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

• Exciting Updates to the Kiosk Studio Feature in Zoho CRM!

  Hello Everyone, We are here again with a series of new enhancements to Kiosk Studio, designed to elevate your experience and bring even greater efficiency to your business processes. These updates build upon our ongoing commitment to making Kiosk a powerful

• Passing a form object to a function

  Suppose I have a sort_order field in multiple tables and I want to increment it by +1 onCreate of a new record. Is there a way to pass the form object as an argument into the function to keep things DRY? The following function from Zia works, but I'd

• Change of Blog Author

  Hi, I am creating the blog post on behalf of my colleague. When I publish the post, it is showing my name as author of the post which is not intended and needs to be changed to my colleague's name. How can I change the name of the author in the blogs?? Thanks, Ramanan

• Allow customers to choose meeting venue and meeting duration on booking page

  My business primarily involves one-to-one meetings with my clients. Given the hybrid-work world we now find ourselves in, these meetings can take several forms (which I think of as the meeting "venue"): In-person Zoom Phone call I currently handle these

• Booking outside of scheduled availability

  Is there a way for staff (such as the secretary) to book appointments outside of the scheduled availability? Right now to do this special hours must be set each time. There should be a quicker way. Am I missing something?

• Operation Questions.

  Hello, I hope you are well. To explain a little, we are a company that sells services and products with a technical team responsible for installation and maintenance. Zoho FSM can be useful for the technical team, namely for the technical coordinator

• Direct Access and Better Search for Zoho Quartz Recordings

  Hi Zoho Team, We would like to request a few enhancements to improve how Zoho Quartz recordings are accessed and managed after being submitted to Zoho Support. Current Limitation: After submitting a Quartz recording, the related Zoho Support ticket displays

• Update date & time when a cell is edited

  Hi All, I am desiring to have a cell update with the current date and time when another cell is edited. Any ideas?  Thank you

• Ask the Experts 26: Brighten every customer interaction with Zoho Desk all year long

  Hello everyone, Greetings and welcome to Ask the Experts 26. As we wrap up 2025, we are excited to invite you to the 26th episode of our Ask the Expert series. 🎄The Merry Metrics Edition = Best of Zoho Desk [Best Practices + Holiday Automation + Year-End

• Add "Groups" to "Share With" on Reports & All Entries

  Hi, On Forms we can share Publicly, with Specific Users And/Or Specific Groups or All Users. With Reports and All Entries we lack the "Groups" option, please add this as with many users this saves a lot of work. Thanks Dan

• Add Pause / Resume Option to Zoho Quartz Recordings

  Hi Zoho Team, We would like to request an enhancement to Zoho Quartz recordings: the ability to pause and resume an ongoing recording. Current Limitation: At the moment, when recording an issue with Zoho Quartz, the recording continues even when we are

• Custom Fields Not Showing Up in Invoice PDF Template Document Information

  I have added 2 custom fields under Sales > Invoices > Manage Custom Fields. They are set to show in all PDFs. However when I am editing my Invoice PDF template, i do not see the custom fields under Document Information.

• Tracking Non-Inventory Items

  We have several business locations and currently use zoho inventory to track retail items (sales and purchase orders). We were hoping to use zoho inventory to track our non-inventory items as well (toilet paper, paper towels, etc). I understand that we

• Can I use a Standalone CRM Function as the Callback URL For Async Export Data API?

  I am creating an export job using this API https://www.zoho.com/analytics/api/v2/bulk-api/export-data-async/create-export/view-id.html There is a "callbackUrl" key in the CONFIG object. I tried copying the URL for a standalone function in CRM which can

• ZOHO Books

  Hi there, Why after I upgrade my Zoho invoice > Books then i wanted to add plugin which i cannot do. Please advise.

• How is Your eCommerce Experience w/Zoho Inventory?

  First off, I'm SUPER grateful for the advent of Zoho Inventory and now the Zoho Commerce Suite. Overall, Inventory is a great product, especially for customers without an eCommerce presence. For eCommerce companies (especially those shipping more than ~10 packages/day), however, there are certain drawbacks that keep my clients from moving over to Zoho Inventory: Cons: 1. Invoice + Package Creation from Shopify/Other eCommerce Integrations: Zoho Inventory makes the somewhat perplexing decision to

• Cliq iOS can't see shared screen

  Hello, I had this morning a video call with a colleague. She is using Cliq Desktop MacOS and wanted to share her screen with me. I'm on iPad. I noticed, while she shared her screen, I could only see her video, but not the shared screen... Does Cliq iOS is able to display shared screen, or is it somewhere else to be found ? Regards

• Error AS101 when adding new email alias

  Hi, I am trying to add apple@(mydomain).com The error AS101 is shown while I try to add the alias.

