I'm not sure why a trigger is limited to no more than 30 days after check-out. I'd really like to send my guests some follow-up messages later than that, inviting them back and giving them a special offer. Can you not let us create further-out triggers?
That's because messages within 30 days of a past sales interaction are considered to be related to that sales interaction, and thus are not spam or marketing. Allowing emails longer than that would add additional legal requirements and complexities. It's cleaner for OwnerRez to be able to say "no, we just don't allow automatic emails like that at all".
Of course, you are perfectly free to export your guest list to Excel and use it in another system that is designed for general email marketing - there are many of them around with good reputations.
At some point in the future, we'll probably add more capabilities here, but because of the growing legal restrictions, this would be more complicated than it might at first appear.
I'm not sure why a trigger is limited to no more than 30 days after check-out. I'd really like to send my guests some follow-up messages later than that, inviting them back and giving them a special offer. Can you not let us create further-out triggers?
I too would love to retarget past guests. If I have a guest that is celebrating an anniversary, I would like to send them something in about 10 months asking them if it's time to get away again for another anniversary celebration. Or just send them a happy anniversary email a year after they stay.
It's cleaner for OwnerRez to be able to say "no, we just don't allow automatic emails like that at all".
... this would be more complicated than it might at first appear.
No... It's EASIER for OwnerRez to be able to say "no, we just don't allow automatic emails like that at all".
"... this would be more complicated than it might at first appear."
It is actually not as complicated as it might first appear. It would be very easy to restrict later messages to a particular template format ie, they include the following attributes or they won't be sent:
Don’t use false or misleading header information. (This is all automatic.)
Don’t use deceptive subject lines. (Explain the requirements to your users. If they violate them - they only way you'll know is if you get a complaint, because it is all complaint driven, and complaints can be through a mandatory form link included in the template - they lose their access to the feature. You control access to various features of OwnerRez based on the user subscription, so the mechanisms for this are already in place.)
Identify the message as an ad. (Built into the template.)
Tell recipients where you’re located. (Built into the template.)
Tell recipients how to opt out of receiving future marketing email from you. (Built into the template.)
Remember that subscribers and members can opt out of marketing emails, too.
Honor opt-out requests promptly. (When the guest opts out, it changes or assigns a mandatory tag [without user intervention or ability to change it] on the booking and future emails aren't sent.)
REALLY... this is NOT onerous, and could be built into Templates made specifically for the purpose by OwnerRez, whereby the email being sent uses the "post 30-day" template or it doesn't go out. The trigger could be mandatorily booking related so emails are only sent once per booking, which eliminates 'mass' messaging.
It is actually not that hard to meet these requirements.
Considering all of the 'dancing' OwnerRez programmers do to meet the requirements of the big listing sites, this is a piece of cake by comparison. Whether you can do it is not a question.
It is a matter of will, and the desire to put your customer's needs first, that determines if this happens or not.
Not even allowing your users to vote for this feature and give you an honest indication of the desire for it is very bad form. You can't claim to put your customers first when you refuse to even listen to them about a topic and gauge their desire for something. At least you could be finding out in an honest manner how much desire there is for such a feature. That's not the same as agreeing to do it.
