A Promotion is a guide built for one job: taking a limited-time deal — a resort credit, a sailing perk, a group rate — and turning it into a page that converts. It leads with the offer, spells out the value, and puts a deadline front and center. Because a Promotion is just a public guide with a purpose-built starting layout, everything Compass already does for public guides applies to it: search-engine visibility, one-click hand-off to a Marketing email campaign, view tracking, and shareable links.
Creating a Promotion
From the top-left menu, click New Guide. In the template picker, choose Promotion. You'll land in the editor pre-loaded with a conversion-focused outline you can fill in:
A punchy hook at the top — what the deal is and why it matters right now.
A two-column "What you get" / "The details" block for the offer, travel window, and book-by deadline.
A prominent "This offer ends {date}" callout — the deadline is the point.
A "Who this is perfect for" section to help the right traveler self-select.
A call-to-action button and a short FAQ for deposits, combinability, and flexible dates.
A terms line at the bottom for the supplier's actual fine print.
Publish it — that's what unlocks everything below
The benefits that make a Promotion worth its own guide type all depend on two settings in the editor's Settings panel: set Visibility to Public, and set Status to Published. A Promotion left as Draft, Private, or Team is just a private note — it won't be indexed, can't be handed to Marketing, and has no public URL to share.
Benefit 1 — It can be found on search engines
A published, Public Promotion is a real web page with its own URL — which means Google can index it. When someone searches for the kind of deal you're running, a well-written Promotion can show up in results and bring you bookings you didn't have to chase.
Two things have to line up for that to happen:
Your organization's "Search engine visibility" setting must be on. Find it under Settings → Search engine visibility and turn on "Allow search engines to index this site." That publishes a sitemap of your public guides and serves them as indexable. Left off, every public page is served with a noindex instruction and search engines skip it.
The Promotion itself must be Public and Listed. Public + Listed means it appears in your resource center and is eligible for indexing. Public + Unlisted keeps the URL working but sets noindex — good for a one-off you only want to share directly.
Benefit 2 — Turn it into a marketing campaign, straight from Compass
Once a Promotion is Published and Public, the editor shows an Email Campaign button. Click it and Compass hands the guide off to the Marketing app: it creates a draft email campaign built from your Promotion's title, cover image, and link, then opens the Marketing campaign builder in a new tab where you pick the audience, finish the design, and send.
At hand-off you choose how much of the guide becomes the email:
Teaser — a short preview plus a link to the full Promotion page.
Full — the whole Promotion rendered as the email body.
Hybrid — a middle ground. You can also set an optional intro and override the subject line.
Benefit 3 — Track and share it
Every public Promotion is shareable and measurable:
Share it anywhere. Use the "Copy public link" button in the editor to grab the Promotion's public URL, then drop it into an email, a text, a social post, or a quote. When that link is shared, it renders a rich preview — cover image, title, and description — because Compass emits Open Graph and Twitter Card tags on every public guide.
See how it's doing. Each public guide counts views (de-duplicated per visitor, with your own staff and bots filtered out). The count shows in your admin guide list, and you can sort the list by views to see which Promotions are landing.
Know which campaign drove the traffic. When a Promotion is opened from a link in a Marketing campaign, Compass records that click against the campaign (Compass-Click attribution) — so the visit ties back to the send that earned it.
A worked example
Say a cruise line offers your clients a 48-hour flash deal: free drink package plus $100 onboard credit on select Caribbean sailings, book by Friday. Here's the Promotion in motion:
New Guide → Promotion. Title it "Caribbean Flash Sale — Free Drinks + $100 Onboard Credit". Fill the hook, the What-you-get / details columns, and set the "ends Friday" deadline callout.
Set Visibility: Public, Status: Published. It now has a public URL and, with your org's search visibility on, is eligible to be indexed.
Click Email Campaign → Teaser → open Marketing, pick your Caribbean-interested audience, and send. The email links back to the Promotion page.
Over the next two days, watch the view count climb in your guide list, and let the search-indexed page pick up anyone Googling that sailing. After Friday, either unpublish it or edit the deadline for the next run.
Good to know
Is Promotion different from the other guide types under the hood?
Only in its starting layout and its label. It's a normal guide with content type "Promotion", so it behaves like any other public guide — same visibility rules, same sharing, same Marketing hand-off. The type mainly gives you a conversion-focused outline to start from and a clear label when you sort your guides later.
Do I have to use the Promotion template to get these benefits?
No. Search visibility, the Email Campaign button, tracking, and sharing apply to any Published + Public guide. The Promotion type just packages the right starting structure for a deal. If you already have a promo written as a different type, you can still publish it public and use all of this.
My Promotion is published but not showing up on Google — why?
Check three things in order: your org's "Search engine visibility" setting is on; the guide is Public and Listed (not Unlisted); and enough time has passed for search engines to crawl it. Indexing is never instant. Also make sure the title and description actually describe the deal — that's the part search engines read.
I don't see the Email Campaign button.
It only appears when your organization is subscribed to the Marketing app and the guide is currently Published with Public visibility. If you're not subscribed, you'll see an "Add Marketing" upgrade button in the same place.
What happens when the deal ends?
Nothing automatic — a Promotion doesn't expire on its own. When the offer's over, either set the guide back to Draft (or flip visibility off Public) to take it down, or update the dates and reuse it for the next run.
Related guides
SEO & AI Search Best Practices for Compass
How to get the most search-engine and AI-assistant visibility out of your Compass resource center — the exact settings to turn on, and how to write guides that get found and cited.
PDF Export and Email Campaigns
Export any guide as a branded PDF. Send a guide as a marketing campaign through the Marketing app — a draft campaign is created with the guide's title, cover image, and link.
Compass Categories
Organize guides into top-level categories and subcategories. Used for filtering in the admin guide list and the public resource center.