Building Your Own Campaigns

Alongside the booking messages Haven sends automatically, you can build your own automations: pick what starts them, who they reach, and what happens step by step. You will find them on Marketing → Campaigns → Automations.

The categories

Automations are grouped by what you are trying to do:

Reach new guests is for people who have not stayed with you yet.
Win back guests brings past guests back, converts platform stays to direct bookings, and fills open dates.
Owner outreach is for property managers only — reaching owners who might list with you.

Booking confirmations and other reservation mail live under Communication → Message automations, on the guest journey, and that is also where you add your own stay emails (for example, one the day after check-in) with Add under the day it belongs to. See The Guest Journey. One-off newsletters and announcements live under Broadcasts. Every row shows who it reaches under the name. On Broadcasts, the date under Sent or Scheduled is when it went out or when it is set to go (hover it for the full date and time). Hover a campaign name to see what starts it and any tag filters — not a list of contacts.

Press Calendar above either list and the list slides left with a calendar beside it (on a phone the calendar takes the list's place). It shows broadcasts and automations together, whichever list you are on. Every month is stacked, so scroll down to walk forward through what goes out; Today jumps back to this month and Earlier months loads the ones before. The colors say what each chip is: blue for broadcasts, violet for repeating automations, amber for automated sends, grey for drafts, and dashed for event ideas. Solid chips are still coming — scheduled, or people due their next message — and light chips already went. Each day's automated sends, Haven's built-in automations included, share one Automated chip; open it to see each automation and how many it sent or has due. Click any chip for when it goes, the channel, the subject, who it is for, and how many people it reached or reaches today, with Open and See stats. Hovering a chip highlights its row in the list, and hovering a row highlights its chips. Audience narrows the calendar to the people in the segments you pick: every number then counts only them, and anything that reaches none of them drops off. The legend above the months hides or shows each kind. Press + on a day to choose what to create. Email, text, and WhatsApp start a draft dated for that morning; social posts are still coming. Drafts without a send day sit under Unscheduled. Booking messages are not on the calendar; they live under Communication → Message automations. Each list row has icon actions to edit, send now, schedule, or delete — no labels, hover for the name. A sent broadcast cannot be sent again; delete removes it from the list and does not recall mail already delivered. To stop a scheduled broadcast from going out, choose Unschedule from the row's ⋯ menu, or press its calendar icon and then Unschedule. It goes back to a draft you can schedule or send again later. Open a broadcast to write it — the left To tab is who receives it and when. The editor header has Schedule and Send: Schedule opens a month calendar and a list of times (with quick picks like Tomorrow, 9 AM), in your own time zone, and confirms the exact moment before you commit. Once scheduled, a banner across the top of the editor says exactly when it goes out, with Change time and Cancel schedule in the header. The scheduled send carries the email as it was when you scheduled it: if you edit it afterwards, the banner says so and Update the scheduled email sends your changes at the same time. Who gets this starts collapsed on the audience you picked; open it to change who receives the email. Email uses Blocks for cards and sections; text uses a short composer with a segment count and the required STOP line. See Marketing Email Editor and Text and WhatsApp Marketing.

Draft (beside New broadcast) writes the whole email from a sentence or a page of rough notes: subject, sections, links, and who gets it. It adds your own listing photos where they fit. Paste a website link into the brief — a partner, a local business, an event — and the draft reads that site: its logo, its own photos, what it says about itself, and every link you gave (a booking or scheduling link becomes a button). Press Draft the broadcast and the dialog closes straight away. The draft is written in the background — a row with a progress bar sits at the top of Broadcasts while it works, and a notification with Open draft appears when it is saved, usually within two or three minutes. You can leave the page meanwhile. Nothing is sent: the result is an ordinary draft you edit, schedule, or delete.

