Timely has some of the most competitive and powerful SMS features on the market, and we’ll cover what they are, when you should use them and how each one can help your business thrive.

The SMS messages your business needs

Appointment confirmation SMS

Instead of calling your customers to double-check if they can make it, let Timely automatically send them a message before their appointment to confirm. Your client will reply with a ‘Y’, which will automatically update your calendar and send you their reply for your records, or an ‘N’ if they can’t make it, so you can arrange another appointment. Easy! 

Appointment reminder SMS

Timely makes it as easy as possible for your client to turn up on the right date and time, saving you hours each week in missed appointments and valuable staff time. Choose an amount of time you’re comfortable with before your client’s appointment, and Timely will send an SMS reminder with all the important details like the date, time, and location of the appointment, as well as the staff member they’re booked in with. 

Without a doubt, no business should live without appointment reminder texts.

Tip: You can schedule Appointment reminder messages to be sent between 2 hours and a week before the appointment, or a set time the day before like 12pm. We recommend  24 or 48 hours before, to give your client enough time to get organised if they’ve forgotten.

Follow up SMS

Aftercare

Do your treatments often involve aftercare, take a while to start working or have a lengthy healing process? If so, it’s a great idea to send an automatic follow up message to the client, reminding them of any important aftercare information, and what to expect after the appointment. You might even send them a link to the page on your website that has aftercare instructions for all of your treatments, to make it extra easy for you.

Not only does it save you time, it’s also a nice touch. You’re letting your client know that you care, and showing them your outstanding service continues after the appointment.

Thank you SMS

Build your client relationships and lift your brand image without doing any extra work! A thank you message adds the cherry on top to your client’s appointment, especially when they’ve spent a lot of money at your business or they’re a new client! Thank you messages are a great touch, especially if you’re a brand new business and you’re working hard to build a loyal client base.

Review SMS

When a client is looking online and finds your business, chances are they’re going to look at your reviews, so it’s important that you have lots of great reviews to convince them to book with you. 

It can be time consuming to ask all your clients to give you an oscar-winning review, so get Timely to do it for you! Whether it be Facebook or Google reviews, or any kind of review you want, Timely can help you get the online reviews you need with a Review SMS message. 

Tip: To make it even easier for your client, include a link to where they can post a review in the message. 

Feedback SMS

As well as reviews, it’s a great idea to ask your clients for feedback. You can schedule a custom automated message to send to clients after their appointment requesting feedback; then you can use any negative or neutral feedback to improve your client experience, and ask those who send something positive for a review. Win!

Did not show SMS

Your client didn’t show. Bummer! Let Timely step in and take care of this uncomfortable conversation. Timely can send out an SMS for you letting the client know that they missed their appointment, and that your cancellation policy is now in action. 

We highly recommend that you set up did not show messages. You probably paid a lawyer a lot of money to create your cancellation policy, so at least you get to use it!

Ad-hoc SMS

Running late? Running ahead of schedule? Last-minute staff changes? Need to remind your client to bring their bridal tiara? Maybe the client hasn’t replied to their confirmation text yet? Ad-hoc SMS messages are there for you when you need to manually send a message to your client.

Rebooking reminder SMS

You’ve perfected your craft and offer a great service that your clients love, but sometimes they get busy and forget to make the appointment they said they were going to. Maybe they were in a rush or didn’t have their calendar handy after their last appointment. 

Whatever the reason, sometimes clients need a little nudge to rebook! A Rebooking reminder message is an awesome way to get in touch and encourage your clients to get that next appointment booked in.

Reconnect SMS

You’ve sent your client a rebooking reminder and they still haven’t booked in? Don’t worry, you haven’t lost them yet! You can send them a friendly Reconnect SMS. A lot of businesses use this message to send the client an offer to make it a bit more enticing, like 10% off their next service.

Tip: Both Reminder and Reconnect messages should include a link to your online booking, if you have it.

SMS Marketing Campaigns

Send a message to all of your clients, or just a few targeted ones, depending on the type of campaign you want to run. Marketing campaigns can be anything from a Mother’s Day or Birthday offer, to exciting news about a new location or even a reminder to book in before you go on holiday. 

Why not boost your client retention and send a message to all of your clients without future appointments, or clients you haven’t heard from in a few months? Our SMS marketing campaigns have lots of filters, so it’s easy to target the exact group of clients you want to receive the campaign. You could filter and find customers who had a specific treatment, at a specific location, with a specific staff member, within a specific date range. You never know who you might find!

Timely has all the SMS features you need, and some you just really, really want.

You can send all the above SMS messages using Timely, but there’s more to our SMS menu than meets the eye. 

Multi-part SMS

Sometimes one SMS message isn’t enough to get across all the information you need! No worries, you can send up to the length of 4 messages, which is well over 340 characters. Most businesses use these extra messages to make the text more personal or to inform the client of any important information such as their cancellation policy, sending more detailed aftercare instructions, or including a link to your website or online booking.

Two-way messaging

We don’t want to just make running your business easier for you; we want to make it great for your client too. Timely’s SMS messaging allows for two-way, which means your client can always reply, and you can reply back to them if you want to, giving your clients a more personalised experience. 

There are so many ways you can use SMS to your business’ advantage. We’ve even created these marketing campaign templates, to make it super easy for you to get the most out of SMS messages. Best of all, most of our packages have SMS included, so you don’t always have to pay extra on top of the cost of your plan.

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