Everything about: Customer Communication (Email, SMS)

Automatic emails

With automatic emails, you can send birthday greetings to your customers or win back customers who haven't visited you in a while. All without having to remember it yourself each time.

You can access this area via
Settings > Automatic Customer Reactivation.
If this function is not activated, it can be activated via "Add function".

Important prerequisite for sending campaigns

Message option activated in customer file

Only customers who also have the option "This customer receives email or SMS campaigns." activated in their customer files will receive marketing emails and SMS campaigns. Reminder and confirmation emails are not affected by this.

If a large part of your customers are not yet activated for marketing functions, you can contact us: +49 30 5770 9641.

Message option activated in customer settings

To automatically activate new customers for marketing functions, you can enable the corresponding function in the customer settings.

Automatic emails at a specific time after the last appointment

If you want to send customers an automatic message at a specific time after an appointment, you can create it here.

Examples for automatic emails

You want to ask all your customers two days after their visit to rate your company on your Facebook page.

You want to automatically remind customers who haven't been to you in 3 months about your company and encourage them to book an appointment online. (This can also be combined well with a discount via online vouchers.)

Create automatic email

Select + Create new template under Automatic Emails and fill in the fields. After saving, the message will not be sent yet.

Name: choose a name by which you can recognize the campaign. Customers cannot see this.
Customer group: Select a customer status if needed. The email will only be sent to customers in this customer group.
Gender: Select a gender if needed. The email will only be sent to customers in this customer group.
Time period: Then select when this email should be sent after the customer's last appointment.

Design and send

You can now first edit the content and design.

Once you are satisfied with the appearance of your test email, you can now start sending under "General".

When win-back emails are activated, only customers whose last appointment with you was exactly the specified number of days ago will be reached. Therefore, older customers ("inactive accounts") will not be contacted.

Birthday email

To automatically send customers birthday emails with your congratulations, you can compose a birthday email. Creating and sending the birthday email works exactly as described above.
For more information about birthday emails, click here.

Important: A customer receives an activation email AT MOST once. It is not sent multiple times.

For an overview of all marketing functions, click here.

Confirmation texts

You can access this section via Settings > Appointment Confirmations & Reminders.

Confirmation texts are sent as soon as you save an appointment in the calendar or your customer has booked an appointment online. The confirmation summarizes the booked appointment and gives your customer assurance that they have booked a binding appointment. Confirmations can be sent via email and SMS. Email confirmations are always included free of charge in your Belbo calendar, while sending SMS messages incurs costs according to the package you have booked.

Please use the Google Chrome Browser to edit confirmation texts. Other browsers may not interpret the placeholder function correctly. This can result in placeholders not displaying correctly in emails sent to your customers.

Email Confirmation

Set Text Placeholders in the Email

The blue-green highlighted fields within the confirmation text are placeholders. They are replaced with actual text in the confirmation email.

Example of Email with Text Placeholders

Types of Placeholders

In the header area of the text input field you will find the menu item Text Placeholders. Here you can view all available types of placeholders.

Using Placeholders

Click at the position in the text where you want to insert the placeholder. Then go to the Placeholders menu item and select the desired placeholder. It appears as a blue-green highlighted field in the text. Short video on using placeholders:

SMS Confirmation

If the SMS function is active in your calendar, you can send SMS confirmations in addition to email confirmations. Placeholders can also be used in SMS messages.

Please make sure your SMS texts do not exceed 160 characters. To be able to estimate how long your confirmation SMS will actually be after the placeholders are implemented, there is a preview below the SMS confirmation text. Should you expressly wish to write longer SMS, please note that according to international standards 2 SMS will be sent, which will incur double costs.

In the respective settings you can specify whether the message dispatch should be automatically activated when entering an appointment or whether it must be activated manually.

All articles on the subject of email and SMS templates can be found here.

Email Design Header Image

In the email design area, you can set the header image for emails sent to your customers.

You can access this area via Settings > Email Settings > Header Image

Design recommendations for your header image

The image should have a width of 540 pixels. This ensures that it displays correctly in all email programs and mailboxes.
The recommended height is between 50 and 300 pixels. This gives you a wide image format into which you can insert your logo or image material without pushing the message content too far down.

Example of a suitable header image:

Example of the header image in an appointment confirmation email:

Reminder texts

You can access this area via Customer Settings > Appointment Confirmations & Reminders.

Reminder texts are normally sent to your customers 24 hours before the appointment. You can also set the reminder time yourself.
This way you reduce appointment no-shows from customers who forget your appointments. Reminders can be sent via email and SMS.
Email reminders are always free with your Belbo calendar, while sending SMS incurs costs according to the package you have booked.

Please use Google Chrome Browser to edit the reminder texts. Other browsers may not correctly interpret the placeholder function. This can cause the placeholders in the emails to your customers to not display correctly.

Email Reminder

Set Text Placeholders in the Email

The blue-green marked fields within the reminder text are placeholders. They are replaced by actual text in the reminder email.

Example of Email with Text Placeholders

Types of Placeholders

In the header area of the text input field you will find the menu item Text Placeholders. Here you can view all available types of placeholders.

Using Placeholders

Click at the location in the text where you want to insert the placeholder. Then go to the menu item Placeholder and select the desired placeholder. It appears as a blue-green marked area in the text.

Short video on using placeholders:

SMS Reminder

If the SMS function is active in your calendar, you can send SMS reminders in addition to email reminders.
Placeholders can also be used in SMS messages.

Please make sure your SMS texts do not exceed 160 characters.
To help you estimate how long your reminder SMS will actually be after the placeholders are processed, there is a preview below the SMS reminder text.
If you explicitly wish to write longer SMS, please note that according to international standards 2 SMS will be sent, which will result in double costs.

In the respective settings tabs you can specify whether message sending is automatically activated or must be activated manually when entering an appointment.

All articles on Email and SMS templates can be found here.

Message Log

Here you have an overview of the SMS and email messages sent to your customers.
You can also see which messages were delivered or not.

You can access this area via Settings > Statistics & Reports

You can find more statistics and reports under Statistics & Reports