Notifications & Marketing
On this page
The Notifications & Marketing addon reaches your patients by SMS, e-mail and WhatsApp. You write a campaign once (a free hearing camp, a new model, a service reminder), choose who gets it, and it goes out in batches through the cron job. The addon also raises the reminders a hearing centre owes its patients: service checks, warranties about to end and birthdays.
It is for the owner and the front desk. It uses the SMS gateway, e-mail and WhatsApp settings of the core script, so set those up first; see Communication and Settings.
Switching it on
Notifications & Marketing is a free addon that comes with the script. Open Admin → Addons, find its card and press Enable.
On first start it adds five ready message templates: Six-month service check, Warranty about to end, Birthday greeting, Free hearing camp and Thank you after a fitting.
Where to find it
The addon has its own heading in the sidebar, Notifications & Marketing Addons:
- Campaigns: write, send and follow campaigns.
- Templates: the messages you send again and again.
- Settings: the addon's settings.
The permissions, in the Marketing group under Roles & Permissions, are See campaigns and what was sent and Write and send campaigns.
Writing a campaign
Campaigns → + New campaign.
- Name: for example Free camp, November. Only you see this.
- Send by: SMS, WhatsApp or E-mail.
- Who it goes to:
- Every active patient;
- Seen in the last 90 days;
- Not seen for a year (patients who have been in at least once, but not in the last year);
- Everyone who bought a hearing aid (anyone with a serial-numbered item on a sale);
- Website newsletter subscribers;
- One branch only, with a Branch box, when you run more than one branch.
Reaches shows at once how many people that is, as things stand.
- For e-mail, a Subject and the Message.
- Short message (SMS and WhatsApp):
{name},{company},{phone}and{today}are filled in for each person. Keep an SMS under 160 characters or the gateway charges twice. - Start from a template puts one of your templates into the message with one click.
- Press Save. The message reads Campaign saved. Check who it reaches before sending it.
Sending it
Open the saved campaign and press Send it. The panel asks Send this to … people? This cannot be taken back.
The messages are queued, and they go out in batches as the cron job runs, not while you wait. Without the cron job nothing is sent; see The cron job. The message after sending says how many were queued and how many were skipped for having no contact details: a patient without a mobile number cannot get an SMS, and one without an e-mail address cannot get an e-mail.
The Sending card shows Queued, Sent and Failed. Pause stops a campaign that is going out; nothing further is sent. Delete removes the campaign and its record.
Who it went to lists each person with the number or address used, the status, the reason when it did not go (for example no phone number or the SMS gateway refused it) and when.
While a campaign is going out, the dashboard shows a Sending card.
WhatsApp campaigns
WhatsApp campaigns need WhatsApp set to send through an API under Settings → WhatsApp. With the free click-to-chat link, a message can only be sent by a person pressing the link, so a campaign marks those recipients as failed with the reason WhatsApp is in link mode — nothing was sent.
Templates
Templates → + Add a template.
| Field | What to enter |
|---|---|
| Name | What you call it, such as Free hearing camp. |
| Code | Short and unique, for example service-due. |
| Meant for | SMS / WhatsApp or E-mail. |
| Subject (e-mail only) | The e-mail subject. |
| Message | The text. {name}, {company}, {phone} and {today} are filled in for every person. A {date} in a template, such as the camp date, is yours to replace in the campaign before sending. |
| Status | In use, or Not offered to keep it out of Start from a template. |
{company} and {phone} come from your company details in Settings. Add a template for anything you type twice.
Automatic reminders
Every time the cron job runs, the addon also looks for patients who need a call, and sends a notification to the staff with the patient's name and phone number:
- Service check due: a patient whose last visit was exactly the number of months in the settings ago.
- Warranty ending soon: a warranty card that ends in the number of days in the settings. See Warranty.
- Birthday today: a patient whose birthday is today, when birthday greetings are switched on.
The staff can then ring the patient or send the matching template. For aids fitted and serviced through Hearing Aid Management, that addon keeps its own Service Due list as well.
Settings
| Setting | What it does |
|---|---|
| Messages sent per cron run | 40 by default. Keep it modest: most SMS gateways rate-limit, and a shared host has a time limit. |
| Remind about a service check after (months) | 6 by default. 0 turns it off. |
| Warn before a warranty ends (days) | 30 by default. 0 turns it off. |
| Send a birthday greeting | Raises the Birthday today reminder. Off by default. |
| Do not send between | 21:00-09:00 by default. No campaign message goes out in these hours. An SMS at two in the morning loses you the patient it was meant to keep. |
With the cron job every five minutes and 40 messages a run, a campaign to 1,000 patients takes a little over two hours, outside the quiet hours.
A free hearing camp
- Open Templates and adjust Free hearing camp with your own wording.
- + New campaign: name it, choose SMS and Not seen for a year.
- Press the Free hearing camp template under Start from a template, and type the date and place into the message.
- Save, check Reaches, then Send it in the morning so it goes out in the day.
- Open the campaign the next day and look at Who it went to for the failures.
Tips
- Before a big campaign, check Reaches and the template text twice. A sent campaign cannot be taken back.
- Write in Bangla if your patients read Bangla. One Bangla SMS holds fewer characters than an English one, so keep it short.
- Combine campaigns with Patient & Customer Management follow-ups: a campaign reaches many, a follow-up makes sure one person is rung.