Using CiiRUS's Template Builder, create email, SMS, Airbnb, and Vrbo inquiry templates for your guests, owners, and staff. You can automate templates based on rules and criteria, or send them on-demand. Popular templates include:
Guest booking confirmations
Balance due reminders
Arrival instructions
Thank you for staying
Use tokens (smart tags) in templates to dynamically change and populate details for each recipient.
This article is an overview of the Template Builder, but we've created articles to help you set up each template that you'll find next in this chapter.
Where to go
To access the Template Builder, go to:
Communications
Template Builder
Templates
The templates are divided into two sections:
Automation Templates
Standard Templates
Automation templates
Automation templates are messages that can be automatically sent to guests, owners, and staff members based on pre-defined rules. This can save you a lot of time and effort, and ensure that everyone is kept informed at every stage of the reservation lifecycle.
Some common automation templates include:
Quote details: Send a quote to a potential guest as soon as they inquire about a unit.
Guest booking confirmation: Send a confirmation email to the guest once they have booked a unit.
Guest rental agreement: Send the guest a rental agreement that they must sign before they arrive in the unit.
GuestPass login: Send the guest their login details for the GuestPass portal, which gives them access to unit information, check-in instructions, and more.
Payment reminder: Send the guest a reminder to pay their balance before the balance due date.
Arrival details: Send the guest their arrival instructions, including the address of the unit, the check-in time, and access codes.
Thank you for staying, please leave a review: Send the guest a thank-you email after their stay, and encourage them to leave a review of the unit.
You can customize these templates to include any information you want, and you can also create your own automation templates from scratch.
For each template that you create, you can can configure an email, SMS, and Airbnb/Vrbo version of the message. You'll determine in the automation rules which version to send and when.
Standard templates
Standard templates are messages that can be sent on-demand by email to a guest or owner. They are typically used for one-off messages that are not part of an automation workflow.
Some common standard templates include:
Quote email: Send a potential guest a custom quote for their stay.
eCiiGN documents: Send the owner an electronic signature request for a Power of Attorney document or Management Contract.
Reservation lifecycle emails: Send guests booking confirmations, arrival details or payment reminders, on-demand from the reservation.
You can customize these templates to include any information you want, and you can also create your own templates from scratch.
Add a new template
To add a new template:
Click the "New Template" button above the grid.
Choose whether to copy an existing template to save time.
Enter an internal description of the template.
Enter an email subject line, which is what the guest will see in their inbox.
Specify the category, which determines whether the template is for automation or standard use.
Click the "Save" button.
Edit a template
To edit a template, simply select the "Edit" icon next to the template you want to edit:
The template editor window will open. The editor is split into two sections:
Tokens (smart-tags)
Editor window which contains the three versions of the template
HTML (email) version
SMS (text message) version
Airbnb message or Vrbo inquiry version
Understanding tokens
A smart tag, also known as a token, is a placeholder that is used in email, Airbnb and SMS messages to dynamically populate data once the message is sent. For example, the token [arrivaldate] would be replaced with the actual arrival date of the guest's reservation when the message is sent.
Tokens can be used to personalize messages and make them more relevant to the recipient. They can also be used to automate messages, so that you don't have to manually update each message with the latest information.
To add a token to your template, double-click it in the list of available tokens on the left-hand side of the editor window. The token will be inserted at the current cursor position in the editor.
Template versions
For each automation template, you can create multiple versions of the message for email, SMS, Airbnb, and Vrbo.
Email version: This version allows HTML, so you can create beautiful email templates using a tool like MailChimp or use the preconfigured HTML email templates in CiiRUS.
SMS version: This version must be plain text only, with a character limit of 160 characters. Think of these as short and sweet text messages to send to the guest.
Airbnb/Vrbo version: This version must also be plain text only, with a character limit of 40,000 characters. This version is used for Airbnb messages that are sent directly to the Airbnb chat thread with the guest, or for Vrbo inquiries.
Choose the tab for the version you want to create, and write your message using the tokens on the left. You can use the tools at the top of the email version to change the colors, fonts, and add images. These tools aren't available for the plain text versions of the message.
Once you've created your templates, you can set up automation rules to activate your messages and start sending them. See the Automation Rules article for more information.