Sending confirmations is a great way to keep your clients in the know as an appointment is booked - either by them via the online booking system, or manually by a member of your team.
Cliniko is capable of sending booking confirmation emails, but not SMS. Furthermore, Cliniko's booking confirmation emails are plain - no branding, logo, images or buttons.
So if you'd like more control over the appearance, targeting or format of your confirmations - keep reading.
Skip to step 3 if you want to go straight to the SMS instructions.
1. Create a Transactional email template:
Begin by crafting a dedicated email template for your confirmations. You may create several templates for different purposes that use language specific to the appointment type, whether they are a new or long term patient and so on.
Start with a 'Standard' and 'New Patient' confirmation template if you want to keep things simple to begin with.
Peptalkr provides a pre-built confirmation template for both standard and new patients in the 'My Templates' section of the email builder if you want a head start.
2. Insert your buttons, links and anything else extra
Customise your email content - insert any links, buttons, text or personalisation you require to make this email as helpful as possible.
3. Create your trigger
Head to the Triggers tab within Peptalkr.
If setting up an SMS, you would go to the Send SMS tab and follow the same steps
Create a New Trigger:
Click on the purple + button in the top right of the screen and proceed with the following steps, tailoring each part to suit your needs.
Step One: Name & Kind:
Give your trigger a descriptive name, e.g., 'New Patient Booking Confirmation'
Select 'Automated recurring' as confirmations send them selves.
Step Two: Marketing or non-marketing:
Select non-marketing
Step Three: When should it send?:
From the available triggering events, select 'After an appointment is created' - this means the trigger will fire after an appointment has been scheduled in Cliniko. We recommend choosing right after (5 minutes) But it's up to you.
Tick the 'Is this a confirmation?' checkbox if you'd like this email to only send to people who have opted in for confirmation emails in their Cliniko communication preferences.
Step Four: Filters to apply:
You can now also filter down which appointment types, categories or even practitioners this confirmation is specific to. Just leave the filters blank to target everyone.
In order to target just new patients - select your applicable appointment types, or use the appointment count filter. Read the yellow box below to understand each of these approaches.
⚡️ To target new patients - select your 'initial' appointment types using the appointment type filter. Or, alternatively - if you don't have a specific appointment type for new patients or want to ensure this confirmation is only sent upon booking their very first appointment of any type - set the appointment count filter to 'Exactly 1'.
Step Five: Frequency:
Select 'every time the conditions are met' or 'once ever' depending on your needs.
Step Six: Select your template:
Select the transactional email template you created in step 1 - and tick the 'attach an ICS file' checkbox if you want a calendar file the client can add to their phone or computer calendar with one click.
If sending an SMS you'd simply write in what you want the SMS to say. Use the personalisation dropdown to insert data specific to the patient.
👉 If you can't see your email template in the template dropdown you may not have pressed the 'Finish' button in the email builder. f this happens, just select any available template and continue, you can edit it and set the correct template before you turn it on. Then navigate back to the email builder and ensuring you hit the 'Finish' button on your draft template.
Step Seven: Summary
Review all details of your trigger. Once satisfied, press finish to create the trigger. It will be turned off by default.
Step Eight: Test and Activate:
Test your email by pressing the email test icon or SMS by pressing the SMS test icon.
If everything looks good, press the switch to turn it on.
You can now duplicate the trigger if you want to make more versions.
3. Monitor and improve
Over time, monitor the performance of your emails. Then adjust your template or trigger as necessary to improve your your open rate, click rate and number of responses.
💡 Remember, the key to a successful confirmation email is to communicate the most important information a patient needs.