Correspondence product training webinar

Learn how to use guest correspondence templates, resolve bulk correspondence issues, and configure auto-sending with our product webinar on Escapia's correspondence tool led by Escapia experts!

In this webinar, the Escapia support team covered the Escapia Correspondence tools! Topics covered included what is Escapia Correspondence, Correspondence templates, Bulk Correspondence, sending reservation specific Correspondnece, and Correspondence tips and tricks! Additionally, the team covers when you should use the Escapia Correspondence tool vs. when you should use the Communications Hub for your guest communication software options.

The Escapia team also answered some common customer questions.

What is the Escapia Correspondence vacation rental guest communication tool?

Escapia Correspondence is a module that allows you to create templates to use and send messages to your guests and owners for your vacation rental properties. You can create templates and use available merge tags within Escapia to have the template automatically pull information from the reservation or booking unit and add to the messages that are sent out.

Some key features of the Correspondence tool:

  • The ability to automatically send guest communications based on specified triggers such as booking creation, arrival date, departure date, etc.
  • The ability to send a templated message directly from the reservation details
  • The option to send mass emails or notifications to users for things like marketing emails, emergency notifications, or friendly reminders

When it comes to the why of using Correspondence module for your guest communication software, there are a lot of benefits! Escapia's Correspondence module offers a lot of formatting options, and when setting up the template automation you can enter your business or associated business email address for notification and replies from users.

The Correspondence module is also a great tool for unit owner communication alongside guest communication, enabling you to include owners in booking notifications and keep them up to date. Correspondence templated messages can also be sent on triggers like booking canceled, moved, or pending, allowing for total control over guest communication timing!

Correspondence Templates Overview: Using templated messages for guest communication

Correspondence sets allow for three different set types:

  • Standard Correspondence, which includes reservation and booking based correspondence triggers
  • Unit Correspondence, which generates a unit flyer to send through other Escapia tools/features
  • Owner Statements, which will show processed reservations, upcoming bookings, and a unit financial summary (a great tool to utilize alongside our Owner Portal!)

From there, you can also adapt templates to recipient types. This controls who is able to receive this piece of Correspondence, and affects which tags are available to use in the template. All Correspondence falls into one of two types of recipient messages - guest and owner.

For guest Correspondence, you'll then be able to select the template type, which has three options to choose from:

  • Reservation - sending Correspondence related to reservation details, which allows very few tags available for a quick reservation confirmation
  • Booking - sending Correspondence related to a reservation booking, which has the most tags available for when you need a lot of reservation details (like a rental agreement or deposit information)
  • Unit - sending Correspondence for property overviews, which can include several tags related to unit details to keep guests up to date

For owner  Correspondence, you utilize the same Reservation and Booking template types with the addition of an "Owner" type to send reservation correspondence to Owners as booking notifications, reservation details on guests, and specific owner statements.

Probably my favorite part of the reports module is the filtering options. You’ll notice that there’s a ton of options, and what you see isn’t even the limit! Selecting the pencil on a filter option will allow you to go into even more detail on date ranges and options on each filter, and you can easily revert to the default as needed.

On a template, you have the option to add custom text if you'd like to include specific information without modifying the template, allowing flexibility if you need to add details to your messages for unique situations. This custom text added utilizes default text details and will not be present upon further sends unless otherwise specified.

Escapia's Correspondence template uses similar HTML and editing styles as a typical Word processor, allowing you to adapt or update your template content as you'd like! Utilize different font styles and sizes, add information in bullet lists for quick clarification, add hyperlinks to bring guests to specific websites - we encourage you to view the recording for a deep dive into the options available to you or explore on your own the potential of this tool's word editing!

You also have the option of creating multiple Correspondence templates, which will be available to you to provide for automation across your portfolio. This can help save your business time and effort in reaching out to guests on designated trigger times, so utilize as many templates as you need. You're also able to bring templates together for easier sorting and adjusting within folders.

Bulk Correspondence: Sending vacation rental guest communication templates to multiple guests simultaneously

Our Bulk Correspondence tool allows you to send multiple emails to multiple guests at the same time should you need to send out a large scale notification. This is done through our Front Desk tool, which allows you to Generate Booking Correspondence through established search and qualification criteria. You can then focus your Correspondence to specific groups of guests or owners, as well as select delivery options between email or PDF.

Correspondence Tips and Tricks

Escapia's Correspondence is flexible for adapting to your business' needs, and we clarify the three most common requests here!

We cover specifically how to add a Guest Portal your business utilizes for reservations to templated communication, how to add payment due dates to templates, and how to add unit financial summaries to owner statements - if you're interested in any of the above (or even some extra insights into some merge tag options for our Correspondence tools) view the section of the recording above.