How do I personalize email notifications?

Make your communication feel more personal and professional by customizing email notifications in Checkfront. This guide shows you how to tailor messages to match your brand and connect with your customers.

Learn how to use email variables in your notifications, including creating a custom field with a variable, adding a variable to your email, and previewing the email.

Accessing the features mentioned in this article

Where can I find this feature using the top menu?

• Manage > Layout > Booking Form
• Manage > Notifications > Email > Email Notification

What more do I need to use this feature?

• Admin or restricted permissions, such as to Manage Notifications.
   

Which Checkfront version supports this feature - classic items, classic products, or both?

• This feature is available in both our classic version using classic items (Inventory > Items) and our classic version using classic products (Inventory > Products).  → Learn more about products

What is an email notification? A notification is an email message sent to your Customers to confirm booking actions and may include a booking confirmation, notice of changes made to the booking, or a payment request.

Would you like to gather booking information and include that information in an email sent to recipients? Can you not find the field you need in our list of default system fields? You can solve this by creating a custom form field variable and including it in a notification.

1. Add a custom field with a variable.
2. Add the custom variable to the email notification.
3. Preview what this looks like to the recipient.

Add a custom field with a variable by following these steps:

1. Within the Booking Form (Manage > Layout > Booking Form), click the + Add New Field button.
2. In the window that shows, choose the Type, enter the Label, and specify the custom field ID.
3. Enter an optional Report Label and Tip, and select the appropriate options from the Options and Advanced tabs.
4. Click the Add button to save the changes. 

Setting the custom field to populate within a notification For the custom field to populate within the notification, you must set it to Show on form and/or Show on invoice for Customers within the form field Options tab. Configuring booking forms and field options

Add the custom variable made in the previous section to an email notification.

1. Create a new or edit an existing Notification (Manage > Notifications).
2. In the Email tab, edit the email body to include the field ID of the custom variable within the content. The format of the custom variable is {$fieldID}.
3. Click the Save button to save the changes made.

When a notification includes a custom variable, the system automatically populates it with the corresponding content from the booking form.

You can preview the email from the email template page (Manage > Notifications > Live Preview).

Learn more about email notifications and the booking form For a detailed look at email notification variables and the booking form, check out the following articles: Working with variables in email notifications Booking Form & Field Editor: Introduction