Latest Activity...
You may have noticed that some of your inquiries from FlipKey have come in as "unrecognized email" over the past week or two. This is due to some changes FlipKey made in the message format. We released a patch to fix it last week. A change occurred again last night, so this morning we just released a patch that fixes it again. Please let us know if you continue seeing any issues with FlipKey inquiry emails or receive more "unrecognized email" alerts.
We would like to introduce David and Tricia Bregman as OwnerRez's VROTM! The Bregman's live in Orange County, California. David and Tricia own two vacation rental homes in Palm Springs.
They bought their first rental in July, 2007. Originally purchased as housing for a disabled relative, it was eventually renovated and turned into a profitable income stream as their first vacation rental!
Meet David and Tricia!
David and Tricia know first hand how time consuming owning vacation rentals can be, so when we asked what they liked best about being a vacation rental owner this is what they had to say:
"Our favorite part about a being a rental owner is creating and running a successful side business that is making us money. It didn't take much time after we got it up and running. We outsource key aspects of the rentals (greeting guests, housekeeping, and maintenance) but respond to inquiries and do the bookings ourselves. We each work full-time plus we have two children under 10 so life can be crazy at times. Very rarely does the vacation rental business take us away from the top priorities in our lives."
Like most of our users the Bregman's most useful listing site is VRBO. For their first home they advertised on VRBO, HomeAway, Vacation Home Rentals, and FlipKey/TripAdvisor.
For their second home (which they bought specifically as a vacation rental) they only advertise on VRBO and HomeAway. With the first home booking so quickly they utilize the spillover inquiries to help fill the second home. (Smart!)
Luckily David and Tricia do not face a lot of obstacles with the rentals they own, however like most of our users sometimes they must get involved directly when guests have issues with Internet Access, Cable/TV issues, or Pool/Spa heating issues.
They minimize guest problems by having strict vacation rental policies. Rules like minimum rental age being 28 and their security deposit being a $1,000 hold on a credit card. They believe this has directly correlated into very few rental problems. In two years, they only had to deduct from the security deposit 4 times for damage.
How has OwnerRez helped?
When asked how OwnerRez has helped them, David and Tricia said:
"OwnerRez has completely simplified the booking process for us. Guests want to pay with credit cards and they want straightforward policies. OwnerRez allows us to manage everything without having to ever take someone's credit card information. Our business would be much more complicated if we didn't have OwnerRez as a tool."
We wish The Bregman's all the success in the world with their vacation rental business and thank them for continually being loyal users. Good luck on your next rental purchase!
Hi Claudia,
Great question! All you have to do is:
1.) Create a custom field at the property level
2.)Populate it with the property specific information
3.) Create the scheduled email template then refer to that custom field to pull in the property info
I can also walk you through this if you need me to!
-Devin
Devin@ownerreservations.com
Hi, I am a little late to the game. I have been very busy lately.
If I have a property in PA and another one in SC, they both have different letters that go out, with different information. How can I make sure that it is different information that automatically goes out?
Claudia
I looked at the booking level date based scheduler. PERFECT. If we had the same scheduler for global it would suit my needs
An example might be an email blast or an email reminder to my pool guy to drain pool every year on October 15 or....
I like your first suggestion. That's a good one.
Can you be more specific on the date driven idea? You can, currently, set a specific date for scheduled emails at the booking level. Open a booking, click Email tab, add or update a scheduled email and you'll see a 'specific date' option.
It's not really possible to set specific dates at the template level because every booking varies on arrival/departure.
Or were you look for some kind of scheduled newsletter blast that is sent to everyone at a specific date? That could be interesting.
Awesome addition, guys!
A couple of ideas to make it even more powerful:
--Add the option of "After Quote Sent, not booked" This would give me an option of following up with an automatic email to people that received a quote but haven't already booked
--Date driven emails
Nice work!
This past week, we released an exciting new feature that allows users to send schedule (or time) based emails to guests. Instead of being tied to a specific event, you can now send emails based on a number of days before or after the arrival, departure or booked date.
Let's Take A Look
To create a scheduled email, go to the email templates area and click on Create Scheduled Template.
