The goal goes beyond sending
Having a CRM and an email calendar does not explain the commercial value of that operation. A hotel can start with specific questions: which guests does it want to win back, what behaviour signals interest, and which action should stop a sequence? Opens and clicks help observe engagement, while the journey’s actual goal might be a booking, an enquiry or another stay.
Microsoft documents the ability to define business goals for journeys alongside interaction metrics. Our recommendation for hospitality is to translate each automation into a simple brief: audience, reason to contact, expected action, evaluation period and accountable owner. That definition supports decisions about what to retain, correct or stop running.
A segment should be explainable
A name such as frequent guests can hide very different rules. Before activating a segment, write its definition in commercial language and compare that with its logic: number of stays, dates, property, market or other relevant available data. How conditions combine and which records are excluded should also be explicit.
Customer Insights documentation describes building segments with attributes and related data, and previewing their size and members. For an audit, we recommend checking a sample of people who should be included and another who should be excluded. This provides a concrete way to find reversed rules, incomplete relationships or fields whose meaning differs from the team’s expectations.
Data quality is part of the journey
In hospitality, the same person can appear across different bookings and properties. We recommend reviewing identity rules, contact origins and data updates, without assuming every record represents a different guest. An outdated field can alter the relevance of a message or route a contact into the wrong journey.
Consent and preferences need to be reviewed for the channel and destination that will actually be used. Microsoft describes contact-point consent controls, such as those associated with an email address or phone number. Technical configuration supports an organization’s programme; it does not replace defining the requirements applicable to that organization. Commercial and technical teams therefore need to coordinate the scope.
A checklist for reviewing an automation
Before expanding sends, we suggest choosing one relevant journey and reviewing how it works from start to finish.
- Does the audience match a defined, verifiable commercial need?
- Do inclusion rules, exclusions and preferences produce the expected members?
- Do the trigger, timing and frequency limits make sense for the guest?
- Does a new booking or another relevant action stop or modify the sequence?
- Can a booking be related to the journey using a documented rule and window?
- Has it been tested with controlled records, with an owner assigned to review results?
Measure the business without assigning every sale to email
A booking attributed to a journey within a defined window does not, on its own, prove that the send caused the purchase. Evaluating incrementality requires an appropriate comparison design. Meanwhile, distinguish engagement, associated outcomes and incremental outcomes, and monitor unsubscribes, contact pressure and database quality. A useful CRM review leaves understandable segments, journeys with clear goals and an activation plan the team can operate and evaluate.
Further reading
These sources expand on the article’s concepts. Applying them to your hotel requires a review of your configuration, data and business objectives.
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