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 booking for the following scenario:
Scenario: Ask Channel Guest With Contact Info to Sign Renter Agreement
You got a booking. Awesome! But how do you get your guest to sign that all-important Renter Agreement signed?
Fortunately, you have the contact information (real email address, phone number, etc.) of your guest from the channel booking so you can easily reach out to them by email or phone to sign your renter agreement and schedule their security deposit.
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 an email or channel template and trigger, you'll be able to send out a request to guests who booked through a channel, to sign your renter agreement and schedule their security deposit 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 with guest info to sign your renter agreement
- Create a trigger that applies to bookings requesting channel guests with guest info to sign your renter agreement
Create Booking Channel Template Requesting Channel Booking Guest With Contact Info to Sign Renter Agreement
Go to Settings > Templates to configure the "booking" template type message you want to send to your guest.
There are three choices for the type of template you can create - email, channel, and SMS. These are the delivery methods that will be used for your response. To send these types of templates, the booking must have contact information you can reply to. For instance, if you want to send an SMS message as your reply, the guest must have provided a phone number with their booking. Likewise, if you want to send a message on Vrbo, the booking must have come through Vrbo, to begin with, so that our system knows how to deliver your response back to the correct Vrbo thread.
Requesting by Email
First, we'll create an email template, so go to Settings > Templates > Email tab > click the Create Email Template button > select the "Booking" option. This will open an email editor with some sample field codes filled in. For detailed information about how email templates work, check out the email templates overview article and field codes article. Also, see our Capture additional fields on booking and agreement signing support article.
Copy and paste the following values into your new email template.
Name:
Request Channel Booking Guest With Contact Information to Sign Renter Agreement Email Template
From Name:
{MYCOFULL}
From Address:
{MYEMAIL}
To Name:
{CFULL}
To Address:
{CEMAIL}
Subject:
{PDISPNAME} Renter Agreement to Complete
Body:
Hi {CFIRST},
Thanks for booking {PDISPNAME}!
I have entered your {BSOURCE} booking into our main booking system.
Please take a minute to click on the following link to share your contact information and to complete our renter agreement.
e-Signature form for Booking # {BID}
If the above link does not work, please copy and paste the URL below to access the Rental Agreement for signature.
{BUFIXUP}
If you could take care of this ASAP, that would complete your booking for {PDISPNAME}.
Talk to you soon, and thanks for choosing {PDISPNAME}!
{MYFIRST}
If you're wondering what those field codes do, check out the field codes support article or use the "Preview" button on the bookings to take a live look.
Here's a quick preview of what the above email message looks like:
Notice how clean and personalized the content is. The subject line is dynamic to the property name. The body addresses the guest by name so it looks like the body was written by hand. It includes the listing site that the guest booked on, too. In other words, it looks like a manual response that was hand-written, even though it wasn't.
After copying and pasting the above subject and body into your template, feel free to play with the words and styles to make it your own. However, remember that we are creating a message that is specific to "booking" renter agreements. This message assumes that all bookings it is responding to are bookings that have guest contact information, so make sure to customize accordingly. If this template was used for a booking for a guest who booked through your personal website, the body of the message would not make sense.
Similarly, it includes the all-important {BUFIXUP} field code link that can be copied and pasted by your channel booking guests to enter their contact information, sign the renter agreement, and schedule their security deposit.
We are now armed with a solid email renter agreement request for any channel bookings that come in that include guest contact information. But what about channel inquiries?
Requesting by Channel
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!
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.
For detailed information about how channel templates work, check out the Channel Templates and field codes support articles.
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 Channel Booking Guest With Contact Information to Sign Renter Agreement Channel 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 we have your channel message template created! But maybe we want to send an SMS message?
Requesting by SMS
Some bookings that arrive in your account will already include the guest's phone number. This typically happens when a guest books on your book-direct website, using your Book Now widget, or on a listing channel that passes guest contact information at the time of booking, such as Vrbo.
Using our SMS premium feature, you can reply directly to their cell phone via SMS. For detailed information about how SMS templates work, check out the SMS Templates and field codes support articles.
To create an SMS template, go to Settings > Templates > SMS tab > click the Create SMS Template button > select the "Booking" option. This will open an SMS message editor with some sample field codes filled in.
Copy and paste the following values into your new SMS template.
Name:
Request Channel Booking Guest With Contact Information to Sign Renter Agreement SMS Template
To Phone Number:
{CPHONE}
Body:
Hi {CFIRST}, I got your {PDISPNAME} booking in our system and I sent you an email. Let me know if you don't get it. Thanks, and we'll talk soon! ☕
Once again, smack that Preview button to see how this looks live! SMS templates are similar to channel templates in that they are plain text with no colors or formatting options, but you can still dress them up with personalized field codes and light-hearted emojis.
Here is a quick look at how the above SMS template looks in preview mode:
Not a fan of emojis? No worries, edit that part out!
You'll notice that this SMS template differs from the email and channel templates in that it is much shorter and doesn't include the {BUFIXUP} field code link. Instead, it's a quick sentence to direct the guest to check their email from us. If you'd rather say something else - that's totally fine. Or you could send a larger message body, including the {BUFIXUP} field code link like the channel template above does.
Now that we have some message templates created, it's time to configure the trigger that will send them.
Create a trigger that applies to bookings requesting channel guest with contact info to sign renter agreement
Since each trigger can only send one message template, you'll need to create a trigger for each type of reply you send. Above, we crafted replies for email, channel, and SMS, so we'll need to create three triggers to send each one.
First, we'll create a trigger to send the email 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 Vrbo
- Add Condition > Renter Agreement Signed Status: No
- Add Condition > Email Address on File: Has Real Email Address
- Action: Channel Templates > Request Channel Booking Guest With Contact Information to Sign Renter Agreement Channel 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" for guests for whom we already have contact information only, we want to add a "Condition" to the trigger that will stop it from sending out messages for other bookings. Adding the "Has real email address" condition status covers that. We added the "listing site" condition of Only Vrbo, but you could add any of your listing sites to the list.
Keep in mind that channels like Airbnb and Booking.com don't provide an email address (or even a phone number) for the guest. See the Ask Channel Booking Guest Without Contact Info, to Provide Contact Info and Sign Renter Agreement support article for more information on that topic.
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 request them to 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!