This guide builds a real automation from start to finish, using a jungle lodge in the Cayo District as the example. The same steps apply to a shop in Orange Walk or an accounting firm in Belmopan. Follow along in your own account. If you do not have one yet, the 500 free credits are enough to test everything described here.
Before you start: three decisions
- Goal: what should the sequence achieve? For the lodge, the goal is a direct rebooking within a year, instead of a booking through an online travel agency.
- Trigger: what starts it? Here, a guest’s checkout date.
- Audience and consent: only guests who ticked the marketing box at booking. Everyone else receives only transactional messages. Belize’s Data Protection Act, 2021 lets people stop direct marketing at any time, and many guests come from countries with opt-in laws.
Step 1: prepare your contact data
Import or sync contacts with the fields your automation will use: first name, language (EN or ES), country, checkout date and marketing consent. Consistent date formats matter. A field that mixes 03/04 in US and Belizean formats will trigger emails on the wrong day. Use custom contact fields for anything specific to your business.
Step 2: create the journey
In your Mailpro account, open the automation menu and create a new customer journey. Choose a date-based trigger and point it at the checkout-date field.
Step 3: add the emails and delays
- Day 1 after checkout: thank-you email with a link to leave a review, signed by the manager.
- Day 10: a short photo story from the lodge, such as a new trail or the birding season, with no hard sell.
- Day 120: a return offer for the next green season, with a direct-booking code.
Add a condition after Day 10: if the contact clicked a link about a specific tour, send a follow-up about that tour.
Step 4: write for your readers
Create an English and a Spanish version where your guest mix needs it, and branch on the language field. Keep the design mobile-first, because most readers will open the email on a phone. Show prices in the currency your guests use; for North American visitors that is usually US dollars.
Step 5: time it for the reader’s clock
Belize uses Central Standard Time year-round. If most of your past guests are in the eastern US or in Europe, set send times to their morning, not yours. Mailpro’s scheduling lets you choose the hour each step goes out.
Step 6: test, then activate
Send each email to yourself and a colleague and check the links, the merge fields and the unsubscribe link on a phone. Then activate. The journey runs by itself from now on.
Two more automations worth building
A retail welcome series
Trigger: a new signup on your website or in-store tablet. Email 1 (immediately): welcome with a first-purchase voucher. Email 2 (day 4): best sellers. Email 3 (day 10): store locations and opening hours in Belize City, Belmopan or wherever you trade. Mailpro’s welcome automation is built for this.
A hurricane-season alert, ready before you need it
Not every automation is a sequence. Between June and November, keep an alert template and an SMS ready to send to guests with upcoming arrivals. The message covers closures, reopening dates and your rebooking policy. When a storm is forecast, you only need to edit two lines and send.
After launch
Check the journey’s statistics after a month: opens and clicks per step, unsubscribes and bookings. Our page on automated email statistics explains what to look for. For the broader picture, go back to automated emails in Belize.