Latest Activity...
Good morning everyone! Having received a few "what's going on?" emails in the past few weeks, I wanted to throw up a quick post about what the OwnerRez team has been up to in the first quarter 2012.
The dev team has been working hard to overhaul the payment settings area (now called payment methods) so that there is a great deal more flexibility. We're going to be supporting PayPal, Google Wallet and payment by check so we needed to take the time to rebuild some things to handle those changes. For instance, if you want to accept credit cards, PayPal or checks on some of your properties but not all, there needs to be a way to easily customize that.
We overhauled the quote acceptance and payment forms because of the changes to the payment settings and because of some underlying performance issues we wanted to correct. Later this year, owners will be able to add header info about their property and images and links so that the guest has more of a visual cue about the property. These sorts of images and links will be added to inquiry and quote emails as well.
There have been numerous other minor changes and enhancements as well, some of which were related to the above changes and some that were requested by users.
Sorry for the quietness over the past few months (it's been aggravating for us too!), but the changes we've been working on couldn't be released in piecemeal.
We'll have a release out, and a lot of blog posts talking about it, in the next few weeks.
I noticed an article in USA Today that I wanted to share with everyone.
Our travel insurance partner, Travel Guard, talks about the victims of the recent Costa Concordia accident and how they're helping the passengers that purchased policies:
"While thousands of evacuated Concordia passengers waited for Costa Cruise Lines to offer assistance, the insurance company helped its customers with their individual requests to relay messages back home, replace ID (for those who left their passports on the ship) and get quickly on flights back home"
They also point out other benefits the passengers will receive if necessary:
"If any of the Travel Guard customers on Concordia had been injured, reimbursement of medical expenses and emergency medical evacuation would have kicked in, Mueller says. The policy also includes $10,000 accidental death and dismemberment insurance."
I'm glad to see Travel Guard leading the way and taking care of their customers with gusto. This is the kind of customer service we expect from the vendors we partner with.
Remind your guests how important travel insurance can be!
We just released an update that changed how renter agreements are signed. The update involved two major areas:
Many of you have already noticed these changes and have asked some great questions. Here's a breakdown of everything that happened.
Removing archiving from the quote acceptance process
Previously, when a guest submitted the quote acceptance form, they had to wait while the renter agreement was digitally signed, turned into a PDF and archived with our storage provider. This all happened synchronously as one of several steps before they got a confirmation. In fact, about 75% of the time involved this part of the process. All told, the guest had to sit and wait a good 5-8 seconds on average for the booking to be finalized.
While the process worked well and didn't cause any specific problems, we've disliked how long it took. Also, as more vacation rental owners use OwnerRez and the rate of quotes and bookings increases, we are constantly looking for ways we can gain speed as we scale up.
With this update, we've removed the renter agreement steps out of the process entirely. Now, when a guest accepts the quote, the process goes right to the final steps of collecting the payment and saving the booking record. A few minutes later, after the guest has left, the renter agreement is signed, PDF'd and archived by a separate background processes.
This change greatly increased the speed of quote acceptance and removes potential obstacles from a scaling point of view as OwnerRez continues to grow.
Signing renter agreements manually
Being able to have guests sign renter agreements manually (i.e. not as a part of the quote acceptance process but in a separate single form) has always been a highly-requested feature by OwnerRez users.
This is for an obvious reason: if you create a manual booking, there is never an automatic point where the guest has to sign an agreement. Also, sometimes you need a guest to sign a new agreement after you've made updates.
Well, now you can. You can send the guest a link which will open a public form with options to sign the renter agreement. You can even do this for bookings that have a renter agreement signed and archived already.
Let's see it in action.
Navigate to one of your bookings and click on the Legal tab. If the booking already has a signed renter agreement in place, the page will show you the details with an option, as before, to open the archived PDF.
If the booking was created manually, you'll see a blank form telling you that no agreement has been signed.
