SMS or email for appointment reminders

The question is not whether to send reminders. That answer is well established: automated reminders are the cheapest available measure against no-shows. The question is which channel to use, because SMS is not free and email is not always read.

What each channel actually does

The decisive difference is not reach but time to read. A reminder the customer opens the next morning is useless for an 8am appointment.

Use both, each for its own job

Rather than picking one channel, split messages by the job they do.

Booking confirmation by email. Sent immediately. There is room here for the address, parking directions, the cancellation policy, the price and a reschedule link. The customer can also find it again a week later, which nobody does with an SMS.

Reminder by SMS 24 hours before. Short, no preamble: service, time, place, reschedule link. This is the message that actually prevents the no-show.

A second SMS two hours before, only for expensive or long appointments. On a 20 EUR service that is a needless cost and mildly irritating. On a two-hour, 150 EUR treatment it pays for itself the first time it saves a slot.

When to skip the SMS

Do not send an SMS for appointments booked less than 24 hours in advance. The confirmation went out moments ago; a second message in the same hour is pure cost. Likewise skip it for standing weekly appointments at the same time, unless the customer specifically asked for it.

For group sessions, send the SMS only to those who have not yet paid. Email is enough for paid attendees.

How to work out whether SMS pays

The arithmetic is simple and takes three minutes. Take your monthly appointment count, your no-show rate and your average service value.

A salon with 400 appointments a month, an eight percent no-show rate and an average service of 35 EUR loses roughly 1,120 EUR a month. If SMS reminders halve the no-show rate, the saving is around 560 EUR. The cost of 400 messages at typical rates is far below that. The ratio is so unfavourable to no-shows that the calculation almost always comes out in favour of SMS.

What is worth noting is that the ratio stays favourable even if reminders work far worse than expected. Even a one-fifth reduction in no-shows covers the cost.

What the message should contain

The best reminder is one that requires no response. It carries four facts and nothing else:

1. Your business name, so the customer knows immediately who is writing.
2. The date and time.
3. The service and the employee, where that matters.
4. A link to reschedule or cancel.

The fourth point is what separates a reminder from a notification. Without it, a customer who cannot make it does nothing, because cancelling would mean phoning. The slot stays booked and is lost.

Do not add promotions, discounts or invitations. That turns the message into marketing, which means you need consent for it and the customer reads it less carefully.

When to send

Send the reminder 24 hours ahead, but within civilised hours. If the appointment is at 7am, send the message the previous afternoon rather than at the same hour the day before. A message at 2am is a worse experience than one lost appointment.

For Monday morning appointments, send on Friday afternoon. That is the most commonly overlooked case.

What to set up in practice

In Calendra, confirmations and reminders are part of delivering the booking, which means they are sent automatically and kept separate from marketing messages. You can set the channel, the timing and the content per service. The details, including where sending is logged, are on the Appointment reminders page.

If you have been reminding people by hand, start with a single setting: SMS 24 hours ahead, with a reschedule link. That is most of the effect and takes five minutes. See the pricing for how many messages are included.