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Most of the calls a rental business fields every week are the same three questions: when can I pick up, which unit is mine, and what’s the code. The answers already live in the booking — the only thing standing between your phone ringing and your phone staying quiet is whether that information reaches the customer on time, in a channel they actually check. This guide covers which messages a rental company should send, what belongs on SMS versus email, and how to automate both in Sharefox so the messages go out on their own.
Why rental businesses should send SMS notifications
SMS gets read almost immediately, which matters because rental information is time-sensitive. Independent read-rate research puts 90% of text messages as read within three minutes of arrival[1] — compare that to email, which routinely sits unread for hours, buried under newsletters and promotions. For a rental customer standing at the pickup point, waiting on an access code, or about to miss a return deadline, that three-minute gap is the difference between finding the answer themselves and calling your front desk.
That doesn’t mean every message belongs on SMS. A simple rule of thumb:
- SMS for what the customer needs to act on right now: pickup location, which unit or unit number is theirs, the access code, the return deadline.
- Email for what the customer can read at leisure: order confirmation, receipt, terms and conditions, longer instructions.
Which messages should a rental business send
Most rental operations — equipment, trailer, tool, or self-storage — can cover the full rental lifecycle with four recurring messages. The timing below is a starting point; adjust it to how your own rental flow works.
1. Order confirmation, right after booking. Send by email as soon as the booking is placed. Include what was rented, pickup time and location, and a link back to the booking.
2. Pickup reminder. This is the single message that removes the most phone calls. Send it by SMS the day before, or a few hours before pickup. Include where and when to collect, which unit is theirs, and the access code if the location uses a keypad or self-service lock.
3. Return reminder. A short SMS the day before the return deadline, with the time and place, measurably reduces late returns — which matters because a late return delays the next customer.
4. Post-return follow-up. A couple of days after return, while the experience is still fresh, send a thank-you by email and ask for a Google review. Reviews make the business more visible both in regular search and in AI-generated search summaries.
Self-storage and other subscription rentals need a slightly different sequence: a move-in message with the unit number and a link to the facility layout; periodic updates during the tenancy (changed opening hours, maintenance); a review request after the tenant has settled in; and, when the tenancy ends, a final move-out date plus a same-day SMS reminding the tenant to clear and clean the unit.
What this looks like in practice
“The fastest way to cut support calls isn’t a bigger team — it’s making sure the answer is already in the customer’s pocket before they think to ask.” — Åsgeir Helland, CEO, Sharefox
The mechanism behind that is simple: a message template written once, populated automatically from the booking record every time it fires — so the same setup scales whether a business runs a handful of rentals a week or a thousand units across several locations. (See two real examples of this in practice further down, under “How to automate the messages.”)
SMS vs. email: what goes where
| SMS | ||
|---|---|---|
| Typical read time | ~90% read within 3 minutes[1] | Often hours; easily buried under other mail |
| Best for | Pickup time, unit/asset number, access code, return deadline | Order confirmation, receipt, terms, longer instructions |
| Length | Keep under 160 characters per message to avoid extra billing | No practical length limit |
| Tone | Short, direct, one action per message | Can carry more context and links |
| Consent needed | Yes for marketing/promotional texts; informational messages tied to an existing booking are generally treated as service messages | Yes for marketing; transactional email tied to a purchase is standard practice |
What a good rental SMS actually contains
A good SMS answers five questions and nothing more: who’s sending it, what it’s about, which unit or item is the customer’s, what the code is, and where to find the rest. Keep it under 160 characters — longer messages are split into multiple parts and billed as multiple SMS, even though the customer sees them as one.
How a pickup reminder reads in different verticals:
- Trailer rental: “Hi Maria, your trailer is ready. Trailer 4, code 4829. Pickup from 8 AM. View your booking: [link]”
- Self-storage: “Hi Alex, your storage unit is ready for move-in. Unit A-14, code 5521. View your agreement: [link]”
- Tool rental: “Hi Sam, the mini excavator is ready for pickup tomorrow at 7 AM. Read this before you collect it: [link]”
- Bike rental: “Hi Priya, your bikes are ready. City bike (A-14, code 4829) / E-bike (B-02, code 7710). View your booking: [link]”
If a customer has rented several items, give each one its own unit and code — stacked with a slash on SMS to save space, and on its own line in the email version.
