SevenRooms Email Marketing and GDPR: What a Restaurant Can Send

You have 6,000 guests in SevenRooms, a holiday menu to launch, and a simple question: who are you allowed to write to? In Europe the answer is stricter than in the US, and SevenRooms enforces it for you. For SevenRooms email marketing and GDPR, the rule fits in one sentence: a marketing campaign only goes to guests who have explicitly given their consent (opt-in).

This guide explains what you can send, to whom, how to collect opt-ins, and how to launch a compliant campaign in SevenRooms.

Please note: this article is a practical guide, not legal advice. The exact rules (retention periods, mandatory wording, special cases) depend on your situation. Have your consent policy reviewed by a lawyer or your DPO, and check the guidance of your country's data protection authority.

SevenRooms email marketing and GDPR: what changes in Europe

SevenRooms automatically applies a filter to marketing emails sent from venues in Europe. It is based on the municipality set for your venue in SevenRooms. Two practical consequences:

• Only guests who explicitly agreed to receive your emails get your campaigns.
• The "All Guests" Auto-tag is not available. Elsewhere it covers every guest who has booked or ordered. For you, the tag to use is Marketing Opt-Ins, which covers all guests who allow your marketing communications.

One more thing: Email Marketing is an add-on to SevenRooms. If it is not in your package, ask your Customer Success Manager or SevenRooms support.

Your "emailable" list is therefore smaller than your guest database. That is normal: you are writing to people who said yes.

Opt-in vs transactional: what you can send to whom

Two families of emails coexist in SevenRooms, and you need to tell them apart.

Transactional emails relate to a booking or a service provided. According to SevenRooms, they do not require an opt-in:

• booking confirmation;
• cancellation or modification;
• pre-arrival reminder;
• feedback request after the visit;
• other service-related messages.

A guest who unsubscribes from marketing keeps receiving them. That is the point.

Marketing emails promote something: newsletter, holiday menu, event, birthday offer, win-back of an inactive guest. They require an explicit opt-in.

SevenRooms' standard Automated Emails (confirmation, reminder, feedback) are treated as transactional. The default setting is implied consent: all guests receive them. If you would rather send them only to guests who gave marketing consent, you must write to SevenRooms support, because this setting is controlled on the back end.

A marketing automation, on the other hand (post-visit thank-you with an offer, re-engagement series, custom automation), is email marketing: it only goes to opted-in guests.

Common mistake: slipping a promotion into a confirmation email. As soon as the message sells something, it is no longer purely transactional. Keep confirmations plain, with at most an invitation to subscribe.

Subscription statuses in SevenRooms

Each guest profile carries a marketing email subscription status:

• Subscribed: the guest ticked a box or filled in a form (booking, online order, subscription form) and has not unsubscribed. This is your audience in Europe.
• Unsubscribed: the guest clicked the unsubscribe link or asked your team to unsubscribe them. They get no marketing until they resubscribe.
• Not Yet Subscribed: the guest neither accepted nor refused, but has booked or ordered. This is implied consent, which does not open the door to email marketing in Europe.
• Double Opt-In Activated: if Double Opt-In is on, a greyed-out box shows that you cannot subscribe a guest on their behalf.

To see how many guests you can actually reach, check Total Mailable Email Contacts on your account page. Group or venue opt-in tags do not reflect the true database size.

Double Opt-In: how to enable it and when to choose it

Double Opt-In adds a second step: the guest signs up, receives a confirmation email, and is only considered subscribed after clicking the link. A guest who does not click is not marketable. You avoid typos, sign-ups by a third party and spam complaints, and you get a stronger record of consent.

It is not self-service: SevenRooms offers it on request. Contact your Customer Success Manager or support, and say whether you want to customise the subject, text or button of the confirmation email.

You also need to decide what to do with existing guests:

• Treat them as subscribed. Your list stays usable, but only if the original consent was valid. SevenRooms asks you to rely on your legal resources to choose.
• Send them a confirmation email. Everyone must click to confirm. Until they do, your marketable contacts drop to zero.

The emails are customised in Settings > Guest-Facing Language > Emails > Marketing Subscription:

• Marketing Subscription Confirmation: sent to new guests who sign up on an ongoing basis;
• Continued Marketing Subscription Confirmation: sent once to existing guests, if you chose that option.

How to decide? If you do not know where the consent of a large, old database came from, reconfirming is the most cautious route. Validate with your legal counsel.

Collecting opt-ins: 8 levers that work in a restaurant

An opt-in is earned at the right moment with a clear reason. SevenRooms recommends picking one or two levers to start, testing, then adding more.

• The reservation widget. When Email Marketing is activated, an opt-in checkbox is automatically added to the Reservation Widget. This is lever number one: every online booking can produce an opt-in.
• The Subscription Widget (Settings > Subscription Widget). It collects email, phone and opt-in outside a booking, including from people who never booked. It is available to all venues. First name, last name, phone and email are required, and you can add salutation, birthday, postal code or dietary restrictions. Keep the form short: a long form makes people give up. The Show Email Marketing Checkbox for Group option lets guests opt in to the whole group. Do not pre-tick the box without legal advice.
• Your website. A button that opens the widget as a pop-up (HTML code in Settings > Subscription Widget > HTML, to be installed with your web developer), or a direct link to the widget (Direct Link to Widget). Also enable reCAPTCHA to filter out bots and set a redirect URL after sign-up.
• A QR code in the dining room. On the host stand, in the check holder, on tables. It points to your Subscription Widget link. SevenRooms suggests creating it with a free tool such as Flowcode.
• Checks and payment point. Train your team to offer sign-up at the host stand or when settling the bill: "Would you like to receive our invitations and seasonal menus by email?"
• Wi-Fi, loyalty and upsell programmes. SevenRooms recommends adding a clear consent prompt to these journeys.
• Transactional emails. Add a sentence to the confirmation or thank-you: "Want to stay in touch? Sign up to receive our offers and priority access to reservations." A sign-up link, not a promotion.
• Social media and ads. The widget link in your Instagram bio, stories and ads.

