Appointment reminder texts: what to send and when

A good appointment reminder text names your business, gives the day, time, and place, and offers a one-tap way to confirm or change the booking. Send it 1 to 3 days ahead, add a short note on the day for early or long-booked visits, and keep each message to a single text.

Our guide to reducing no-shows covers the research showing that reminders work. This one is about the message itself: the words, the length, the timing, and how to handle replies.

What every reminder should include

• Your business name, first. People get texts from numbers they do not recognize. The CTIA principles ask that links and phone numbers in a message clearly identify who owns them, and a name at the start does the same job for the whole text.^[1]
• Day, date, and time. "Fri, Oct 16, 2:30pm" is clearer than "tomorrow afternoon", which goes wrong if the text is read late.
• Where. The address, or a note that it is a video call, with the link in the booking confirmation.
• Who or what. The service or the person they are seeing, so a client with two bookings knows which one this is.
• One action. A link to confirm, move, or cancel. Reply-to-confirm works too, as long as someone or something reads the replies.
• How to stop. "Reply STOP to opt out" in the first message, and in later ones if you send often.

Leave out anything else. Reminders get read on a lock screen in a second or two, and the date and time are what people need.

Keep it to one text

A single text message holds up to 160 characters in the standard SMS alphabet. If the message uses a character outside that alphabet, it is sent in a 16-bit encoding that holds up to 70 characters.^[2] Emoji and curly quotes copied from a word processor are common culprits.

Longer messages are split into segments, and we bill texts per segment, at $0.0249 a segment, at published rates. One plain reminder per booking stays cheap. A reminder that quietly runs to 3 segments triples the cost across every appointment you book.

Sample wording

These are illustrations to adapt, not tested templates. Each fits in one segment once you add your own short link.

Use a link that clearly belongs to you. The CTIA principles ask senders not to use link shorteners shared with other businesses, and to make sure links and the pages they lead to identify the business behind them.^[1]

When to send them

The research gives a range rather than a rule. A 2013 Cochrane review of text reminders found that most trials did not report when messages went out, and asked future studies to record it.^[3] A 2023 review of 61 studies found reminder timing ranged from 2 hours to 2 weeks before the visit, and the largest group of studies, 16 of them, sent reminders 1 to 3 days ahead.^[4]

• At booking: a confirmation, sent straight away.
• 1 to 3 days before: the main reminder, with time to rearrange and time for you to fill the slot.
• On the morning: a short note for early appointments, long bookings, and anything booked weeks ago.
• For bookings made far ahead, such as 6-month dental check-ups, add a reminder a week or two before.

Keep sends to normal hours. The federal rule that bars telephone solicitations before 8 a.m. or after 9 p.m., local time for the person called, is written for sales calls and messages, not reminders a customer asked for.^[5] It is still a sensible window, and nobody wants a dentist's text at 6 a.m.

What the wording can change

Small changes in wording can matter. The 2023 review reported healthcare studies where reminders that stated the specific cost of a missed appointment cut no-shows more than a plain reminder, and a study of reminder calls made by a person in the patient's preferred language found attendance improved.^[4]

For a business, the honest version is to name your policy in the confirmation, such as how much notice you need to move a booking. Keep the tone friendly, because a reminder that reads as a threat invites a cancellation rather than a confirmation.

Keep reminders separate from offers

A reminder is an informational text. The CTIA principles treat appointment reminders as informational, which needs the customer to have given their number for that purpose. Adding a sales call to action, such as a coupon code, may make it promotional, which calls for written consent to marketing texts.^[1]

So keep "20% off a whitening add-on" out of the reminder. Send offers only to people who agreed to marketing, as a separate message.

Handle the replies

People reply to reminders with everything from "C" to "running 10 mins late" to "can we do Friday". Those replies need to reach a person, or be read by a system that books the change. A reminder that invites a reply nobody reads is worse than one that does not invite replies.

Opt-outs need care too. Under the FCC rule, a customer may revoke consent to texts by any reasonable means, so "please stop texting me" counts as much as STOP.^[5] The CTIA principles ask senders to act on ordinary wording such as cancel, end, or "please opt me out", and to send a single confirmation.^[1] Note that "cancel" in a reminder thread may mean the appointment, so a person should check those.

Set it up once

Our appointment reminders go out by text, email, or WhatsApp at the times you choose, with a link in every confirmation that lets customers move or cancel on their own. Booking messages can go out in the language each customer speaks. Replies land in one thread per customer through messaging.

An automation can add the no-show follow-up, and a different reminder schedule for long or high-value bookings. See how a dental practice or a salon sets up its reminders, and check your texting registration if messages are not arriving.

Want your reminders written and scheduled for you? On Grow and Scale our team sets them up in your voice. Book a walkthrough or compare plans.