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title: Distribution and sending
description: Distribution and sending
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# Distribution and sending
## Distribution is where you decide which guests receive your surveys and review requests, and when. This guide covers three tasks: splitting guests evenly across review portals, setting up audiences, and automating your sends.
Audiences pick the guests, **Send** and **Automate** email them, and a split decides which review portal each guest is offered. A review request always names a single portal.
Sending an even split of review invitations across portals
You can spread guests evenly across Google, Tripadvisor and HolidayCheck in two places: the split on your survey links, and a split on the survey’s thank-you page. A review request email asks for one portal at a time, so you spread those by audience instead.
| Method | Who it reaches | Where you set it | Even split across 3 portals |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Link split | Guests who open a survey link from your PMS, CRM or booking engine | **Distribution → Links & QR codes** | 34 / 33 / 33 % |
| Thank-you page split | Guests who complete a survey | **Survey Settings → Forwarding** | Weight 1 / 1 / 1 |
| Review requests | Guests in an audience you choose | **Distribution → Email invitations → Review requests** | One portal per send, so use a separate audience for each |
### Before you start: add your review links
Go to **Settings → Review Links** and add the write-a-review link for each portal. A portal appears in the split options only once it has a link. Booking.com is not offered, because guests can only review there with a Booking.com reservation.
### Option 1: Split guests who open your survey links
This split applies to the deep links and v1-format links that your PMS, CRM or booking engine sends to guests. It does not apply to static links, QR codes, portal links, or invitations emailed from Customer Alliance.
1. Go to **Distribution** and open the **Links & QR codes** tab.
2. Under **Deep-link credentials**, find your property’s credential. If there is none, click **Create credential**.
3. Under **Send guests to review portals**, enter a whole-number percentage for each portal. The total can be at most 100.
4. Click **Save**.
Whatever you don’t assign to a portal opens your survey. Some common settings:
| Goal | Google | Tripadvisor | HolidayCheck | Survey |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Two portals, no survey | 50 | 50 | 0 | 0 |
| Three portals, no survey | 34 | 33 | 33 | 0 |
| Three portals and the survey | 25 | 25 | 25 | 25 |
How guests are assigned:
- **Each stay is assigned once.** A guest who opens the link again goes to the same place, even if you change the split later. Your changes apply to stays that haven’t been assigned yet.
- **Shares even out with volume.** Across a few hundred guests the result lands close to your percentages. With only a handful of guests it can look uneven.
- **Guests already invited keep their survey.** A guest who already has a survey invitation for that stay is not redirected.
- **A portal visit counts as contact.** A guest sent to a portal won’t receive another survey invitation or review request from you for 30 days.
- **If you send nobody to the survey**, make the shares add up to 100. If they add up to less, keep a survey selected under **Survey for v1-format links** so guests in the remaining share have somewhere to go.
### Option 2: Split survey respondents on the thank-you page
This split invites guests who have just completed your survey to review you on a portal, with a button on the thank-you page.
1. Open the survey in **Surveys** and click the settings icon to open **Survey Settings**.
2. Open the **Forwarding** tab and, under **Post-Survey Forwarding Rules**, click **Add Forwarding Rule**.
3. Choose **Split traffic**. The split starts with two entries; click **Add portal** for each further portal.
4. Set each entry to a different portal, and give every entry the same **Weight**, for example 1. Each shows its share: 33% with three portals.
5. Publish the survey so the change goes live.
Good to know:
- **Keep the rule open to every respondent.** Inviting only guests who gave a high score to review publicly is known as review gating. It breaks Google’s review policies and can breach consumer-protection law.
- **The portal links come from the review links of the property or group that owns the survey.** If a portal has no link there, respondents assigned to it see no button.
- Results appear under **Analytics → Review Conversion**.
### Option 3: Review requests, one portal at a time
Each review request, and each review request automation, names a single portal. To spread requests, give each portal its own audience. For example, ask guests whose language code is *de* to review you on HolidayCheck and everyone else on Google.
Don’t set up several automations for different portals on the same audience. A guest is asked at most once every 30 days, so the first automation to run reaches them and the others skip them.
### Track the results
The **Review portal requests** table on the **Links & QR codes** tab shows, for each portal, how many guests were sent and how: **By portal link**, **By split** or **By email** (review requests). For Google and Tripadvisor it also shows **Reviews confirmed**, **Pending**, **Not confirmed** and the confirmation **Rate**.
A review counts as confirmed when one appears on that portal for the property within 90 days and its author’s name matches the guest’s full name. **Can’t check** means we don’t have the guest’s full name. HolidayCheck shows only reviewers’ first names, so its reviews can’t be confirmed.
