Leaving Hostaway because of their booking fee?

Can I manually select a group of guests to send email to?

Monica R
Jul 6, 2018 10:16 AM
Joined Feb, 2018 86 posts

I have a handful of regular guests that I'd like to send a group email to. I thought it would be under the GUESTS tab, and that I could select each guest by their checkbox, and then there would magically be a button that said "EMAIL THESE GUESTS" and poof I could choose a template and email them all at the same time.

Is this possible? I can't imagine that it's NOT, I just can't figure out how to do it.

Thanks!
Monica

Monica R
Jul 6, 2018 10:23 AM
Joined Feb, 2018 86 posts

One more thing to add... I also realized that I can't generate a NEW email to an OLD guest via the guest's profile.

I have looked everywhere I could think of and it appears to be impossible unless you look up the old BOOKING on the calendar and then hit "Email This Guest".

Am I missing something?

Thank you!

Monica

Chris Hynes
Jul 11, 2018 1:52 PM
OR Team Member Joined Oct, 2012 1401 posts

Nope, you're not missing anything! Right now you can only email in the context of a booking, quote, etc -- we don't have email blasting or newsletter capability. Turns out that the legalities and requirements for a bulk email are different than the normal transactional back and forth emails you get for a booking, and our current email provider does exclusively transactional email to ensure the highest delivery rates.

We do have plans to add an email blast/newsletter module, but in the meantime the best thing to do would be to go to Reports and export an Email List, then import that into MailChimp. They've got a free version for up a list of up to 2000 contacts, so that's an easy way to go and they cover all of the email newsletter unsubscribing and contact requirements etc.

Larry B
Oct 1, 2023 5:08 PM
Joined Dec, 2020 6 posts

Any updates on the email functionality you noted?  I'd also like to have the emails I send to people tracked in their profile if that is an option

 

Shawn H
Oct 3, 2023 5:52 PM
OR Team Member Joined Aug, 2021 257 posts

Hi Larry - emailing marketing is not on the roadmap. With so many email marketing tools available, and it being their core business (i.e., they know how to keep things above board in the ways of sending email "campaigns"), it's not a high priority with everything else on the roadmap. That could change down the road but there are so many other core things we need to stay focused on.

You may know this, but you can manually email a guest as it pertains to a booking from the Overview tab ("Email this Guest"). By doing so, the outgoing manual email will be saved in the Communication History for that booking/guest.

We are working towards a "unified inbox" with the ultimate goal of supporting inbound email. So, if a guest replies to a message you sent them via OwnerRez automated messaging, that today is delivered to your email inbox (say Gmail or private domain inbox), but this would allow that message to come into the OwnerRez inbox and then you could reply to their message from inside OwnerRez, keeping that whole conversation in one place.