What is Memo? Memo is Touch Stay’s guest notification system. Schedule unlimited, customised emails and/or SMS to guests containing their Touch Stay welcome book link. How does it work? There are three simple stages: Select and customise the message templates you want to use. Create an invitation for each person whom you want to receive one or more of these messages. Memo schedules and sends out email and SMS messages to the recipients you’ve invited.

Memo allows you to send email and/or SMS notifications to guests inviting them to view your guide. The first step is to create your message templates – see this article for help with that. Once you’ve created your message templates and set up your notification journey, you can create your invitations. Creating your invitations will trigger Memo to start sharing the relevant message templates with your guests. Invitations can be created from both Invitations tab on the Memo page, and the “Invite & Share” tab on each Guide page.

If you previously used Touch Stay’s legacy messaging system (in operation before 11th May 2022, allowing 1 primary message and up to 2 reminders), then we’ve copied all your existing message templates into Memo. This means you can continue inviting guests as before and the same messages will be sent out. However, Memo has a few handy features that we think you’ll find helpful. For a start, you’re no longer limited to just 3 messages per invitation.

Field Codes are data fields that can hold information about your guide, or the people you are inviting to view your guide. These codes can then be inserted into your guide content or message templates by using a short code and are automatically replaced with the actual data when the guide is viewed, or the message is sent. Using Field Codes in Memo Templates As an example, {{guest_first_name}} is a field code, when used in a message template this field code will be replaced by the actual first name of the guest on the invitation.

When creating templates you have the option of setting specific criteria when that template should be used. Note that this is an advanced feature of Memo and unless you are sure you need this level of customisation in your messaging then it’s best to leave the send criteria as “Always Send”. If you can think of reasons why this could be useful, or are just interested in learning more about how to create criteria and see if that inspires you, then read on!

You can edit your message templates at any time but please be very careful if changing the schedule or criteria as that may affect existing invitations based on the template and change who or when the template will be used. If you don’t want your changes to affect any existing invitations and only apply to new invitations then you should create a new template instead and archive the old one.

Invitations can be deleted and this will stop all future messages from being sent out to that person, plus the unique link for that invitation will no longer be active. If the person has already received a message with the link and added your guide to their home screen then their access will end as soon as they reopen the guide. To edit an invitation, go to the “Invitations” tab of the Memo page or the “Invite & Share” tab of your guide page.

Messages already sent can be resent if the person has not received it. The main reason for a message not being received is for the message to be caught by junk mail filters. Please ask the message recipient to check their junk mail folder when resending messages to them. To resend a message you must first open the invitation, go to the “Invitations” tab of the Memo page or the “Invite & Share” tab of your guide page.

With Memo, you have the option to delete or archive any templates that you no longer use, or wish to use for new invitations. Once a template is no longer active, it will not be used on new messages going forwards. If you choose to archive your message templates then any future messages that are using that template will remain scheduled. If you choose to delete a template then any future messages will also be deleted and will no longer be sent out.

When creating templates using Memo you can set the time of day the message will be sent out. The time zone used for this is the time zone at the guide location and will be set automatically. You can check the time zone for each guide (and manually update it in the rare case of errors) from the Guide Details tab for each guide. Note that when viewing the timing of scheduled messages, the time displayed will be adjusted according to the time zone of your local device.

Existing invitations can be edited to change the details of the person invited or to add or remove scheduled message. To edit an invitation, go to the “Invitations” tab of the Memo page or the “Invite & Share” tab of your guide page. Find the invitation you wish to edit (you can search using the search box at the top right of the invitation table), use the 3 dots menu and select “View/Edit”.

To check if a message has been sent on an invitation, open the Message Schedule screen for the invitation and this will reveal the status of each message. If you wish to see if a person sent an invitation has viewed your guide, then see this article instead. The Message Schedule screen is accessed from the Invitations table found on either the Memo page or the “Invite & Share” tab of each guide page.

As a refresher, deep links allow you to point your guests to specific information within your digital guidebook. You can add deep links for the Categories, Subcategories and Topics in your guide to your Memo message templates. This then creates a link to the chosen section of your guide from the unique invitation link. The Deep Links option can be found in the toolbar of the add/edit message template screen.

You can set the reply-to email on your email message templates by including it as part of the from name. The format needs to follow the email standard, which is to wrap the reply-to email with mark-up tags: < >. The content you add before the reply-to email will remain as the visible from name. For example: The person who receives the email would see the name that the email is from as “John Doe” and if they used the reply button then the email would be sent to john@touchstay.

You can preview a message that will be sent using Memo to see how it will look with all the field codes replaced by the actual data. This can be done from the Message Schedule screen accessed by using the 3 dots menu for each invitation and choosing View/Edit. Then within the Message Schedule screen use the 3 dots menu for the message and choose the Preview Message option.

You can connect custom field codes created in Touch Stay to additional fields through the OwnerRez integration. This will then mean any values/data for these fields set in OwnerRez will pass into Touch Stay and can be added to your Memo message templates. The available fields are as follows: Door code (data type: Text) Expected Check-in Time (data type: Text) Expected Check-out Time (data type: Text) Booking ID (data type: Number) Form Key (data type: Text) – this can be used to create links to the OwnerRez review page for each booking, see this article for details.

You can connect custom field codes created in Touch Stay to additional fields through the SuperControl integration. This will then mean any values/data for these fields set in SuperControl will pass into Touch Stay and can be added to your Memo message templates. The available fields are as follows: Booking ID (data type: Text) Arrival Time (data type: Text) Departure Time (data type: Text) Number of Adults (data type: Number) Number of Children (data type: Number) Number of Infants (data type: Number) Cleaner Notes (data type: Text)  Arrival Time Notes (data type: Text)  Departure Time Notes (data type: Text)  To connect any of these fields to Touch Stay head to the Integrations tab and within the SuperControl Settings select “Custom Field Mapping”.

If your account uses the Hostaway integration then it’s possible to set the reply-to email on your Memo email templates to be your Hostaway inbox. If a person then replies to one of your Memo emails, their reply will appear in your Hostaway inbox for that reservation. If this sounds useful to you, then these are the steps to follow. Step 1. Create a custom field code to hold the Hostaway reply-to email.

It’s important to know if the people you have shared a guide with have not yet viewed the guide, especially if they are getting close to their arrival date. This can be done by using the filter and sort options on the invitations table. Head to Memo and the Invitations tab, now use the filter to select “Unopened” and “Future Arrivals Only”. Finally, use the Sort option on the “Arrival Date” column to sort the invitations with the closest at the top.

 For those who love video and want to see how our very own Queen of Guest Experience (Tyann Marcink) uses Memo, this is for you! She’ll walk you through a brief overview of what Memo is, followed by more detailed videos of how to set up your message flow (message templates) and then how to send to your guests (which we call ‘invitations’) Video 1: an introduction to Memo Exactly what it says on the tin, this is a very brief overview of what Memo is.