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: Send Morning After Arrival Message to Your Channel Guest Without Contact Information to Ensure Everything is Alright
Good guest communication is essential for a positive guest experience. Clear and timely communication can greatly influence guests' perceptions and impact their reviews.
This scenario assumes that the guest has already provided contact information and signed a renter agreement. Checking in with your guests the morning after arrival is important to ensure that you, as the host, can proactively address any issues promptly so that your guests will have a comfortable stay.
Don't have your guest's contact information? See the Ask Channel Booking Guest Without Contact Info, to Provide Contact Info and Sign Renter Agreement support article for more information.
By setting up a channel template and trigger, you can send a Morning of Guest Arrival Information message template 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 Send Morning After Arrival Message to Your Channel Guest Without Contact Information to Ensure Everything is Alright
- Create a Trigger That Applies to Bookings to Send Morning After Arrival Message to Your Channel Guest Without Contact Information to Ensure Everything is Alright
Create a Booking Message Template to Send Morning After Arrival Message to Your Channel Guest Without Contact Information to Ensure Everything is Alright
Go to Settings > Templates to configure the "booking" template type message you want to send to your guest.
Without your guest's contact information, there is only one type of template you can create and send—a channel message. This is the delivery method that will be used to send your message. 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.
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.
Some OwnerRez users and guests prefer to keep all communications on the channel booked. 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:
Morning After Arrival Message to Your Channel Guest Without Contact Info to Ensure Everything is Alright Channel Template
Body:
Good Morning {CFIRST},
Just wanted to check in with you this morning to make sure you have everything you need.
Have a wonderful stay, and feel free to contact us at {MYPHONE} if you have any concerns!
{MYFIRST}
Channel templates have a Preview button, so as you type, take a quick look at 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, 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 property name {PDISPNAME} field code. We also included our {MYPHONE} phone number field code so that guests have our contact information if needed. You want a concise message for the guest to read, and this does the trick!
Now 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 Send Morning After Arrival Message to Your Channel Guest Without Contact Information to Ensure Everything is Alright
Since each trigger can only send one message template, you'll need to create a trigger to send your 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 the trigger needs to have:
- Type: Scheduled Time
- Event: 1 days > After> Booking has arrived > at 9:00 AM
- Add Condition > Listing Site is > Only: Airbnb, Booking.com, Vrbo
- Action: Channel Templates > Morning After Arrival Message to Your Channel Guest Without Contact Info to Ensure Everything is Alright 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 on the morning after arrival at 9:00 AM.
Since we are targeting "bookings" for channel guests, 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, Booking.com, Vrbo" 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.
You may want to add other conditions, but for now, this is enough to make our trigger send the Guest Morning After Arrival channel message the morning after their arrival.
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.
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. On the morning after your guest's arrival at 9:00 AM, the trigger runs and sends your Guest the Morning After Arrival Channel Template. That's it!