How customers find their booking without calling you
The link inside the message matters more than most rental teams realize. If a customer has to remember a username and password to see their own booking, many of them will call instead of logging in. A one-tap login link takes them straight to their own booking with no password required, and that page should carry everything they need in one place: what was rented, which unit is theirs, the access code, the pickup point, and both pickup and return times.
The same page can also solve after-the-fact charges. If a customer paid by a method other than card, they can add a card to the booking themselves; it’s stored securely, and any add-ons that come up later — extra equipment, toll charges — can be billed against it without you having to raise an invoice. Sharefox’s self-service rental tools are built around exactly this kind of unattended, link-based flow, and the same approach underpins card-on-file payment handling for add-on charges after the booking closes.
How to automate the messages
Four messages per booking is a lot to track by hand. In a rental management system, you set each message up once and attach it to a booking event — one day before scheduled pickup, or two days after actual return, for example — and after that the messages go out on their own, including on weekends and outside office hours. A dedicated booking and reservation system is what ties the message trigger to the booking record in the first place.
The messages still read as personal, because the content is pulled from the booking itself. In Sharefox you write the text once and insert smart fields for the customer’s name, the products, the unit the customer has been assigned, and the access code. When the message is sent, the right information appears for each customer, whether they’ve rented one trailer or three bikes.
Lagerboxen, which has more than 1,000 self-storage units in southern Norway and in Larvik, uses smart fields in its SMS messages to tenants. Each customer gets their own unit and access code in the message, without anyone at Lagerboxen having to type them in by hand.
If you need to send something outside the standard setup, you can send a saved message manually from the booking. Everything that’s been sent sits in the booking’s activity log, so you can check what the customer has already received before you respond to an inquiry.
Automated notifications are closely tied to self-service. Once a customer gets their unit and code by SMS, the rental can happen without anyone needing to be present. Verktøyskuret in Oslo and Bærum rents out tools around the clock with Sharefox this way: the customer gets a code by SMS that opens the storage unit and the tool cabinet, and if the tool isn’t returned on time, the code locks automatically.
What to check before you send
Service messages versus marketing messages are treated differently, and the line matters legally. A reminder tied to a booking the customer already placed — pickup time, access code, return deadline — is a service or transactional message. An unsolicited offer or promotion sent by SMS is marketing, and that generally requires the recipient’s prior consent. In the US, the Telephone Consumer Protection Act and the FCC’s related rules govern this distinction and require consent for promotional texts[2]; in the EU and UK, GDPR requires marketing consent to be freely given, specific, and unambiguous[3]. Rules differ by country, so check the requirements where you operate before sending anything promotional by text.
A few practical checks worth running before you turn automated SMS on:
- Privacy notice: make sure your privacy policy describes which messages you send and why.
- Sender name: SMS sender names are typically capped at 11 characters and may not support special regional characters, depending on your carrier.
- Carrier testing: send a test message to numbers on the major mobile carriers in your market before going live, so you can confirm delivery actually works.
Common pitfalls
- Sending everything by SMS. Putting receipts, terms, and long instructions on SMS runs up your messaging bill and buries the one text that actually mattered. Reserve SMS for what’s genuinely time-critical and move the rest to email or a linked page.
- Ignoring the 160-character limit. A message that runs long gets silently split into two or three SMS and billed as such, even though the customer only sees one message. Draft templates with the limit in mind, not after the fact.
- Stale templates after a policy change. If your access-code format, pickup hours, or return process changes and the message template doesn’t get updated, customers start receiving wrong information automatically — which generates more calls, not fewer.
- No activity log to check against. Without a record of what was already sent to a given booking, your team ends up repeating or contradicting an automated message when a customer calls in anyway.
- Treating all consent the same. Assuming a customer who accepted booking reminders has also agreed to promotional offers (or vice versa) is a common compliance mistake — keep the two separate.
Summary
Four automated messages — confirmation, pickup reminder, return reminder, and follow-up — answer the questions that otherwise turn into phone calls, as long as the time-critical ones go out by SMS. Start with the pickup reminder, since it removes the most calls on its own, then add the return reminder and follow-up once that’s running. If you want to see how automated notifications and a customer self-service page work together with your own products, you can book a demo.
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