Scheduled emails rely on scheduled templates. The template determines the kind of message that will be sent, who the recipients are and the point in time it will be sent. After clicking the "Create Scheduled Template" button, you'll notice a normal template form open but with a new "Sending Schedule" section at the top.
In the "Name" box, put in something that will help remind you what the template is for. On the "Send" line, select when you want the email to go out. For instance, let's assume that we want to send the access code to the guest 10 days before arrival. Our Name box might be "Send Access Code to Guest", the days would be "10" and we'd select "Before Arrival" from the drop-down.
The other template fields are exactly what you've used before. From, To, Subject, Body - fill them in however you want your message to look. You can use the "Use Default" button at the bottom to pre-fill some of the message.
All templates are property agnostic. In other words, you need to use field codes to distinguish between properties. Do not create a new scheduled template for each of your properties, or your guests will receive multiple copies of the same message. For instance, if you want your email to read "Access code for Acme Retreat" where Acme Retreat is the name of one of your properties, you need to set the subject to "Access code for {PDISPNAME}". Click the button next to each input box to get a full list of field codes.
The Difference Between 'Scheduled Templates' and 'Scheduled Emails'
It's important to understand the difference between scheduled templates and the specific emails that are sent for each booking.
Each individual booking has a list of scheduled emails waiting to be sent. You can see the scheduled emails for a specific booking by opening the booking and clicking on the Email tab.
You can add, update or delete scheduled emails on the booking which only affects that specific booking. If a booking does not have any scheduled emails listed, no scheduled emails will be sent for that booking regardless of the templates you have created.
Back on the template page, you'll notice an option called "Add to all current bookings" which is selected by default.
This option allows you to control whether or not you want a scheduled email created for bookings already entered in the system. In the example of sending the access code to guest, you would want to leave this checkbox selected so that already-created bookings get the email as well as new bookings you create in the future.
The system will never automatically create a scheduled email for any booking whose arrival date is in the past. If the arrival date is in the past, the booking is skipped. Blocked-off time and canceled bookings are skipped as well.
Most of the time, you'll want to leave the "Add to all current bookings" checkbox selected so that already-created bookings get the email. If, however, you only want future-entered bookings to get the email, unselect the checkbox so that none of the current bookings are affected.
As new bookings are entered into the system, new scheduled emails are created based on your scheduled templates. If you want to stop newly-created bookings from getting scheduled emails, use the Disable option on the template to turn it off. Disabled templates do not automatically create scheduled emails, but you can still manually create scheduled emails based on disabled templates.
When editing a scheduled template, the option checkbox changes to read "Overwrite all current bookings to use these settings".
This acts very similarly to "Add to all current bookings". When saved, the system will loop through all current bookings (i.e. bookings with future arrival dates) and add a scheduled email based on the changes you saved. If the booking already has a scheduled email for that template, it will attempt to reset the sending date to match your changes unless the scheduled email has already been sent. Once sent, a scheduled email is never changed.
That's it for now! Have fun sending templates and communicating with your guests!
Please let us know what you think. What do you like or dislike? What is simple or confusing? What areas need to be expanded or reduced? We have a list of potential changes and upgrades that we're mulling over. The more feedback you give, the more we can help your workflow.
A few updates ago, we released the ability to publish and share your calendar data through the use of iCal feeds. iCal is a file format which allows internet users to share calendar events between different services and applications.
We announced the new iCal feature to users but never blogged about it. Our assumption was that those users who wanted the feature would already know what it was and how to use it. However, I'd like to run through a quick tutorial so other users can make use of this great feature and understand it a little more completely.
Setting up iCal for your property
Open one of your properties in OwnerRez and click on the iCal tab on the right. Click the "Add iCal Feed" button at the bottom and you'll be presented with a normal looking form with some options.
When iCal events (which are bookings, in the case of OwnerRez) are shared, there are numerous pieces of data that can be shared along with the dates. For instance, you can share the guest's name, the property location and more. The check boxes you see on the page allow you to pick and choose which pieces of data you want to share and which you don't.
Because you can create as many iCal feeds as you want for a property, you can share the same iCal data with two different people and set different settings for each person. For instance, suppose you want to share your calendar data with a third party listing site (that accepts iCal) and your housekeeper. You would create two iCal feeds for the same property and set the first one to not have any settings but select "show guest" on the second one for the housekeeper.
