Appointment reminders
Every confirmed appointment gets a reminder at the time you choose, by email, and by text or WhatsApp for patients who want them. Moved or canceled visits never trigger an old one.
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Most reminder tools can send a message. Fewer know when not to.
Most no-shows aren't people who meant to skip. They forgot, or remembered too late to let you know.
A patient reschedules on the phone, but the reminder tool still sends the old time. Now they're confused, and so is your front desk.
Tools that remind every request tell patients about appointments your team hasn't agreed to yet.
How it works
Reminders are built into booking, so they always know the real state of every appointment.
In settings, set how many hours before an appointment reminders go out. The same timing applies across channels.
Every confirmed booking gets an email. On the booking form, patients can also opt in to WhatsApp messages and a text message reminder.
A request waiting for your team never triggers a reminder. Once confirmed, the reminder is scheduled.
If an appointment is canceled, moved or has already started, its old reminder is dropped automatically.
Booking history
Each channel has a clear job. Email covers every confirmed booking. WhatsApp, through Meta's official WhatsApp Business Cloud API, sends booking messages and reminders to patients who opt in. SMS, through Twilio, sends the reminder only, to patients who ask for texts and when your clinic switches SMS on.
Read more about SMS reminders, WhatsApp reminders and email notifications.
Appointments are kept in your clinic's own time zone, whether that's Eastern, Central, Mountain or Pacific, and availability accounts for daylight saving time changes. The time in every reminder is the time the patient actually booked, on both sides of the clock change.
Patients' mobile numbers are checked against your country's format when they book, so WhatsApp messages and text reminders go to a number that can actually receive them.
A message that arrives too late to be useful is skipped instead of sent. That rule runs across all automatic messages, not just reminders, so patients never get something that makes your clinic look out of date.
Every reminder links to the patient's private manage page. A patient who can't make it cancels within your cancellation window, and the slot becomes available for someone else.
That turns a likely no-show into a slot you can fill. It's the core of reducing no-shows, alongside booking deposits on the treatments where they make sense.
Failed sends are retried automatically. If a channel keeps failing or isn't connected, the Velvet Lead team is alerted. Your admin panel's system status shows whether email, WhatsApp and background jobs are healthy.
When you need quiet, for a closure or a system change, one switch pauses every automatic message. They queue up and go out when you switch back on.
The same message system sends the rest of the patient journey: a prompt to fill out the medical and consent form before the visit, a review request afterward, and a rebooking reminder when it's time to come back.
Honest limits
Worth knowing before you plan your patient messages.
FAQ
Email for every confirmed booking, WhatsApp for patients who opt in, and SMS for patients who ask for a text when your clinic switches SMS on.
Yes. Your clinic sets how many hours before the appointment reminders are sent.
No. Reminders only go to confirmed appointments.
If the appointment is canceled, moved or has already started, the old reminder is dropped automatically.
Yes. One switch pauses all automatic messages. They queue up and go out when you switch them back on.
Reminders are appointment and care messages only. Marketing to a segment of patients is a separate email campaign, written and sent once to people who agreed to it. There are no SMS or WhatsApp campaigns.
Book a 15-minute demo and we'll show you a booking's full message history on our demo clinic.