How to prove guest WiFi ROI to your clients each month

A venue renews guest WiFi when the owner can see what it did for the business, month after month. This guide is for MSPs, installers and resellers looking after venues on CaptiFi, and it starts after the install, when the owner is wondering what they're paying for. It uses the figures CaptiFi already shows plus the owner's till and accounts, and the guide to guest WiFi for MSPs covers the partner models.

What a venue can measure from guest WiFi

Guest WiFi tells a venue who came in and who came back, and which of them agreed to hear from it; CaptiFi then tracks what happened after the venue got in touch. Visits count connections and unique guests count people: CaptiFi recognises a returning guest by email address, then mobile number, then device.

There are no benchmarks here: set each target from the venue's own month-one figures.

The analytics dashboard page describes each report, and the insights card page shows what the weekly card says.

Setting a baseline in month one

A baseline is the venue's own starting figures, written down in the first month while the splash page is collecting and before the first campaign goes out.

1. Note unique guests, returning rate, marketing opt-ins and the opt-in rate for the period. The returning rate needs a few weeks of history before it means much, because every guest is new the first time CaptiFi sees them.
2. Record what CaptiFi can't see: the venue's public review count and rating on its listings, its average spend per visit from the till, and its gross margin from the accounts.
3. Note anything else that will move the numbers, such as the season or a new menu. The insights card estimates next week's visits and mentions what is on locally, such as a home match or a bank holiday, and the weather when it is likely to change visits; confirm the venue's address so it knows where the venue is.
4. Agree with the owner which three or four figures count as success, and keep them in the client's private notes on your partner dashboard.
5. On Growth, open Reports and switch on Email reports automatically for the owner, so the monthly report arrives on the 1st.

Measuring what campaigns and review requests did

Lead with what guests did after an email. Each CaptiFi campaign page shows sends, opens and clicks, and campaigns sent from 18 October 2026 also have a Came back card: the recipients the venue's WiFi saw again within 7, 14 and 30 days of the email, each as a share of the campaign's recipients. When the venue has Toast or Square connected, the card also shows what recipients spent there in the 30 days after. Only orders tied to a WiFi guest count, and CaptiFi matches Toast orders on email alone. Toast's API includes the guest's name, email and phone on take-out and delivery orders, according to Toast's developer guide, and CaptiFi has also seen emails on orders booked through Toast Tables; orders rung up in store at the till reach CaptiFi with no guest email. Square orders match through the customer record on the sale or the email on the order.

CaptiFi's documentation states the limit plainly: someone who came back after the email might have come anyway, so compare campaigns with each other and with a normal week at the venue. The Results view on each automation shows Enrolled, Sent, Opened, Clicked and Returned within 30 days for the period you pick.

Treat open rates with care. Apple's Mail settings include Protect Mail Activity, which, in Apple's words, will "privately download remote content in the background when a message is received (instead of when you view it)" (Apple Support). So an open count can include emails nobody read.

CaptiFi's review requests go only to guests who gave contact details and marketing consent, once they've left, and at most once every 90 days per venue, so a regular gets one request a quarter. The Guest feedback tab shows the average rating, total reviews and the share sent on to Google. For the public total, check the listing itself against the figure you noted in month one.

How to work out guest WiFi ROI

Return on investment is gain minus cost, divided by cost. Wikipedia's return on investment article describes ROI as "the ratio between net income or profit to investment", and gives the form (gain from investment minus cost of investment) divided by cost of investment. Use profit for the gain: a visit's spend still has to pay for the food and drink, so multiply takings by the venue's gross margin.

The table works the sum for a hypothetical café on Growth. The venue figures are invented to show the method; the cost is CaptiFi's public Growth price in USD.

For a real client, use what they pay you, including any support fee, and their own spend and margin. Agree the "would have come anyway" share with the owner before the first review and keep it the same every month, so the result moves only when the venue's figures do. Wikipedia also notes that ROI "is not time-adjusted", and a one-month sum leaves out things that pay later, such as opt-ins the venue can email next month and reviews that stay on its listing.

The monthly PDF has an Estimated ROI and Revenue Impact page of its own, which puts a fixed standard value on each marketing opt-in. It's a quick indicator; put the owner's own sum beside it.

A monthly review agenda

Run the review in the same order every month so the owner learns where to look.

1. Was the WiFi up? Check device status and open alerts for the venue on your fleet overview, and any support tickets.
2. Who came in: unique guests and returning rate against last month and against the baseline.
3. The list: marketing opt-ins and the opt-in rate. If the rate falls, look at the splash page wording and the consent question first.
4. What went out and what came back: campaigns and automations, their Came back and returned-within-30-days figures, and matched till spend where Toast or Square is connected.
5. Reviews: the average rating, new reviews on the listing, and any private feedback that needs a reply.
6. The ROI sum, with the owner's figures.
7. One or two actions for next month, such as a win-back email timed just inside the average return gap (Growth), or an offer for the quietest slot on the footfall heatmap.

Price the review time into the client's fee; the guide to reseller pricing and margins shows where it sits.

The reports your client receives

On Growth and above, CaptiFi builds a branded PDF report per venue for each finished month, and for any of the last 12 finished weeks. A monthly report covers the calendar month and compares it with the month before; a weekly one runs Monday to Sunday, UK time, against the week before. The monthly report runs to eight pages, nine once there's more than one venue, plus a page for each module switched on.

The Email reports automatically card on the Reports page sends the report to up to five people per venue: weekly every Monday morning, monthly on the 1st, or quarterly with the three monthly reports of the quarter. Every report email has a Stop these emails link, and an address that used it can't be re-added from the card, so check the card first if an owner says the report stopped arriving.

On Essentials there's no PDF or report email, so you take the figures from the dashboard KPIs and the weekly insights card into the review yourself.

Reports under your own brand

For a white-label partner with Brand the client dashboard switched on, the Brand PDF reports setting puts your logo, name and support email on the monthly PDF report for clients on Growth and Pro, and the weekly and monthly report emails, the monthly analytics digest and the weekly performance report carry your branding. For resellers without white label, the reports carry CaptiFi's brand; the white-label page lists every branded surface.

Groups and a whole client base

For a client with several venues, Pro adds the All venues option, which totals every venue into one set of figures. Below Pro, the dashboard shows one venue at a time, so set each venue's baseline separately and compare them in the review.

Across your client base, the Clients page shows each client's guest connections over the last 30 days, and the morning health digest flags a venue with no guests for a week, so look into a quiet venue then, well before its monthly review. From your own login you can open any client's analytics with the client selector, so preparing for a review needs no client password.

With your next client, take the month-one baseline before the first campaign goes out and book the first review for the week the first monthly report arrives; the guide to selling guest WiFi to hospitality venues covers what that owner should see in month one. If you don't resell CaptiFi yet, the partner programme sets out the terms and you can apply online.

Sources: Wikipedia, Return on investment, read on 22 October 2026; Apple Support, Change Privacy settings in Mail on Mac, read on 22 October 2026; Toast developer guide, Building a CRM & Guest Engagement integration, read on 22 October 2026; CaptiFi's partner programme pages and customer documentation, October 2026. The worked example uses invented venue figures and CaptiFi's public Growth price in USD. Apple Mail, Google, Toast and Square are trade marks of their owners; CaptiFi is not affiliated with or endorsed by them.