Once you click Save, your new feed will be created and you'll see a new URL to share.
Everyone that shares your data through iCal must use this URL. The recipient will use the URL in their personal calendar system to subscribe, import or "bring in" your calendar entries. Let's look at how several popular calendar systems use iCal feeds.
Adding iCal to Yahoo! Calendar
If you have a Yahoo! account, go to Yahoo! Calendar and login. After it opens, you'll notice a small "SUBSCRIBED" heading in the left sidebar. "Subscribing" is how Yahoo! refers to iCal feeds. Click the gear icon and you'll be presented with several options.
Click on the "Subscribe To Other Calendars" option and a dialog box will open for you to use. This dialog box is where Yahoo! expects you to enter the iCal information from the provider or host system (which is OwnerRez).
Set the name to whatever you want. In this example, I used the name of my property in OwnerRez. In the iCal Address field, put the URL of the iCal feed provided by OwnerRez. The Color, Refresh and Remind fields are for you to choose based on your preferences.
Click the Save button, and within a few seconds you'll see all your OwnerRez bookings appear.
To remove your data from Yahoo! Calendar, click on the down arrow next to the calendar in the left sidebar and select the "Unsubscribe" option.
Adding iCal to Google Calendar
If you have a Google account, go to Google Calendar and login. After it opens, you'll notice a small "Other calendars" heading in the left sidebar. Click the down arrow next to "Other calendars" and you'll be presented with several options.
Click on the "Add by URL" option and a dialog box will open for you to use. This dialog box is where Google expects you to enter the iCal information from the provider or host system.
In the URL field, put the URL of the iCal feed provided by OwnerRez. You don't have to make the calendar publicly accessible. That's for you to decide and has nothing to do with the iCal data provided by OwnerRez.
Click the "Add Calendar" button, and within a few seconds you'll see all your OwnerRez bookings appear.
To remove your data from Google Calendar, click on the down arrow next to the calendar in the left sidebar and select the "Hide this calendar" option.
Once you delete an iCal feed, the URL you've shared with third parties will no longer work. If you only want to stop the feed from working temporarily but not destroy the URL that you've shared, use the Disable option instead. To disable, open your feeds and click the "Disable" button.
You'll see the feed turn red and it will no longer work. To reactivate it, click the "Re-Enable" button and the URL will come back to life.
Hopefully, this brief walk-through will help you understand what iCal is and how it works. There are many calendar systems that accept iCal feeds such as Outlook, Lotus Notes and Apple Calendar. If you have any problems sharing your data with these calendars, please let us know.
@Jimmy: Custom email sending is being worked on as we speak. The first part will include a TIME based send (eg. how many days before arrival) but we'll be adding on an EVENT based send after that. Event based sending is what you're asking about - when booking is paid in full or when payment is made, etc. Now you can probably use a TIME based send to do the same thing for now. For instance, if all your bookings have their final payment made 2 weeks before arrival, you can probably schedule a TIME based send for 10 days before arrival, knowing that most all bookings will be paid by that point. ~Sam
Possible to auto generate an email with lock codes, directions, etc. when the booking is paid in full?
A few weeks ago we came out with custom fields for properties. A lot of users jumped on the feature immediately, but a few other users pointed out how useful it would be to be able to add custom fields at the booking level too. So we did that.
If you go to custom fields and add (or edit) one, you'll notice a new Type field showing. The Type field lets you pick whether the field is to be used on bookings or properties.
Everything about how custom fields for bookings are implemented is exactly the same as it is for properties. Open a booking and you'll notice a new Custom Fields tab. If you click in, you'll see the exact same layout that you have with properties. The fields and options are exactly the same.
In the email templates, the field selector shows your custom booking fields at the end of the system booking fields.
Select the field and you're done. One thing to note - when previewing your email templates, custom booking fields do not show a value. The system cannot show a value when previewing because it does not know which booking value to use.
What else would you like to see changed or added to custom fields? We've had users ask for a default value - that is, the custom field has a starting value that is used if a value isn't assigned at the property or booking level. Is that something your workflow could use? As always, feedback is welcomed!
