Automated emails

Session automatically handles email communications with your customers and team. Getting the right emails to the right people - without any manual work - reduces no-shows, saves time on admin, and helps your team stay on top of what's happening.

What you can do with it

• Customise customer notifications - edit the subject and body of booking confirmations, cancellations, membership emails, and more to match your voice
• Send automated follow-ups - remind customers before their session, request a review after it ends, and win back customers who haven't been in for a while, with no manual effort
• Word a follow-up differently for one session - give an event or a special its own reminder and review request, while every other session keeps your venue wording
• Alert your team - notify admins and staff about new bookings, cancellations, and membership sign-ups as they happen
• Let each team member set their own preferences - staff can mute categories they don't need from their own account, so inboxes stay manageable

Customer notifications

All customer notifications are on by default. Go to Email → Automated, pick a type, and edit the subject line and body to match your tone. You can also turn individual types off.

Editing an email

Open Email → Automated, pick any email, and click the pencil to edit it. Each email has three parts you control:

• Subject - the line customers see in their inbox.
• Content - a simple formatting editor. Select text to make it bold or italic, add a link, or start a bulleted list. You never need to write HTML.
• Reply-to - where customer replies go (optional). It defaults to your contact email, so replies reach you without any setup. Enter a different address to override it. If you have no contact email set, set an address here - otherwise a customer replying to this email reaches nobody.

To include details that change per booking - like the customer's name or the session time - type a variable such as {{first_name}} or {{session_name}}. The available variables are listed under the content box, and Session fills them in when the email sends. Details like the date, time, spaces, total paid, and booking link are added to every email automatically, so you don't need to include them yourself.

Previewing before you save

Click the eye on any row to see the email laid out. The preview uses your real logo, colours, wording and venue address; the rest - the customer's name, the session, the date and the amounts - are example details standing in for a real booking, so you can judge the layout without having to find one. A notice at the top of the preview says as much. Nothing in there is a setting you need to correct.

If you have not added a location yet, the address is an example too, and it starts saying "Example Street" so you can tell. Add one under Settings -> Company and it appears in its place.

Customer follow-ups

Go to Email → Automated and enable the follow-up types you want - session reminder, review request, win-back, or any combination. Then set the timing for each - for example, 24 hours before the session starts. Follow-ups send based on the session date, not the booking date, so they stay accurate if a customer reschedules.

Follow-ups have a few built-in limits so customers aren't over-emailed:

• Last-minute bookings skip the reminder. If someone books close to their session start, their booking confirmation already gives them the details, so we don't send a reminder right behind it.
• Review requests are capped at once every 90 days per customer. Your regulars won't be asked for a review after every single visit.
• Customers can opt out of review requests. Every review request includes an unsubscribe link. It only stops review requests - booking confirmations, reminders, and other essential emails keep coming. Confirmations and reminders themselves can't be unsubscribed, because they're essential booking information.

Different wording for one session

Some sessions need their own wording. An event might need "bring a mat and arrive fifteen minutes early", where an ordinary sauna session doesn't - and a review request after a one-off event reads better if it names the event.

Open the session, go to the Messages tab, and click the pencil beside Session reminder or Review request.

1. 1

   Write only what you want to change

   Leave the subject blank to keep your venue subject and just rewrite the message, or change both. Anything you leave blank uses your venue default, and the box shows you what that default is.

2. 2

   Save

   The row now reads Customised for this session, so you can see at a glance which sessions have their own wording. Click the eye beside it to preview the wording customers will receive, with example booking details filled in.

3. 3

   To go back

   Reopen it and click Use venue default, then Save. Emptying every field has the same effect - it clears the customisation rather than sending a blank email.

Timing stays venue-wide. You choose how far ahead reminders go out once, in Email → Automated, and every session follows it. Only the wording changes per session. Review requests keep their unsubscribe link whatever you write, and a customer who has opted out stays opted out.

