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, which vary depending on the country of the sender.
Setup
1. In your Bookly Cloud account > Products, click on the Get started button near the 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 please 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. Also, pick the right hour for the notifications that will work best with your audience. We recommend a default of 8 pm for customers and around 1h or 30 min before clock off for staff members.
Read more about CRON setup in this article.
4. Choose notification types and build your messages. Write the copy, format it as you like, and add personalized data using variables in curly braces.
If you plan on using scheduled notifications, choose what time scheduled notifications will be sent out under each type of notification you're building.
5. Custom Sender ID allows you to send messages from a personalized sender name. You can display your company or brand name. Prices for messages with the custom sender ID are usually 20-25% higher than normal message price. Check the price list for more info.
Note
a) not all countries allow custom sender IDs due to the local regulations. If custom sender ID is not supported in the destination country, the message will be sent using a generic number of the SMS gateway;
b) Sender ID must be longer than 3 and shorter or equal to 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 > SMS Notifications, open Mailing list tab. Click on the 
button. Set the title.
2. Click on the 
button.
Automatic selection – the system will 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 example, 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 – you can add contacts manually by entering one phone number per line in the international format.
Click on the Add recipients button to save the list.
3. Open Campaigns tab. Click on the 
button. Set the title and schedule a start date and time of the campaign. Once you set a start date, the campaign will have a Pending state until that date and time, but you can change the start date until the campaign begins. Messages will be sent in the time zone that is set in your WP site settings.
4. In the Recipients field, select the Mailing list.
5. In the SMS text, enter your message. Click Save.
Sent messages are listed 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.
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.
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RELATED
Bookly Cloud Products – explore our cloud services that work for your business.
Overview of Notifications – see how you can schedule emails and what you can set as triggers for automated and personalized emails.
Personalization Codes – messages can include real appointment data among other types of personalized info.
GOOD TO KNOW
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WPML Integration – lets you translate messages into 40+ languages.