Heyyyyyy there! Cait here! I’m here today to answer a question that I have been seeing A LOT lately- how can you automate sending a reminder to a client to book an appointment after you’ve sent the scheduler? This is one of my FAVORITE workarounds!
If you know me at all, you know that I’m ALL about automation. During my Workflow Mapping Meetings with clients, we dive deep into how we can change the structure of the client experience in order to let Dubsado take MORE work off your plate.
People ask ALL THE TIME about how to automate a follow up from the Dubsado scheduler if a client does NOT book a particular appointment (whether that’s a discovery call or some other type of session). Unfortunately, this isn’t a native trigger in Dubsado at this time, but that doesn’t mean we can’t automate with a little creativity and ingenuity!
Here’s the method I recommend for the most automation possible.
- Send scheduler- this is where you will send the appointment scheduler that you are trying to get your (potential) client to book.
- Send follow up email x days after all previous actions complete- this step will happen NO MATTER WHAT! Which is why the workflow continues to step 3 and 4, to STOP this email from sending if the client DOES book an appointment.
- Start a workflow 0 days after an appointment is scheduled – this new workflow will have the automations built in for whatever happens after they book the appointment
- Pause workflow 0 days after an appointment is scheduled – this is what will stop the follow up email from sending if the appointment does get scheduled.
The important thing to know is that these steps have to happen in THIS order, or things won’t go correctly.
Just in case reading this isn’t quite resonating with you, I recorded a little video walking you through it (lookin ROUGH on a Sunday afternoon, but whatever, IT’S FOR THE PEOPLE!).
Cait! Thanks for providing this tutorial. I recently had a client inquire about this and I’ve been in touch with Dubsado about it but I wasnt too clear on how the secondary workflow worked. Thanks for your insight. I appreciate it!
Dubsado users are so smart! Thanks Cait 🙂
This is so useful, Cait! Question, in your follow-up email, how would you link to the scheduler (eg. discovery call) without it creating a new lead/project?
Hi Dawn! You can’t, unfortunately. I just include a line redirecting them back to the original email. I give them the subject line to make it easy for them to find it!
Thank you!!! I needed this workflow for a client of mine and am so happy you created this for us to find!!
hi Cait! thank you so much for sharing this. would this work if I send two follow-up emails, but want the workflow to pause if they’ve booked after either of those appointments are scheduled?
Hi Randi,
You can definitely send multiple follow ups, however, I don’t recommend sending duplicate schedulers in the workflow because it just adds unnecessary complication. Instead, for each follow up you would like to send, I recommend including a line in the email that says something along the lines of “To book your appointment, head back to the email with the subject line “INSERT SUBJECT LINE HERE”.” That way, it’s easy for the client to find it, but it keeps your workflow nice and clean on the back end.
If you’re going to send the scheduler itself multiple times, then you’ll need to duplicate the pause workflow and start workflow steps for each time that it’s sent.
Hope this helps!
xo, Cait
Could your multiple follow ups just be an email that has your scheduler link? or would that not work? so the Action, ‘send email’ instead of ‘ send scheduler’ and that email contains a link of that same scheduler? I’m not sure I’m a big fan of sending them back to the first email. Want to keep it easy.
Each time you use the “Send Appointment Scheduler” action, it will apply a NEW scheduler. SO in the example you gave in your second comment, it would mean that you need to make that “Change Project Status” step TWICE (or once for each time the scheduler is sent).
The only action I want after the appointment is booked is ” Change status” so that it moves the lead into Consult booked on my lead status in projects.
I plan on applying my proposal workflow manually to projects because I usually know better after consult wich proposal template to send (I’m a wedding planner). So instead of step 3 being start a new workflow can my step 3 be ” change status after appointment is booked” ? and then keep the same step 4 you suggest?
Yes you can swap out step 3 for changing the status.
This is so helpful Cait! In the second workflow that is then started, it is not possible to use the appointment triggers is it? Do you have a tip on how to get around this eg create a Todo in the next workflow that triggers 1 day before appointment. Appreciate you!
There’s no way to do that unfortunately! The downside to using this workaround is that you lose all ability for your workflow to know when the appointment takes place. Since the scheduler is sent in the first workflow, the second workflow has no idea when the appointment is happening. It’s a matter of prioritizing which piece of that experience or workflow is most important to you and choosing a method that allows you to do THAT thing while compromising on the other thing.
Thank you so much 🙂