To send booking reminders, WC Vendors have 3 different options.

1. Adding Reminder Emails

2. Manual Email Reminders

3. SMS Reminders via Twilio

Let’s see how you can send reminders in these three ways with the Booking & Appointment Plugin for WooCommerce.

Firstly, go to your WC Vendor Dashboard > Booking > Send Reminders.

After clicking on it you see the Reminders Page:

1. Adding Email Reminders

Click the Add Reminder button as found here:

Clicking the Add Reminder button will take you here:

Add the Title, subject, and heading for this email.

You can edit the Email Content using the shortcodes/tags given.

Set the Status of this reminder as Active.  

Under Triggers, you will find the following:

Sending Delay decides the time when the email will be sent. For instance, it could be after or before 1 hour, 2 days, 1 month, or even 2 years.

Trigger decides whether the email will be sent before or after booking. 

The Products setting lets you choose more than one product for which this email reminder will be sent.

For example, you can enter a delay of 1 hour before the booking date for the product Hotel, the Pierre.

This would mean the customer will receive an automatic reminder email 1 hour before their booking date for the product Hotel, the Pierre.

Let’s say a customer has made the booking for Hotel, The Pierre – 1:50 PM to 2:50 PM, then they will receive an automatic reminder email at 12:50 PM on 24th December as shown below:

Similarly, you can go to the SMS Reminder tab.

Tick the checkbox for the Send SMS setting.

Edit the SMS Body using the short tags. 

2. Manual Email Reminders 

With this setting, you can manually set up reminder emails. Click the Manual Reminder tab:

The template used to send manual reminder emails is the same as the one used for automatic reminders.

However, you can add more content to the message.

Reminders can be sent based on an Order, Booking ID, or Product.

This can be done by selecting the radio button in Send Reminder for the option shown in the above image.

When you select Order # in the ‘Send Reminder for’ option, the list of Order IDs will be available by clicking the Order IDs field:

Select from the list of displayed Order IDs.

You can send the reminder email to multiple Order IDs by selecting them from the dropdown.

The reminder email will be sent to the selected Order IDs together.

Likewise, the Booking ID can be used for reminder notifications.

Select the booking IDs from the dropdown as shown below:

When you select the Product radio button, all the Booked Products will be displayed like Order IDs and Booking IDs.

You can select a single product or multiple products from the list as shown below:

Once you have selected the Order # or Booking ID or Product, add the Subject and the Message to the email.

To understand this better, let’s take an instance where you want to send a reminder email to a customer’s booking for Guitar lessons.

Select the product Guitar lessons for beginners, add the Subject as Reminder – Guitar lessons for beginners, and compose a message as shown below:

You can click the Save Draft button to save it as a draft and send the email later.

You can even click the Send Reminder button to send the reminder email immediately.

Clicking the Send Reminder button sends the email reminder to all future bookings of Guitar lessons for beginners.

This is the reminder email that the customer receives:

3. SMS Reminders 

This setting lets you send SMS Reminders. Select the SMS Settings tab:

The SMS Reminders page will look like this:

To send SMS booking reminders, you must create a Twilio account.

You will collect your Account SID, Auth Token, and Twilio phone number.

Next, enter all these details after enabling sending reminder SMS by ticking the Enable SMS.

Next, you can make changes to the SMS Body.

There are some shortcodes available that can be used in the SMS body. They will be replaced by the actual information when sending an SMS to the customer.

Once you have filled in the details they will look like this:

When you’re done, click on the Save Settings button.

Now you will have to add details for sending a Test SMS to the added recipient so that you can check the message before it is sent to the customer.

The phone number in the Recipient field should be valid in the E.164 format.

Clicking the Send button will send an SMS to the number entered in the Recipient field.

Once done, you can click on the Send button.

For example, a booking for ‘Guitar lessons for beginners’ is set for 20th December 2021.

The SMS reminder will be sent to the customer about their booking with the following booking details:

In this way, WC Vendors can manage sending email and SMS reminders for the bookings automatically or manually!