Sam, this is the big one!! I'm excited to have it all automatic!! You guys are great at making things simple.
Do you need us to test it for you?? Let us know. :)
Claudia
@Glenn: Custom email scheduling is THE NEXT thing to go out. We've been working on the design for awhile but we are actively preparing the (first pass beta) version of it for the next update. Maybe not this Friday, but definitely by next. ~Sam
Curious how you are saving lock code information?
That is awesome. I have already started to use the fields to store lockcode information and other stuff. Once the email system is enhanced with workflow rules on events and dates related to the booking, then life will be even better. This is a damn fine site - I consider myself lucky to find it!
Great job, Randy. Hope you have more time now, after OwnerRez.
Claudia
We want to introduce Randy J. of Galveston, Texas as our Vacation Rental of the Month! Randy has been a loyal user of OwnerRez, and his comments and suggestions have helped us grow our software and make us more aware of what is most useful to our users.
Meet Randy!
Randy is originally from Louisiana but now resides in The Woodlands just north of Houston. Randy has three two bedroom and three one bedroom condos in Galveston. He enjoys the income in vacation rentals better than holding his money in securities. Like most vacation rental owners, Randy usually advertises his properties on Homeaway, VRBO and his own website. His website is http://galvestonbeachcondo.net
When we asked Randy what were some of the struggles he faced, here is what he had to say:
"I am very particular about how the condo should look when the guests arrive. I want it spotless. Not even a hair on the toilet, beds, counters, refrigerator, etc. If someone is paying $300 a night for a 2 bedroom condo, it had better be spotless when they arrive."
"I would say the biggest struggle I have is making sure the condos meet my standards for cleanliness."
"Next would probably be the time I spend quoting and answering questions from prospects. It's starting to be overwhelming. I own 2 insurance agencies and they are more than a full time job for me. The extra work with the condos makes my typical day about 16 hours, even on the weekends. I work all the time -- at restaurants while eating, while driving, while managing my insurance businesses, while standing in line at the grocery... I'm always on my phone quoting or talking."
How has OwnerRez helped Randy
OwnerRez has helped minimize his mistakes and with no upfront fees was a no brainer for him. We take his suggestions and implement them quickly - sometimes within a few days. We understand that Randy, like all of our users, is using our system to help make their 16 hour days worry free and turn that 16 hours into a lot shorter period of time.
We want to wish Randy good luck with the rest of his 2013 bookings and the building of his new condos!
Have a guest who needs to enter a different card number for their second payment? Have a guest who paid by check but needs to put their security deposit on a credit card? You can now do all of that with public guest forms.
Open one of your bookings in OwnerRez and click on the Payments tab. You'll see an overhauled designed with a new Guest Form section at the bottom.
The Guest Form is a URL that you'll send to the guest. These payment URLs are unique to each booking and should only be sent to the guest that needs to pay for that booking.
When the guest opens the URL in their browser, they'll see a custom payment form that they can use to submit a payment by credit card.
If the booking was already paid in full, the guest will see a nice message telling them that. The system will not allow the guest to submit payments for more than the total booking amount.
If the guest needs to pay more than the current total, adjust the total by adding charges to the booking.
This functionality is also available for security deposits. Open a booking and click on the Security Deposit tab, and you'll see a similar URL to share there. The URLs for payments and security deposits are different.
Good
FYI - custom fields can now be used for bookings, Glenn. That went out in tonight's release with a bunch of other things. ~Sam
Sorry, I should clarify that the crummy template system I am using is NOT OwnerRez. Your email templates, although very limited is great! It is a third party template system I use to try and fill in the blanks in my emails where OwnerRez stops. It is hard to find a good one that doesn't do mass emails, but does CRM type emails.
Glenn
That is a great idea for attachments - especially the drop box part! I had never even thought of that!
The crummy template system I am using now (...only thing keeping me going is the anticipation of improved email delivery options - with custom fields at the booking level;-) ....) does not allow use of attachments. Now I think i have a bit of an improvement on a so-so temp solution to get me by for the time being.
Glenn
You're absolutely right. That's one of two things we'd like to include in the upcoming email changes. The other one is the ability to have multiple TO, CC and BCC fields. However, both of these things are not immediate priority given the other things we're working on.
