Email replies from guests

How do I get reply emails from guests to show up in ownerrez?

For example, we have our own website, the guest fills out a booking inquiry, we then reply to that inquiry in ownerrez with a quote, customer replies to that email… but their reply only goes to our external email inbox.

How do I get their reply to also be imported in to ownerrez and presumably show up next to the booking in question?

We verified our domain with ownerrez, so our outgoing emails appear to come from our domian, but how to we get the replies to comeback in to ownerrez? Is it as simply as setting an email account forwarder from ouremail@ourdomain.com to ouruniquecode@inquiryspot.com?

Thanks for the help 👍

At present, OwnerRez doesn't have a fully integrated inbox like you're describing - return emails go directly to your own email inbox and client program. This is something planned for the future.

Yes, you can forward emails to the inquiryspot address, but OwnerRez won't know what to do with them - they'll show up as unidentified inquiries.

Ahhhh that is a shame and I might have overstated OwnerRez's capabilities to the guys that will be dealing with bookings. As under the booking-messages tab I had seen "Search for all emails sent or received for this booking"

But if not, then any emails sent via ownerrez will not be present on the email accounts sent folder, and any emails we get back won't be present in ownerrez and so that makes keeping an audit trail of communications very messy.

I had assumed there might have been some unique identifier in the outgoing ownerrez emails message-header/return-path, that when email replies came back, ownerrez knew what to do with it and assigned it to a booking (assuming the guest replied to the message and hadn't composed a new fresh email. Or even at worst case, ownerrez acted as another email client and essential created a rule based on the customers email address to assign it to a guest record).

OK second question then...

Say we did set up a forwarder from our email address to ourunique@inquiryspot.com account and as you say, ownerrez pulls guest replies in to the system as a new inquiry and doesn't know what to do with it... Is there a way you can manually assign that email/new inquiry to a current booking, quote or customer? Thus a manual work around for keeping an audit trail?

Cheers

Yes, we do have plans to add a full unified email inbox, as we have for Airbnb messaging and SMS, but currently the only inbound emails supported in to OwnerRez are inquiries, not replies from the guest on a booking. Replies from the guest will go back to your email program.

If you want to store the outbound emails in your email program too, the best way to do that is to turn on the "send me a copy" on the template, which will send a copy of the email to your email as well as the guest.

There's not currently a way to link inbound emails to a booking in OwnerRez -- they'd just create inquiries.

Hi Ken,

Is there any progress on this feature? Although guest replies are saved to a Google account that I have dedicated to rentals, I would prefer to all correspondence stored within OwnerRez.

I wouldn't anticipate this new feature in the new future. Maybe next year.

So we’re now well into 2022 - can you give me an update on when OR will be providing users with a much needed unified inbox?

Checking in for an update on this...we're now into 2023.  Just joined OR a few weeks ago and had incorrectly assumed there would be a unified inbox.  Surprise surprise!  It seems like every other possible PMS out there offers a unified inbox as that's such a basic feature, I didn't even think to check for that as a feature cause it seemed so obvious to me (especially coming from Hospitable, where they're all about the messaging). 

Any update from OR?

I too would like to know when this feature is being implemented. We signed up in Oct after speaking with a Sales Rep that said it was in the works. However they could not give a date of when the feature would be available.  I believe in the New Owner Rez Pricing Blog you shared the roadmap for 2023 and said that unified box would be coming later in 2023.  Are we talking Q2, Q3 or Q4.

In the meantime if we want to be able to keep all conversations in OwnerRez for archival purposes, what type of workarounds are available. Would we just use the notes field in the booking section to track replies?

Dee Word

Adding my voice to the chorus here. When emails automatically go out, guests like to respond with great information. That should be persisted to support recurring bookings and future communications with the guest. 

This feature is needed!  Thanks! 

Looks like you have considered working on this issue since July 2021 it will soon be two years, how can we get this higher in the future programming?