Example - Scheduled Quote Follow-up to Guest Who Started a Book Now on Your Personal Website

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 an quote for the following scenario:

Scenario: Scheduled Quote Follow-up to Guest Who Started a Book Now on Your Personal Website

We've all experienced it. A potential guest begins the "Book Now" process on our personal website but fails to complete the reservation. It’s important to follow up with them to remind them to finalize their booking. They may be exploring travel options for a larger group or just considering their choices, but reaching out is crucial. This way, we can address any unanswered questions and remind them of the quoted amount.

Whatever the reason, you want to follow up with messages for these "Book Now" quotes to arrive at just the right time—to remind potential guests that the quoted reservation is still available so they can take advantage of your offer. We already covered sending an immediate Quote Follow-up to Guest Who Started a Book Now on Your Personal Website, but we can also send a reminder at a later scheduled time.

This article assumes that you already have your potential guest's contact information (real email address, phone number, etc.) from the quote. Thus, you can easily reach out to them by email or phone to send a personalized follow-up communication reminding them to finalize their 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 a Quote Follow-up Template
   • Replying by Email
   • Replying by SMS
2. Create a Trigger That Applies to Quotes, and Send Your Templates

Create a Quote Follow-up Template

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

There are two choices for the type of template you can create - email and SMS. These are the delivery methods that will be used for your response. To send these types of templates, the quote 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 quote.

Replying by Email

First, we'll create an email template, so go to Settings > Templates > Email tab > click the Create Email Template button > select the "Quote" 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 articles.

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

Name:

Quote Follow-up to Guest Who Started a Book Now on Your Personal Website Email Template

{MYCOFULL}

{MYEMAIL}

{CFULL}

{CEMAIL}

Subject:

[Quote # {QID}]  {PDISPNAME} for {QARR} - {QDEP}

Body:

Hi {CFIRST},

Thanks for checking out {PDISPNAME}! We would love to host you on your next stay. 

Below is a quote for your travel dates. You can use the link to view more details or accept and finalize your reservation with our simple and secure checkout.

{QHCTAB}

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 quote to take a live look.

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

Notice how clean and personalized the content is. The subject line is dynamic to the guest name, property, and dates selected, so it will match the quote that the guest created. The body addresses the guest by name so it looks like the body is being written by hand. By including the guest's original quote comment {ICOMM} field code and requested itinerary to remind the guest of what they asked originally and to provide context for why this response is coming back to them. In other words, it looks like a hand-written manual response, even though it wasn't.

Notice how we included the quote field code {QHCTAB} in the body? By including the quote field code {QHCTAB}, the guest will be able to see the original quote (and hopefully book right then and there) that you mentioned in the second sentence.

After copying and pasting the above subject and body into your template, feel free to play with the words and styles to make it your own. However, remember that we are creating a message specific to unbooked quotes. This message assumes that all quotes it responds to are available dates, so make sure to customize accordingly. If this template is used for an inquiry that has unavailable dates, the body of the message would be confusing to your potential guest. 

We are now armed with a solid email reply for any quotes that come in. But what about SMS message? Wouldn't it be cool to fire off a short SMS text message to the guest?

Replying by SMS

In certain circumstances, quotes come in with a phone number. This typically happens when a guest is on your book-direct website or using your Book Now widget, and they include their phone number in the quote they submit.

Using our SMS premium feature, you can reply 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 "Quote" 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:

Quote Follow-up to Guest Who Started a Book Now on Your Personal Website SMS Template

To Phone Number:

{CPHONE}

Body:

Hi {CFIRST}! Thanks for checking out {PDISPNAME}! We would love to host you on your next stay. 😀 Here's a link for your travel dates to view more details or accept and finalize your reservation with our simple and secure checkout. Let me know if you have any questions. {MYFIRST}

{QHCTAB}

Once again, smack that Preview button to see how this looks live! SMS templates are similar to channel templates in that they are plain text with no colors or formatting options, but you can still dress them up with personalized field codes and light-hearted emojis.

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

Not a fan of emojis? No worries, edit that part out!

You'll notice that this SMS template differs from the email and channel templates in that it is much shorter. Instead, it's a quick sentence along with a copy of the original quote. If you'd rather say something else - that's totally fine. For instance, you could include the website URL of your property and ask the guest to refer to that for future availability. Or you could choose not to include the quote field code {QHCTAB} to send an even shorter message body.

When you create your trigger to send your SMS message template, be sure to include both Conditions of "Phone Number on File Status is Yes" and "Quote Status is Open."

Now that we have some message templates created, it's time to configure the trigger that will send them.

Create a Trigger That Applies to Quotes, and Send Your Templates

Since each trigger can only send one message template, you'll need to create a trigger for each type of reply you send. Above, we crafted replies for email and SMS, so we'll need to create three triggers to send each one.

First, we'll create a trigger to send the email 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 > 7 days after > Quote is created > at 9:00 AM
• Add Condition > Quote Status is One Of > Open
• Add Condition > Email Address on File is One Of > Has Real Email Address
• Action: Email Templates > Quote Follow-up to Guest Who Started a Book Now on Your Personal Website Email Template

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

The Type and Event fields will make the trigger run seven days after a quote is received or recorded in your account. Remember that quotes can be received or recorded in different ways.

Since we are targeting quotes only, we want to add a "Condition" to the trigger that will stop it from sending out messages for other types of quotes. Imagine getting a quote for bookable dates from a guest who met your policies, but your trigger accidentally sent out a "no, your travel dates are unavailable" message. That would not be good! Adding the Quote Status condition will stop that.

Furthermore, since this trigger will send an email template, we add the "Email Address on File" condition and select the "Has real email address" value. This will ensure that only quotes that include an email address from the guest will get this trigger.

If the quote is still open, this scheduled trigger is somewhat similar to the immediate Quote Follow-up to Guest Who Started a Book Now on Your Personal Website, but now we're sending our templates at a later scheduled time - seven days later, in this case.

You may want to add other conditions, but for now, this is enough to make our trigger send the email reply when quotes are both "open" and have a real email address.

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 reply, select the email template and be careful not to select the channel or SMS template.

At this point, your trigger should look like this:

Nice and simple!

These actions do exactly what they say. When the quote comes in, this trigger will send your email template seven days after the initial quote is received.

That's it! Click Save, and now you have a trigger ready to go.

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

Using the instructions above, create one more trigger with the same type, event, and conditions, but select the channel template and the SMS template as your "Actions" instead of email. In the Conditions section, make sure to remove the "Email Address on File" condition since channel and SMS replies don't care about the email address. 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 quote 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.

All done! You now have active triggers in place that will automatically send email replies to any unbooked "Book Now" quotes.