However, you could right now get around that by using a link. Basically, you could host your Welcome Packet as a public file on a link and then put it in the body of the email. That is actually better for email delivery since some email systems demote emails w/ attachments as spam.
To do that, host your Welcome Packet on a public location. For instance, use Dropbox or a service like that so that you get a link like so:
http://somedomainname.com/my-welcome-packet/blah/blah
And then in the body of your OwnerRez emails, you would reference that link and tell them to click and download it.
You could both (a) do that immediately and (b) make sure your emails aren't flagged as spam as much. I'm not saying that any attachment is seen as spam - that obviously isn't true - but attachments do tend to hurt deliverability over all, sometimes just because of their extra size alone.
Hope this helps,
-Michelle
Hi Michelle,
It would be great to have an ATTACHMENT included in these custom Fields, or somewhere else. This would be great for Welcome Packets!
Is that a possibility some time soon?
Claudia
Hi Glenn,
Thanks for your feedback. We've seen a lot of use so far from multi-property owners, but I see your point about needing to store things per booking.
We have a lot more updates coming to email including custom/scheduled sending which I know you're looking forward to.
Later today, I'll talk with the dev team about how difficult it would be to wire in custom fields for bookings. The major infrastructure has been laid so it may be fairly simple to flip it on for bookings.
-Michelle
I really hope you add custom fields for a booking because that is where my particular need lies the most. I have a unique lock code for each booking I take and it would be great to include that in outgoing messages regarding bookings.
The custom fields per property are nice, but if others are like me and only have one property, it doesn't really provide much.
Glenn
In our most-recent update, we've added the ability for you to create custom fields for your properties. Custom fields are pieces of text that help your email templates say different things for different properties.
For instance, you may want your email templates to show your VRBO and FlipKey links for whatever property is being discussed in the email, which means that your email template needs to be different for each property. Custom fields let you do that.
Setting up your custom fields
First, you have to define a global list of fields your properties will use. Look at the My Account dropdown menu for a new option called "Custom Fields" and drill in.
The overview page is similar to what you see throughout the system - a basic list with add, update and delete buttons.
Click the "Add Custom Field" button and an entry form will show with a several fields.
The Code field is a short (8 characters or less) recognizable rubric while the Name field is a longer description. For a VRBO link, you might set the Code field to something like "VRBO" or "VRBOLINK" and then set the Name field to "The VRBO link for this property". The Code field does not allow spaces or special characters, and the system will force it to upper-case upon saving.
You'll notice that there's an option for using a rich text editor. Rich text editors are input boxes that give you the ability to select fonts, colors, formatting and a lot more. Technically, this is known as "HTML editing" but many people refer to it simply as rich text. Want to enter hyperlinks or special-looking text for the custom field? Select the rich text option, and you'll be able to do that.
Open one of your properties and click on the new Custom Fields tab. You'll see all the custom fields you've defined without any values.
Click the "Set Value Now" button next to a field and a form will open so you can enter the value you want to use. If the field uses the rich text option, you'll see that type of editor to work with. Otherwise, you'll see a plain text box.
Using custom fields in email templates
Now that you've defined your custom fields and filled in values for each property, it's time to make use of them in email templates.
Open an email template - any template - and click on the field selector to see the available fields. Down in the Property Fields section, you'll notice that your new fields are showing. Insert one of your custom fields just as you would any other global system field.
You may notice that each custom field shows a prefix of "PX" in front of the code. We do this to ensure that there are no collisions between the codes you enter and the codes that are already in use by the global system fields. For instance, if you entered "PNAME" as a code for one of your custom fields, that would conflict with the PNAME that is used globally. To avoid that, your "PNAME" custom field is turned into "PXNAME" when selecting from the editor.
After updating your email template, click the Preview button to see how the template looks with your property values showing.
At the top of the preview form, you'll notice that a new property selector is showing. This allows you to preview the email against different properties to see how all of your custom fields perform.
There are several moving parts to the custom field process, so make sure to test everything before finishing. In the future, we may add custom fields for other entity types such as bookings or quotes. If you have ideas about that or feedback on what we've done here, please let us know. We love to know what users think!
