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 booking for the following scenario:
Scenario: Send Your Guest Who Booked Through Your Personal Website an Invoice or Receipt
Discerning guests often book stays directly through your personal website, making them your most valuable guests. Sending an updated invoice or a summary of booking charges after making changes to a booking or providing a receipt for business purposes enhances the reputation of your vacation rental business. 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:
- Create a Booking Template to Send Your Guest Who Booked Through Your Personal Website an Invoice or Receipt
- Create a Trigger that Applies to Bookings with "Listing Site is My Website" Condition to Send Your Guest Who Booked Through Your Personal Website an Invoice or Receipt
Create a Booking Template to Send Your Guest Who Booked Through Your Personal Website an Invoice or Receipt
Go to Settings > Templates to configure the message you want to send. Since this template will be used for inquiries, create a "Booking" type of template.
You can create two types of templates: email 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.
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 "Booking" option. This will open an email editor with some sample field codes filled in. For detailed information about how email templates and field codes work, check out the email templates overview article and field codes articles. 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:
Send Your Guest Who Booked Through Your Personal Website an Invoice or Receipt Email Template
From Name:
{MYCOFULL}
From Address:
{MYEMAIL}
To Name:
{CFULL}
To Address:
{CEMAIL}
Subject:
Receipt for your {BARR}-{BDEP} stay at {PDISPNAME}
Body:
Hi {CFIRST},
Thank you for booking {PDISPNAME} for your, {BARR} to {BDEP}, stay!
We know that you, as a discerning traveler, had many accommodation options to choose from, and we appreciate that you chose {PDISPNAME}.
Here is an updated billing summary for your {BARR} to {BDEP} stay at {PDISPNAME}.
Charges: {BTAMT}
Paid: {BTPAY}
Balance Due: {BTOWE}
Your current charges:
{BCTAB}
We will be in touch with you closer to your travel dates, but feel free to reach out with any questions in the meantime.
{MYFIRST}
If you're wondering what those field codes do, check out the field codes support article or use the "Preview" button on the template 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 booked, so it will match the guest booking. The body addresses the guest by name so it looks like the body is being written by hand. In other words, it looks like a hand-written manual response, even though it wasn't.
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 bookings made through your personal website. If this template is used for a channel booking, the message body would be confusing to your guest. Similarly, if you do not include the {BARR} arrival date and {BDEP} departure date field codes both in the Subject field of the email and again in the body, the guest will not be able to see their travel dates displayed.
We also included the following field codes for a complete booking receipt or invoice for your guest in the example above.
- {BTAMT}: Booking charges
- {BTPAY}: Amount the guest has already paid
- {BTOWE}: Balance due
- {BCTAB}: Complete current charges
We are now armed with a solid booking receipt or invoice for any bookings made through your personal website. But how about sending an SMS message to your guests who booked through your personal website?
Replying by SMS
Guest phone numbers are always included in bookings made on your book-direct website or using your Book Now widget, so let's use this to our advantage by alerting them to the invoice email we sent.
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 "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:
Send Your Guest Who Booked Through Your Personal Website an Invoice or Receipt SMS Template
To Phone Number:
{CPHONE}
Body:
{CFIRST}, thank you for booking {PDISPNAME}! Be on the lookout for your Receipt email from us for your {BARR}-{BDEP} stay. Feel free to reach out with any questions. Cheers! 😁
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 template in that it is much shorter. Instead, it's a quick sentence to thank the guest and direct them to our email. If you'd rather say something else, that's totally fine.
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 Bookings with the "Listing Site is My Website" Condition to Send Your Guest Who Booked Through Your Personal Website an Invoice or Receipt
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 two 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 time
- Immediate: After > 1 days after > Booking is created: at 9:00 AM
- Add Condition > Email Address on File is One Of > Has Real Email Address
- Add Condition > Listing Site > Only is One Of > My Website
- Action: Email Templates > Send Your Guest Who Booked Through Your Personal Website an Invoice or Receipt Email Template
Now, let's talk about what the above settings mean!
The Type and Immediate fields will make the trigger run one day after a new booking is received or recorded in your account. Remember that bookings can be received or recorded in different ways.
Since we are targeting the "Listing Site is My Website" Condition only, we want to add a "Condition" to the trigger that will stop it from sending out messages for other types of bookings. Imagine getting a booking from a guest who booked on Vrbo or Airbnb, but your trigger accidentally sent out a "thank you for booking directly on our website" message. That would not be good! Adding the Listing Site 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 bookings that include an email address from the guest will get this trigger.
You may want to add other conditions, but for now, this is enough to make our trigger send the email reply when bookings are from the "Listing Site is My Website" 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 SMS template.
At this point, your trigger should look like this:
That's it! It's nice and simple! Click Save, and you'll 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, too.
Using the instructions above, create one more trigger with the same type, event, and conditions, but select the SMS template as your "Action" instead of email. In the Conditions section, make sure to remove the "Email Address on File" condition since 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 trigger will silently skip sending a message if there is no way to send it.
Wondering about channel bookings? You could set up message templates to send booking receipts or invoices for any channel bookings, but it's probably not necessary as most channel listing sites already have a process for sending booking receipts or invoices.
All done! You now have active triggers in place that will automatically send booking receipts or invoices for bookings made through your personal website to bookings with the "Listing Site is My Website."