Inside an open email, the AI bar docked under the email changes what is already there instead of starting over. Type the change — "make the tone warmer", "shorten the middle section", "add a photo of the hot tub after the first paragraph", "use photos from the lake house" (or, on the Haven CRM, "use Sanctuary Found's imagery" for a site the email is about), or "add a generated image of a cabin at dusk" — and press send. To change one spot, highlight the text and press the AI button on the formatting toolbar: the text drops into the bar as the thing to change. Or press the pointer icon in the bar and click the paragraphs or blocks you mean. Only those may change; everything else is kept exactly as it was. It usually takes 10–30 seconds (a little longer when it captures a screenshot or generates an image). While it works the email dims with a progress bar; when it lands the email repaints and the conversation above the bar says what changed, with Undo — and Redo to put an undone change back. Name a listing, site or collection and the AI reads its brand profile — the facts, tone and look on file for it — so "rewrite this in the lake house's voice" or "make it on-brand for the collection" uses what is actually true about that place. If a request could mean different things, it asks one question with a few options; tap one or type your answer and it makes the change. Keep typing to refine it further. On an empty email, the first message drafts the whole email. The bar edits the email you wrote; it never swaps it for a new one. A formatting request ("make it better formatted", "break this up", "add headings") rearranges your own words — shorter paragraphs, headings, a list, a divider — and keeps every sentence; an edit that would change what a paragraph says is refused and the bar tells you which one it kept. The header picture changes only when you ask for the header, banner or cover photo; a tone, length or formatting change leaves it alone. Emails Haven drafts for you from a blank canvas still get their artwork generated.

You can rename these, reorder them, and add your own from the Categories button. Archiving a category that still holds campaigns asks you where to move them first, so nothing gets lost.

Starting an automation

Press New automation at the top of the list.

Start from offers templates that are already assembled — win back last year's guests, convert OTA guests, outreach to a new list, and a few more. A template arrives with its trigger, audience, re-entry rule and draft emails already chosen, so picking one creates the campaign and takes you straight into the editor. Anything it chose stays editable afterwards under Settings.

Two things a template cannot decide for you, and asks about first when they apply: which list its trigger should watch, and — for the campaigns that fire off bookings, like winning back last year's guests — which listings it covers.

Starting from scratch is also fine. It asks all four questions below, because on a blank canvas none of them has an answer yet.

When should it start? is the trigger. Each one shows roughly how often it has fired for your account recently, so you can tell whether it is worth building. A few triggers that are still being wired up appear greyed out with an explanation.

Added to contacts starts the automation the first time someone lands in your audience — a form, an import, a booking, or a contact you add yourself. It is not the same as Added to a list, which waits until they join a list you pick. Connecting a PMS and pulling in a history of past guests does not fire this trigger; that would start a welcome sequence for people who have been on the books for years.

Which listings? is the scope. If you have a multi-unit site, that is usually the right answer: the campaign then covers every unit in the site, including ones you add later, and its emails can promote any of them. You can also pick specific listings or your whole account.

Who is it for? is the audience. The quickest answers are the three shortcuts: Everyone, Guests, or Owner leads. If you want to be more specific, pick any combination of lists and segments instead, and any to exclude. As you choose, Haven shows how the number is arrived at:

how many match your rules
how many have marketing enabled
how many are not blocked from receiving email
how many have not opted out
how many will actually receive it

That last figure excludes anyone who has had a marketing email from you in the last day, which is a spacing rule that applies across all your campaigns so a guest never gets three emails from you at once. Open See who if you want to send anyway: Dropped lists people sitting out for that spacing rule, and checking a row — or Include everyone emailed recently — puts them back on this send only. Excluded is people you unchecked by hand; Include all puts them back. People who unsubscribed, bounced, or have no marketing consent cannot be overridden.

Welcome new subscribers

A welcome for someone who has just joined your audience is an automation you build and publish yourself. Press New automation. Under When should it start?, choose Added to contacts. Under Who is it for?, choose Everyone or Guests. Add an Email step for the note they should receive, then press Publish. Until you publish, nothing is sent.

Added to contacts runs the first time a person lands in your audience — a popup, a page form, the rewards pop-up, a follow, a booking, an import, or a contact you add yourself. Someone already in your audience does not start it again. Added to a list is for one list you pick. Followed you is for people who follow a listing, a collection, or a community.