Regardless of which version you see, at the bottom of the page there will be an "Email a link to the guest" option. Click on that link and an email form will open.
A default message will be pre-filled for you, but you have the option of changing the message just like every other email form in the system.
You'll notice that the default message includes a link to a public form that the guest can use to sign their agreement. If you wish to see what the guest will see, open that link in your own browser. You'll notice that the public form is very similar in design and layout to all the other OwnerRez public forms.
Underneath the renter agreement body, the guest is presented with several fields that show them what they're signing. They are then free to sign the agreement as they choose.
Once the guest has submitted the form, the signing, PDF'ing and archiving process is exactly the same as the quote acceptance process. After a few minutes, the background process will finalize everything and you (and the guest) will receive confirmation emails.
We have a number of ideas in the pipeline about how to improve the renter agreement process even more - such as allowing you to upload files that the guest faxes/emails to you - but we're also interested in your feedback.
Please let us know what you like or dislike about these changes and what you'd like to see in the future.
We recently added inquiry integration for ArrangeYourVacation.com. Here's how you get your ArrangeYourVacation.com inquiries show up in OwnerRez.
I've covered how to find your @inquiryspot.com email addresses in OwnerRez in previous blog posts so I'll skip over that part and get right to the meat.
First, login to your ArrangeYourVacation.com account.
After logging in, click on the big "Rentals" icon right in the middle of the page. This will take you to a list of your properties. Click on the "Edit Rental" link on the property you want to integrate.
Once the property details load, you'll see a row of links for the different property attributes you can change. Click on the "Contacts" link over on the right.
ArrangeYourVacation.com allows you to send your inquiries to multiple contacts. Make sure that at least one contact uses the @inquiryspot.com email address so that inquiries get sent to OwnerRez.
And as always, be sure to send a test inquiry to yourself by opening your property listing on ArrangeYourVacation.com and filling out the inquiry form. When it arrives in OwnerRez, you'll know the integration is complete.
We recently added inquiry integration for GetAwayDigs.com, so I wanted to take a few minutes to explain how to make your GetAwayDigs.com inquiries show up in OwnerRez.
Several previous blog posts explained how to find your @inquiryspot.com email addresses in OwnerRez so we'll skip over that part and get right to the meat.
First, login to your GetAwayDigs.com account.
After logging in, you'll see your properties listed on the GetAwayDigs.com control panel homepage. You may have to scroll down a bit to see the properties. Click on the "Basic Info" link for the property you want to integrate.
Scroll to the bottom of the property details page, and you'll see a Contact Information section. Put your @inquiryspot.com email address in the "Email" field.
Clicking the "Next" button will save your changes.
As always, be sure to send a test inquiry to yourself by opening your property listing on GetAwayDigs.com and filling out the inquiry form. When it arrives in OwnerRez, you'll know the integration is complete.
FreeVacationRentalSite.com is another listing site that we recently added inquiry integration for. Here is a quick walkthrough on how to make your FreeVacationRentalSite.com inquiries show up in OwnerRez.
I'll assume you already know how to find the @inquiryspot.com email address for each of your properties in OwnerRez. If not, look at the last several blog posts.
First, head on over to FreeVacationRentalSite.com and login.
After logging in, you'll see your properties listed on the FreeVacationRentalSite.com control panel homepage. Click on the property that you want to integrate.
Scroll to the bottom of the property details page, and you'll see a Contact Information section. Click the "Edit Contact Info" button.
You'll see a "Contact Email" field which contains the email address that FreeVacationRentalSite.com sends inquiries to for this property. Put your @inquiryspot.com email address in that field.
Remember to click the "Save Changes" button at the bottom right of the form.
And as always, be sure to send a test inquiry to yourself by opening your property listing on FreeVacationRentalSite.com and filling out the inquiry form. When it arrives in OwnerRez, you'll know the integration is complete.
