ROLLER recently teamed up with Patch Retention for a webinar on what's working, and what's coming next, in AI-powered guest retention. Patch Retention's Cameron Jarvis, VP of Partnerships, and McKay Allen, CEO, were joined by ROLLER's VP of Partnerships, Ellen Lorenzo, to show how venues are using the two platforms together to bring guests back and grow revenue, with real campaigns and results along the way.
🎥 Missed the live session? Watch the full recording here:
How ROLLER and Patch work together
Together, ROLLER and Patch cover the full guest journey: before a visit, during it, and after. ROLLER is the data foundation, capturing every touch point as guests book online, sign waivers, buy memberships, and spend in venue, all in real time. Patch turns that data into automated SMS and email: abandoned cart campaigns to bring unfinished bookings over the line, and upsells to drive memberships and repeat visits. The integration is live with more than 700 venues.
The difference shows up most clearly in the day-to-day. Without the integration, a manager running a single promotion has to export data from the venue platform, upload it to a separate marketing tool, build the segment, create and schedule the campaign, then pull the results back by hand, and repeat the whole thing for the next one. With ROLLER data flowing into Patch, the same manager can describe a campaign in plain language, let Patch build and run it, and watch the results in real time.
For the guest, it is the difference between a disjointed experience and a seamless one. Picture a parent who starts booking a birthday party, gets distracted, and drops off. With the integration, an abandoned cart email brings him back that evening to finish, his family completes their waivers online before arriving, check-in is fast, an in-venue text offers a free ICEE that turns into nachos, pizza, and ice cream, and a post-visit email thanks him and asks for a Google review.
Every step captures spend and keeps the venue top of mind.
Real campaign results
During the session, Cameron shared three venues already running ROLLER and Patch, and the campaigns driving real revenue for them.
Abandoned cart recovery: Miami Roller Rink
When a guest starts a booking on the ROLLER checkout and then leaves, Patch automatically follows up with texts and emails until they book or the sequence ends. The checkout itself is the trigger, so there is no list to build and nothing to schedule.
It reaches a venue’s warmest audience, the guests who already showed intent, so a reminder is usually enough and a discount only comes in later if it is needed.
Miami Roller Rink, which runs 20 to 30 campaigns at a time, earned $8,334 from this one automation in a single 30-day period. The lesson for any operator is to find out how many bookings you are losing, because that number is almost always higher than you would expect.
In-venue upsells: a California amusement center
An in-venue upsell is a message sent to guests while they are still at your venue, offering them something extra in the moment. Patch can time it automatically: a text 10 to 15 minutes before a session ends to offer more play time, or one a few minutes after check-in to nudge a food and beverage purchase. Because it runs off the booking times coming from ROLLER, no one has to watch the clock.
Running it monthly, one California amusement center drove 113 upsells and about $1,316 in 30 days, from 2,085 messages that reached 968 guests.
The reason it works is timing: the best moment to get a guest to spend more is when they are already in the building, and with food and beverage often targeted at 30 to 40% of revenue, those extra sales add up quickly.
Clean lists and sharp emails: Flyup 417 Bike Park
This UK venue earned $9,268 from just five emails sent between July and October, with only three opt-outs. They were a mix of monthly newsletters and seasonal promotions, nothing fancy.
The difference was Patch’s ListScrub, which flags unengaged or invalid contacts so emails go only to real, engaged guests. After scrubbing its list, the venue’s open rate climbed from 52.85% to 65% and its bounce rate fell to 0.2%. A clean list sent regularly beats a big list emailed now and then.
The common thread
Across all of these campaigns, the same habits keep showing up:
- Capture consent automatically
- Send only to engaged contacts
- Trigger on what a guest just did
- Give each message one clear next step, including asking for a review
- Measure revenue, not opens
The pattern is simple: well-aimed campaigns, sent to the right people, with the revenue tracked back.
What's next in AI-powered retention
Patch shared three newer capabilities:
Patch AI
Patch AI can build a campaign from a single prompt, handling three jobs that used to take hours. It segments (describe the audience, even a complex one, and it filters the list for you), it authors the content (on-brand emails and texts you can refine by prompt or even by voice), and it builds the automation itself, a full multi-step journey with delays between messages.
The biggest win is removing the blank-page blocker that used to stall campaigns before they started.
Patch CRM
Newly launched, Patch CRM extends Patch from individual guests to group bookings like birthday parties and corporate events. Every inquiry moves through a clear pipeline, from New Inquiry to Quoted, Confirmed, Deposit Paid, and Completed, and each lead is tagged by source automatically.
Patch then follows up on open quotes until they are confirmed, which matters because an instant response can lift booking likelihood by around 45%. You can also build quotes and event orders and collect a signature, all in one place.
Patch MCP
Patch MCP connects the AI tools you already use, like ChatGPT and Claude, directly to your Patch data. From there you can ask questions, pull live metrics, and take approved actions, like checking which campaigns are performing best or generating performance reviews and heat maps of where your guests come from, all without copy-pasting anything.
What it means for operators
For operators, the benefit is straightforward: less manual work, and fewer missed chances to bring guests back.
When ROLLER data flows into Patch, the campaigns that drive repeat visits and higher spend per guest, abandoned cart recovery, in-venue upsells, win-backs, and review requests, run automatically in the background. Your team spends its time with guests instead of exporting and uploading data.
If you want to try it, start simple: one abandoned cart automation, one in-venue upsell, and a clean list.
If you’re ready to see how ROLLER and Patch could fit your venue, book a demo today.
Looking for more ways to bring guests back? Get your free copy of the 2027 Attractions Industry Benchmark Report.
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