Win-back discounts

The win-back email goes to customers who haven't booked for a while, with a personal discount code to bring them back. Open Email → Automated, click Win-back, and set three things: how long after someone's last session to send it, the percentage off, and how long the code stays valid.

Every code is personal to one customer and can only be used once. A few rules are built in and always apply, so you don't need to configure them:

• Each customer only ever gets one win-back code. Not one per lapse - one for life. If they come back, lapse again a year later, and would otherwise qualify, they still won't get a second code.
• Codes only work on standard-price sessions. Private hire and group bookings are never discounted, so your most expensive bookings are protected.
• Codes only cover one space per booking. If a returning customer books for four people, one space is discounted and the other three pay full price.
• Customers with a future booking, an active membership, or unused bundle credits are skipped. They haven't lapsed, so there's nothing to win back.
• Every win-back email includes an unsubscribe link, because it's a promotional email rather than essential booking information.

If some of your standard-price sessions are pricier than others - a guest-led event, say, or a special - you can narrow the discount further. Turn on Limit to specific sessions and tick only the sessions the code should work on. Leave it off and every standard-price session is eligible.

Issued codes get their own tab under Offers → Discounts, separate from the discount codes you create yourself, so a long win-back list doesn't bury them. The tab shows a running count of how many codes have been issued and how many have been redeemed, and opening any code shows who used it and when - which is how you tell whether the campaign is actually paying for itself.

Team notifications

Go to Email → Automated and enable the global notification types you want. Any admin or staff member can go to My account → Notification preferences and mute categories they don't need. Admins can also adjust preferences on behalf of team members from Settings → Team - open the edit panel for any member to view and change their settings.

There are four types:

• New bookings - a customer makes a new booking
• Cancellations and reschedules - a customer cancels or changes a booking
• Memberships and purchases - a new membership, bundle, or gift voucher purchase
• System alerts - events that need admin attention (cannot be muted)

Troubleshooting

1. Team members aren't receiving notifications. Check that the category is turned on in Emails → Automated, and that the individual hasn't muted it in their account.

2. A customer email looks wrong. Go to Email → Automated, find the type, and check the subject and body. Changes apply to all future sends.

3. The preview shows a customer I don't recognise, or details that aren't mine. Those are example details, there so the layout makes sense without a real booking behind it - the name, the session, the date and the amounts are all made up, and the notice at the top of the preview says so. Your logo, colours, wording and venue address are the real ones. If the address is wrong, that one is worth fixing: it comes from your first location under Settings -> Company.

4. A {{variable}} showed up literally in a sent email. The name doesn't match one Session recognises - only the variables listed under the content box are filled in. Check the spelling and the double curly braces, and avoid formatting part of a variable (bolding just first inside {{first_name}} breaks it).

5. Follow-ups aren't sending. Confirm the type is enabled and the timing is set. Follow-ups only send for sessions booked after you turned them on. Reminders are also skipped for last-minute bookings (the confirmation covers them), and a customer won't get a repeat review request within 90 days or after they've unsubscribed from review requests.

6. A session is sending the venue wording, not the wording I wrote for it. Check you saved the override on the right session - custom wording is per session type, so a session that looks similar in the calendar is a separate session with its own wording. Open that session's Messages tab: if the follow-up row doesn't say Customised for this session, it's still using the venue default.

7. I want one date of a repeating session worded differently. That isn't possible - custom wording applies to every occurrence of a session. If the date is genuinely a one-off event, create it as its own session and customise that instead.

8. A win-back discount came off less than the customer expected. Win-back codes only cover one space per booking, so on a booking for several people the other spaces pay full price. That's deliberate - the code is meant to bring one lapsed customer back rather than discount a group outing. If your own email wording promises a discount "on your next booking", edit it to say "session" so it matches.

9. A lapsed customer didn't get a win-back email. They'll be skipped if they've had a win-back code before (it's one per customer for life), if they have a future booking, an active membership, or unused bundle credits, or if they've unsubscribed. Customers whose last session predates the day you enabled the automation are also skipped, so nobody gets a backlog of emails the moment you turn it on.