💡 One Off Blasts are a special type of Transactional Email that allow you send email blasts to patients who attended an appointment within a specific date range. These are different to Marketing Campaigns as they allow more control over your targeting based on a patient's specific appointment history.
Reasons you might send a one off blast:
You want to recall patients who have not had an appointment of a particular type in a specific timeframe (e.g 'Physio' patients who have not attended in 1 year)
You want to send an email to all DVA patients from the last 6 months.
You want to email all patients who had a pilates class last year, but not this year.
You want to email Private Health patients ahead of their private health benefits renewal.
Difference between Campaigns and One Off Blasts
| Campaigns | One Off Blasts |
Can be sent as marketing | Yes | Yes |
Can be sent as non-marketing | No | Yes |
Can target patients who attended a specific appointment type within a chosen date range | No | Yes |
Can target patients who attended a specific appointment category within a chosen date range | Only knows when their last appointment in that category was | Yes |
Can be sent to Segments you have pre-created | Yes | No |
Your Checklist before hitting 'Send'
Carefully follow the checklist to ensure you are sending your One-off blast correctly. Remember - the transactional trigger builder is powerful, so it's worth taking an extra moment to check you configured it correctly.
One: Did you add an unsubscribe link?
If you selected YES to the marketing question, you MUST add an unsubscribe link the bottom of your Transactional email template to comply with Privacy Law.
Unsubscribe links are added to Campaigns and Marketing Journey's automatically, but Transactional emails require you to add one manually as they can be marketing or non-marketing.
Two: Did you set your appointment date range correctly?
One off blasts require you to set both a start and end date for when this patient must have attended an appointment within. Even if you want to send the email to everyone, you still need to set this step.
Ensure you see the correct dates in the two fields pictured below.
Three: Did you filter down your patients?
This step is optional, but usually necessary.
For example, if you want to ensure the patients who attended an appointment within the specific date range attended a specific appointment type, or category or saw a particular practitioner or had their appointment at a specific business - use these filters.
Warning: You need only apply a filter where you are narrowing down your audience. i.e. you do not need to apply a business filter if you have one business location or want to target all your businesses.
Whatever you select will apply to your date range. For example, if you select:
Appointment Category: Physiotherapy
Practitioner: Joe Clark
Then the email will only send to patients who attended a Physiotherapy appointment with Joe Clark between the specific dates.
🗣️ If you make multiple selections within one filter category (e.g. you have selected 3 appointment categories) - those selections will be treated as 'OR' rules, not 'AND' rules.
For example, if you selected 'Physiotherapy' and 'Chiropractic' in your Category filter, then the email will send to patients who attended a Physiotherapy OR Chiropractic appointment between the specific dates.
Four: Did you apply a Sex filter (important)
In most cases, we recommend that you do not apply a Sex filter - simply because we have seen that most Cliniko accounts do not always use the Sex field in the patient file.
As such, if you apply a Sex filter - your email will be limited to only patients who actually have a value assigned in the Sex field - which may be a very small percentage of your patients!
So even if you select 'Male' and 'Female' with the assumption it will target all of your patients - this is incorrect. It would only target patients who have a 'Male' or 'Female' value assigned - it would exclude everyone else.
As a general rule of thumb: do not apply filters, unless you wish to narrow down. We will target everyone within a filter category by default if you select nothing.
Five: Did you tick the recall box?
If the intention of your email is to target people without an upcoming appointment, you MUST tick the recall box.
Use the dropdown to further specify how the recall will work. The dropdown rule will apply to the specifics of the appointment for that particular patient receiving the email.
For example, if you had applied a 'Physiotherapy' and 'Chiropractic' category filter, and you selected 'Of the same Category' from the dropdown:
A patient who attended a Physiotherapy appointment would receive this email if they have no attended another Physiotherapy appointment.
A patient who attended a Chiropractic appointment would receive this email if they have no attended another Physiotherapy appointment.
Six: Did you double check the approx count on the summary screen?
One the summary screen you'll be given an estimate of the number of recipients set to receive the email.
If it seems exceptionally high, or far too low - you'll need to go back and look closely at your configuration to ensure you are targeting the correct group of recipients.
🚀 Well done - go forth and send your one off blast! Remember, you can access the delivery log to see who received a copy of the email.