Remind Channel Booking Guest Without Contact Info, to Provide Contact Info and 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 without contact info to provide contact info and 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 Without Contact Info, to Provide Contact Info and Sign Renter Agreement immediately after booking, but your channel guest hasn't responded yet. Let's craft a channel template to remind your channel guest to provide their contact information and sign your renter agreement.

By setting up a channel template and trigger, you'll be able to send out a reminder to guests who booked through a channel for their contact information 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 channel template to remind your channel guests to provide their contact information and sign renter agreement
2. Create an SMS template to remind your channel guests to provide their contact information and sign renter agreement
3. Create a trigger that applies to bookings reminding your channel guests to provide their contact information and sign renter agreement

Create booking channel template to remind your channel guests to provide their contact information and 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.

You can create only one type of template - a channel template. This is the delivery method that will be used for your response.

Channels like Airbnb and Booking.com don't provide an email address for the guest, so you need to be able to reply 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 provide their contact information and 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 provide their contact information and 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 > Airbnb, Booking.com
• Add Condition > Renter Agreement Signed Status is No
• Action: Channel Templates > Remind Channel Guest to Provide Contact Information and Renter Agreement for Channel Bookings Template

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

The Type and Event fields will make the trigger run two days after an Airbnb or Booking.com channel booking is created if the guest has not yet provided their contact information or signed their renter agreement.

Since we are targeting "channel bookings" only, we want to add the "Conditions" of Airbnb and Booking.com Listing Sites and the Renter Agreement Signed status of no, so the trigger will not send out messages for other channel bookings that have already provided their contact information and 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 request guest contact information, sign your renter agreement, and schedule their security deposit.

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. A couple of days after an Airbnb or Booking.com channel booking comes in, the trigger fires to send your channel 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 an Airbnb or Booking.com channel booking is created.

But we're not done. You created a template for an SMS reminder, so now you need to create a trigger to send that, too.

Using the instructions above, create another trigger (or two) with the same type, event, and conditions, but select the SMS template 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., Airbnb or Booking.com messaging), the trigger will silently skip sending the reply since there is no way to send it.