Connecting a PMS and pulling in a history of past guests does not fire this trigger; that would start a welcome sequence for people who have been on the books for years.

Only people with marketing permission receive it. The figures under Who is it for? — how many have marketing enabled, how many are not blocked, how many have not opted out — are the same funnel described above.

A form hosted on Mailchimp never reaches Haven. Put a Haven popup or a page form on your site, or export that audience and import it again (Import Mailchimp Contacts). Switch off Mailchimp's own welcome so the same person does not get two.

What can start an automation

When should it start? groups the choices by what happened. A few from each group:

You or the calendar — Send once, On a repeating schedule, When you add someone by hand.
A moment of the stay — Inquiry received, Booking confirmed, Before check-in, After check-out.
Money on the stay — Deposit paid, Balance paid in full, A payment fails.
The guest does something — Agreement signed, Review left, Guidebook opened.
Something changes about a contact — Added to contacts, Added to a list, and Followed you. Tag added, Stay anniversary, and A guest's important date are in that group as well.
Something changes about a listing — Open nights ahead, Short gap beside a stay, Rates drop, New listing goes live.
Someone does something on your site — Abandoned checkout.
Something happens on a Haven account — A Haven account event. Only Haven's own account campaigns can use it; it is not in the list on yours.
Another automation ends — When another automation ends.

Something happens with a job — A job is created, Someone accepts a job, A job is finished — lives on Communication → Message automations, in the Team lane, rather than among the campaign triggers above.

Choices that are still being wired up stay greyed out in the picker, with a short explanation, and are left off the list above.

Smart triggers that watch for you

Some triggers don't wait for the guest to do something — Haven watches the world for you and starts the automation at the right moment. These are what make Haven's win-back different from a normal newsletter tool:

A local event is happening nearby. Haven detects nearby events worth traveling for — concerts, festivals, big games, and the like — near each property, and can automatically reach out to past guests before the dates sell out.
You improved or updated a listing. When you add new photos, list a new amenity, or refresh a property, that's news worth sharing. Haven can automatically re-engage past guests of that property so your best improvements actually win you a rebooking instead of going unnoticed.
Gap nights open up. When your calendar leaves a short gap that's hard to fill, Haven can offer it to the right past guests before it goes empty.
A price drops. When a stay a guest looked at gets cheaper, Haven can let interested past guests know while the deal is live.

Each of these pairs the trigger with an audience. Add a discount block on the email if you want a code on that send — the same code goes to every recipient and applies at checkout. You'll find these triggers in the When should it start? list when you add an automation, and several come pre-assembled as templates under Start from.

When Haven spots one of these opportunities and you have chosen to review before sending, it also appears as a card under Event recommendations at the top of Broadcasts — and in the Marketing inbox on Marketing → Overview. Add to drafts files the email in Broadcasts with the send day Haven picked. Preview email shows the mail without opening the editor. Draft is how you name something Haven would not find on its own.

Lists and segments

Both can be used as an audience, and they do different jobs.

A segment is a saved set of rules — "stayed twice or more", "last stay over a year ago", "booked through Airbnb". Membership updates itself as guests change.

A list is a fixed set of contacts you curated. Any file you upload becomes a list automatically, which is how you email "the partner list from March" without having to remember who was on it.

Draft a whole automation

Draft on the Automations tab (beside New automation) builds a complete sequence from a description of the journey, such as "win back guests who stayed last summer, follow up a week later, and stop once they book". Haven decides:

what starts it, such as a booking, a checkout, a stay anniversary or a tag;
who it reaches, using your guests, a saved segment or a list;
how many emails it sends and how long to wait before each;
which emails go only to people who still match (for example, still without the tag you add when they rebook);
when someone leaves. When the sequence is trying to win a booking, an inquiry or a click, that becomes its goal, and anyone who reaches it leaves the automation, so nobody who already booked gets the rest.