Setting up audiences
An audience is a saved group of guests, defined by conditions such as stay status, length of stay or country. You build it once, then pick it whenever you send or automate a survey.
### Create an audience
1. Go to **Settings → Audiences** and select the property or group the audience should belong to.
2. Click **New audience**.
3. Enter a **Name**, for example “Checked-out guests”, and an optional **Description**.
4. Under **Conditions**, click **Add condition** for each rule. With two or more conditions, choose **Match all** (a guest must meet every condition) or **Match any** (one is enough).
5. Click **Create audience**. A confirmation tells you how many guests match right now.
An audience with no conditions covers every guest at that property or group.
### Conditions you can use
| Condition | What it checks | Example |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Stay status | Whether the guest has (or has no) stay with a given status: booked, arrived, checked out, cancelled or no show | has *checked out* |
| Stay ended within (days) | Whether a stay ended in the last N days | within *14* days |
| Nights stayed | Length of stay, in nights | is at least *3* |
| Booking channel | The channel your PMS recorded for a stay, matched exactly | has *Expedia* |
| Stay field | Any other field your PMS records on the stay, such as room type or rate code | *room\_type* is *Suite* |
| Country code | The guest’s country | is *DE* |
| Language code | The guest’s language | is *de* |
| Email address | Whether the guest has an email address | is present |
| OTA relay email address | Whether the guest has a forwarding address from a booking site | is absent |
| Custom field | Any field stored on the guest profile, from your PMS, an import or the API | *loyalty\_tier* is *Gold* |
| HubSpot segment | Membership of a HubSpot list (only shown when HubSpot is connected) | is member of *Newsletter* |
If you define a custom field under **Settings → Guest Attributes** (as text, number, date, yes/no or a choice list), the audience builder offers only the operators that fit its type, and a dropdown for choice lists.
### Where audiences are available
An audience belongs to the property or group where it was created and is available to every property beneath it. Lower down it carries an **Inherited** badge and can only be edited or deleted where it was created. This lets a group define shared audiences once while each hotel keeps its own.
Creating, editing and deleting audiences needs permission to change settings (the built-in **Admin** role has it). Other roles can view them.
### Good to know
- **The guest count is not the number of invitations.** It counts every matching guest. When you send, guests without an email address, duplicate addresses, blocklisted, unsubscribed and withdrawn-consent guests, and anyone invited in the last 30 days are skipped.
- **Field names must match exactly.** Use the key exactly as your PMS writes it, and use **Stay field** for booking details such as room type. If an audience matches 0 guests, the list shows a hint about what to check.
- **“Is not” also matches guests with no value.** For example, *Country code is not DE* includes guests with no country recorded.
- **Check your automations before deleting an audience.** An automation whose audience has been deleted stops sending, so point it at another audience first.
- If a send reports that an audience filter can’t be evaluated, open the audience, check its conditions and click **Save changes**.
**Automating campaigns**
An automation sends a survey to every guest in an audience a set number of days before or after a stay date, without anyone clicking Send. It checks for newly due guests every six hours and after every PMS sync.
### Before you start
- The survey is published.
- You have an audience for it (see *Setting up audiences*).
- Your stays reach Customer Alliance through a PMS connection, a CSV import with stay dates, or the API.
- Your plan includes surveys, and your role can configure surveys for the property.
### Set up an automation
1. Go to **Distribution** and open the **Email invitations** tab. If you manage a group, select the property: automations belong to the property they were created at.
2. On the survey’s row, click **Automate**.
3. Under **Audience**, choose who should receive it.
4. Under **Send timed off**, choose the date that starts the clock: **Checked out (actual departure)**, **Departure (scheduled)**, **Checked in (actual arrival)**, **Arrival (scheduled)**, or a date field from your PMS.
5. Under **Days from that date**, enter how many days after that date to send. Use a negative number to send before it, from −365 to 365.
6. If you run more than one post-stay survey, tick **Main post-stay survey** on the one guests should get first.
7. Click **Add automation**.
Common setups:
| Campaign | Send timed off | Days from that date | Audience tip |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Post-stay feedback | Checked out (actual departure) | 1 | Stay status has *checked out* |
| Pre-arrival questionnaire | Arrival (scheduled) | −3 | Stay status has *booked* |
| Long-stay feedback | Checked out (actual departure) | 1 | Add *Nights stayed is at least 5* |
### What happens after you click Add automation
- **The first run catches up on the last 30 days.** Guests whose send date fell in the last 30 days are invited straight away. The same applies when you switch a paused automation back on, so check the audience first.