Opt-in from the reservation. If a guest asks your team, open the reservation and toggle Send Email Marketing opt-in email (available while the guest is "Not Yet Subscribed"). They receive a confirmation email and only become Subscribed after clicking. You can also tick the venue under Marketing Subscriptions > Manage Subscriptions on the guest profile. If Double Opt-In is on, a confirmation email goes out first.

A rough order of magnitude, as a hypothesis: a restaurant taking 40 online bookings a day, where 25% of guests tick the box, collects about ten opt-ins a day with no effort from the team.

Launching a compliant campaign in SevenRooms

Once your opt-in base is built, here is how to send.

1. Go to Marketing > Email Marketing, then Create Campaign. Start from a template or from scratch.
2. Give it a clear internal name and check the reply-to address (by default the one in Profile Information > Guest-Facing Contact).
3. In Audience, choose Marketing Opt-In: it is the only audience available in Europe. To target more precisely, use Auto-tags or Client Tags (for example guests who visited at least 3 times in 6 months). Custom Auto-tags are only offered with certain packages. See our guide to SevenRooms Auto-tags.
4. Use Exclude Guests to remove tags, for example "Employee" or "Press".
5. Set the schedule: immediately or at a future date.
6. In the content, enter the sender name (the restaurant's), a subject line of 50 characters or fewer, then build the email.
7. Preview and test: audience and exclusions, links, prices and dates, mobile display.
8. Click Send or Schedule.

Targeting is evaluated at send time: a guest who receives the tag before the scheduled time gets the campaign.

Checking that unsubscribed guests are excluded. SevenRooms automatically excludes unsubscribed guests. To find them, create a custom Auto-tag (Marketing > Auto-tags > + Create Auto-tag) with the condition OutgoingEmail: Unsubscribed, wait a few hours for processing, then filter under Clients > Tags.

Unsubscribing, proof of consent and content: best practices

Unsubscribing must be simple and visible. SevenRooms automatically adds Unsubscribe and Manage Email Preferences links to the footer of every campaign. If you use a premade footer, remove any placeholder unsubscribe links it contains. In Automated Emails, add the link via Embed > Unsubscribe Link. Guests can unsubscribe from a single venue or the whole group. An unsubscribed guest still receives confirmations and reminders.

Keep proof of consent. The Subscribed status in SevenRooms tells you the guest agreed, but your best safety net is knowing how, when and through which channel. Our advice: keep the exact wording of the checkbox shown to guests, note the dates you change forms, and favour Double Opt-In if your list is old or of mixed origin. These are māhie recommendations, not a SevenRooms requirement.

Never buy lists. Addresses must be given directly by the person, with their permission. If you import contacts from another tool, exclude or tag those who had unsubscribed there.

Useful content, not pushy.

• A clear subject line of 50 characters or fewer, a recognisable sender (the restaurant's name), a single call to action.
• A sustainable frequency: one email a month that matters beats four that get ignored.
• Aim for under 0.1% spam complaints (1 in 1,000) and under 1% unsubscribes per campaign, according to SevenRooms.
• Target engaged contacts (opened within the last 60 or 90 days) rather than pushing on those who never respond.
• WhatsApp or SMS follow-ups only with the guest's consent on that channel; Heep, the AI for restaurants that māhie deploys, can automate them within that framework.

SevenRooms limits in Europe to be aware of

• No All Guests. Your maximum audience is the Marketing Opt-Ins list.
• Email Marketing is an add-on, and some features (Custom Auto-tags, subscription management) depend on your package.
• Double Opt-In is requested from support. It is not a setting you switch on yourself.
• Your marketable list shrinks if you move to Double Opt-In with reconfirmation of existing guests: it can drop to zero until guests click.
• SevenRooms SMS Marketing is in beta, and the help center only mentions North America. A guest has to sign up themselves anyway.

SevenRooms itself states that you are responsible for complying with local laws: the tool applies filters, it does not replace your consent policy.

SevenRooms email marketing and GDPR: frequently asked questions

Need help with email marketing and GDPR on SevenRooms?

A well-built opt-in base is worth more than a large cold list. But between the reservation widget, the Subscription Widget, Double Opt-In, Auto-tags and your in-venue materials, the pieces easily get assembled wrongly, and it is your responsibility on the line.

māhie is an agency specialised in restaurants and hospitality, with deep SevenRooms expertise. We help restaurant groups in Paris and beyond with collecting consent and preparing their campaigns. Concretely, we can:

• frame your GDPR opt-in collection set-up: checkbox wording, Double Opt-In, handling your existing database, proof of consent (with your legal counsel);
• configure the Subscription Widget and the reservation widget, then integrate them into your Webflow or WordPress site with sign-up tracking;
• create your in-venue collection materials: QR codes, check inserts, scripts for hosts and floor staff, and train your teams;
• prepare your Auto-tags and audiences: opt-in segments, exclusions, finding unsubscribed guests;
• build and test your email campaigns, from layout to send, with tracking of the bookings they generate.

To turn a guest database into a usable opt-in base, Contact māhie. We start from your current SevenRooms configuration and propose an action plan.