metric that matters for a venue operator is not the click-through rate on the SMS link. It is whether the recipient came back. Purple's analytics platform closes this loop by matching subsequent WiFi logins against your SMS send list. When a visitor who received your win-back message connects to your WiFi three days later, that is a confirmed return visit attributed to the campaign. That is the number you take to your board. The pitfalls to avoid: do not buy phone number lists. Ever. Purchased lists have no consent trail, they violate GDPR and TCPA, and they will get your sender ID flagged by carriers. Build your list through your own venue touchpoints - WiFi login, loyalty sign-up, event registration - and protect it. Do not ignore unsubscribe rates. An unsubscribe rate above 3% on any single send is a signal that your segmentation or your message relevance is off. Investigate before you send again. [RAPID-FIRE Q&A - approximately 1 minute] A few questions we hear regularly. "How quickly can we build a usable SMS list?" At a venue doing 500 WiFi logins per day with a 30% SMS opt-in rate, you accumulate 150 new consented numbers daily. In 90 days, that is 13,500 contacts. That is a viable list for a first campaign. "What is a realistic return visit uplift?" Across Purple's customer base, venues running triggered SMS win-back campaigns see between 15% and 25% return visit uplift compared to non-messaged control groups. Premier Inn and Whitbread properties using Purple Engage have reported measurable increases in repeat booking rates through automated post-stay messaging. "Does SMS cannibalise our email programme?" No. Brands using both SMS and email see a 97% higher click rate than those using email alone, according to Mailchimp's combined channel data. They are complementary, not competing. [SUMMARY AND NEXT STEPS - approximately 1 minute] To summarise. SMS messaging marketing is the highest-engagement re-engagement channel available to venue operators. The data you need - verified, consented phone numbers - is already flowing through your Guest WiFi login. Purple's Capture plan collects it. Purple's Engage plan automates the campaigns. The three things to do this quarter: first, audit your current WiFi login flow and confirm SMS consent is being captured and logged. Second, build three audience segments - lapsed visitors, regular visitors, and new first-timers - and design a triggered message for each. Third, set up return visit attribution in your analytics dashboard so you can measure actual footfall impact, not just message opens. If you want to see how this works in practice across your specific hardware estate - whether that is Cisco Meraki, HPE Aruba, Ruckus, or another platform - talk to the Purple team. We have deployed this across 80,000 venues and 350 million unique users. We know what works. Thanks for listening. The full written guide is available at purple.ai, and the link is in the show notes.