It then writes every email for its moment in the sequence. Each email knows what came before it, in your voice, with your listing photos and links. Websites you paste into the brief are read the same way a broadcast draft reads them.

Press Draft the automation and the dialog closes. A progress row at the top of Automations shows "Writing email 2 of 4" as it works, and a notification with Open draft arrives when it is done, usually within a few minutes. You can leave the page meanwhile.

The result is an ordinary draft automation on the canvas. Nothing sends until you publish it. Its description (under the automation's settings) says why Haven picked that trigger, that timing and that stop rule, and what it assumed. Any setting it could not decide from your brief, such as which list a trigger should watch, is left for you, and Publish points to it. Change the timing, the audience or any email as you would on an automation you built yourself.

Emails Haven rewrites before every send

A repeating automation — one that runs on a schedule, like the first of every month — can carry an email that Haven's AI writes fresh each time instead of sending the same copy again. Describe one to Draft ("a monthly email listing the events happening in the area in the coming month") and Haven builds it this way on its own; or select any email step on a scheduled automation and turn on Rewrite this fresh before every send. Write the brief that stays the same from issue to issue — what the email is for, the tone, what to always include — and choose how many days ahead it drafts (one to seven; three is the default).

That many days before each send, Haven writes the issue from your brief: it knows the dates the issue covers, the subjects of the issues it already sent so it does not repeat itself, and the local events it has found near your listings for that period, which it will only mention if they are real and in that window. You get a notification with Open draft when it is ready. Open the step to read it; edit anything you like, and your edits are what sends. If you do nothing, it sends on schedule exactly as drafted. The automation row shows where the next issue stands — Drafted for Nov 1 — review, Drafting for Nov 1…, or Next: drafts Oct 29 for Nov 1 — and its ⋯ menu has Skip this send when you want one issue to sit out (and Send this one after all to change your mind).

Nothing stale ever goes out: if a draft could not be written in time, the row says Could not draft — Nov 1 will not send, you get a notification, and that issue is held rather than sending old copy. Pausing the automation pauses the drafting too. Two templates under Start from are built this way already: Monthly newsletter and Monthly local events. Monthly local events goes to your past guests and contacts (owners are skipped), and each issue shows pictures of up to four of the events it lists. When an event has no picture yet, Haven makes one; an event without a picture still appears as text.

Emails written for each guest

Some automations are about one person, not a list: a guest's wedding anniversary, their birthday, the anniversary of a stay, a guest who has gone quiet. For these, an email can carry a Personal note block — type / in the editor and pick Personal note, or ask Draft for an email "specific to each person". You write the instruction ("wish them a happy anniversary by name, mention something they told us they loved, and invite them back"); when the email sends, Haven writes that paragraph for each guest from what it may share about them — the facts under What Haven has learned that are marked Can be mentioned to the guest, your notes if you opened them, the guest's own Haven profile, their stays with you, and the date the automation fired on. It never uses a private fact and never invents one. A guest with nothing shareable on file gets the email without the paragraph, so write the rest to stand on its own. In the editor the block shows your instruction in a dashed card; the words themselves exist only in each guest's copy.

The trigger A guest's important date pairs with this: pick which dates (all, birthdays, anniversaries, or your named dates) and how many days ahead, and the email can use {important_date}, {important_date_label} and {important_date_years}. Haven fires it once per date per year, and a 29 February date fires with the 28th in a common year. The Anniversary offer template under Start from is a ready-made example. A personal note is only accepted on an automation that starts from one contact; on a broadcast or a scheduled email, publishing tells you to remove it or change the trigger.

Building the automation

The editor is a canvas. Add steps from the left, click any step to edit it on the right, and everything saves as you type. Email steps open the Marketing Email Editor — a full-page composer with header styles and insertable blocks. The left rail's Emails tab lists the other messages in that flow so you can switch without leaving the editor.

Adding an Email step opens Draft this email straight away. Say what the step should tell people, in a sentence or in rough notes, and press Draft it. Haven writes the subject and the whole email for that point in the automation: it knows what started the automation and what came before this step, it uses only the personalization the step can fill in, and it names the step for you if it is still called "New email". It usually takes under a minute. Press Write it myself to skip it and open the editor instead.

