Reduce no shows and keep your services calendar full
Sales Force Automation With Ontraport
Automated Scheduling
Sales Force Automation With Ontraport
Automated Scheduling
Reduce no-shows and keep your services calendar full
What are self-scheduling appointments?
Whether you run a service-based, SaaS or one-on-one coaching business, keeping your calendar full is paramount to your success. That’s where automated online scheduling comes in. Online automated scheduling is a low-cost, highly scalable solution for streamlining your appointment follow-ups to minimize an otherwise significant loss of leads and customers.
The idea is that leads or customers schedule an appointment with you using an online form — for a product demo, consultation or a service call — after which they receive automated email or SMS appointment reminders leading up to the scheduled booking prompting them to attend the event.
Proven to drastically reduce appointment no-shows, automated appointment confirmation and reminders keep leads and customers on course in your sales funnel by notifying them of an appointment while keeping you (or your team) up-to-date on their attendance status. It’s simply the most efficient way to manage high-volume bookings and appointments — hands-off.
What are self-scheduling appointments?
Whether you run a service-based, SaaS or one-on-one coaching business, keeping your calendar full is paramount to your success. That’s where automated online scheduling comes in. Online automated scheduling is a low-cost, highly scalable solution for streamlining your appointment follow-ups to minimize an otherwise significant loss of leads and customers.
The idea is that leads or customers schedule an appointment with you using an online form — for a product demo, consultation or a service call — after which they receive automated email or SMS appointment reminders leading up to the scheduled booking prompting them to attend the event.
Proven to drastically reduce appointment no-shows, automated appointment confirmation and reminders keep leads and customers on course in your sales funnel by notifying them of an appointment while keeping you (or your team) up-to-date on their attendance status. It’s simply the most efficient way to manage high-volume bookings and appointments — hands-off.
Examples of self-scheduling appointments using Ontraport
By tying an appointment request form directly into an automated appointment reminder campaign using Ontraport, you’ll cut down on no-shows significantly. When a lead/client visits your website and fills out your appointment request form, they’re automatically filtered into your appointment reminder campaign after which they’ll receive at least one appointment reminder email. The day before their scheduled appointment, your lead/client will receive an SMS reminder for the appointment that you are all but guaranteed they will read — since 98% of SMS messages are opened. By implementing this follow-up automation in your sales process, you’ll see your appointment attendance skyrocket. Ontraport integrates with scheduling apps such as Calendly to make scheduling and keeping upcoming appointments even easier.
Ontraport makes it easy for businesses that demo products to handle appointments. Since your sales funnel depends heavily on this lead qualification step, when a lead signs up for a demo on your website’s demo request form, you don’t want to simply send them automated appointment reminders and assume they’ll show up when the time comes. You want explicit confirmation that they’ll attend and should they decline, prompt them to reschedule. By adding an SMS appointment reminder to your campaign, you can most assuredly prompt a response from your leads. Within your SMS message, you’ll remind them of the upcoming appointment and also ask them to confirm their attendance by responding with either “Y” or “N.” This in itself drastically reduces no-shows as people are more likely to honor an appointment date when asked to confirm their attendance. By confirming the appointment (or not responding), the lead will remain on your appointment reminder campaign as planned. Should they decline, they’ll be asked to select a new demo date/time after which they’ll start the appointment reminder process over again.
With appointment reminders in Ontraport, leads can book consultations with you automatically. Take yourself and your team entirely out of the picture until the appointment itself arrives. Leads who select an available date and time from your integrated scheduling calendar will receive a consultation reminder email and automated phone call as well as a confirmation SMS message in which you’ll ask them to confirm their attendance by responding with either “Y” or “N.” If for any reason the lead declines to attend, they’ll be sent an email directing them back to your consultation calendar to book again and the reminder process resets.
