Set up and edit custom notifications for rental and account contact (BETA)

💡 Note: This article is relevant if you have access to the beta feature for scheduled messages. If you still see custom automatic responses for guests, please follow the classic instructions in this article instead.

Use Lodgify's Custom Notifications to create personalized messages for your rental contacts and account contacts, and control when each message is sent. 
For example, you can set up a message that is automatically sent at a specific time to your rental contact, depending on your needs. 
Custom notifications can be delivered via email, platform inboxes, and SMS, giving you flexibility to communicate with these key contacts.

✨ Feature exclusive to the Professional and Ultimate Plan!

Read about:

• Creating custom notifications
• Editing custom notifications
• Sending custom notifications via SMS
• Disabling custom notifications
• Custom notification languages

⚠ Important: Custom notifications are always sent out in the timezone of the associated rental property and may take a few minutes to reach.

Creating custom notifications

To create a custom notification, follow these steps:

1. Go to your left-hand menu and select Settings.
2. In the sidebar menu, click on Custom notifications.
3. Click on the green Create notification button.
   💡 Note: The button is in the top right corner of your screen if you have already created custom notifications.
   
4. You will now see an empty response template. Start by adding a Name, so that you can always easily identify this custom notification, should you want to edit or review it later. 
5. Set the Schedule for when the response should be sent, by choosing the number of days before / after the guest's arrival / departure / booking confirmation, and the time when you would like the response to arrive. 
6. Create the message content using the rich text editor where you can insert pictures, hyperlinks, etc.. Here you can also use {{Messaging placeholders}} to insert booking/rental-specific information.
7. You can then click the button send test email. The test email will be sent to the account owner's email address.
8. Then define the sending conditions of the custom notification:
   • Choose the Recipients:
     • the Rental Contact (the contact information set in the rental's Contact section);
     • the Account Contact (the information set in your My Account section).
   • Choose the Booking channels (= booking source) for which the notification should be sent. (For example, Airbnb and VRBO.)
   • Choose the Rentals.

💡 Note: Adding a custom notification does not override existing notifications.

Editing custom notifications

Once you have created a custom notification, you can always edit it. To edit a response:

1. Go to your left-hand menu and select Settings.
2. In the sidebar menu, you will see a section Messaging, here you need to click on Custom notifications.
3. Locate the custom notification you want to edit, click the three dots on the right and then Edit.
   

Sending custom notifications via SMS

You can send an SMS to the rental and account contacts at the same time the automatic email response is sent. This feature is available free of charge on your Ultimate plan.

To do so, follow these steps:

1. Go to your left-hand menu and select Settings.
2. In the sidebar menu, you will see a section Messaging, here you need to click on Custom notifications.
3. Find the notifications you want to link to an SMS message, or create a new one.
4. Scroll down to the SMS section and tick the box to enable it.
   
5. The SMS will be sent at the same time as the email, but you can enter a different message. You can also use placeholders in your SMS content.

Disabling custom notifications

Newly created custom notifications are by default enabled (= turned on). If you do not want a custom notification to be sent out, you can disable it by switching the lever to the left. You can always turn the automatic response back on again by switching the lever back to the right.

Custom notification languages

Each language version must be created and edited individually, as messages are not automatically translated languages.

To add a new language version of a custom notification:

1. Save the content of your response in one language.
2. In the same response template, select the next language from the Languages drop-down menu.
3. Repeat this process for each language you want to offer.