• Simplify Mass Replies with Predefined Templates and Snippets

  Hello everyone, We are happy to introduce a new enhancement to Mass Reply that helps agents respond to customers quickly and consistently. With the addition of Email Templates and Snippets in the reply window, agents can use predefined messages while

• Add "Groups" above "Users" in the Zoho Forms Left Menu

  Hi, We have Groups but you have to go to a Form and Share or use the Directory App to manage them, please add "Groups" above "Users" in the Zoho Forms Left Menu so you can manage them in 1 place within Zoho Forms too. Thanks Dan

• Mapping custom fields from one module to another

  I have a custom field, "Subscription Period" that appears as a required field in every Opportunity (Potential). I want that field to appear on any Quotes derived from that Opportunity (and have created a custom field of the same name in Quotes for that

• Inquiry on Help Centre Tab Customisation

  Hi Zoho team, I’m wondering if it’s possible to further customise the Help Center tabs, specifically the descriptions under Knowledge Base, Community, and Tickets. While the current setup allows customising tab names, being able to tailor the descriptions

• Passing the CRM

  Hi, I am hoping someone can help. I have a zoho form that has a CRM lookup field. I was hoping to send this to my publicly to clients via a text message and the form then attaches the signed form back to the custom module. This work absolutely fine when

• The Social Wall: November 2025

  We’re nearing the end of the year, and the holiday season is officially kicking in! It’s that time when sales peak and your social media game needs to be stronger than ever. We’re back with exciting new updates across AI, analytics, and the mobile app

• Item name special charaters <>

  Im trying to input speical characters such as < and > into item name and item description but comes up with following error: Invalid value passed for Item Name and Invalid value passed for Item Description How do i allow speical characters?

• How to update Multi File upload field

  Assume that i have a multi file upload field,how can i update the same field again?

• Customer Address Not on Standard Invoice when Address is on Contact Record

  Hi,  I entered the customer billing and shipping address in Zoho CRM. I created an invoice in Zoho Books with the same customer contact. The contact is correctly in Zoho Books with the billing and shipping address. The invoice for the customer does not

• Auto-Invite Users to Portals in Zoho CRM based on Conditions

  Hello Everyone, You can now automate portal invitations in Zoho CRM with the new Auto-Invite users feature in Portal management. No more manually enabling portal access one by one. With this enhancement, you can automatically send invites for users to

• Apply partial payments to invoices from the Banking Module

  We need this! Why is this not possible?

• Welcome to the Zoho Show Community Forums page!

  Hello everyone, The Zoho Show community is a place for you to discuss and share anything and everything related to Zoho Show Presentations, our online presentation software. It includes users from all over the globe and all walks of life. Our community helps answer your Zoho Show questions with responses from other knowledgeable community members to give you the best experience creating and designing exciting presentations. Along the way, you'll meet recognized experts from our software team and

• Regarding the integration of Apollo.io with Zoho crm.

  I have been seeing for the last 3 months that your Apollo.io beta version is available in Zoho Flow, and this application has not gone live yet. We requested this 2 months ago, but you guys said that 'we are working on it,' and when we search on Google

• How can I convert an existing contact into a lead?

  I imported many contacts into ZOHO CRM. In order to select a few of them as leads, I want to mark or convert a few hundred as Leads. Who can I do that?

• Introducing Dedicated Modules for Plans, Addons, and Coupons in Zoho Billing

  We’ve enhanced the way you manage Plans, Addons, and Coupons in Zoho Billing. Previously, all three grouped together under Subscription Items. Now, each one has its own dedicated module, giving you a cleaner and more intuitive experience. This update

• Price book functionality enhancement

  A common use of price books is to create a price book for a given customer level or contract with a specific company. Given that this is done at a company/customer level it would be great to see a way to associate a price book to a given customer and

• SMS to customers from within Bigin

  Hi All, Is there anyone else crying out for Bigin SMS capability to send an SMS to customers directly from the Bigin interface? We have inbuilt telephony already with call recordings which works well. What's lacking is the ability to send and receive

• Tracking Emails sent through Outlook

  All of our sales team have their Outlook 365 accounts setup with IMAP integration. We're trying to track their email activity that occurs outside the CRM. I can see the email exchanges between the sales people and the clients in the contact module. But

• Contact data removes Account data when creating a quote

  Hi, Our customer has address fields in their quote layout which should be the address of the Account. They prefill the information, adding the account name - the address data is populated as per what is in the account - great. However when they then add

• Important update about notification security in Business Messaging SDK

  As part of our ongoing effort to strengthen the security of notification data, we have enhanced how notifications are processed and protected in our applications. These improvements ensure that all notification related data follows the most up-to-date

• 年内最後のユーザー向けイベント：5名限定！ 課題解決型ワークショップイベント Zoho ワークアウト開催のお知らせ (12/18)

  ユーザーの皆さま、こんにちは。コミュニティチームの中野です。 12月開催のZoho ワークアウトについてお知らせします。 今回はZoomにて、オンライン開催します。 参加登録はこちら（無料） https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/QHn6kJAcRs-znJ1l5jk0ww ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Zoho ワークアウトとは？ Zoho ユーザー同士で交流しながら、サービスに関する疑問や不明点の解消を目的とした「Zoho ワークアウト」を開催します。

• Saved Sections?

  In sites editor, the + button reveals options to add a section, element, etc. It includes Saved Sections, but I can find no way to save a section I've already created. Otherwise, is there a way to copy a section from one page to another?

• Next Page