Confirmations and Reminders
Confirmation e-mails are a calendar-level setting, and the message is where most of the value is.
Where to find it
Architect Panel → Layout & Pages:
- Booking Calendars — the calendar, then its row actions for everything else
- E-mail Templates — the message
Architect Panel → Integration & Connections:
- E-mail Accounts — what it is sent from
What a confirmation must contain
- What was booked, in words the person recognises.
- When, with the day of the week spelled out.
- Where, including the location if the calendar has several.
- What to bring or prepare.
- How to cancel or change it, and by when.
- Who to contact — a monitored address, not a no-reply.
Most confirmations contain the first two and stop, and every one of the remaining four is a support contact you will otherwise receive.
Spell out the day
"Thursday 14 May at 2:30pm" is read correctly. A date alone is misread, particularly across countries where the number order differs.
Say how to cancel prominently
Somebody who cannot easily cancel does not cancel — they simply do not turn up, and you have lost the slot as well as their attendance. Making cancellation easy is the cheapest way to recover capacity.
A reminder is worth more than the confirmation
Bookings made weeks ahead are forgotten. A reminder a day or two before is consistently the single most effective reduction in no-shows, and it is built as a rule or a journey rather than as a calendar setting.
Two days is usually better than one — it leaves time to rearrange rather than only to cancel.
Send from something monitored
People reply to confirmations, to change a time or ask a question. A no-reply address turns that into a missed appointment.
Include a calendar invitation where you can
Something the recipient can add to their own calendar removes the transcription step where the wrong time gets written down.
Test the whole message
Book a real slot and read what arrives, on a phone. Confirmations are read on phones, and a message that looks fine on a screen frequently does not.
Cancellations deserve a message too
Both ways. A cancellation confirmed in writing prevents the person turning up anyway, and a cancellation by you needs to reach them reliably.
Worked example
A service sends a confirmation naming the day, time, room, what to bring and a cancellation link, from a monitored address, with a calendar invitation attached. A reminder two days before is sent by a rule. No-shows fell by roughly a third after the reminder was introduced.
Recommendations
- Answer all six questions in the confirmation.
- Add a reminder two days ahead — it matters more than the confirmation.
- Monitored sending address, never no-reply.
- Read the message on a phone before going live.