Text messages can be triggered by events within the plugin or scheduled to be sent out to clients and staff (see more).
Text messages will incur additional charges, the amount of which varies depending on the country of the sender.
Setup
1. In your Bookly Cloud account, navigate to Products and click on the Get Started button next to SMS Notifications.
2. Open the SMS Notifications section. In the Administrator phone field, enter a valid mobile number in the international format.
3. To send scheduled notifications, execute the following command hourly with your cron:
wget -q -O - http://[your-domain]/wp-cron.php
We advise that you contact your hosting provider for assistance with setting it up. Choose an appropriate hour for notifications; we recommend a default of 8 pm for customers and approximately 1 hour or 30 minutes before clock-off for staff members.
For more information on CRON setup, read this article.
4. Select the notification type and customize your messages. Write the copy, format it to your preference, and add personalized data using variables in curly braces.
If you intend to use scheduled notifications, specify the time at which these notifications will be sent for each type of notification you are creating.
5. Custom Sender ID enables you to send messages from a personalized sender name, allowing you to display your company or brand name. Please note that prices for messages with a custom sender ID are typically 20-25% higher than the normal message price. Refer to the price list for more details.
Note
a) Not all countries allow custom sender IDs due to local regulations. If custom sender ID is not supported in the destination country, the message will be sent using a generic number from the SMS gateway;
b) Ensure that the Sender ID is longer than 3 characters but not exceeding 11 characters.
Text messages (SMS) can have as many characters as you wish. If the texts of your notifications exceed the limit, the messages won't be cut in two, but you will be charged twice as much. That's why you may want to optimize the cost by cutting down on the number of characters in your text message notifications.
Latin characters – 160 symbols fit in one message.
Any other characters (Cyrillic, Chinese, Arabic, etc.) – 70 symbols fit in one message.
You can use this Online SMS Length Calculator to check the length of your message.
SMS Campaigns
Reach all your customers with text messages for various marketing purposes.
1. In Bookly Cloud, navigate to SMS Notifications and open the Mailing list tab. Click on the New list button. Click on the New list button, then proceed to set the title for the new mailing list.
2. Click on the Add recipients button.
Automatic selection: The system will automatically add to the list all contacts that meet the selected criteria and have attended at least one service/provider selected in the Providers and Services fields. For instance, if you set "All Staff" in the Providers field and the customer had a meeting with one of them, this contact will be added to the mailing list.
Manual selection: Alternatively, you can add contacts manually by entering one phone number per line in the international format.
Click Add recipients at the bottom of the window to save the list.
3. Open the Campaigns tab, and then click on the New campaign button. Set the title and schedule a start date and time for the campaign.
If you choose Manual, the campaign will be saved with the 'Ready to send' status. You can then click on the Start Now button to send the campaign immediately.
If you set a start time, the campaign will have a 'Pending' status until that date and time. However, you can change the start date until the campaign begins. Messages will be sent in the time zone set in your WP site settings.
4. In the Recipients field, choose the desired Mailing list.
5. Enter your message in the Sms text field, and then click Save.
Sent messages can be viewed in the SMS Details tab.
[BOOKLY BLOG] How to Get Started with Bookly SMS Mailing Campaigns
Note
Currently, not all Bookly placeholders are supported in the SMS Campaigns. You can use {company_name}, {company_phone}, {company_website}, {client_name} and {client_phone} codes.
SMS Verification
You can use customer verification by SMS to ensure that their contact information in a booking form is correct.
For Step-by-step booking form
Go to the Settings > Customers > Verify customer's contact information at Details step, and select Always verify phone. This way, a notification with verification code will be sent by SMS every time a client books an appointment on your website.
If you choose Only if data is different from the previous order, a verification code by SMS will be sent in case of the updated phone number.
To disable SMS verification, select Off.
For modern booking forms
Open your booking form and navigate to the Details tab. Then, select Verify phone under Verify credentials.
Ensure that you have enabled a Notification to customer with verification code template in SMS Notifications.
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