Client emails let you write one email and send it to a group of your clients — everyone who has lapsed, everyone who boarded this time last year, this month's birthdays, or all your active clients. Each client gets their own copy, addressed by name.
Owners and managers can write and send them. Go to Analytics → Marketing and press Emails, or press Email this list on any of the Marketing page's lists to start an email to exactly the clients that list is showing.
Writing an Email
Press New Email. The page has three parts on the left — who it's for, the email, and sending — and two on the right that follow along as you type: Who gets it and a Preview.
Who It's For
Pick a Group:
| Group | Who's in it | Its second control |
|---|---|---|
| Active clients | Everyone who has visited in the last 24 months or has something booked | — |
| Booked this time last year | Clients who boarded in the coming weeks a year ago and haven't booked those dates again | Looking ahead: 4, 8 or 12 weeks |
| Lapsed clients | Clients who have stopped coming | Last visit: 3–6 months ago, 6–12 months ago, or over a year ago |
| Pets with a birthday | Owners of pets with a known birthday in the month | Month: this month or either of the next two |
The three lists follow the same rules as the Marketing page. There is no way to email clients who haven't been in for more than two years and have nothing booked — old addresses are where bounced mail and spam reports come from.
Who Gets It
The Who gets it card shows how many clients the email will reach and the first few names. Underneath it lists anyone in the group who is being left out, and why:
- emailed in the last 7 days, skipped — a client gets at most one of these emails from you in any seven days, whichever email it was. This stops a birthday note, a lapsed nudge and a holiday offer landing on the same person in one week.
- unsubscribed — the client has opted out of your offers and news.
- no email address on file
Two client records sharing one email address get one copy, not two. Clients whose pets are all archived or deceased are never included.
The Email
- Subject and Message are plain text. Leave a blank line between paragraphs.
- Type
{first name}or{pet names}anywhere in the subject, the message or the button, and each client's copy is filled in: "Hi Dana", "We miss Maple and Birch". For a birthday email,{pet names}is the pet with the birthday; for a this-time-last-year email, the pets that stayed. - Button (optional) and Button link add one button under the message — to your online booking page, for example. The link must start with
https://orhttp://. - Start from fills in a ready-made email you can edit: We miss you, Holiday booking or Birthday. Arriving from a Marketing list fills in the matching one for you.
The Preview shows the email as the first client on the list would read it. It's close to the real thing; Send me a test is the real thing.
Tip: Every email is signed off however you write it. The starters end with "— The team at" and your facility's name; change it to your own name if that's how your clients know you.
Sending
| Button | What it does |
|---|---|
| Send now | Asks you to confirm the number of clients, then sends. |
| Send me a test | Sends one copy to the email address you sign in with, with [TEST] in front of the subject. The unsubscribe link on a test is a real one for your own address — leave it alone. |
| Save draft | Keeps the email for later. Drafts are on the Emails page. |
| Schedule | Sends at the Date and Time you pick, in your facility's time. |
Every button saves what's on the page first.
Sending Later
A scheduled email works out its group when the time comes, not when you schedule it. An email to lapsed clients scheduled for next Tuesday goes to whoever is lapsed next Tuesday.
Open a scheduled email from the Emails page to see when it goes. Edit changes it; Cancel send takes it back to a draft and nothing is sent.
If a scheduled email can't go when it's due — nobody was in the group, or your account couldn't send — it is marked Not sent and says why.
On a Free Trial
During your trial you can write emails, save them and send yourself tests. Send now and Schedule unlock once your subscription starts.
What Your Clients Receive
- The email comes from your facility's name. When a client replies, the reply goes to your facility's email address.
- It opens with your subject as a headline, then your message and button.
- The footer says the client is getting it because they're your client, shows your facility's Address from the Facility Information card on Settings → General, and ends with an Unsubscribe link, added by the mail service that delivers these emails.
Unsubscribing
A client who follows the unsubscribe link stops getting your offers and news. Booking confirmations, reminders and invoices are not affected — those keep arriving.
You'll see it in three places:
- On the client's page, the Offers and news switch in the Notifications card is off. You can also switch it off yourself for a client who asks you to.
- In the customer portal, the client has the same Offers and news switch under Notification Preferences.
- The email's results show them as Unsubscribed.
A client who marks one of these emails as spam is unsubscribed automatically.
A client who unsubscribed through the link is also on the mail service's own do-not-send list. Switching Offers and news back on doesn't take them off it, so their copy will show as Not sent. A client who wants back in needs both: they use the re-subscribe option on the page the unsubscribe link took them to, and you switch Offers and news back on.
Results
Open a sent email from the Emails page:
| Figure | What it means |
|---|---|
| Sent | Messages handed to the mail service |
| Bounced | Addresses that turned out not to exist |
| Unsubscribed | Clients who unsubscribed from this email |
| Booked since | Clients who made a booking of any kind after the email went out |
Who it went to lists every client with what happened: Sent, Bounced, Unsubscribed, Reported as spam, Not sent (with the reason), and Booked since.
"Booked since" tells you the client booked after the email, not because of it — but an email to forty lapsed clients followed by six bookings is a fair sign it worked.
Bounces from these emails show here instead of raising an email couldn't be delivered alert for each one. When an address bounces, fix it on the client's page.
A sent email can't be edited or deleted — it's your record of who was sent what.