The same button stays on the step afterwards. Select an Email step and the right panel shows Draft while the email is empty, and Revise once it has something in it. Revise takes an instruction ("make it warmer", "add a line about early check-in") and rewrites only what you asked about. The confirmation has an Undo. An AI draft is not held for review: on a published automation the step sends what was written, so read it through.

Wait holds for a set time, in minutes, hours or days. Wait for a date holds until something on the booking, like three days before check-in or two hours before checkout. Days count calendar days; hours and minutes count from the moment itself, which for check-in and checkout is the listing's own time in its time zone. Wait for something holds until a condition becomes true, or gives up after a while.

Split is how a campaign branches. You give each branch a condition, and each one shows roughly what share of your contacts would take it — which is usually the fastest way to spot that a branch you thought was important only catches four people. Branches are checked in order and the first match wins. Anyone matching none of them takes the fallback path, so nobody is ever silently dropped.

Do something covers the non-email steps: tag a contact, add them to a list, or notify yourself.

Emails that match the listing

Some automations start from something that happened at one of your listings — an abandoned checkout, a stay coming up, open nights, a rate drop. On those, each email can carry that listing's own brand instead of one brand for everybody.

Open an email, then Brand on the right. Two pictures of mini emails are Look:

Each listing — every recipient sees the logo, name, colors, and fonts of the listing their email is about. A guest who nearly booked the beach cottage gets the cottage's brand; a guest who nearly booked the cabin gets the cabin's. The picker under the stamps is which listing you are previewing.
Same look — one brand for everyone, which you pick under the stamps.

Previewing for above the automation's canvas is the same listing choice. It is only a preview; real sends use each guest's own listing. In the full email editor, Editing above the email picks which version you change: All properties, or one property's own wording, which only that property's guests get (and which also previews that property).

The open-nights, rate-drop, and new-listing automations already work this way and keep doing so. Abandoned checkout and the stay automations start on Same look, so turn on Each listing if you want them to match.

Abandoned-checkout emails can also use {booking_url} — a link straight back to the listing with the guest's dates already filled in — plus {check_in_date}, {check_out_date}, and {nights}. Insert them from the Personalize menu while writing.

Goal marks the outcome you want. When someone reaches it they leave the campaign, which is what stops a guest who just booked from receiving the rest of a "come back" sequence.

Publishing

Editing a campaign changes a draft. Nothing you type reaches anyone until you press Publish, and before it commits you will see exactly what changed — added steps, removed steps, a different audience. Anyone already part-way through a campaign keeps following the version they started on, so publishing never makes someone skip a step or repeat one.

If anything is incomplete, it is listed and marked on the step it belongs to. A campaign cannot go live without an audience, because a campaign with no audience must never be read as "everyone".

Duplicating a campaign

Open the ⋯ menu at the end of a broadcast's or automation's row and choose Duplicate. The copy opens as a draft named Copy of … with every email, the audience and the sender carried over. It has no send date, no history and no enrolled guests, and it is not published until you publish it. To start a new broadcast from a single email instead, or to pull parts of one email into another, see Reusing Emails You Have Already Written.

Pausing and turning off

The switch in the campaign header stops new people entering and freezes anyone mid-way exactly where they are, so turning it back on continues each person from their own position. Archiving is final and removes everyone still inside.

Setting your sending address

When you start a broadcast or automation without a sending address of your own, Haven warns you first. You can add one right there, or carry on and send from Haven's shared address, and tick Don't show this again if that is what you want. Nothing is blocked either way. Your own address is still worth adding: guests open mail from a name they recognize, and their replies come to you instead of a Haven inbox you never see. You will find it under Account → Sending address.

Any address works, and which one you use changes what Haven can do with it:

An address at a domain you own (hello@yourplace.com) becomes your From address. Guests see your name and your domain, and Haven gives you three DNS records to publish so mail from it is signed as yours. If Haven manages your domain already, those records are published for you and there is nothing to do.
A Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo or similar address becomes your Reply-To. The email goes out on Haven's sending domain — no personal-email provider allows anyone else to send as you, and mail that tries is rejected outright — but replies land in your inbox, and your name is still on the message.

