Messages to visitors

Sometimes something changes after your visitor has bought their ticket. The doors open half an hour later. The car park is full. It will be cold in the hall. With messages to visitors you send one short notice about it, and it arrives in the place where your visitor already keeps their ticket: in their wallet, on their phone.

This article explains what the visitor sees exactly, which two kinds of message there are and why that difference matters, and how you send one yourself.

First this

• Keep it short. It becomes a notification on a lock screen, not a newsletter. One sentence is often enough.
• Pick the right audience. Send "the 2 p.m. hall starts later" to the 2 p.m. people, not to everyone.
• Choose honestly between practical and promotion. That is not a matter of form: it decides who is allowed to receive your message. You will read why further on.

Who may do it? Only the owner of the organisation sees this screen.

From which plan? Messages to visitors belong to the Start plan and higher. On the free plan you can still open the screen and prepare everything; sending becomes possible as soon as you switch plans. Your wallet passes keep working as usual in the meantime. See Your plan, your invoices and pausing.

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What it is for

This is meant for notices your visitor needs to know before their visit. Three examples from real life:

• "The doors only open at 8.30 p.m. tonight." Anyone who does not know that waits half an hour in the rain.
• "Our car park is full from 1 p.m. — come by bike or park at the station." That saves your front desk a whole afternoon of the same explanation.
• "The exhibition is outdoors, bring a coat." A small thing, but exactly the kind of thing people thank you for afterwards.

What it is not: a newsletter. Only a few sentences fit, and you may only send a few a day. That is deliberate, and you will read why further on.

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What the visitor sees

That depends on their phone and on what they did with their ticket. You do not have to choose anything for this: you write one message, and every visitor gets it along the route that works for them.

On an iPhone, with the ticket in Apple Wallet

Your visitor gets a notification on their lock screen, just like with a boarding pass that changes. If they tap it, their ticket opens. The message itself sits on the back of the pass — you turn it over by tapping the three dots at the top right.

The last five messages stay there, the newest at the top. Send a sixth one and the oldest drops off. That way the back of a pass does not become an endless timeline after one season.

On an Android device, with the ticket in Google Wallet

There the message appears in the pass, in the same way. Google adds a notification of its own; we do not arrange that, and neither do you. Here too the last five messages stay.

Anyone without a wallet pass

Not everyone puts their ticket in a wallet. Whoever did not gets an email at most. And there the strictest rules apply, because that visitor only ever asked you for a ticket and for nothing else.

Nobody gets the same message twice. If someone has a wallet pass, the message goes there and not into their mailbox as well. If someone bought four tickets, they get one email and not four. Getting the same notice twice is the fastest way to make someone unsubscribe.

The visitor has	They get the message	With a notification
The ticket in Apple Wallet	On the back of the pass	Yes, on the lock screen
The ticket in Google Wallet	In the pass	Yes, Google sends it itself
No wallet pass	An email at most	As with any email

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The two kinds of message, and why that difference exists

This is the most important part of this article. Before you send anything, you choose between a practical message and a promotion. That is not a label on your text: it decides who gets your message.

A practical message is about a visit that has already been booked. A different time, a full car park, roadworks, bring a coat. That may go to everyone with a valid ticket, even to people who never asked for news from you. Only people who have unsubscribed no longer get it by email. The reason is simple: that person has an appointment with you, and this is about that appointment. Without the message they stand in front of a closed door. That is not advertising but service.

A promotion is advertising. A new season, an offer, another event, a discount code. That may only go to people who ticked the box "I would like to receive news from ..." themselves when ordering, and not to anyone who has unsubscribed since. Anyone who never saw that box because they ordered before this feature existed counts as "no consent" — and that is exactly right.

Note: the difference is not in the tone but in the recipients. A practical-sounding message with a discount code in it is simply a promotion. "The doors open later, and with code SUMMER you get 10% off your next visit" is advertising, however useful the first half is. If you still mark such a message as practical, you are sending advertising to people who never asked for it — and that is precisely what the privacy rules (the GDPR) forbid. Those rules say something simple: about an appointment someone made with you, you may let them know; selling them something is only allowed if they said yes to it themselves.

The choice also does you a practical favour: with promotion you see before sending that your message reaches fewer people. That difference is the best argument for choosing honestly.

One rule of thumb. Would your visitor be caught out if they did not get the message? Then it is practical. Would they at most miss out on something nice? Then it is a promotion.

For anyone with a wallet pass the distinction matters less: they get both kinds on their pass. They added that pass to their phone themselves and remove it again with one swipe. For email the strict rule applies in full.

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Who you can send to

You pick one of five audiences. They are deliberately broad: a filter builder with all sorts of rules sounds powerful, but it mainly produces messages that end up with the wrong people.

Audience	When you use it
The tickets for one event or product	Something changes about that one event: a different time, a different entrance, a cancelled guest.
The tickets for one time slot	It only applies to one group: the 2 p.m. hall, not the 4 p.m. one. This is the audience you will need most often.
All season pass holders	News that only concerns your regulars: changed opening hours, an evening just for them.
All outstanding gift vouchers	A reminder to anyone with a voucher in a drawer. Do remember: nudging them to come and use it is a promotion.
Everyone with a valid pass	Something that affects your whole public: the building is closed because of a water leak, the car park is moving. Use this sparingly.

For the first two you also choose which event or which time slot. Without that choice nothing goes out: "send this to the tickets for" without saying which, is a message that is guaranteed to reach the wrong people.

Who is never included. A cancelled or refunded ticket, a ticket that has already been scanned, a withdrawn or expired season pass and a used-up or expired gift voucher fall outside every audience. That is no longer a visitor, and still sending messages to such an address is exactly what you may not do.

