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21 customizable appointment reminder text templates
Save yourself thousands of dollars each year from missed appointments with our guide to setting up appointment text message reminders.
Save yourself thousands of dollars each year from missed appointments with our guide to setting up appointment text message reminders.
Missed appointments are not just a nuisance — they’re a drag on your bottom line.
In fact, they cost the US healthcare system $150B each year. And the issue of no-shows isn’t unique to the healthcare industry.
Let’s say you run a hair salon and have four no-shows a week. If your average revenue per customer is $92, that’s $368 per week. That translates to $1,472 a month, which ends up costing $19,136 per year.
Luckily, text message appointment reminders are easy to set up and will help reduce missed appointments.
It’s not just businesses that benefit from text reminders, either. Our text message marketing report found that 61% of consumers want to be able to text a business, with over 50% prioritizing reminders and appointments as a reason to be in touch via text message.
With 98% open rates, text trumps phone and email reminders by a wide margin.
When you couple this with customers’ preference for text reminders (and the time-consuming process of making appointment reminder calls), you have plenty of reasons to start sending reminder texts.
Every appointment reminder text should include:
To make the text message feel more personal, include the name of the person sending the appointment reminder so the recipient will know who to address if they have questions.
You may also want to include a request that they reply “YES” or “C” to confirm their appointment or “NO” if they need to cancel or reschedule.
To save you time, I’ve collected 21 appointment reminder text message templates and prompts that our customers use.
You can customize them to your brand’s tone of voice and paste them into your business texting software.
📚 Check out our medical office appointment reminders guide and tips for scheduling patient appointments with SMS.
Hi [PET OWNER NAME]! This is [YOUR NAME] from [VETERINARY PRACTICE NAME]. [PET NAME] scheduled for their appointment on [DATE] at [TIME] at [ADDRESS]. Please call or text this number if you need to reschedule. We’ll see you and [PET NAME] soon!
[CLIENT NAME], we’re looking forward to seeing you on [DATE] at [TIME] at [ADDRESS] for your [SERVICE] appointment. Please call or text us at this number if you have any questions or need to reschedule.
[CLIENT NAME], this is [YOUR NAME] from [SHOP NAME]. Your [VEHICLE MAKE/MODEL] is scheduled for [SERVICE] on [DATE] at [TIME]. To confirm, please reply YES to this message. See you then!
Hey [CLIENT NAME], I’ve got you down for your next training session on [DATE] at [TIME] at [GYM OR STUDIO NAME]. Does that still work for you?
Hi [CLIENT NAME]! I can’t wait to show you [ADDRESS] on [DATE] at [TIME]. Does that still work for you?
Hi [CLIENT NAME], this is a reminder that you have a [SERVICE] appointment scheduled for [DATE] at [TIME]. Please let me know if you need to reschedule or have any questions. Thanks!
Hi [CLIENT/PATIENT NAME], your appointment at [BUSINESS NAME] is scheduled for [DATE] at [TIME]. Please note that canceling or rescheduling less than [NUMBER OF DAYS/HOURS] before your appointment will result in a [FEE AMOUNT] cancellation fee. Reply or call this number with questions. Thank you!
Before you send your first appointment reminder text, keep these five best practices in mind:
Use custom fields to address your recipient’s by name to make your reminder texts sound human and personal.
We all lead busy lives. Your customers should be able to get all of their info from a quick skim of your text message. Plus, including too much information in a reminder text can confuse people and cause them to miss out on the most important details, like the date and location.
If you need to include extra information, format your text with line breaks and punctuation. You don’t need to use complete sentences, but the message should be easy to read quickly.
Because no-shows are so costly to your business, give customers a clear way to cancel if needed.
Tell them whether they can reply to the reminder text (which is possible if your texting software has two-way messaging) or if they need to call you on a different number.
Tell clients how you want them to respond to your appointment reminder texts.
Having the same responses for confirming, rescheduling, and canceling will make it easier to keep track of which conversations need your attention.
For instance, you might say, “Reply C to confirm your appointment.” Then, you can quickly spot the clients who need to reschedule or cancel.
Send your final reminder text at least 24 hours before the appointment time so you have enough time to fill their slot, but not so much time that they forget.
If you find that people are still forgetting their appointments, you may want to add a reminder a few hours before as well.
You can send text appointment reminders and confirmations one-by-one, but why make life harder for yourself?
You’ll save time when you integrate an SMS service provider with your scheduling software or by scheduling the text message reminders ahead of time.
I’ll walk you through both options.
One of the easiest ways to remind your customers about an upcoming appointment is to send automated text appointment reminders through an integration with your scheduling software.
When an appointment is created in the scheduling software, it’ll ask your SMS platform to schedule a text message reminder for that specific appointment.
The exact process depends on which SMS platform you’re using, but I can show you what it looks like for SimpleTexting customers.
If you want to send out automatic text reminders, you’ll need to connect SimpleTexting to Zapier.
If you’re unfamiliar with Zapier, it’s an online automation tool that connects your favorite software apps. They offer a free plan that includes 100 tasks per month, which could be 100 appointment reminder texts.
With over 2,000 apps available on Zapier, chances are you can connect whatever appointment or scheduling software you use to SimpleTexting.
If you use a custom-built scheduling software or don’t see your platform listed on Zapier, check out our SMS API.
If you don’t know what an API is, read this beginner’s guide to using an API for SMS. We also have a team of in-house integration specialists who will set up and maintain a custom integration as an add-on service to our paid plans.
Let’s say you want to schedule out text message reminders instead of having them send automatically through your scheduling software.
In that case, you can:
You can schedule appointment reminder texts to send to all of your contacts at once, specific contact segments, or individual contacts.
If you have questions about sending text reminders to customers, our team of SMS experts are here seven days a week to answer them.
Text or call us at (866) 450-4185, or use the chat button at the bottom of your screen.
And if you’re looking for a business texting platform to help you automate your appointment reminders, try ours free for 14 days.
This article was written on June 25, 2020, by Drew Wilkinson and was updated on August 1, 2023, by Dani Henion. Nathan Ellering contributed to this piece.
Drew Wilkinson is the Head of Marketing at SimpleTexting. Drew has more than a decade of experience managing successful integrated marketing programs to build brands, raise awareness, and generate demand.
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