Verification runs on its own and usually finishes within a few minutes. You do not have to sit on the page waiting for it, and you can write your campaign while it completes.

If the records never turn up, verification is abandoned after three days and Haven emails you — naming your DNS provider, listing the exact records your domain still needs with the names written the way that provider wants them, and offering a 30-minute call if you would rather do it together. Nothing else about your account is affected while this is unresolved: your marketing simply keeps going out from Haven's shared address. Add the records, then add the address again under Account → Sending address and choose Check status.

Sending to more than 1,000 people

A campaign to more than 1,000 contacts does not go out all at once. Haven paces it: 500 emails on the first day, then 1,500, 3,000 and 5,000 a day on the days that follow, until everyone has been reached. Each step up is earned rather than scheduled. A day only moves up when what you have sent so far reads clean (hard bounces under 2% and almost no spam reports), and a send that does not read clean stays at 500 a day until it does. Turn the campaign on once; the rest leaves on its own each day, and the campaign shows as still sending until it is done.

Mailbox providers watch for a sender whose volume suddenly jumps, so a large send that starts small and climbs is what keeps it landing in the inbox. The pace is the same whichever sending address the campaign uses.

While a large send is going out, Haven also watches its bounces on their own. If more than 5% of the emails sent so far have bounced (after at least 100 have gone, and at least five people), the campaign pauses itself and the list shows Paused for bounces with the numbers. Your other campaigns and your booking email are not affected. Remove or correct the addresses that bounced, then turn the campaign back on and it continues from where it stopped. If it keeps bouncing, it pauses again on the next bounce, because the addresses are the problem.

Uploading a list you did not collect yourself

Haven supports this, carefully.

Any address you import can be emailed. You do not have to prove that each person opted in — every message carries a working unsubscribe, which is the basis marketing email runs on. What Haven does insist on is that the addresses are real: every contact is checked at import, and any address whose domain cannot receive mail is dropped from marketing before it is ever sent to. Dead addresses are what damage a sender's reputation, and they are also the part you cannot see by looking at a spreadsheet.

When you upload contacts you are asked where they came from. Own past guests, your own signups, or a partner list all send normally. Owners of properties I manage also send normally, and every contact in that import is tagged as an owner: campaigns sent to All guests skip them, and the Owners segment collects them so you can write to owners on their own. A purchased or third-party list is treated differently: it sends through a separate outreach sender with its own daily limit. The limit starts at 500 a day and climbs to 1,500, 3,000 and then 5,000 a day on the following days — but each step is earned, not scheduled: a day only moves up if what has been sent so far reads clean (hard bounces under 2%, at most one spam report or a rate under 0.1%), and a list that does not read clean stays at 500 a day until it does. A campaign to such a list has no size cap of its own — add the whole list, turn the campaign on, and it goes out at each day's limit until everyone has been reached. That separation is deliberate — it means a cold list can never affect the deliverability of your booking confirmations or your rebooking email, even if it goes badly.

For those lists Haven also:

watches each list's bounce and complaint rate and pauses that list on its own if it goes bad — a paused list holds the campaign where it is, and it continues from there once the pause is lifted
stops emailing anyone who has ignored three messages

You are always asked to confirm that the people on a list can lawfully be emailed by you. Decline and nothing is imported.

Working out why someone did or did not get an email

Open a campaign and use Why did someone get this?. Enter an address and you will see the exact path that contact took: when they entered, every wait, which branch they went down and why, each email that sent, and each one that did not along with the reason.

If a campaign reached fewer people than the audience count promised, the usual answer is in the Audience tab: contacts marked Not sending are skipped because their address bounced, was reported as spam, or unsubscribed. Hover the reason to see which, and use Send anyway to clear a block you believe is wrong. Deliverability protection covers the rules and why they exist.