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 Guest Who Booked Through Your Personal Website 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 already provided contact information and signed a renter agreement.
By setting up an email or SMS template and trigger, you can remind your guests about a day-of-the-week task. Create message templates to send to guests who booked on your personal website. 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 Guest Who Booked Through Your Personal Website About a Day of Week Task
- Create a Trigger That Applies to Bookings to Remind Your Guest Who Booked Through Your Personal Website About a Day of Week Task
Create a Booking Message Template to Remind Your Guest Who Booked Through Your Personal Website 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 are two choices for the type of template you can create - email 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.
Send 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.
Copy and paste the following values into your new email template.
Name:
Remind Your Guest Who Booked Through Your Personal Website About a Day of Week Task Email Template
From Name:
{MYCOFULL}
From Address:
{MYEMAIL}
To Name:
{CFULL}
To Address:
{CEMAIL}
Subject:
Just a Reminder that trash pickup for {PDISPNAME} is tomorrow!
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}
If you're wondering what those field codes do, check out the field codes support article or use the "Preview" button on the booking 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 booking by including the {CFIRST} guest's first name and the property name {PDISPNAME} field codes. The body addresses the guest by name, so it looks like the body was written by hand. In other words, it looks like a hand-written manual response, 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 "bookings." This message assumes that all bookings as it responds to are bookings with guest contact information, so make sure to customize accordingly.
We are now armed with an email template to remind your guests who booked on your personal website about a day-of-the-week task. But what about an SMS message?
Send 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:
Remind Your Guest Who Booked on Your Personal Website About a Day of Week Task SMS Template
To Phone Number:
{CPHONE}
Body:
Hi {CFIRST}, just a Reminder that trash pickup for {PDISPNAME} is tomorrow! Please bag all trash, bring it to the trash cans, and bring the trash cans to the curb for pickup. Thank you! 😊
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 template in that it is much shorter and doesn't include detailed instructions. Instead, it's a quick sentence to remind the guest to bring the trash cans to the curb. If you'd rather say something else - that's totally fine. Or you could send a larger message body with more details like the email 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 to Remind Your Guest Who Booked Through Your Personal Website About a Day of Week Task
Since each trigger can only send one message template, you'll need to create triggers for each type of reminder you send. Above, we crafted replies for email and SMS, so we'll need to create triggers to send each type of template.
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 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 this trigger needs to have:
- Type: Scheduled Time
- Event: 2 days > After > Booking has arrived > at 4:00 PM
- Add Condition > Email Address on File: Has Real Email Address
- Add Condition > Arrival Day of the Week > On: Sunday
- Add Condition > Number of Nights is > Greater Than or Equal to: 3 nights
- Action: Remind Your Guest Who Booked Through Your Personal Website About a Day of Week Task Email Template
Now, let's talk about what the above settings mean!
The Type and Event fields will make the trigger send your email template at a scheduled time 2 days after the booking has arrived at 4:00 PM.
Since we are targeting "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 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 email 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 guest a reminder about a day of the week task.
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 message, select the email template and be careful not to select a channel 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 email 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 email 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 bookings which arrived 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."