For coaches who offer one-on-one training sessions with their clients, Ontraport manages appointment reminders with ease so both you and your clients show up to your bookings. Using Ontraport’s campaign automation, leads who schedule a series of calls with you are reminded to attend via automated email and SMS appointment reminders. At the same time, an automated task prompt is sent to you preceding the upcoming appointment to remind you to reach out to your client. After you’ve completed the task, the client schedules their second session and the process repeats itself.
You can use appointment reminders in Ontraport to boost attendance of your webinars. Let’s say you planned a three-part webinar series and want to drastically reduce viewer drop-off among those who have shown interest and signed up. A reminder email containing the date, time and location is a great first step, but an SMS appointment reminder picks up where email leaves off, giving you a 98% chance of engagement. These two correspondences are sent to your registrants prior to each webinar, increasing their chances of attending by a large margin.
Ontraport can send appointment reminders for your one-on-one onboarding process while retaining the essential human element. This is made possible with a campaign that sends automated emails, SMS messages and task prompts as well as calendar integration with web tools such as Zapier and Calendly. When customers buy from you, they receive a welcome email that links them to you or your dedicated onboarding staff member’s online calendar. Once the onboarding appointment is booked, a customer receives an appointment confirmation email followed by a reminder email and SMS appointment reminder to ensure their attendance. The day of the onboarding call, your team member is prompted with an automated task email or SMS to call the customer for 1-on-1 onboarding at the designated time.
Why automated scheduling?
One of the biggest missed opportunities for any business is when a lead or customer fails to show up for a scheduled appointment. Consider customer lifetime value: Not only are you losing a potential sale, you may be letting a potential client slip through your fingers. Every no-show steals a good chunk of your time that could have been spent on another potential client. This happens because there’s little accountability for your leads to respect your time. Good thing there’s a simple turnkey solution for all your appointment scheduling woes: automation.
Save loads of time and money by eliminating manual work
Not only is manually managing appointment reminders tough to scale, it’s time wasted on a process that can be automated entirely. Streamlining online booking with automation vastly improves your business operations by ensuring all leads are accounted for — no matter how high the volume.
Save loads of time and money by eliminating manual work
Not only is manually managing appointment reminders tough to scale, it’s time wasted on a process that can be automated entirely. Streamlining online booking with automation vastly improves your business operations by ensuring all leads are accounted for — no matter how high the volume.
Boost ROI by drastically reducing no-shows
Automated appointment follow-up drastically improves attendance by reducing no-shows by 50%. Every no-show is a potential missed sales opportunity or repeat customer. That’s why promoting accountability through effective, automated correspondence results in more leads honoring their appointments with you. Mutually respecting each other’s time instills trust in your brand and in turn increases sales.
Where does Ontraport fit in with automated appointment reminders?
Did you know that the most common reason for appointment no-shows is that the lead or customer simply forgot? By implementing automated appointment reminders into your follow-up process, you’re ensuring that not a single lead or customer is left unaccounted for.
Traditionally, whenever leads or clients book an appointment with a business, they receive a phone call confirming the booking — sometimes more than one. When confronted with a high volume of customers, this becomes a tedious job demanding many man-hours a week. Or maybe appointments are indeed booked on a web form on a business’s website that logs appointment date and time. Though the booking itself now takes place online, it still requires the human element in the form of reminder correspondences that cost time, money and resources.
Ontraport removes all the manual work, leaving you with a fully streamlined and automated appointment booking system. You can utilize web forms and automated messaging to remove the human element from online booking without forfeiting a personal touch. This ensures that leads and customers can book appointments with you online on their own time. Once booked, Ontraport leaves no room for error, handling upcoming appointment reminders, sending attendance prompts and tracking whether or not your leads and customers honor their appointments.
Traditionally, whenever leads or clients book an appointment with a business, they receive a phone call confirming the booking — sometimes more than one. When confronted with a high volume of customers, this becomes a tedious job demanding many man-hours a week. Or maybe appointments are indeed booked on a web form on a business’s website that logs appointment date and time. Though the booking itself now takes place online, it still requires the human element in the form of reminder correspondences that cost time, money and resources.
