Making the most of email notifications in Zoho Bookings

Email notifications are one of the most versatile tools in Zoho Bookings.

We've beautified and translated them. Now, let's see what other steps we can take to further stretch their use.

In this guide, we'll use email notifications to:

1. Create product awareness
   
2. Market other services
   
3. Show social proof
   
4. Thank customers
   
5. Collect feedback
   
6. Win repeat business and more
   

Check out the table below to see how you can pack more value into your outgoing emails.

Email Notifications

	Booked	Rescheduled	Canceled	Completed	No-show	Reminders
Agenda and meeting prerequisites	✓	✓				✓
Case studies	✓				✓	✓
Customer testimonials	✓				✓	✓
Staff credentials	✓				✓	✓
Post-appointment instructions				✓
Data gathering			✓	✓	✓
"Book another appointment" button			✓	✓	✓
Service promotions				✓	✓

Yes, customer testimonials, case studies, and other value additions can be shared through social media. But think about this: Brands spend billions of dollars for customer attention, whereas on the other end, customers are overloaded with information. It's difficult to reach your customers amidst this chaos.

Even if you pack valuable content into your social posts, your customers are likely distracted and their attention fragmented.

But when you leverage email notifications in Zoho Bookings, you get more targeted customer attention with very little effort from your side. Above all, it is FREE.How?

Because even when faced with hundreds of emails, customers will open Zoho Bookings messages to view valuable information like appointment times and meeting links.

Plus, as customers often forget these details, they're likely to open your email notifications more than once. This means you get a customer's undivided attention on a recurring basis.

So why not leverage this?

You can double-down on the value you deliver to your customers during this attention window and let customers know more about what you have to offer.

This reinforces brand recall, strengthens customer trust, and increases repeat bookings, eventually leading to a boost in revenue.

Sending value packed emails

Let's explore different ways to deliver value to your customers.

1. Agenda and prerequisites

An agenda helps you set clear expectations by giving a preview of the session. This way, customers can prepare for what's to come.

Prerequisites are beneficial for both you and the customer. Say, for example, you teach students programming languages online. Your prerequisites might be a laptop, a GitHub account, and an integrated development environment such as Visual Studio.

This helps your students prepare and makes your class time more effective. It's a win-win situation.

Two ways to send an agenda and prerequisites to your customers include visuals and text.

Visuals

For more detailed agendas, you can create a private page on your website with stunning designs and include the page's hyperlink in your email. This is easily done by creating a share link through Zoho WorkDrive or Google Drive.

Here's what a hyperlinked agenda will look like:

To make things even easier for customers, you can hyperlink a downloadable agenda. The following video demonstrates how to add a downloadable file to your outgoing emails.

Text

If your agenda is short, you can write it out using bullet points directly within your emails.  We recommend having no more than six points to keep the message as concise as possible.

Text-based agenda

Text-based prerequisites

The following video shows how to add text-based agendas and pre-requisites to your emails.

2. Customer testimonials, case studies, and more

Customer testimonials and case studies help you showcase your credibility and gain trust. When your potential customers see highly rated testimonials and successful case studies, they'll put their faith in you.

It's also important to note that customers might have second thoughts about their appointment if it is far in advance. Sending these testimonials eliminates any such thought and reduces the possibility of a no-show.

Let's dive into some of the ways that you can send positive customer feedback along with your emails.

Landing pages and blog posts

Sometimes, the real estate in an email isn't sufficient enough. In those cases, you can hyperlink your testimonials or include buttons that lead to customer feedback forms.

Here's what the output will look like.

And here's how to add a button that links to any content of your choice.

Copy and paste the following code from the below snippet to add a button to your emails. In place of the blue "Button Text Here," you can add the text that you wish to see on your buttons.

1. <button style="padding: 16px 32px; text-align: center; display: inline-block; font-size: 16px; margin: 4px 2px; background-color: rgb(80, 73, 127)">
   
2. <a href="https://www.zoho.com/bookings/customers/loanstreet.html" style="color: white; text-decoration: none">
   
3. <!-- Button Text Here -->
   
4. </a>
   
5. </button>
   

Videos

You can also embed your YouTube thumbnails as images in your emails and hyperlink them to the corresponding videos. We embed thumbnails rather than videos because most email clients cannot read video embeds.

We can use online image editors like Canva to create engaging thumbnails. This method intrigues your clients, increases click through rates, and enhances brand recall.

The following GIF shows how the output will look like:

Using the same technique, you can record videos of your staff speaking on camera about:

• The agenda, to give a preview of the session
  
• Any prerequisites, to prepare your customers for an engaging session
  
• Their own experience in the industry, to assure customers that they're under the guidance of an expert
  

Check out the following video to embed YouTube thumbnails in your outgoing emails.

1. <a href="https://www.zoho.com/bookings/">
   
2. <img src="https://i.imgur.com/JieK.png" alt="HTML tutorial" style="width:400px;height:250px;">
   
3. </a>
   

4. Adding value after an appointment

It's best to go the extra mile and send thank you emails to your customers post-appointment. You can also send resources that may be helpful to them.

For example, a marketing team that does product demos could send out a PDF that contains help documents, support contacts, and other useful details. A solopreneur who teaches programming languages online might send a study plan and some words of encouragement.

All these steps show that you care about your customer's progress. This leads to increased trust, recurring bookings, and growth in revenue.

Depending upon the size of these instructions, you can choose to include them in the body of the email itself, or within a downloadable PDF, videos, hyperlink, or a button.

5. Collecting feedback

Both satisfied and dissatisfied customers add value to a business, and forms work well when you wish to gather their feedback. This comes in handy for cancellation and no-show emails as well because it allows us to find out why our customers have cancelled. You can also send forms along with your completed emails to find out what went well.

Here's what a hyperlinked form will look like:

Notes

1. Zoho Bookings offers five types of email notifications and three types of reminders. Not all content works with every email, and our table at the beginning of the article can help you decide on which to use. Depending upon your businesses, you can choose to stick with one or more value additions.

2. Be sure that your reminders are spaced out well. For example, if you have an appointment scheduled two weeks from now, you can send three reminders. However, if the appointment were just two days away, you would likely just want to send one reminder. This will also vary depending upon the industry you're in, so we recommend you use your best judgment.

Suggested flow ideas

So far, we've seen the content that works for different types of emails. But what should your ideal flow be?

Don't worry, we've got your back.

Here are some sample flows that you could emulate.

• Marketing team that offers product demo calls
  
• Booked email + agenda
  
• Reminder 1 + staff experience
  
• Reminder 2 + customer testimonial
  
• Completed email + post-appointment instructions
  

• Solopreneur who teaches programming languages
  
• Booked email + pre-requisites
  
• Reminder 1 + staff experience
  
• Reminder 2 + agenda
  
• Reminder 3 + case study
  
• Completed email + post-appointment instructions

In this article, we've pushed the boundaries of email templates in Zoho Bookings. We've also discussed different ways that we can group together email notifications and create flows that maximize value for your audience.

If you have any questions, drop them in the comments or email us at hello@zohobookings.com. We'll be happy to help you out.

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