Making the most of email notifications in Zoho Bookings

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.

I want to try this!


      • Topic Participants

      • Siva

      • Sticky Posts

      • Zoho Bookings know-how: A hands-on workshop series

        Hello! We’re conducting a hands-on workshop series to help simplify appointment scheduling for your business with Zoho Bookings. We’ll be covering various functionalities and showing how you can leverage them for your business across five different sessions.

      • Announcing: custom color palette + free workshop

        Hello everyone, We're excited to share new feature in Zoho Bookings—a color palette within booking page themes. You'll find this option under Manage Bookings > Workspaces > Booking Page Themes. You can customize the color of every element in your booking page and even alter the transparency of your background image. Please note that this is a paid feature included in the Basic and Premium plans. At the moment, it's available only under the Modern Web theme. This means you can create billions (7,

      • Complete walk-through of Zoho Bookings (video)

        Save time for both you and your customers. Use Zoho Bookings, the appointment scheduling app from Zoho, to free yourself from email and paper-based scheduling. Zoho Bookings can give you a common calendar by syncing multiple calendars, including yours and your staff's. Your customers can book a time convenient for them, and pay for services, through your website or the customizable webpage features available in Zoho Bookings. They'll also get emails reminding them about their appointments and any

      • New Features: Service Availability and staff booking page themes!

        Dear All,  Want a dedicated schedule for your one-on-one services? How would it feel to have one-on-one services open for consultations only during certain times? You need a superpower to make that happen and we give it to you - Service Availability is

      • Zoho Bookings has a new pricing - Pay per user

        Dear customers, Businesses around the world use Zoho Bookings. Customers have booked 1.5 million appointments and over 200K online meetings using Bookings. We are only set to cross more milestones, thanks to your support. We are excited to introduce to

        • Recent Topics

        • favorites no longer listed

          Hello, I can no longer navigate to my Favorites from the pulldown at the top of my grid view (see attached screenshot). I wasn't able to find it anywhere! Please help me display my Favorites. Thank you!

        • Notecards Disappeared

          Got a new phone. Downloaded and signed in Zoho Notebook. Not finding the Note cards. Just Empty Note books. Frustrating.

        • Table Errors

          Hello, I'm new to Zoho Notebook and using it on several Mac/Apple devices. My question is regarding tables: Why do they become broken, and how to fix the error without retyping all my data? (Please see the screenshot attached.)

        • Aggregating the First Value in the Group By of a dataset

          Hi I am trying to get the following Aggregate Formula to work in my chart, but cannot seem to get the right format. I have a series of data that I am running an include_groupby and want to SUM only a column in the first row of each group. So for example.

        • Online Calculator with Zoho Forms?

          I'd like to build a custom calculator on my website. Zoho Forms seems to offer all the fields for basic calculations performed live without pressing any "Calculate" buttons. Unfortunately, there is still that "Submit" button at the bottom. There is nothing

        • Zoho Tables instead of Zoho Creator Spreadsheet reports <3

          That would make my day for sure. Zoho Creator is create, but miss data entering as AirTable/Spreadsheet can. Seeing Zoho putting effort in this makes me think maybe one day we could see a similar interface for Zoho Creator spreadsheet reports. B.

        • Zoho Sheet - Desktop App or Offline

          Since Zoho Docs is now available as a desktop app and offline, when is a realistic ETA for Sheet to have the same functionality?I am surprised this was not laucned at the same time as Docs.

        • Notebook Stack

          Hi Everyone I Hope you´re fine, I´m sorry if this idea was posted before (I made a search but I haven´t find anything related). So, Having the possibility of stacking notebooks would be an interesting way to order notebooks that correspond to the same

        • Writing on sketch cards is bugged when zoomed in

          When zoomed in, it writes a noticeable distance above or to the side of where you're actually trying to write. The further you're zoomed in, the more noticeable it is. Zooming is also entirely absent on the desktop version.