Ontraport removes all the manual work, leaving you with a fully streamlined and automated appointment booking system. You can utilize web forms and automated messaging to remove the human element from online booking without forfeiting a personal touch. This ensures that leads and customers can book appointments with you online on their own time. Once booked, Ontraport leaves no room for error, handling upcoming appointment reminders, sending attendance prompts and tracking whether or not your leads and customers honor their appointments.
“The more you’re able to successfully automate your business, the easier it is for you and your team to focus on creating new value for your clients.”
- Landon Ray, Founder and CEO of Ontraport
Learn how Ontraport’s sales automation suite can streamline your sales process & grow your business
Get started today with Ontraport’s sales pipeline software. Use this free, prebuilt funnel to easily handle lead’s objections and earn more online sales without having to pick up the phone.
A new contact display option in Ontraport’s CRM provides an overhead view of your funnels and pipelines for better customer relationship management.
With Ontraport’s CRM, you can view your contacts in a list, or you can choose to use Card View, which displays your contacts’ information like business cards and organizes them within stages in your business.
Ready to streamline your sales process?
“I simply cannot believe how powerful Ontraport is … The ability to know each and every touchpoint that prospects have with my business is so important. We never read an email from a client or prospect without knowing their entire relationship with our business. We would be lost without Ontraport.”
— Matthew J. Watts, FreedomPreneur, Business Academy
Ready to streamline your sales process?
“I simply cannot believe how powerful Ontraport is … The ability to know each and every touchpoint that prospects have with my business is so important. We never read an email from a client or prospect without knowing their entire relationship with our business. We would be lost without Ontraport.”
— Matthew J. Watts, FreedomPreneur, Business Academy
Frequently Asked Questions
I’m new to sales process automation — what is it, and why is it such a big deal?
There are lots of time-consuming sales tasks that Ontraport can do for you automatically. Our sales automation software can follow up with your leads, keep your pipeline organized and moving, manage your team’s workload and more. With all those tasks off your plate, you can spend more time doing the work that matters most: actually selling your product or service.
I want to get more conversions, but I’m busy. Does Ontraport have any done-for-you sales funnels?
Ontraport has a whole library of prebuilt funnels, so you can get up and running without learning all the ins and outs of the platform. You can launch an entire sales funnel, follow up with leads, segment your list of prospects and more — and each system only takes minutes to launch. The best part is, you’ll get a Setup Wizard that walks you through every step.
My business is growing, and I want to keep my personal touch as I scale. Can I do that with Ontraport’s sales force automation system?
Ontraport is built to grow with you, so it’s easy to create a personal sales experience for every lead on your list — no matter how big your business gets. Since all your sales data will be stored on one centralized platform, you’ll have all the data and sales automation tools you need to deliver more engaging, more effective experiences across every channel.
My business uses outbound lead generation to find customers. Can Ontraport help with that?
Ontraport is great for driving both inbound and outbound sales. We have lots of tools to deliver personal, multi-channel messages and connect you with all the right leads at the right times. Plus, you’ll get all the tracking features and KPIs you need to measure and optimize results.
Manual vs. automated appointment scheduling: which is better for my business?
Not only is manually managing appointment reminders tough to scale, it’s time wasted on a process that can be automated entirely. Streamlining online booking with automation vastly improves your business operations by ensuring all leads are accounted for — no matter how high the volume.
I like the idea of done-for-you sales funnels, but what if I want my campaign to work differently than the template?
Ontraport’s sales pipeline software and prebuilt funnels were built based on feedback from thousands of business owners, but of course, everyone likes to — and should! — put their own spin on things. You can easily adjust any part of these funnels — the copy, design, automation settings and more — however you’d like. You can also skip these systems and start from scratch to build anything you can imagine.
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