Send an email or SMS to clients

This guide shows you how to email your clients from go flow, how to check what was sent, and how to test your automated messages safely. Messages you write yourself are always sent as email — either a one-off email composed from the Emails page, or an email to a session's participants started from the participant list. SMS is used only for the three automated SMS reminders, and only once SMS is set up for your organisation; see SMS template.

Compose a one-off email

Open the Emails page to see the history of everything sent from your organisation, then click the Compose email button (the email icon) to open the email composer. This button only appears if you have the Clients right set to Manage, so if you can't see it, ask an administrator to grant that right.

Add recipients, subject and body

In the composer, use the Recipients field to search for and select clients. Each one appears as a chip showing their name and email address; remove a recipient with the close icon on their chip, and add as many as you need. Enter a Subject line, then write the message in the formatting editor, which supports bold, italic and underline text, bullet and numbered lists, and links. Click the send button to deliver the email to every recipient. The button stays disabled until you have at least one recipient, a subject, and a body, and closing the dialog with unsaved changes asks you to confirm first. The system does not check a client's marketing or newsletter opt-in before sending, so before you send any marketing or promotional content, confirm the client has given consent on their profile — transactional replies to a client are unaffected.

Each recipient gets their own email. In the message text — not in the subject — you can write {{clientFirstName}} to greet each recipient by first name; {{organisationName}} and {{year}} work too. Clients without an email address are skipped. The email is framed by the header, signature and footer chosen in the Ad-hoc email template on the Messages tab of Configurations > Templates, in the client's language where your footer and signature have one.

Message a session's participants

To reach the people booked into a session, open the session's participant list, tick the participants you want to contact, and click Message clients. The same email composer opens with the selected participants already filled in as recipients — add a subject and body and send as usual. The message goes out as an email.

Note that the Clients page has no send-message action: selecting clients there feeds the Excel export only. To email several clients of your own choosing, use Compose email on the Emails page and add them as recipients.

Review delivery

Back on the Emails page, the history shows one month at a time — use the month picker to move between months, up to five years back. The search matches the subject and the client's name and email address, not the message text. Each row shows the send date, type, subject, client, email address, who it was Sent by, and a status chip so you can follow the recorded sending state:

• Sent — the system records the message as sent. This does not prove inbox delivery or that the recipient read it.
• Scheduled — it has a future send time: a reminder, or a message waiting for another attempt after a failed one.
• Pending — it is waiting to be processed, or it was not delivered: sending was given up after repeated failures, or go flow dropped it on purpose, for example a reminder whose booking was no longer active or whose session had already started. A message that is still Pending well after its send time was not delivered.

The Emails page describes the statuses in full. Click a row's expand chevron, or double-click the row, to read the body as it was sent. The header, footer and signature are added at sending and are not shown here — check them in a real inbox. Verification codes for the booking site are never listed.

Brand your automated messages

The one-off emails above carry whatever you type, but your automated emails, SMS messages and printable documents follow saved templates. These are managed on the Templates page under the Messages and Branding tabs.

Open an email or SMS template from the Messages tab to edit the subject and content for each of your organisation's languages, using only the placeholders that message type supports. Whether a message is sent at all is set separately — mostly by the switches under Email notifications on each resource and session. On the Branding tab, edit the header, footer and signature blocks that frame your emails; they are added each time an email is sent, so a change to a block reaches all emails that use it. See Message templates for the full detail, including which message is sent when, to whom, and with which placeholders.

Test your automated messages safely

The preview in the email editor shows sample data and every optional section at once. To see what a client really receives, trigger the messages for a test client whose email address is your own. Never use a real client for a test: messages go to whatever address the client record holds.

You need: the Configuration & settings right set to Manage to add, hold and cancel participants in the participant list, and an active session at least two days ahead with a free place, whose Email notifications switches you want to test are turned on.

1. Create your test client. Add a client with your own name and your own email address — and your mobile number if you use SMS reminders — see Add your first client. Alternatively, sign in on your booking site with your own address: that creates the client, and the Verification code email arrives in the language selected on the booking site.
2. Default language, from the dashboard. Open the session's participant list, click Add participant and choose your test client. The Confirmation arrives within moments, once the change has synced. The reminders follow on their own schedule: Reminder — 1 day before at 09:00 the day before and Reminder — morning of at 07:00 on the day. Bookings you add in the dashboard produce messages in your organisation's default language.
3. Place held for you. Click Hold places, choose your test client and one place, set a hold end, and tick Email the client the link to book. Open the button in the email to check that it leads to the booking.
4. Cancellation. Select only your test participant, click Cancel selected and enter a Reason. You receive the Cancellation with the reason. Cancelling also removes the reminders not yet sent. Selecting several participants would cancel the whole session — select one.
5. Every other language, from the booking site. Open your booking site, switch to the language, sign in with your own address and book a session. The Confirmation and every later message for this booking use that language. If the session has a price and your organisation allows paying at the desk, choose that option — nothing is charged, and cancelling the booking also voids the unpaid order. Otherwise the booking takes a real payment. Then cancel the booking in the dashboard, as in step 4. Repeat for each language.
6. Check each message in your inbox: the right language; the header, footer and signature; names, dates and amounts in your format; no {{ left anywhere; and every button and link — profile, booking site, booking link — opens the right page. On the Emails page, check that each one is listed and its status.

Messages that depend on a later event are checked when that event happens: No-show after you mark the participant as no-show once the session has started (sent at the end of that day), Post-visit follow-up after the session if the participant is still booked. Messages tied to refunds, waitlists or groups are easiest to check on their first real occurrence: read the sent text on the Emails page.

Keep the test client for the next test. Remove its remaining bookings when you are done, so that it takes no place and gets no further reminders.

If a message does not arrive

Look for it on the Emails page, in the month of its send date:

• Not listed — go flow did not create it. Check the switch under Email notifications on the session or resource, the module it needs, and that the event really triggers this message (see Message types — for example, a cancellation you make in the dashboard notifies neither a group organiser nor the resource person). A message type that was never set up for your organisation is not sent until you open its template and save it. A reminder is written only if its send time is still ahead when the booking is made.
• Pending well after its send time — it was not delivered. Check the client's email address; if the address is right, contact go flow support.
• Sent but not in the inbox — look in the spam folder. Your emails come from a go flow sending address under your organisation's name.