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 and Triggers - Setup & Configuration support articles. We've also 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: Remind Your Channel Guest Without Contact Information About a Day of Week Task
If you have a recurring task that you need to remind your guests about, you can set up reminders to go out a day before. For instance, if your trash gets picked up every Wednesday, you can send messages to your guests on Tuesday to remind them to take the trash out to the curb. This support article can show you how you can set that up.
This scenario assumes that the guest has not provided contact information and signed a renter agreement. Note that channels like Airbnb and Booking.com don't provide email addresses (or even guest phone numbers). 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.
By setting up a channel template and trigger, you can remind your guests about a day-of-the-week task by creating message templates to send to your channel guests. 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 a Booking Message Template to Remind Your Channel Guest Without Contact Information About a Day of Week Task
- Create a Trigger That Applies to Bookings to Remind Your Channel Guest Without Contact Information About a Day of Week Task
Create a Booking Message Template to Remind Your Channel Guest Without Contact Information About a Day of Week Task
Go to Settings > Templates to configure the "booking" template type message you want to send to your guest.
There is only one type of template you can create—a channel template. This will be the delivery method for your reminder. To send these types of templates, the booking must have contact information you can reply to. For instance, if you want to send a message on Airbnb, the booking must have come through Airbnb to begin with, so that our system knows how to deliver your response back to the correct Airbnb thread.
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.
Even though you may have your guest's contact information, some users and guests still prefer to keep all communications on the channel. 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.
Name:
Remind Your Channel Guest Without Contact Information About a Day of Week Task Channel Template
Body:
Hi {CFIRST},
Just want to let you know that tomorrow is trash day for {PDISPNAME}.
(Insert specific instructions for bagging trash, there the trash cans are, where to place the trash cans, and return the trash cans, etc.)
Thank you for choosing {PDISPNAME} and helping us keep it clean!
{MYFIRST}
Channel templates have a Preview button, so as you type, you can quickly check 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, bullets, 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.
Again, the channel message is dynamic to the booking by including the {CFIRST} guest's first name and the property name {PDISPNAME} field codes. 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 to Remind Your Channel Guest Without Contact Information About a Day of Week Task
Since each trigger can only send one message template, you'll need to create triggers for each Arrival Day of the Week reminder you send. You will need multiple Triggers for each template.
Let's assume trash pickup is on Wednesday. That means you want to send reminders on Tuesday. You'll need to create Triggers for each day of the week to send these reminder templates to the guest a certain number of days "after booking has arrived" based on their check-in day of the week and how many nights they're staying.
For example:
- For guests who arrive on Sunday and stay for 3 nights or more, you'll want the Template sent 2 days After the Booking Has Arrived.
- For guests who arrive on Monday and stay two or more nights, you'll want the Template sent 1 day After the Booking Has Arrived.
Normally, when setting up a trigger, it is best to move from top to bottom on the Trigger page. But with these instructions, it may be easier to start in the middle of the screen with the "Conditions."
Let's start with a Trigger for bookings that Arrive on a Sunday. First, we'll create a trigger to send the channel 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 this trigger needs to have:
- Type: Scheduled Time
- Event: 2 days > After > Booking has arrived > at 4:00 PM
- Add Condition > Listing Site is > Only: Airbnb or Booking.com
- Add Condition > Arrival Day of the Week > On: Sunday
- Add Condition > Number of Nights is > Greater Than or Equal to: 3 nights
- Action > Channel Message: Remind Your Channel Guest Without Contact Information About a Day of Week Task Channel Template
Now, let's talk about what the above settings mean!
The Type and Event fields will make the trigger send your channel template at a scheduled time 2 days after the booking has arrived at 4:00 PM.
Since we are targeting "bookings" for channel guests for whom we do not 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 "Listing Site is > Only: Airbnb or Booking.com" condition status covers that.
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.
We added the conditions, "Arrival Day of the Week > On: Sunday" and "Number of Nights is > Greater Than or Equal to: 3 nights" for guests who will arrive on Sunday and stay for 3 nights or more, so this reminder channel template will be sent on Tuesday afternoon at 4:00 PM.
You may want to add other conditions, but for now, this is enough to make our trigger send your channel guest a reminder about a day of the week task.
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.
We also included the day of the week arrival in the Description field (in this case, Sunday Arrival) so we know exactly which arrival day of the week this trigger is for. You can use the same channel Template for each day of the week. You'll just have to calculate the arrival days, the number of nights, and how many days after arrival to send your reminder message templates.
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. Two days after your guest arrives on a Sunday, your reminder about a day of the week task channel template will be sent on Tuesday at 4:00 PM. That's it!
If you wanted to send it a different day, just count forward that number of days. If you want it sent on a Friday for channel bookings that arrive on Sunday, you would instead set Action "Time" to 5 days after Booking has arrived. You would also adjust the Booking Field "Number of Nights" to "Greater Than or Equal to 6 Nights."
Now repeat the process, making Triggers for arrivals of each day of the week.
One more consideration - if you typically have guests who stay for more than a week, you may want to set up a second trigger where the "Bookings Fields" has "Number of Nights is Greater Than or Equal to X". In our example, with the Sunday arrival and Wednesday trash pickup, your number of nights would be "Greater than or Equal to 10 nights."