Triggers give you a powerful way to communicate automatically. You can respond to guests with personalized messages or notify third parties without lifting a finger! To read more about triggers, check out our Trigger overview support article. We've created a small library of trigger examples to help get you started.
In this example, we're dealing with a channel booking for the following scenario:
Scenario: Ask a channel guest without contact info to provide contact info and sign renter agreement
You got a booking! Great. But what happens if you don't have the guest's email address or phone number? Channels like Airbnb and Booking.com don't provide an email address (or even a phone number) for the guest.
How do you request your guest's contact information and have them sign your renter agreement and schedule their security deposit? OwnerRez directly integrates with the native messaging platforms at Vrbo, Airbnb, and Booking.com, so you need to reply on those channel messaging platforms.
Note: Why can't you use a platform email or proxy email address like "joe.blow.12345@messages.airbnb.com" or "joe.blow.12345@messages.booking.com?" These platform/proxy email addresses aren't real. If you send messages to them, your message will be collected by the channel, stripped, re-formatted and displayed on the channel's message platform in various ways that typically don't work well for email.
By setting up a channel template and trigger, you'll be able to send out a request to guests who booked through a channel, for their contact information immediately upon booking. OwnerRez can do that for you with message triggers.
Here are the steps for how to set up a template and trigger for this scenario:
- Create booking channel template with your reply, requesting channel guests for their contact information and sign renter agreement
- Create a trigger that applies to bookings requesting channel guests for their contact information and sign renter agreement
Create booking channel template with your reply, requesting channel guests for their contact information and sign renter agreement
Go to Settings > Templates to configure the message you want to send. Since this template will be used for channel bookings, create a channel "booking" type of template.
You can create only one type of template - a channel template. This is the delivery method that will be used for your response.
Channels like Airbnb and Booking.com don't provide an email address for the guest, so you need to be able to reply on channel messaging platforms as well. OwnerRez directly integrates with the native messaging platforms at Vrbo, Airbnb, and Booking.com, so this is easy to set up!
For detailed information about how channel templates work, check out the Channel Templates and field codes support articles. Also, see our Capture additional fields on booking and agreement signing support article.
To create a channel template, go to Settings > Templates > Channel tab > click the Create Channel Template button > select the "Booking" option. This will open a message editor with some sample field codes filled in.
Copy and paste the following values into your new channel template.
Name:
Request Guest Contact Information and Renter Agreement for Channel Bookings Template
Body:
Hi {CFIRST},
Thanks for booking {PNAME}!
I have entered your {BSOURCE} booking into our main booking system.
Please take a minute to copy and paste the URL below into a new tab to share your contact information and access your Rental Agreement for signature.
{BUFIXUP}
If you could take care of this ASAP, your booking for {PDISPNAME} will be complete.
Talk to you soon, and thanks for booking!
{MYFIRST}
Channel templates have a Preview button, so as you type, take a quick look at the preview window to get a sense of how the channel message will look.
Here is a quick look at how the above channel template looks in preview mode:
As you can see, this message is plain (no colors, images, or rich text), but that's good because it will be sent to the guest via the channel messaging platform, and the messaging platforms don't allow anything other than plain text.
Notice how we include instructions to "copy and paste" the plain text URL into a new tab? The channel message template converts the {BUFIXUP} field code link into plain text that can be copied and pasted by your channel booking guest to enter their contact information, sign the renter agreement, and schedule their security deposit. You want a concise message for the guest to read, and this does the trick!
Now that we have your channel message template created, it's time to configure the trigger that will send them.
Create a trigger that applies to bookings requesting channel guests for their contact information and sign renter agreement
To create a trigger to send the channel message. Go to Settings > Triggers > and click Create to pull up the new trigger screen.
Here is a list of all the settings the trigger needs to have:
- Type: Immediate
- Event: Booking is created
- Add Condition > Listing Site is: Only > Airbnb, Booking.com
- Action: Channel Templates > Request Guest Contact Information and Renter Agreement for Channel Bookings Template
Now, let's talk about what the above settings mean!
The Type and Event fields will make the trigger run as soon as any channel booking is received or recorded in your account.
Since we are targeting "channel bookings" only, we want to add a "Condition" to the trigger that will stop it from sending out messages for other bookings.
Note: Why do we not recommend users create a channel template and trigger for Vrbo bookings? You certainly can do that, but Vrbo continues to provide OwnerRez users with Vrbo guest contact information, email addresses, and phone numbers...for now. As long as you already have a Reminder to Guest to Sign Rental Agreement email template and trigger set up, you should be good.
You may want to add other conditions, but for now, this is enough to make our trigger send the channel message when you receive a channel booking and need to request guest contact information, sign your renter agreement, and schedule their security deposit.
Finally, the last thing we select is the "Action" for the channel template we want to send. Since this trigger is supposed to send a channel message, select the channel template and be careful not to select an email or SMS template.
At this point, your trigger should look like this:
Nice and simple!
Click Save, and now you have a trigger ready to go. These actions do exactly what they say. When the channel booking comes in, the trigger fires. That's it!