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A quick overview of follow-up messages
A quick overview of follow-up messages

Here’s how to set up follow-up emails and SMS! 📧📱

Joe avatar
Written by Joe
Updated over a week ago

Have you ever wanted to follow up with patients a week, a month, or even a year after their appointment? Whether it’s a check-in, a gentle nudge to rebook, or sharing helpful resources, our automated messages help you keep your calendar full and your clinic running smoothly. Here’s how to set up automated messages to your patients after their appointments.
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In this article, we'll give you the basic run-down of how it all works. There are two main components of how follow-up messages work. You'll need to:

Step one: creating templates

First things first, you’ll want to create your templates. These will be the core of your follow-up messages.

Head to Settings, and then Follow-up messages:


You can set up either a new email template or a new SMS template:

After selecting a template, you’ll notice several settings to adjust based on your preferences:

  • Template name: give your message template a unique name (this is only for your internal reference).

  • ​Follow-up period: choose when you want the message to be sent—anywhere from 1 day to up to a year after the appointment.

  • Follow-up time: specify the time of day you’d like the message sent, like between 1:00p.m. and 2:00p.m.

  • Skip weekends: decide if you want your messages to go out to your patients only on weekdays or on weekends as well.

  • Patient attendance: decide who receives the message based on their attendance status:

    • All: sends to all patients for that appointment type, regardless of attendance. Any cancelled/archived appointments are skipped.

    • Arrived only: sends to patients marked as “arrived”.

    • Did not arrive only: sends to those marked “did not arrive”.

    • All except did not arrive: sends to everyone except those marked as “did not arrive.”

  • No following appointments: tick this option to send only to patients who don’t have another appointment scheduled after the one the message is for. You can choose between two options-

    • Any appointment type: the follow-up message will only send if the patient has no following appointments scheduled, regardless of the type.

    • The same appointment type: the message will only send if the patient has no following appointments of the same type as the one the message is for.

  • Is this a marketing message?: if this is a marketing message, it will respect the preferences of patients who’ve opted out of marketing communications.

Once your settings are ready, you can edit the content of the follow-up message itself:

Feel free to customise all the text to fit your practice's tone, and we highly recommend using placeholders to automatically populate patient, appointment, or business info!

Keep in mind, SMS follow-ups will generally be shorter than emails as they do cost SMS credits:

Once you’re done, you’ll see a list of all your follow-up templates under your Follow-up messages settings:

Step two: linking templates to appointment types

Great, you’ve set up your templates—awesome! 🙌 Now, let’s link them to your appointment types.

Head to Settings, then Appointment types:

Select the appointment type you want to link to your templates. In the appointment type settings, look for the options to add either an email or SMS follow-up message:

Select the template you want to link:

Hit Update appointment type and you're all set!

Things to remember:

  • If nothing is selected, no follow-up message will be sent—even if you have a template created. Be sure to link your template to the appointment type!

  • If a patient doesn't have an email address or a mobile number on file, nothing will be sent to them—even if the appointment type has been linked with its related template.

  • You can enable/disable follow-up messages for a specific patient within the settings on their profile page. In a particular patient's profile, tick or untick SMS and/or email under follow-up messages.

  • If a patient has been opted out of marketing messages, then they won't receive any follow-up message that's been marked as a marketing message.

  • If you want to use SMS follow-up messages, you'll need to purchase SMS credits.

  • You can set different timeframes for email and SMS follow-ups—for example, an email might go out 2 days after an appointment, while an SMS can be scheduled for 6 months later!

We also have instructions if you want to disable follow-up messages for your specific business locations. If you have any other questions about this feature, our support team is here to help! 🤗

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