VacationRentalPeople.com is another listing site that we recently added inquiry integration for. Here is a quick walkthrough on how to make your VacationRentalPeople.com inquiries show up in OwnerRez.
First, open the instruction page in the inquiry area. This will show you your assigned @inquiryspot.com email address for each of your properties in OwnerRez.
Next, login to your VacationRentalPeople.com account.
After logging in, you'll see your properties listed on the VacationRentalPeople.com control panel homepage. On the right side of each property, you'll see a list of links that you can use to edit the details for that property. Click on the link labeled "Edit Your Contact Information Property Address and map" for the property you want to integrate.
At the top, you'll see several contact options. Make sure the "Allow them to contact me by email" option is checked. Then put your @inquiryspot.com email address in the field next to it.
Last, click the 'Save and Finish' button at the top right of the page.
As always, be sure to send a test inquiry to yourself by opening your property listing on vacationRentalPeople.com and filling out the inquiry form. When it arrives in OwnerRez, you'll know the integration is complete.
We recently added inquiry support for five more listing sites. Here is a quick walkthrough on how to make your VRWD inquiries show up in OwnerRez.
First, open the instruction page in the inquiry area. This will show you your assigned @inquiryspot.com email address for each of your properties in OwnerRez.
Then, head over to VRWD and login.
After logging in, you'll see your properties listed on the VRWD control panel homepage. Click on the Details button for the property you want to integrate.
In the property details, you'll see an 'Email' field which contains the email address that VRWD sends inquiries to for this property. Put your @inquiryspot.com email address in that field.
Then click the 'Update Your Listing' button at the bottom of the page to save the new email address.
As always, be sure to send a test inquiry to yourself by opening your property listing on VRWD and filling out the inquiry form. When it arrives in OwnerRez, you'll know the integration is complete.
If you need to integrate all your properties, you'll need to go property-by-property updating each one at a time. There is no way to update multiple properties at one time.
Our inquiry management feature, released in August, has had enormous success. We've processed several thousand emails and greatly reduced the amount of time it takes for owners to respond to inquiries.
Yesterday, we released an update that integrates with five more listing sites. If you have a listing on any of the below websites, OwnerRez can now parse the incoming inquiry emails for you automatically.
New listing sites:
Over the next few days, I'll be posting specific information on how to integrate OwnerRez with each of these sites. Most owners can probably figure it out on their own by using the inquiry instructions page.
I've never heard of these sites! Who cares about these listings?
One of the themes behind OwnerRez has always been owner independence. Instead of building our software around a few major brands in the industry (e.g. HomeAway), our integration strategy is to allow for a broad range of different scenarios.
We're aware that these sites don't get the same type of traffic that the bigger ones currently do, but a) most of these sites are free so it'll cost you little-to-nothing to go add your listing, b) some of these sites get better traffic in specific areas where the bigger ones don't, and c) these sites may grow in popularity over time.
What other listing sites do you use that you'd like us to integrate with?
What other inquiry features can we add to make your life easier? Thing we're already working on:
In addition to changing charge types, we've also changed phone types. The phone types list is scattered throughout the interface, from the control panel to the public guest forms, so you'll see these changes in quite a few places.
The old list of phone types was much bigger:
Our reason for consolidating the list down to the new values was very straightforward: we like simple pragmatic options.
The old list was copied from some CRM system that one of the developers used a year ago, and it's been a source of humor and target for derision ever since. Who the heck uses an ISDN modem anymore, and - more importantly - why would you care about recording that number?
A simple query of the database showed that, across many thousands of bookings, no one used most of the types. So we consolidated.
All 'Company' and 'Business' types were merged into 'Work'. All weird types were removed. The list is now clean and simple.
We've changed the charge types that you see throughout the interface to use different values.
"Charge types" is the drop-down list that displays on each line item on the editable charge grid. These "types" allow you to categorize each line item. If you open the charges on a quote or booking, you'll notice the new list of charge types.