        • Swipe between notes on iPhone

          It'd be convenient if I could move from one note to the next in a notebook simply by swiping left to right.

        • Sales IQ chat is not working in signed android apk

          I have integrated ZOHO sales IQ support chat and i have followed each step and its working fine in my development build but when i create signed APK for it. Chat does not work in it and showing awaiting for detail. I previously asked the same query but

        • COQL order by COUNT not working

          Dear community, I am trying to get a list of deal amounts per planner working on it and sorted to get see who has the least amount of deals. For some reason, I am unable to use sort by in combination with a COUNT. My original code was: query = "select

        • I want to duplicate a report and name it something else

          Hi, I have created a report, and now want to reproduce it and call it something else. so that I will end up with TWO separate reports with different titles. Please tell me how do I copy / reproduce a report please

        • Zoho CRM: Sales Rep Professional Certification Program on Coursera

          We are happy to share that we have published the Zoho Sales Representative Professional Certificate in partnership with Coursera, a leading platform for online learning and career development that offers access to courses and degrees from leading universities

        • OS X Notebook quits immediately upon launch

          NoteBook for OS X (Sequoia, but also under Sonoma) always quits immediately upon launch (so I cannot use the "Attach user log" option). I've restarted my MacBook but the problem persists. If it helps, attached is a diagnostic report from Library>Log

        • Can External users upload files or images to WorkDrive?

          I want to know if it is possible for someone externally through a link and PW be able to upload files and images onto WorkDrive?

        • Multi-line fields character limits

          Is there a way to set the character limit higher on multi-line fields so that we are not losing information pasted into the field? When the text is entered or pasted, there is no error to say that the text is too large. After saving and going back to view most of the text is gone.   Also, when viewing the resume, the text is not wrapped in the multi line fields and can t be read without scrolling across the page.

        • Taz bot not working — What should I do to resolve this issue?

          I am experiencing issues with the Taz bot in Zoho Cliq—not receiving responses or it does not seem to work as expected. Could you please explain why the Taz bot might not be functioning and what steps I should take to resolve this issue? Thank you!

        • Zoho Calendar soft bounce on @hotmail.com and @yahoo.com email addresses

          Hello, our Zoho calendar recently does not send the calendar invites to emails with hotmail and yahoo domains and comes back with a "soft bounce". other domains like Gmail works fine. Also sending "email" to the same emails to the above domains work well

        • OneNote Migration

          I am trying to migrate two notebooks from OneNote. For five days now I have had no notification that migration has completed and the migration page show 50% complete - one notebook completed one not finished. It just stays like this. I am unable to cancel

        • Set various time slot reminders for task and event

          Hi I would like known if there is possibility to set various time reminders for a task or event like we have the possibility to do in google calendar or google task. For example I'am creating an event or task and I want to be alerted before 30min and

        • Zoho Calendar not functioning---cannot edit, add attendees, etc.

          Hello, My calendar is acting strange. I'm using Chrome as my browser and pop ups are not blocked (the calendar worked fine yesterday). When creating an event, I'm not able to "edit" the event and add attendees, etc. The link is non-responsive. I cannot

        • Spilt Axis for stacked column and line graph

          Each month around this time I prepare a business review deck. One of the biggest annoyances I have with Zoho, also happens to be something that most other platforms have provided for a long time now, and that is being able to create a chart with stacked

        • Pin a note on top

          Dear Zoho Notebook Team, Please highly consider adding ability to pin a note on top and arrange pinned notes. I have a lot of notes that I want to pin important ones on top and this feature is missing badly. Thank you.