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How to send a message

Sales → Messages to visitors

1. What kind of message is this? Choose Practical message or Promotion. Under each choice one sentence says what it means for your recipients. Read the previous section before you choose.
2. Who is it going to? Under Audience you pick one of the five groups above. If you chose a product or a time slot, Which product? or Which time slot? appears next to it, with a search field to point at exactly one.
3. Title and text. Per language your organisation uses. Title is the bold line your visitor reads on their lock screen, so put the news itself in it: "Doors only at 8.30 p.m." and not "Important notice". Text is one or two sentences below it, with the what and the why. Under each field you see how many characters you have left. If you leave a language empty, the message falls back on your default language. See Languages.
4. Add a link. That section is collapsed and may stay empty. One address for anyone who wants to know more — your directions, your opening hours page. It has to start with http:// or https://. Anyone who gets the message by email sees the link as a button in the email; only the title and the text go on the wallet pass.
5. Send, then confirm with Yes, send. The screen honestly tells you onto how many lock screens you are pushing a notification, and that it cannot be undone.

Next to the form sits Who gets this message? There you see, while you type, how many people the message goes to and how that is split: so many through Apple Wallet, so many through Google Wallet, so many by email. If you choose Promotion, it says underneath how many people drop out because they did not consent to advertising. Your allowance for today is there too: how many messages you may still send to this group. If there is a number you did not expect, your audience or your kind is wrong. Check that first; sent is sent.

At the bottom of the screen sits What you sent before: the last fifty messages with when, by whom, which kind, which audience and the numbers per channel. If a delivery failed, you click through there to see what went wrong.

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Why it has to be short

Your message becomes a notification on a lock screen. Only a few seconds of reading fit there, and the phone simply cuts off the rest. A cut-off notice is worse than a short one, because then your visitor reads "The doors open exceptionally late tonight because the techn…" and still knows nothing.

That is why there are fixed limits:

The title	60 characters at most
The text	200 characters at most

That is roughly one short heading and two sentences. If it will not fit in 200 characters, put the news in the message and the explanation behind the link.

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Three messages a day at most

Per audience you may send three a day. If you reach that ceiling the screen says so, and tomorrow it is possible again.

That is not there to annoy you. Such a message pushes a notification onto the lock screen of someone who only bought a ticket. Three a day is ample for "the doors open later", "the car park is full" and "bring a coat" — and too few to turn into a newsletter. That is exactly the intention: it is the line between something your visitors are grateful for and something they unsubscribe from.

The ceiling applies per audience. Three messages to the 2 p.m. time slot therefore do not stand in the way of a message to your season pass holders.

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Unsubscribing

At the bottom of every email there is an unsubscribe link. It works with one click: no login screen, no confirmation step, no "are you sure". Someone who unsubscribes is already sure, and every extra step is a reason for them to press "spam" instead — which is far worse for you.

Three things to know:

• The link does not expire. Even an email from last year still has a working unsubscribe button.
• Unsubscribing applies per organisation. Someone who wants no more news from your museum says nothing about anyone else's.
• Tickets and confirmations keep arriving as usual. Unsubscribing is about messages like these, not about the email with the ticket someone paid for.

The unsubscribe link is also under a practical message, even though strictly speaking it does not have to be. The reason: someone who unsubscribes after "the doors open later" does not want any more messages. Making them hunt for it only produces a complaint.

Anyone who has unsubscribed gets no more messages from you by email — no promotions, and no practical ones either. If they have a wallet pass they keep seeing messages on that pass — they put that pass there themselves and remove it themselves.

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Common mistakes

• A discount code in a practical message. That is a promotion, whatever you call it. Mark it as a promotion or take the code out.
• Choosing "everyone" when it is about one hall. Sending three hundred people a notification about a time slot they are not in is the best way to have your next message ignored.
• "Important notice" as the title. That is precisely the one line your visitor gets to see. Put the news itself in it.
• Writing the message like an email. No greeting, no sign-off, no headings. One heading and two sentences.
• Quickly sending a second message to put something right. Correcting is not possible: a sent message stays on the pass. Read it over before you send.

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What if …

What if I spot a mistake after the message has gone?

You cannot recall or change a sent message; it is already on the phones. Send a short new message with the correction — it goes above the previous one on the pass. Remember that it counts towards your three a day.

What if someone did not get a notification?

Notifications are a matter for the phone, not for us. If your visitor turned off the notifications for their wallet, or their device is on silent, they only see the message when they open their pass. It is there all the same.

What if my message reached nobody?

Look at the numbers you saw before sending. If it said zero, the audience was empty — often because an event or time slot without valid tickets was chosen, or because a promotional message went to a group in which nobody gave consent.

What if I need more than three messages in one day?

Then it is probably about different groups, and that is fine: the ceiling applies per audience. If you really need to say something four times to the same group in one day, something else is going on — in that case put a notice on your ticket page instead.

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Frequently asked questions

Does my visitor have to install anything for this? No. Whoever put their ticket in their wallet gets the message there. Whoever did not gets an email at most.

Does this cost anything extra? No. It is part of the Start plan and higher.

Can I see who got my message? You see the numbers per route — Apple, Google, email — and they are in your log as well. A list of names is not part of it.

Can I prepare a message in advance? No. A message goes out at the moment you send it. That fits what it is for: news that applies today.

In which language does my visitor get the message? For a ticket, in the language they ordered in, if you filled that language in. Otherwise, and for a season pass or a gift voucher, in your organisation's default language. See Languages.

Why can I not build my own audience? Because the five that exist nearly always cover exactly what you want to say — and because a home-made filter mainly produces messages that reach the wrong people. See also Wallet passes.