The old list of charge types was a bit bigger:
'Cleaning Fee' and 'Processing Fee' were removed because the new custom surcharges feature makes them obsolete. Since you can now have any kind of surcharge you want, it doesn't make sense to call out cleaning and processing as specific charge types. Instead a new 'Surcharge' type covers all of them.
'Discount' was also removed because we determined that it doesn't make sense from an accounting standpoint to use it as a type. Integrating with QuickBooks and other accounting software is a big part of our To-Do list so we think about the accounting implications of everything we do. While discounts are definitely a big part of the booking process, from an accounting standpoint, they are merely a reversal or credit of some other rent or surcharge that was previously billed. In other words, the concept of a "discount" doesn't exist unless the guest is charged something else which the discount applies to. A free booking cannot be discounted because there is no charge on which the discount would apply. The type of charge should always reflect how the item will be accounted financially. Is the charge rent, in which case it is taxable? Is it a cleaning charge that isn't taxable? A "discount" should always be accounted for in the same way that the charge it is discounting is. So if you're discounting the overall rent, the discount line item would have a 'Rent' type with some description like "Discount for last minute booking" with a negative rate.
Very happy to see this new feature, and it works great. Thanks!
Many of you have probably already noticed that the charges grid (in both the booking and quote areas) has a new style and some new features. While we were working on the new custom surcharges and taxes feature, we spent some time updating the charges grids to make editing faster and more convenient.
Open an existing quote or booking, click on the Charges tab, click on the 'Change' button and you'll see how it looks.
The grid itself is wider so there's more room to see everything.
The delete button, on each row, has been moved to the far right which is a more intuitive place for it to be.
A new 'add row' button has been added to the far left of each row which allows you to quickly add in-line rows directly above the row you click on. This enables you to insert new line items in the middle without having to manually re-order all the line items below it.
The reset links are now at the bottom of the form where they take up less room and are easier to read.
These updates were made on both quote charges and booking charges. There are other features we'd like to add to these grids, but we wanted to make some quick improvements first and push out an update so that owners can begin using them right away.
On Friday, we rolled out an update which allows owners to define custom surcharges and taxes instead of picking from a pre-defined list.
Open up one of your properties and click on the new Add-Ons tab (which replaces the old Surcharges tab). You'll see a list of current surcharges and taxes for the property instead of the old list of checkbox options.
We decided to separate surcharges from taxes (instead of leaving tax as a type of surcharge) because taxes have unique behavior that is dissimilar from other surcharges.
Click the 'Change' button and you'll get an edit view of the same page.
You'll notice that surcharges have a new "Taxable" option. This option is what determines whether tax line items, which follow the surcharge, will include tax for that item or not.
As before, all rates can be entered as dollar amounts or percentages, and they can be positive or negative. A percentage rate calculates against all preceding line-items that come before it. The surcharges and taxes are entered as charges exactly in the order they appear - first the surcharges, then taxes.
This new ability to enter custom surcharges and taxes should enable you to customize your quotes more accurately and cleanly.
No more having to use "cleaning fee" or "processing fee" as the type when adding a charge for firewood or pool heat.
P.S. Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!
information. Its usefulness and significance is overwhelming the way you
covered all the basic necessary information is really impressive, good work
keep it up.
There's now another way to stay up-to-date on OwnerRez updates, news and information. In addition to LinkedIn, Facebook, RSS and Twitter, you can now follow OwnerRez on Google+!
The new OwnerRez Google+ page is here: http://ownr.es/rTQ5TU
We've also updated the sidebar (right side of this page) with a button for Google+ and put a link in the footer.
Tell your friends!
Travel insurance is a great option to offer your guests because it gives them peace of mind about cancellations. There is nothing worse for the guest than having to cancel a vacation while realizing that they're past the refund period, which means that hundreds or thousands of dollars will be lost. Travel insurance takes away that worry.
That being said, there may be owners who do not want to offer travel insurance to their guests and don't want the option showing up at all.
