🌍 Overview
With Appointedd, you can ensure that the reminders and follow-ups that are sent around a booking are entirely relevant. By sending relevant communications, you can prepare the recipient before the booking occurs and nurture them after.
All reminders and follow-ups are sent based on the time of the booking, but you can add additional rules depending on what service or resource are booked or what the booking status is. As reminders and follow-ups are transactional (sent in relation to a booking), they are not classed as marketing so will send regardless of the customer's marketing preferences.
You are in control of the channel (email or text message), sender, recipient and content of the communication.
❗️Please note: In order to send SMS via Appointedd, you will need to connect your account to an SMS provider. Click here to learn more.
👇 Check out this video below to get familiar with reminders & follow ups 👇
⚙️ What additional rules you can apply to your reminders and follow-ups
You can create multiple reminders and follow-ups so each communication sends only when it matches the details of a booking. Both reminders and follow-ups are sent based on the time selected (e.g. 2 hours before/after the booking). However you can apply additional rules to further control when each reminder or follow-up are sent, for example:
To send only when specific resources are booked;
To send only when specific services are booked;
To send when a booking has a specific status (e.g. No show)
Please note: once you create your communications, they will become live and send automatically so you can focus on your bookings, knowing your customers and resources are receiving all they need.
🧑🏽💻 What you can do with reminders and follow-ups
The possibilities are endless! Here are some common examples:
A text message which sends to the customer 12 hours before a booking with any resource for a telephone interview.
An email which sends to your resource Barry 1 hour before a booking with him.
An email which sends to the customer 3 days after a booking for a consultation which had an arrival status of complete.
An email which sends to your customer 1 day after a booking which has an arrival status of no show.
⚒️ How to set up reminders and follow-ups
You can access your reminders and follow-ups alongside all communications sent from your account, under the Email & SMS tab.
To create a new reminder or follow-up, click create and follow through the steps:
Give the communication a name (only visible internally)
Select whether it's a reminder (to send before a booking) or a follow-up (to send after a booking)
Select the timeframe (how long before/after a booking the communication should send)
Set the channel which the communication sends in
Set the send-from name and email*
Select the type recipient (the communication will send to the resource/customer on the booking or the specific recipient you choose)
Select the details of bookings for which this communication should send
Set whether you wish to bundle this communication**
*Send-from name and email address:
You can set the name and email address which are displayed to the client as the 'sender'.
For emails, we recommend you use a real email account and an email domain that's used in your business settings as it needs to be authenticated to ensure a smooth delivery. Click to here to learn more.
For SMS, you can set the send-from name under Connect > Connect to an SMS provider, after you have linked with a provider. You can read more about how to connect & send SMS via Appointedd here.
**Bundling communications:
Bundle reminders and follow-ups to ensure that the recipient doesn’t receive more than one of the same communication in one day, instead they receive one copy of the communication, with details of all of the day's bookings.
For example, if your customers often have multiple bookings with you in one day, bundle a reminder so the customer receives only one reminder (which includes details of all of the day's bookings).
Set the content of the communication (and subject for emails)
Set whether you wish to send a cancellation link (for email reminders only)
Click save.
If you're unable to click save, go back to the form to check that all mandatory fields (those marked with as asterisk *) are complete.
🔖 How to manage your existing reminders and follow-ups
All of your created reminders and follow-ups are displayed together. You can expand the name of each to see more about them by clicking the arrow icon:
Additionally, you can edit each, create a copy or delete them by clicking the appropriate icons.
Top tips ⭐️
If you schedule multiple reminders to be sent simultaneously, such as two reminders set to be sent one hour before an appointment, only the first reminder created will be sent. To ensure that multiple reminders are sent, it's essential to set them with different timing intervals. For example, you could set one reminder for one hour before the appointment and another reminder for two hours before. The same rule applies to follow-up messages.
If a customer replies to an SMS communication message, there will be no response. All SMS messages are sent to a no-reply number and your customers will not be notified. If this is important, you can add a message at the bottom of you SMS communications that says "please do not reply".