Send a one-off email to a customer
Open the customer's profile.
Select Send message and you'll see a compose panel slide out.
Either start from scratch or choose from your reusable templates to pre-fill the subject and body.
Write your message in the rich-text editor — add formatting, links and dynamic content as necessary.
Use the merge-tag picker to drop in details like the customer's name, instead of typing them by hand (see Personalise with merge tags below)
Select Review and Send to see exactly what the customer will receive, including your branding.
When you're happy with what you see, hit Send.
After you send
The email goes to the customer from your connected email address.
The message is logged on the customer's timeline, so anyone on your team can see it was sent, by whom, and when — and view the email itself.
Send about a specific subscription or invoice
You can start an email from three places, depending on what your message is about:
A customer's profile — for a general message to the customer.
A subscription page — when the email is about a specific booking, unit or move-in.
An invoice page — when the email is about a specific invoice, such as chasing a payment or explaining a charge.
Why this is useful: when you start from a subscription or an invoice, Stora already knows which one you mean — so it auto-fills that context into your email. Merge tags resolve to that exact record: the right unit, the right invoice number, the right amount due, the right due date. You don't have to look anything up or copy details across.
For example, open an overdue invoice, click Send message, and drop in the amount-due and payment-link tags — they fill with that invoice's figures automatically. Start the same email from the customer's profile instead, and those invoice-specific details wouldn't have a particular invoice to point at.
💡 Rule of thumb: send from the page that matches what the email is about, and your merge tags will have the right details to hand. Sending about a specific booking? Start on the subscription. Chasing a specific bill? Start on the invoice.
Create a reusable template
If you send the same kind of email over and over, save it as a template — write it once, use it whenever. We've created some example templates in your account to get you started.
To create your own
Go to Settings → Email Templates
Click New template.
Give it a name — just for you, so you recognise it in the list and the picker.
Write the subject and body, using merge tags where you want customer details filled in automatically.
Save.
Personalise with merge tags
Merge tags are placeholders that fill in automatically when the email is sent — so one message can greet every customer by name or reference their unit, without you typing it each time. A greeting written with a name tag becomes "Hi Sarah," for one customer and "Hi James," for the next.
To insert one: place your cursor where you want the value, type {{ to choose from the list of available tags. Select one and the tag is added for you — no need to remember the exact wording.
You can pick from the full set of available details — the customer (e.g. their name), their booking and unit, and their invoices (e.g. amount due). Just insert whatever you need and Stora will keep you right before sending.
See your tags fill in, right in the editor
Once inserted, a merge tag shows as a real time preview in the editor rather than raw {{ ... }} code. When you're composing to a specific customer, each tag shows that customer's real value inline, so you can see exactly how the email will read as you write it — click a chip for more detail. No more guessing from a separate preview.
You can still review the whole email before sending. If a tag is misspelled or doesn't exist, Stora flags it before the email can go out, so customers never receive anything broken.
See if a customer opened your email
Once you've sent an email, you can see whether the customer opened it — not just that it was delivered.
Delivered — the email reached the customer.
Opened — the customer opened it.
Open status shows on the email's record in the customer's timeline, next to the delivered/failed status. This works for every email Stora sends, not only one-off messages.
💡 Open tracking works by detecting when the email's images are loaded. Most email apps load images automatically, so it's a strong signal — but if a customer has images turned off, an email they read can still show as unopened. Treat "opened" as "almost certainly seen," not a guaranteed read-receipt. An important message that's delivered but never opened might be worth a follow-up.