Conversely, there may also be owners that want to require guests to buy travel insurance, such that it is automatically added to every booking.
All of this is possible. There are options both at the quote and property level to enable, disable, require or pre-select travel insurance.
Navigate to any one of your properties, click on the Billing Details tab and then click the "Change" button. At the bottom of the page, you'll see a "Travel Insurance" section with several options.
By default, the third option is selected which allows the guest to see travel insurance on their quote and optionally choose to purchase it. We recommend that you leave this option in place as it offers the most versatility without forcing the guest to do anything. With this option, you can also set travel insurance to be selected by default if you want to encourage guests to purchase it.
The second option forces the guest to purchase travel insurance. If selected, travel insurance won't appear as a selectable check-box. Instead, it's a line item charge like any other.
The first option does exactly what it says - travel insurance is completely disabled. Not only will it not be selectable on the quote, but all other marketing information will disappear. The guest will never see or hear about it anywhere.
As with all the other billing details, these travel insurance options can also be configured at the quote level. For instance, suppose that you have a guest that needs to buy travel insurance and you want to make sure they include it. Instead of leaving it in the normal optional state, you can simply set travel insurance as required on that specific quote and it will appear as a line item that they have to purchase.
We strongly recommend that you keep travel insurance enabled, optional and unselected by default. You may find that your conversion rate increases as guests now see that they have a way to mitigate cancellation problems. As always, if you have any questions or comments, don't hesitate to ask.
We here at OwnerRez have always prided ourselves on being kind and thorough with our customers. Every customer service request is not only fielded quickly, but in way that covers every part of the problem. Our goal is not only to get answers out quickly, but to provide comprehensive information. We don't want you to have to ask a third or fourth question because our original explanation is too brief.
Get-it-off-my-plate responses from customer service have always been a personal pet peeve of mine.
While designing our new travel insurance feature, we spent a good amount of time evaluating insurance companies.
We looked specifically for a provider that would treat us like we treat our customers: kind and thorough.
When your guest needs to cancel their booking because of a medical problem, we want the claim process to be easy and straightforward. We expect the person on the other end of the phone (at the insurance company) to care about the guest's problem and want to help, not throw up as much red tape as possible.
We also looked for a company whose sole focus is on travel insurance and travel related services. We wanted specialists that really understood and cared about their product.
It didn't take long to find Travel Guard as the provider of choice. Their staff was knowledgeable, helpful, kind and thorough. We asked lots of questions and they bent over backwards to walk us through the details, even when we asked them multiple times.
Several users have asked me about this so I wanted to be clear and transparent. Our decision to use Travel Guard was based solely on them being the best travel insurance company that we could find. We want our guests (and your guests) to have a solid travel insurance product that they can rely on.
To read more about Travel Guard, visit their web site directly, or ask us and we'll find the answer for you.
Use the links below to read more about their insurance product:
Yesterday, we released a major update that adds travel insurance to OwnerRez.
Your guests can now buy a travel insurance policy directly through the system at the same time they accept their quote. It only takes one click of the mouse.
Also, on the owner side, you can purchase travel insurance on the guest's behalf just as easily as you collect a payment or reserve a security deposit for them.
The next time you generate a quote, look at the payment form and you'll notice a new option showing.
On the quote email, you'll notice the same option.
There's nothing you need to do to begin offering this option to guests. By default, the option will appear on all new quotes you generate and the payment form will handle all the details. Once purchased, the guest will receive a travel insurance policy directly from the carrier, Travel Guard, and all questions or claims will be handled directly by the carrier. The guest will receive emails that explain the policy and phone numbers to call in the event they need to file a claim. Again, no interaction or extra work is required on the part of the owner to facilitate this feature.
I've prepared a screenshot tour so that users who have not yet received any inquiries can see how it looks. If you don't know how to get your inquiries to show up in OwnerRez, I wrote an article about that a few days ago.
