Just got your new Patient Intake Form and want to make sure all your new patients receive it via SMS or email ahead of their appointment?
There are two ways to target new patients and it depends on how your Cliniko account is set up. Both of these are done using a Transactional email.
How do you identify new patients?
If you include specific wording in your initial appointment types (e.g new/initial/first) - then your trigger needs to target those appointment types.
If you do not include specific wording - then you need to use the appointment count filter to identify that it's the patients first appointment.
Send it via Email
We create a number of Transactional emails for you when your account is first set up. One of these is the First Appointment Preparation email. This email is sent 1 day before any appointment type which contains the word 'First' or 'Initial' or the appointment category is 'Initial'. You can edit the content of this email before we switch it on. We'll have already inserted a link to your form. But here are the instructions on editing this email.
First, we need to create an email template
Log in to Peptalkr and go to the Send Email tab.
Click on the Transactional tab.
Scroll down and look for the email titled First Appointment Preparation - click on it.
On the right hand side of the screen click View and Edit.
Scroll down to Content then click Edit Content.
From here you can change the text, add more buttons, change the images, add entire new sections (including videos) and more. Ensure you insert a link to your intake form - the links are found on the Forms tab of your account.
When you are happy with your changes simply Preview to see how your email will look on both computers and on phones.
Finally, click I'm done.
Next we need to connect a trigger to our email template:
Log in to Peptalkr and go to the Triggers tab.
Press the + button to create a new trigger.
Select 'After an appointment is created' if you'd like to send the email as soon as they book, OR select 'Before the appointment' if you want to send it a day or two ahead of the scheduled appointment date.
Set your timing - e.g. 1 day before - then click next.
Now is where you need to filter down to just new patients. Earlier, we mentioned two ways of targeting new patients (scroll up an look for "How do you identify new patients?")
If you chose option 1: Click 'Appointment' then 'Appointment Type' and search for your new patient appointment types.
If you chose option 2: Click 'Appointment' then 'Appointment count' and set this to 'Exactly 0' (i.e. they have never attended an appointment in the past, making their upcoming appointment their first).
You can choose to apply other filters if necessary - for example, you may have a different new patient email for 'Massage' patients vs 'Physio' patients.
Select your send frequency (e.g Every time the conditions are met or alternatively, Once in a day if you have patients attending multiple appointments in a single day)
Click next and then select your Transactional email template you created earlier from the dropdown and click next, then Finish. (If you can't see your template - just select any template for now, then go back to the email builder and ensure you publish your draft transactional email template buy pressing 'Finish')
You can now send yourself a test using the email icon, and turn it on if your test email looked right, and links worked.
Send it via SMS
The steps are the same for SMS as with the "Next we need to connect a trigger to our email template" listed above - except you create the trigger from the Send SMS tab.
You needn't assign an email template for the SMS version, just type what you'd like your SMS to say.
Note: You must have SMS credits in order to send SMS reminders. View your balance and purchase new credits at any time on the Send SMS tab.
Send it with Cliniko instead
Want to include the form in your Cliniko emails/SMS instead of using Peptalkr?
We've got an article for that - please check it out here.