Emails and reminders — who gets told what

Bookodile sends two kinds of email: ones to your customers, and ones to your team. They are controlled separately.

Emails to customers

A customer's first booking asks them to confirm their email

The first time an address books with you — or any time until its owner confirms it — the booking confirmation leads with a Confirm my email address button, with the booking details underneath as usual. It is still one email. Tapping the button signs the customer in to My Bookings, where every booking they have made with that address, at any business on Bookodile, is waiting. Once the address is confirmed, confirmations go back to the ordinary email.

Ignoring the button costs nothing: the booking is made either way, and signing in to My Bookings with the same address later does the same thing.

What changes on your side: that customer's card shows Verified email. What you see of their name, email and phone then depends on what they share with you and what your booking page requires — see Customer details a customer controls.

One visit is one follow-up email

If reviews, private feedback and Google reviews are all switched on, a customer who came once gets one email with a block for each — not three emails.

This is worth knowing before you enable the third one, because the instinct is to assume each add-on brings its own message. It does not.

Emails to your team

Staff notifications are per person. Two people in the same business can want completely different things, and each sets their own in Settings → Notifications.

The standing ones cover new bookings, cancellations, reschedules and time-off requests. Owners and managers also choose whether to hear when a customer moves a booking themselves — Rescheduled by a customer, under Team bookings, which starts switched on for anyone who already gets the team's cancellations. When a customer moves or cancels a booking themselves, the emails say so ("The customer moved it, in My Bookings") and include the reason they gave, if any — and a customer answering in Messages, to the owner and whoever wrote in that conversation. Three add-ons also email staff — Reviews (a new review, and a customer replying to your response), Feedback (new private feedback) and the Leaderboard (the monthly results on the 1st, to the whole team, including people who never sign in — see The leaderboard). Every other add-on emails only the customer, or nobody.

A combo booking or one with add-on items notifies once when it is booked, not once per part. When you — or the customer — move or cancel part of one, each team member whose service changed gets one email listing only their own services.

Calendar files in customer emails

The confirmation, "Booking moved" and cancellation emails each carry a calendar file for the same event: the first adds it, with a link to manage the booking; a move updates its time; a cancellation takes it out. See The customer's calendar.

The master switch

There is a single setting that pauses all customer messages for a business — email and SMS alike.

It stops confirmations as well as marketing — a customer who books during a pause is not told their booking exists. Use it for a genuine shutdown, not a quiet week. A message someone on your team writes in Messages is not automatic, and still goes.

Reminders depend on the scheduler

Reminders, follow-ups, win-backs and a waiting-list offer passed to the next person are not sent as things happen — a background job sends them on a cycle. Confirmations, cancellations and the first waiting-list offer are immediate; the scheduled ones are not.

In practice a reminder goes out within about fifteen minutes of its target time, a follow-up within about ten, an unconfirmed waiting-list offer reaches the next person within about ten minutes of lapsing, and win-backs go out once a day.

A moved booking is reminded of its new time

Move a booking — or a whole visit — after its reminder went out, and the customer gets another reminder for the new time when that one is due. A reminder whose moment has already passed is not sent late: day-before reminders go out at about 8:00 in the morning, the business's time, so a booking moved at 10:00 to tomorrow afternoon gets no second one.

What is deliberately not sent

• No SMS when a customer reschedules or cancels themselves. They get the email — "You moved your booking" with the new times, or the cancellation — and a text would only repeat what they just did, at your cost.
• Dragging a booking in your calendar does not tell the customer — a single booking or a whole visit. Changing a booking's time in the booking dialog, or using Move visit, offers to tell them: by email, by SMS when your business sends texts, or both — see Cancellations, reschedules and no-shows.
• No email when you mark a no-show.

Worked example

A gym with reminders set to "day before", reviews on, and feedback on.

A member books a Thursday class on Monday. They get a confirmation on Monday, a reminder on Wednesday, and on Thursday, a few minutes after the class ends, a single follow-up email asking for a review and offering private feedback.

The instructor gets a new-booking notification on Monday, because they have that switched on. The owner, who has it off, gets nothing until the review arrives.

Limits

• You cannot edit the email templates. You can set a footer, which currently appears on the booking confirmation.
• Reminder timing is a choice of three — day before, two hours before, or both. Not arbitrary.
• Customers cannot unsubscribe from confirmations. They are transactional.
• SMS only with the SMS messages add-on. With it on, confirmations of online bookings, reminders, the changes and cancellations you make, and waiting-list offers also go by SMS to a customer with a phone number, and Messages can send SMS — each kind switchable, each SMS billed monthly with a paid plan. See SMS messages. SMS are one-way: a customer answers on a linked page. Demo workspaces never send SMS.