This is a soup to nuts rundown from the first moment you get an alert to the last moment you fire off your response.
When an inquiry email is sent to you from a listing site, OwnerRez sends you an email alert.
As with all other alerts, the email message contains a link so that you can open the full inquiry and get right to work. Once opened, you'll see the overview page of the Inquiry record.
The overview page is similar in design to the quote and booking overview pages. You see the guest details, what dates were requested and any comments.
The requested dates are presented in a miniature calendar that shows what dates are already reserved. The requested dates are overlaid across the reserved dates to provide visual context.
Before answering the inquiry, it is wise to use the "Verify" link to make sure that our system parsed the inquiry correctly. While we have worked very hard on our parsing techniques, from time to time the listing sites will change their email formats which cause our parsing scripts to be off. We will correct the parsing logic as soon as this happens but it may take a few days for us to catch the change and adjust for it. You can find "Verify" links in several places on the overview page.
The verification page may look big and confusing at first, but it's actually quite simple. The blue summary bar at the top explains what's going on, and I'll reiterate those points below.
On the left, you'll see the original email message sent to you by the listing site. The message is untouched by our system - we do not change anything. It is stored exactly as it was originally sent.
Below the message, there is a "Download" link that lets you save a copy of the message to your local computer. The message is downloaded in the "MIME" format which is readable by virtually all email programs including Outlook, Thunderbird, Windows Mail, Lotus Notes and Eudora.
There is no need to download your messages. Our system has saved them using enterprise storage services and they will always be available to you online.
On the right, you'll see a set of fields that show the values we parsed out of the email message. We currently parse messages from VRBO, HomeAway, FlipKey, VacationRentals.com, Vacation Home Rentals and Perfect Places.
We've tested our parsing algorithms against thousands of inquiry emails, and we're very confident of their strength. That being said, it is possible from time to time that you may need to correct something or fill in details that are missing on the email. For instance, the inquirer may not have included the dates they were interested in but told you later on the phone. You'll want to go back to the verification page and fill in those details so that you can generate a quote based on the full information. Make sure to click the "Save Changes" button at the bottom when you're finished.
After verifying, you'll want to answer the inquiry - that is of course the whole point of the process. There is an "Answer" tab on the inquiry as well as a link on the overview page.
If the requested dates are unavailable or the inquiry is missing information, such that a quote cannot be generated, the answer page will show a simple email form so that you can reply to the guest and explain the problem. By default, message bodies are provided for both types of scenarios.
If the requested dates are available and the inquiry has all necessary information - in other words, the inquiry is "quotable" - the answer page will present you with a button to create a quote.
After the quote is created, a preview of the quote charges is shown in the same page so that you can visually review the line items before sending it to the guest. If you need to change the line items, a button is provided for you to do that.
Once changed, the quote page will return you back to the same inquiry page so that you can continue moving forward with your answer. If you didn't need to change the quote, you're already there. Click the "Answer Guest Now" button and a simple email form will appear with a preloaded message for the quote you generated.
The simple email form is the same design as other email forms in the system. You have the option to change the inquirer's email address, the message subject and the message body. What you see below the body is the reply that will be appended to your message.
After sending your email, you'll see a confirmation message telling you that it was sent. Be sure to *also* send the quote email as well.
To be clear, the quote email - the email that shows the quote charges directly in the message body - is not automatically sent when you send the inquiry email. You must tell the system to send that email separately. A button to do that is included in the confirmation message.
Yesterday, I discussed how the new inquiry management works. Today, I wanted to address a question posed to me by a user - what's with the format of the inquiry email addresses?
When we were designing the process, we wanted to make sure that the inquiry email addresses were straightforward but also mitigated a lot of different risks.
We chose "inquiryspot.com" as the domain name because it was the shortest, easiest-to-read domain name we could find that sounded similar to the inquiry process (and was available).