        • Windows 11 app ver 2.2.8

          I have been trialing Zoho Notes syncing between my PC and iphone. No problems with iphone but the Windows 64 bit app ver 2.2.8 was very buggy and would lock up completely, needing a Control Alt Delete etc to close it down. It seemed to be connected to

        • Deluge Script: Onboarding → Access Form

          Hello everyone, Edit: Sorry, I think I put this topic in the wrong section. I’ve recently run into an issue that’s been giving me a bit of a headache for the past few weeks. Context: This is my first time using Deluge to create a script, but it’s not

        • Windows Device Authentication

          We have recently started using ManageEngine, and my boss saw a device management feature in the Zoho One directory. We thought it would either help give us more intergration into Zoho one through bringing ManageEngine services through Zoho one. Or, it

        • How can I change spell check language?

          I cannot find the way to change spell check language. My "display language" is English, and I want to have the same one for Spell Check, but it is Russian!!! How can I change it? In one of your explanations you mentioned that I have to choose it from

        • Mail is so slow - doesn't even work!

          Mail has been getting slower and slower - and today it's not even pulling up emails in either Inbox or Unread. This is beyond frustrating since email is a big part of business. Sent a request through the useless help portal - no response. Called the useless

        • User marked as SPAMMER. Mail Fetch has also been disabled for any active POP accounts.

          I am the administrator for joelles.com One of our accounts has been blocked saying this: User marked as SPAMMER. Mail Fetch has also been disabled for any active POP accounts. I cannot change the disabled account in the control panel as it says that it

        • My domain did not activate

          Hi, my domain (apsaindustrial.com.ar) did not activate, and the phone verification message never arrived. Please would you solve this problem? Thanks.

        • ME SALE ESTE ERROR: No fue posible enviar el mensaje;Motivo:554 5.1.8 Email Outgoing Blocked

          Ayuda!! Me sale este error al intentar enviar mensajes desde mi correo electronico de Zoho! Tampoco recibo correos pues cuando me envia rebotan. Ayuda, Me urge enviar unos correo importantes!! Quedo atenta MAGDA HERNANDEZ +5731120888408

        • Is there a way to sync Tags between CRM and Campaigns/Marketing Hub?

          I wonder if there is a way to synch the tags between CRM and Marketing-Hub / Campaigns?

        • how to see if a specific contact opened an email in zoho campaign?

          how to see if a specific contact opened an email in zoho campaign?

        • Revenue Management: #8 Revenue Recognition in Educational & Training Institutions

          Educational Institutions and training centres typically collect course fees at the time of enrolment, sometimes for a one-day workshop and sometimes for a year-long certification course. You might also charge separately for course materials or evaluation.

        • How to Customize Task Creation to Send a Custom Alert Using JavaScript in Zoho CRM?

          Hello Zoho CRM Community, I’m looking to customize Zoho CRM to send a custom alert whenever a task is created. I understand that Zoho CRM supports client scripts using JavaScript, and I would like to leverage this feature to implement the alert functionality.

        • how to use validation rules in subform

          Is it possible to use validation rules for subforms? I tried the following code: entityMap = crmAPIRequest.toMap().get("record"); sum = 0; direct_billing = entityMap.get("direct_billing_details"); response = Map(); for each i in direct_billing { if(i.get("type")

        • Using files from Zoho CRM in Gemini/ChatGPT/Claude

          Hi all, I’ve got subscriptions to Gemini and a few other AI tools which I use for tasks like data enrichment, email composition, etc. In our workflow, we often receive various documents from clients — such as process workflows, BRDs/requirement documents

        • Enhancements to the formula field in Zoho CRM: Auto-refresh formulas with the "Now" function, stop formula executions based on criteria, and include formulas within formulas

          Dear Customers, We hope you're well! By their nature, modern businesses rely every day on computations, whether it's to calculate the price of a product, assess ROI, evaluate the lifetime value of a customer, or even determine the age of a record. With

        • Maximum file limit in zoho people LMS

          Dear Team, I am having approximately 4.9 GB of material, including PPTs and videos for uploading in zoho people LMS course. May I know what is the maximum limit limit for the course files Thanking you, With regards, Logeswar V Executive _ Operations

        • Next Page