Confirmation and reminder emails go out with every booking: they accompany a specific action by the customer. Automatic follow-ups answer a different question — what happens when nothing happens? A customer who comes once and vanishes, credits bought and never used, a first session with no sequel: none of these triggers an email, and yet they are the most expensive situations of all.

Four follow-ups are available. Each is enabled separately, and nothing goes out while the master switch is off.

The four follow-ups

The name in brackets is the email template that goes out: that is the name under which you will find it to rewrite its wording.

First booking welcome (first-booking-welcome): a word of welcome on the very first booking, with the practical details. Sent once per customer, on top of the booking confirmation, which always goes out.
After a session (session-followup): a follow-up once the session has taken place, inviting the customer to book the next one. The delay is set in hours — 24 h to begin with — and it is limited to the first session unless you decide otherwise: regulars do not need a message every week.
Inactive customers (win-back): two messages, a week apart, for customers who used to come and stopped. You choose how many days of inactivity make a customer count as inactive — 45 days to begin with. Both messages use the same template.
Unused credits (credits-unused): a reminder to customers who bought credits and have booked nothing since, 21 days after the purchase to begin with. They have already paid; only the booking is missing.

Follow-ups stop on their own

This is the important part: each message is re-evaluated just before it is sent, never scheduled in advance. If a customer books again between two messages, the follow-up stops immediately — they will not receive the next one. The same applies if their account is deleted, if they withdraw their agreement to receive communications, or if you switch the follow-up off along the way.

In practice, you cannot chase someone who has already come back. And if you change a delay, the new delay applies to follow-ups already under way too.

Turning it on late

Turning the follow-ups on six months after opening does not start from nothing. The first time you enable "Inactive customers" or "Unused credits", the customers already in that situation are caught up: those who stopped coming months ago, and those whose credits have been sitting unused. Without it they would never be contacted — those two follow-ups spot the moment a customer tips over, not the fact that they already have.

The catch-up is spread over several hours rather than sent in one block, and it does not reach back forever: past a few months of inactivity a customer is left alone. It happens once only; if you switch a follow-up off and on again later, only the recent weeks are looked at. The other two follow-ups are never caught up: welcoming a regular, or asking how a session three months ago went will not happen.

Who receives them

Only customers with an account who have not refused the follow-ups. Each customer sets this from their email settings, with a "Follow-up emails" box separate from the newsletter subscription: leaving the newsletter does not stop the follow-ups, and the reverse holds too. The box starts ticked; a customer who clears it is never contacted again, whichever follow-up is enabled. The after-a-session message is the exception and may also reach someone who booked without an account: it concerns a session they actually attended.

Enabling and customizing

Everything is set in the settings, "Follow-up" tab. Turn on the master switch first, then the follow-ups you want, one by one. Everything is off to begin with, so nothing reaches your customers without your say-so.

The wording of each message is rewritten in the email templates. Templates are listed there under the names given above — first-booking-welcome, session-followup, win-back and credits-unused — and each follow-up repeats its own in its description. The supplied wording is deliberately neutral: rewriting it in your own voice is what separates an automated message from one that makes someone want to come back.

Sends are decided once an hour: an enabled follow-up therefore does not go out to the second, but within the hour after it falls due. Everything that went out is listed in the email log, with the template name and the recipient.

Following the results

The "Retention" section of the metrics gives the return rate, how many customers are active and inactive, who is holding unused credits and who never came at all. That is where the effect of follow-ups shows: a rising return rate and a falling number of inactive customers.