We were originally planning to use "inquiries.ownerrez.com" as the domain name but decided it was much too long. We shortened it to "inquiries.ownerrez.com" but that was also too long and the subdomain was confusing.
It is possible for you to dress up these email addresses with other words or characters so long as the address still ends with [your-assigned-prefix]@inquiryspot.com.
For instance, if the email address for your property is abc1234@inquiryspot.com, using acme_cabin_abc1234@inquiryspot.com would also be valid. Using acme.cabin.abc1234@inquiryspot.com would also be okay. Basically, you can put any string of characters you want before the assigned email address and it will still work - you don't even have to tell us when you do this, just so long as the assigned address is at the end and isn't changed.
As I mentioned yesterday, make sure to test everything you do. If you decide to dress up your email addresses, make sure to send some test messages so you can visually confirm that everything is going through properly.
Those of you that have already navigated to the new inquiries section have already seen an instruction page on how to get inquiries to show up in OwnerRez. While the instructions are fairly clear, I wanted to spend some time explaining how the routing works and the various fringe scenarios you may run into.
First, here's a high-level run through on inquiries and how OwnerRez plugs into the process.
When an inquirer sees your property on a listing site (VRBO, Vacation Home Rentals, FlipKey, etc) and wants to book it, he uses the inquiry form to send you an email. The listing site shoots off an email message, saying "New inquiry from Joe Blow!" to whatever email address you have on record.
Previously, that email message would go to your ordinary email inbox where you would reply directly to it, and also use OwnerRez to generate a quote manually on the side.
Once you begin using our inquiry management, OwnerRez will receive that email message directly from the listing site instead. When the message arrives, the body is automatically parsed for inquiry information (guest name, phone number, arrival date, etc) and that information is stored in a new "Inquiry" record for you to review. You receive an email alert from our system whenever new inquiries arrive and are ready for you to review and/or answer. You will no longer get the original email in your normal email inbox, because OwnerRez will have received and processed it for you; instead, you'll get the OwnerRez email alert.
In order for OwnerRez to receive your inquiry emails, all you have to do is change the email address on file with the listing sites to one that we assign you. That's it. No other actions are required.
Two Kinds of Email Addresses
Listing sites are not all created equal.
Some listing sites allow you to specify a custom email address for inquiries for each of your properties. Some only allow you to specify one custom email address for all listings (a different email address than the one you use to login). Some only let you change your login email address and all inquiries go to that.
Because of this, we had to come up with two different types of email addresses for you to use so that all scenarios could be covered.
Per-Property Scenario
The first type of scenario is per property. This scenario covers listing sites that allows you to change the contact info per property.
VRBO, HomeAway, Perfect Places and VacationRentalPeople.com are examples of listing sites that allow this. Vacation Home Rentals allows you to have a unique email address per property as long as you have two or more properties.
To change your listing on these sites, login and then navigate to the property you wish to change. Go to the "Contact Info" section (sometimes it's under the "Listing Details") and put in the email address that we've supplied you for that property.
To find the email addresses we've supplied, visit the Inquiries instructional page. The instructional page is what you see by default under the Inquiries menu until your account has started receiving actual inquiries. Once your account has inquiries, the overview page (or the "grid" page) will contain a "How do I get inquiries to show up here?" link at the top right, above the grid. That link takes you back to the instructions.
Account-Level Scenario
The second type of scenario is account level. This scenario covers listing sites that only allow you to have one email address no matter how many properties you have listed.
FlipKey, VacationRentals.com and GetAwayDigs are examples of listing sites that fall into this scenario. Vacation Home Rentals falls into this scenario if you have only one property.
To cover this scenario and make sure that your OwnerRez account could receive inquiries without assigning them to the wrong property, we've supplied each user with a single account-level email address that you can use for these listing sites.
To change your listing on these sites, login and then navigate to the account or profile area. Look for a field that is called something like "email address for inquiries". If you can't find a field by that name, you'll need to change the email address associated with the account/profile since that it probably where the inquiries are sent.
