Request Channel Guest With Contact Info to Sign Renter Agreement Template and Trigger

Using OwnerRez's templates and triggers provides a powerful way to communicate automatically and streamline your vacation rental business processes by reducing errors and improving efficiency. You can respond to guests with personalized messages without lifting a finger! To read more about triggers, check out our Trigger overview support article. We've created a number of Template and 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.

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 Template Requesting Channel Booking Guest With Contact Info to Sign Renter Agreement
  • Email Template
  • Channel Template
  • SMS Template
• Create Trigger to Send Booking Template Requesting Channel Booking Guest With Contact Info to Sign Renter Agreement

Create Booking 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.

Other helpful support articles include our field codes and Capture additional fields on booking and agreement signing support articles.

Email Template & Trigger

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, or copy the template from below by clicking on the + Add Template to My Account. 

Request Channel Booking Guest With Contact Information to Sign Renter Agreement Email Template

{MYCOFULL}

{MYEMAIL}

{CFULL}

{CEMAIL}

{PDISPNAME} Renter Agreement to Complete

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.

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!

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 by clicking + Add Template to My Account.

Request Channel Booking Guest With Contact Information to Sign Renter Agreement Channel Template

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}

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!

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 or click + Add Template to My Account.

Request Channel Booking Guest With Contact Information to Sign Renter Agreement SMS Template

{CPHONE}

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! ☕

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.

Create Trigger to Send Booking Template Requesting Channel Booking 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. Navigate to Settings > Messaging > Triggers > and click + Create Trigger to pull up the new trigger screen.

Here is a list of all the settings the trigger needs to have:

As soon as booking is created

Listing Site is one of Vrbo
Email Address On File Status is one of has real email address
Renter Agreement Signed Status is No 

Request Channel Booking Guest With Contact Information to Sign Renter Agreement Email Template via Email

Now, let's talk about what the above settings mean!

The Type and Event fields will make the trigger run as soon as a Vrbo booking is received or recorded in your account.

Since we are targeting Vrbo bookings only, we want to add a "Condition" to the trigger that will prevent it from sending messages to other listing channels. 

Furthermore, since this trigger will send an email template, we add the "Email Address on File" condition and select the "Has real email address" value.  This will ensure that only inquiries that include an email address from the guest will get this trigger.

There are other conditions you may want to add, but for now, this is enough to make our trigger send the email reply when inquiries come in that are both "rule violations" and have a real email address.

Finally, the last thing we select is the "Action" for the email template we want to send.  Since this trigger is supposed to send an email reply, select the email template and be careful not to select the channel or SMS template.

At this point, your trigger should look like this: