Ensuring that the communications sent to your customers match your brand voice is an important part of aligning your customer experience from start to finish. BusyPaws provides a variety of customizable options for managing the automated messages that go out to your clients. Let's take a look at how to locate, edit, and create your customer notifications.

Client notifications in BusyPaws allow you to set up communications linked to a range of actions. The available notifications are organized into four categories:

Every category contains a set of customer notification messages, with both email and SMS options for a variety of different triggers.

This section includes all notifications related to customer bookings and registrations.

This section includes all notifications pertaining to invoicing and payments.

This section includes notifications regarding client account data.

This section includes all other miscellaneous client notifications.

Let's take a look at your existing client notifications. Start by clicking the gear icon in the bottom-left corner of the screen.

Then select "Client Notifications" in the "Product Configuration" section.

At the top of the Client Notifications page are status indicators for email and SMS messaging on your account. By default, email messaging will be enabled. If desired, SMS messaging can be enabled from the SMS Settings page of your account (SMS unavailable for Starter level plans).

Beneath the status indicators are a variety of client notification messages organized by type, each available in email and SMS format. This includes a set of default messages (applying to all services) in addition to any custom messages you have configured. Every line entry will include the automated message Type (trigger event), Name, and Scope (i.e. which services it applies to). Each message will also have a pencil icon that can be selected to edit it. All emails will have a paper airplane icon at the end of their line entry that can be used to send yourself a test copy of the message. All notifications will also have Active toggles their available formats (Email and/or SMS).

Each kind of message trigger has its own default email and SMS notifications. While all text/SMS messages have an Active toggle, the toggle for some default email messages will be greyed out. Most Active toggles may be switched OFF (grey) or ON (purple), determining whether or not the message is sent automatically when its associated action occurs. Any greyed out toggle indicates a message that cannot be disabled.

Custom messages may also be set up for Booking Cancellations, Booking Confirmations, Booking Followups, Booking Reminders, Boarding Pickup Reminders, Form Submissions, Membership Purchases, Package Confirmations, and Waitlist Notifications. While the default options will be sent out to clients regardless of any service/package/form/membership type, custom messages may be linked to specific services, packages, forms, or memberships. When a custom message is assigned to a service/package, clients will receive that message instead of the default.

Both custom and default automated messages can be edited to better reflect your brand's voice. Let's take a look at how to edit the content of any existing automated message.

Click on the name or pencil icon of any listed notification, whether default or custom, email or text/SMS, to open its Edit Message Template form. This form will include a few fields, depending on the type of message selected.

Once you have made any desired changes to the message, click the "Update Template" button to save your updates.

If the message is set up to go out as an email, you can test out the updated message by clicking the paper plane icon at the end of its line entry on the main Client Notifications page.

This will send a copy of the email to your user profile's registered email address. Any {{first_name}} or {{last_name}} tags will be populated with your test client's information. Note that this option is not available for testing your automated text/SMS messages.

When editing your default messages, you'll notice that there are some characters included in the default Subject and Content fields written within two sets of curly brackets, "{{ }}". These are dynamic content fields that will be replaced with specific details when the email is sent.

To add some yourself, type two open curly braces, "{{". This will populate a menu with a list of available dynamic content options. This list includes fields specific to the client, to your business, and to a specific booking. When an option is selected, the proper content field will be completed for you.

The messages for Booking Reminders and Booking Followups, Boarding Pickup Reminders, and all those found in the Reminders & Expirations section have the ability to be sent out multiple times. This is true both for the default and custom versions of these messages, whether email or SMS/text. This means that those automated texts and emails set up with a follow-up or reminder trigger will have an additional field for controlling the timing of the message(s). When editing a reminder or followup message, and when reminder/followup has been selected as the trigger for a new message, you'll notice an extra field appear on the page.

Click on the right side of the "Scheduled Messages" timing field to open a drop-down menu. This menu will allow you to set the timing to either "Hours" or "Days".

Once you've made your selection, type a value into the left side of the field or use the up/down arrows to adjust the value in increments of 1. Note that this field can be set up for 1 to 72 hours or 1 to 30 days.

Click "Add Message" to populate an additional scheduling field. Each automated reminder/followup message can be set to go out up to three times. To remove any of these messages, click the trash can icon. These messages are removed from the bottom up, so the trash can icon will appear next to the second field after the third has been deleted.

The standard timing for your default messages differs depending on the notification's trigger. The table below outlines the default settings for each trigger. These settings can be edited to reflect whatever timing you prefer, from 1 to 3 notifications each between 1hr and 30 days from the associated trigger event. When setting up custom messages, no default timing will populate.

There are two ways to manage the functionality of your existing automated messages: using their Active toggles or deleting them from your automated messaging list altogether.

The "Active" toggle is available for the some default email notifications as well as for any default text/SMS messages and custom messages you have created. When the toggle is set to ON (purple), the message will be sent out automatically when the related action occurs (i.e. a booking is created, cancelled, etc.). Turning the toggle OFF (grey) prevents the notification from being triggered.

Any default email notification with an active toggle that is greyed out (i.e. shown in lighter purple) cannot be disabled.

Any existing custom message may also be deleted by clicking the trash can icon to the right of its line entry. This will permanently remove the message from your Client Notifications list. Note that the delete button is only available for custom automated messages. Default messages cannot be removed, only edited.

Use these two features to help manage your clients' experience. Choose which messages you want sent out when, and customize exactly what those messages say.

Now that we have discussed where you can find your automated messages and how to manage them, let's take a look at how you can create new custom automated messaging. Start by navigating to your main "Client Notifications" page from the settings navigation page.

Then select the "New Custom Notification" button at the top of the page.

This will open the New Message Template form, which will include the same fields as those found on the Edit Message Template form.

The main difference with this form is that the "Type" and "Trigger" fields will have drop-down menus, allowing you to select the general format for your new message. Clicking on the "Type" field opens a drop-down with the options "Email" and "Text/SMS". This controls the format of the message that will be sent out when the linked action occurs.

Clicking on the "Trigger" field opens a drop down menu with the options Boarding Pickup Reminder, Booking Cancellation, Booking Confirmation, Booking Followup, Booking Reminder, Form Submission, Membership Purchase, Package Confirmation, and Waitlist. This setting controls which action the message will be linked to, and therefore when it will be sent out.

For service-related message types, the New Message Template form will also include fields for "Applicable Services". Use this section to choose which services and/or series you want your new message to apply to. Click the "Select a Service" field to open a drop-down menu with a full list of your services and series, then select one from the list. Use the "Add Service" button to add as many service-selection fields as needed. Click the trash can icon next to any service-selection field to remove it.

If "Package Confirmation" is selected for the message trigger, the Applicable Services field will be replaced by an "Applicable Packages" field. The functionality of this section is very similar to that for services, with the "Select a Package" field opening a menu with a list of your available packages, the "Add Package" button adding another package-selection field, and the trash can icon removing its associated field.

Likewise, if "Membership Purchase" is selected for the trigger, the form will include an "Applicable Memberships" section with a "Select a Membership" field and "Add Membership" button.

If "Form Submission" is selected, the form will include an "Applicable Forms" section with a "Select a Form" field and "Add Form" button.

Once you have selected the message Type, Trigger, and Applicable Services/Packages, use the "Subject" and "Content" fields on the form to create your custom message. Note that if you have chosen to create a text/SMS message the Subject field will not populate.

When done, click the "Create Template" button at the bottom of the form to save your new custom message and return to the main Client Notifications page.

Your message will now be listed in the appropriate notifications subsection, with its assigned services/packages/etc. listed under "Scope". Note that switching the "Active" toggle OFF for any custom automated message will revert the system back to the default message.

For one reason or another, you may find yourself wanting to prevent certain clients from receiving your notifications. It may be due to them having a large number of bookings and not wanting such frequent reminders, confirmations, and followups, or perhaps they have expressed a wish to receive only email notifications rather than SMS messages. Whatever the reason, users can unsubscribe specific clients from automated email and/or text notifications. To edit a client's notification status, start by navigating to their Customer Profile page. From there, locate their "Contact Details" card.

Click the checkboxes next to "Unsubscribed from email" and/or "Unsubscribed from SMS" to control which messages you want to prevent the client from receiving. While the checkbox is unselected (empty), the client will receive the relevant messages. When the checkbox is marked by a blue checkmark, the client will not receive messages of that type. Click any selected checkbox a second time to deselect it. This has no impact on a client's MailChimp subscription status.

There are a lot of advantages to sending your notifications out via text. When setting up your reminders however, there are some important things to keep in mind:

For more information on text/SMS messaging, check out our help article on Sending & Receiving Text Messages.

Happy templating!