You can find your account-level email address by pulling up the instructional page again (see above) and looking at the last paragraph, under the table of per-property email addresses. In that paragraph, you'll see an email address in bold.
Test, Test, Test
We've designed an inquiry management process that is very easy for users to implement, but there is always room for mistakes. For instance, when copying the per-property email addresses to the listing site, you may assign the wrong address to the wrong property.
Please send yourself a test inquiry from every listing that you switch over. It's trivially simple to do, and it will give you visual confirmation that the tracking is working as it should. It will also let you see how the inquiry management works and play with the verification and answer pages.
Be patient! Most of the listing sites do not send inquiry emails immediately; instead, they send a batch every 15 minutes or so. It may take a while for the OwnerRez alert to finally end up in your email inbox, even as long as thirty minutes; this is normal. We are working on ways to speed this up where possible, but most of the latency is on the listing sites' end, not ours.
If you'd like to see what happens when a non-inquiry message is sent to your OwnerRez email addresses, you can test that too. Simply open your personal email and fire off a message and you'll see what happens.
As always, please send us lots of feedback. There is a lot of room for improvement here and we are already hard at work with fixes and enhancements. We appreciate any comments or suggestions you have, whether they be positive or negative.
Thanks - the requests keep coming only because you folks have such a good product and are spoiling us with great features :)
David
Hi David,
At the moment, there is no way to do that automatically but they're both on the developer roadmap,
Thanks,
Michelle
I see. Both of those things are coming in future email updates. Sent email will be stored and tracked, and you'll have the ability to see if a guest "clicked" or "opened" it as well. At the moment - no, there is no way to create custom templates for email. But they're coming, I promise. :-)
Thanks for the quick reply - I should have made my questions clearer. Is there a way to edit the reply template, like the booking response template - this would be nice. As for viewing the response, I do send a copy to myself, but I have already found it would be more convenient to be able to see an archived copy of the email sent within Ownerreservations.com
Thanks,
David
Good Morning David,
DPVR.info said:
Is there a way to edit the standard inquiry response?Absolutely. The "answer" page looks very similar to the email page for quotes. You can edit every part of the response including the subject, body and even the to name/email address.
By default, we supply a standard template message (just like with quote email) for various scenarios.
For instance, if the dates are already taken, the message defaults to:
Thanks for your inquiry. Unfortunately, those dates are already taken. Are you able to move your dates at all?
Thanks,
-[Your Name]
Again, you are free to edit this before sending. We are planning on adding a lot of email options in upcoming sprints so that you can define your own email templates with rich text, mail merge fields and tracking.
DPVR.info said:
Also can you view the email that was sent as part of the response.Yes. As with quote email, there is a "Send me a copy" check box that is selected by default.
Sam will be blogging about all this in detail over the next few days.
This is nice - two questions. Is there a way to edit the standard inquiry response? Also can you view the email that was sent as part of the response.
Thanks,
David
We just released a major update that includes, among other things, our first attempt at inquiry management and tracking.
The next time you login, you'll notice a shiny new menu called "Inquiries". Click on it, and you'll see an instructional page that talks about routing inquiries into the system.
Over the next few days and weeks, I'll be discussing all of the new inquiry features, how they work, answering some of your questions and talking about the future of inquiry management.
From the very first moment I started getting inquiries from listing sites I always wondered which site gave me the best ROI. VRBO sends a lot of inquiries, but do those inquiries convert into bookings as well as inquires from Vacation Home Rentals? If so, who's better and how much better? This new inquiry tracking will allow us to generate reports and charts that answer these questions in future updates.
Inquiries management and tracking has really been an exciting area for us to work in. We have a lot of great ideas, and we're already hard at work on the second pass.
It took me a while to see this one :) but I really like it. I choose to use the FlipKey widget on the property website, so the sync feature if awesome for me.
Thanks and keep up the good work!
David
