Cliniko's bulk SMS and email tool allows you to send group messages to your patients en masse. This can be helpful for alerting patients to a change in your clinic's address, or perhaps you're running some sort of marketing or promotion and wish to let people know.

Simply check the box labeled "This is a marketing message," and if selected, the SMS or email will respect the preferences of patients who have opted out of receiving marketing communications.

For those patients who might not want to receive marketing messages, though, we give you and your patients a few different ways to manage this.

Any patient can choose whether or not to opt into marketing messages. When adding their contact details and finalising their booking online, they'll see a check box that lets them consent to receiving marketing messages:

If the patient checks the box, their individual preferences will indicate SMS & Email as their choice of marketing messages:

However, if they don't tick the box during online booking, then it would just say "None", and they will not receive marketing emails.

Another option is to update and customise the marketing preferences on a per-patient basis. To do this, select the patient you wish to customise and edit their details. Scroll down to Marketing messages. 

You can select whether or not they agree to receive promotional SMS and/or Email marketing:

Save your changes and you're all set.

Alternatively, when you're sending a group marketing email to patients, your emails will automatically include an unsubscribe link at the bottom of your communication:

If a patient opts to unsubscribe from this email, it means they will not get marketing emails in the future, and the preferences in their profile will now have "None" next to "Marketing messages":

However, if a patient has unsubscribed by accident and wants to be added to the list again, you can edit their communication preferences and they will then get future marketing messages.

There are a few things to keep in mind with this feature.

When you're sending a group message, you'll have the option of selecting whether or not it's a marketing message:

If you tick that box, the message will go out only to people who have subscribed to marketing messages. 

If you don't tick it, the message will go out to all applicable patients.

The settings for marketing SMS messages have nothing to do with appointment reminders or one-off SMS messages. If someone has opted not to receive marketing messages, they can still receive reminders and you can still send them a one-off message.

If you have questions relating to this feature (or communication in general), feel free to reach out to our friendly support team via the chat bubble in the lower-right corner! 💬