- **Emails go out within about six hours of the send date.** There is no separate time-of-day setting for email.
- **Each stay is invited once per survey.** A returning guest is invited again for a new stay, but never to the same survey twice within 30 days.
- **Each stay gets one post-stay survey.** If several post-stay automations reach the same stay, the **Main post-stay survey** wins; without one, the oldest automation does.
- **Pre-stay invitations stop once the guest arrives.** The pre-stay wording is added to the survey’s invitation email in any language that lacks it; check that your existing wording doesn’t thank guests for a stay that hasn’t happened yet.
- **Some guests are always skipped:** cancelled and no-show stays, guests without an email address, and blocklisted, unsubscribed or withdrawn-consent guests.
- **Nights stayed and Stay field conditions apply to the stay that triggered the invitation.** Other stay conditions match any of the guest’s stays.
### Manage automations
Click **Automate** on a survey’s row to see its automations. You can switch each one on or off, or delete it. To change the timing, audience or channel, delete the automation and add a new one; stays it already invited won’t be invited again.
Under the survey name, the table shows the automation’s timing, or **Not automated**, **On hold** or **Not sending** when something needs your attention.
### Reminders
Open the survey’s **Survey Settings → Reminders**, switch on **Enable Reminders**, and set up to three reminders, each 1 to 14 days after the previous email. Reminders go only to guests who haven’t completed the survey, by email, and never for pre-stay invitations.
Reminders are scheduled when you send with **Send**. A survey that only goes out through automations doesn’t get reminders yet.
### WhatsApp (if enabled for your account)
If your account has WhatsApp, the automation also asks how to **Send by**: **Email**, **WhatsApp, else email**, or **WhatsApp only**.
- With **WhatsApp, else email**, guests WhatsApp can’t reach are emailed. You can also email guests who haven’t read the message within 24, 48 or 72 hours.
- WhatsApp messages go out between **Send WhatsApp from** and **Until** (09:00–20:00 by default, in your account’s timezone).
- The survey must fit in a WhatsApp form: at most 10 questions and 20 answer options, with no branching.
To turn on WhatsApp, contact your Customer Alliance account manager.
### Customize the invitation email
Under **Settings → Invitation Emails**, edit the **Invitation**, **Reminder** and **Review request** emails for each language: subject, body, button label, sender name and reply-to address. Use **Preview** and **Send test** to check them. Your logo and colours come from **Settings → Email Branding**.
To word one survey’s email differently, use the **Invitation Email** tab in its **Survey Settings**.
### Monitor your campaigns
The **Email invitations** tab shows, for each survey, how many invitations are **In flight**, **Sent**, **Delivered**, **Opened**, **Started** and **Completed**, the **Conversion** (completed ÷ sent) and how many were **Not sent**. The gap between Sent and Delivered is mostly bounces. An address that bounces permanently, or twice, is blocklisted so you don’t keep emailing it.
Frequently asked questions
**Why did fewer invitations go out than my audience’s guest count?** The count includes every matching guest. At send time, guests without an email address, duplicate addresses, blocklisted, unsubscribed and withdrawn-consent guests, and anyone contacted for that survey in the last 30 days are skipped. After a one-off send, the confirmation tells you how many were skipped for the 30-day rule.
**Can I re-invite a guest I contacted recently?** Yes, with a one-off send. In the **Send** dialog, tick **Ignore the 30-day cooldown (re-invite recently contacted recipients)**. Automations always respect the 30-day rule.
**Can a guest receive a survey and a review request close together?** Not within 30 days. Once a guest has been sent a review request or forwarded to a portal by a link split, they receive no survey invitations from you for 30 days. Likewise, a guest invited to a survey in the last 30 days isn’t sent a review request.
**Can I send review request emails as a percentage split?** No. Each review request names one portal. Use the link split or the thank-you page split for percentages, or give each portal its own audience.
**Why don’t I see the Send or Automate buttons?** Your role needs permission to configure surveys at that property, and only published surveys can be sent. Ask an Admin on your account to check your role.
**Why does my automation say On hold?** Invitations on your account are paused until a starting point is reached: your PMS delivering its first reservations, the next sign-in to the account, or a date set by Customer Alliance. The notice on the Distribution page says which applies. Guests who check out before then are not invited.
**Why does my automation say Not sending?** Usually because of WhatsApp: the survey can’t be sent as a WhatsApp form, or WhatsApp isn’t ready on your account. Edit the survey, choose **Email** under **Send by**, or contact support.
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