Remind Channel Booking Guest With Contact Info to Sign Renter Agreement

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 support article. We've created a small library of trigger examples to help get you started.

In this example, we're dealing with a channel booking for the following scenario:

Scenario: Remind your channel guest with contact info to sign renter agreement

You got a booking! Great. But what happens if you don't have the guest's email address or phone number? Channels like Airbnb and Booking.com don't provide an email address (or even a phone number) for the guest.

How do you request your guest's contact information and have them sign your renter agreement and schedule their security deposit? OwnerRez directly integrates with the native messaging platforms at Vrbo, Airbnb, and Booking.com, so you need to rely on those channel messaging platforms.

You already sent the Ask Channel Booking Guest With Contact Info to Provide Contact Info and Sign the Renter Agreement immediately after booking, but your channel guest hasn't responded yet. Let's craft email, channel, and SMS templates to remind your channel guests to sign your renter agreement.

By setting up an email, channel, SMS templates, and triggers, you can send a reminder to guests who booked through a channel to sign the renter agreement a couple of days after booking. 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:

1. Create booking email template to remind your channel guests to sign renter agreement
2. Create booking channel template to remind your channel guests to sign renter agreement
3. Create an SMS template to remind your channel guests to sign renter agreement
4. Create a trigger that applies to bookings reminding your channel guests to provide their contact information and sign renter agreement

Create booking email template to remind your channel guests to sign renter agreement

Go to Settings > Templates to configure the "booking" template type message you want to send to your guest. 

There are three choices for the type of template you can create - email, channel, 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.  Likewise, 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.

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. Also, see our Capture additional fields on booking and agreement signing support article.

Copy and paste the following values into your new email template.

Name:

Remind Channel Booking Guest With Contact Information to Sign Renter Agreement Email Template

{MYCOFULL}

{MYEMAIL}

{CFULL}

{CEMAIL}

Subject:

{PDISPNAME} Renter Agreement to Complete ASAP

Body:

Hi {CFIRST},

Thanks for booking {PDISPNAME}!

I noticed that we don't have your signed Renter Agreement. As a reminder, this needs to be taken care of for your reservation to be finalized. If you've changed your mind, don't hesitate to let us know.

Please take a minute to click on the following link to share your contact information and to complete our renter agreement.

e-Signature form for Booking # {BID}

If the above link does not work, please copy and paste the URL below to access the Rental Agreement for signature.

{BUFIXUP}

If you could take care of this ASAP, that would complete your booking for {PDISPNAME}. If we do not hear from you in the next 24 hours we will assume you are no longer interested and will cancel your reservation.

Let me know if you have any questions.

{MYFIRST}

If you're wondering what those field codes do, check out the field codes support article or use the "Preview" button on the bookings to take a live look.

Here's a quick preview of what the above email message looks like:

Create booking channel template to remind your channel guests to sign renter agreement

Go to Settings > Templates to configure the message you want to send. Since this template will be used for channel bookings, create a channel "booking" type of template.

Channels like Airbnb and Booking.com don't provide an email address for the guest, so you need to be able to rely on channel messaging platforms as well. 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. Also, see our Capture additional fields on booking and agreement signing support article.

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:

Remind Channel Guest to Provide Contact Information and Renter Agreement for Channel Bookings Template

Body:

Hi {CFIRST},

Thanks again for booking {PNAME}!

I noticed that we don't have your signed Rental Agreement yet. As a reminder, this needs to be taken care of ASAP for your reservation to be finalized. If you've changed your mind, don't hesitate to let us know.

Please take a minute to copy and paste the URL below into a new tab to share your contact information and access your Rental Agreement for signature.

{BUFIXUP}

If you could take care of this ASAP, your booking for {PDISPNAME} will be complete. If we do not hear from you within the next 24 hours, we will assume that you are no longer interested and will cancel your reservation.

Let us know if you have any questions.

{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. 

Notice how we include instructions to "copy and paste" the plain text URL into a new tab? The channel message template converts the {BUFIXUP} field code link into plain text that can be copied and pasted by your channel booking guest to enter their contact information, sign the renter agreement, and schedule their security deposit. You want a concise message for the guest to read, and this does the trick!

Now that we have your channel message template created, it's time to configure the trigger that will send them.

Create an SMS template to remind your channel guests to sign renter agreement

In certain circumstances, some channel bookings come into OwnerRez with a phone number. Lucky you! There's no clear-cut way to ascertain if it is the guests' actual mobile phone number or a landline, but you can certainly attempt to leverage that phone number to send an SMS message a couple of days after the channel booking is created, reminding your channel guests to provide their contact information and sign the renter agreement. 

Using our SMS premium feature, you can message your channel guest 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 Channel Guest to Provide Contact Information and Renter Agreement for Channel Bookings SMS Template

Body:

Hey {CFIRST}, we still need your signed Rental Agreement for your upcoming reservation at {PNAME}. Please complete that within the next 24 hours or we will assume that you are no longer interested and will cancel your reservation. Here's the link: {BUFIXUP}. {MYFIRST}

Channel templates have a Preview button, so as you type, you can quickly check the preview window to get a sense of how the SMS message will look.

Here is a quick look at how the above SMS template looks in preview mode:

Create a trigger that applies to bookings reminding your channel guests to sign renter agreement

To create a trigger to send the 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
• Scheduled: After > 2 days after > Booking is created > at 9:00 am
• Add Condition > Listing Site is One of > Vrbo
• Add Condition > Email Address on File is One Of > Has Real Email Address
• Add Condition > Renter Agreement Signed Status is No
• Action: Email Templates > Remind Channel Booking Guest With Contact Information to Sign Renter Agreement Email Template

Now, let's talk about what the above settings mean!

The Type and Event fields will make the trigger run two days after a Vrbo channel booking is created if the guest has not yet signed their renter agreement.

Since we are targeting "channel bookings" only, we want to add the "Conditions" of the Vrbo Listing Site and the Renter Agreement Signed status of no to the trigger, which will stop it from sending messages for other channel bookings that have already signed their renter agreements.

You may want to add other conditions, but for now, this is enough to make our trigger send the channel message when you receive a channel booking and need to remind your channel guest to sign your renter agreement, and schedule their security deposit.

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.

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. A couple of days after a Vrbo channel booking comes in, the trigger fires to send your email template. That's it! Want to create another template and trigger it to run after five or seven days? You can do that, too, by creating an additional trigger to send the same template (or even a different template) five or seven days after a Vrbo channel booking is created.

But we're not done. You created a template for a channel and SMS reminders, so now you need to create triggers to send those, too.

Using the instructions above, create triggers with the same type, event, and conditions, but select the channel and SMS templates as your "Actions" instead of email. In the Conditions section, there is no "Phone Number on File" condition, but that's okay because the trigger won't send an SMS reply if there's no phone number to send it to. The same is true for channel replies. If the inquiry did not come from a channel message platform (e.g., Vrbo messaging), the trigger will silently skip sending the reply since there is no way to send it.