I am new to Cambium and just finding my way around. What do Cambium installers/MSP’s typically do when clients want to capture emails for marketing?
The basic portal fields don’t really offer enough. There are limited data protection and validation features and no options to integrate with email marketing platforms like Mailchimp etc
I ask because we are considering building a professional guest portal service for Cambium.
Is the current solution good enough or is there a demand for something more custom?
Well… you have to remember that everyone has been told for years not to give out their information on public Internet.
Every other add is about buying a VPN to protect your privacy.
Then there is the whole… how do you actually monetize it once you use it.
So I had to work on one of those jobs with one of those Email collecting services…
They swore they could capture all sorts of stuff like DEMOGRAPHICs… not just statistics and usage…
So you had to give them an email address to use the wifi.
1/2 the people I watched would just go back to cellular. Which tracks with that whole privacy thing.
But then I got a look at the visitors emails…
I was surprised how many returning users there were.
I mean [censored-expletive-filled-list-of-fake-email-addresses] all made multiple visits a month some times even the same day!
It was a few different things.
Purple was one.
Something about red something or other.
Another one that reminded me of cards???
They were all marketing companies and they had a good pitch.
Like 20 of the bars I work with went with one of the 3.
All of them dropped it after a year.
The thing of it was there was one that actually had a confirmation setting.
Like it would email you the pass to access it.
This was an issue due to the customers wouldn’t chose to use the wifi unless they couldn’t get access any other way… so getting that email became an issue.
The other one would text you some key. So they had to have phone service. Which if they did… they didn’t use the wifi.
Before that was the whole social media log in… glad that stopped being a thing… NOT EVERYONE IN THE WORLD USES FACEBOOK.
The captive portal not having an up to date certificate became a case of the waiters having to be IT support…
What sort of customer data were you able to get?
I mean online orders… that’s not a local thing… Is it? That’s usually hosted by someone else or off premise. You know… so they order online… like when they are not there.
LETTING a client fill out a form for “loyalty” or some other program… that’s different than “to get wifi access”.
Maybe a captive portal at first connection that OFFERS them the opportunity to register???
Like the bowling alley near me. HOLY SHIT is it expensive. When I was a kid it was cheap to drop us off and fetch us like 3 hours later. Now its like 250 dollars for a family of 3, to bowl and eat.
On the TVs, they have a: “Join Our Rewards Program for a discount”. You send a text to a number on the TVs.
I SEE LOTS OF PEOPLE USING THAT, when I sat there watching. They get a text message with a discount for that night and SPAM FOR YEARS!!!
You have had quite the experience with captive portals
The login process, or at least our login process in much more subtle than the scenarios you mention. It is always important to get the balance right between keeping customers happy and getting marketing data
Venues need to market to their customers or they will struggle against competition
Depending on which country your are delivering the service to, collecting email addresses to market to is not lawful. Example, in Canada if you require the user to use a valid email address to gain access to a service, you must disclose that you are using the email as a marketing vehicle in exchange to their use and give explicit opt-in options including refusal to allow marketing contact. This full disclosure is protected by law and does come with some severe consequences for violators regardless of the country they are actually in.
I am not saying your idea is worthless but you will need to make sure you actually have the right to collect and use this information as intended since it is the location of use that dictates jurisprudence.
First all the restaurants were closed.
Then they could only do take out.
Then they could only serve patrons OUTSIDE.
Remember this timeline???
When they returned for outside only service… We stopped handing people menus.
Everyone was expected to use their phones to see the menu.
That was the end of captive portals and even passwords on the guest network. You had to let anyone on and make it easy. Or they couldn’t even order.
QR codes on the table became the standard…
A redirect to the facebook page was too much…
And now to this day… Every sit down restaurant I wander into “that I don’t work for” still has that QR code on the table. Some offer menus again… But all of them allow/push you to use your phone.
Collecting email info or even password protecting the network turned into “scheduling and firewall rules at most…”
