Sending Automatic Booking Reminders By Email And By Text Message
A new feature has been added that allows booking reminders to be sent to customers. Reminders can be added to any service type or class that you offer and can be by email (24hrs prior) and / or by text message (SMS) 2hrs before.
The setup page is in the admin login setup area under the scheduling setup options
Setup of reminders just takes a few seconds. Whatever services / classes you offer are listed and you just click ON or OFF to select if email reminders and/or text message reminders are to be sent.
Sending text messages isn’t free (requires a SMS credit balance) - so a club might want to use just email reminders for most booking types, but additionally use text messages for bookings like fitness consultations. These type of "sales" sessions are critical - if they don’t come in you can’t convert them - so a 10cents text message in addition to the email reminders is a good option in that situation - just improving show rates by 10% when it comes to sales consults could mean thousands of $$ in new revenues.
Also, for text messages - if a club decides to use this for regular bookings - then there is an option to stop sending text messages after the customer shows up for a specified number of bookings - once they hit that number then text message reminders to them would stop. If they didn’t show then they would start up again automatically. Here’s a screen shot showing that option more clearly
The reminder emails a customer receives states the booking details and if the provider has a photo then that is included in the email, especially useful if the reminder is for a sales consult - the customer has a photo of the sales person to easily seek them out when they arrive at the club.
If the time a booking is made is close to the actual session time (within 24hrs) then no reminders get sent - it would be pointless to remind somebody about a booking they just made
Remember as well that club weekly emails also can contain a list of all the sessions a customer has in the upcoming week. We think that plus this new feature can have a really positive impact on show rates - we’ll track that and publish it in a future blog post.
