How to reduce no-shows with Calendly meeting reminders

Picture this: You’ve scheduled an important meeting with a prospect, client, or candidate, and everyone actually shows up on time and prepared. You’re able to get to all of your agenda items and efficiently move priorities forward. Your meeting was a success!

How do you make that happen? It sounds simple, but automated meeting reminders can make a major difference.

In this article, you'll learn how to use meeting reminders to get everyone to your meeting on time and ready to have a productive conversation. Plus, we'll walk through how Calendly's email and text reminder Workflows take work off your plate while creating a better meeting experience for everyone involved. 

Looking to automate other meeting communications? Learn how Workflows can help with reconfirmation messages, follow-ups, thank-you’s, and more in this Workflows article. 

(Are you a current Calendly user looking to set up email and text reminders? Check out this help center article to get started with Workflows!)

How can reminders help me have better meetings?

A reminder can do a lot of heavy lifting so your next meeting can be a success. Use email and SMS reminders to:

Reduce no-shows by keeping your meeting top of mind

In a perfect world, every meeting would have a 100% attendance rate, but no-shows happen. We’re all busy — it’s easy to be ultra-focused on a project, get distracted talking to a coworker, or have an appointment run over, and before you know it, you’ve missed a part or all of the meeting. Reminders help ensure meeting hosts and attendees show up (and on time!) 

Prompt attendees to cancel or reschedule if they’re no longer available

Attendees often no-show because a conflict came up and they weren’t sure how to reschedule with you. While a rescheduled meeting does push the conversation out, you’d much rather have the conversation later vs. not at all! Or, maybe your product or service is no longer required, so someone needs to cancel. You’d prefer to have a heads up so you’re not sitting in an empty meeting room or video call, wondering if they’re ghosting you or just running late. Asking the attendee to reschedule or cancel if they can no longer make it lets you plan ahead and adjust your schedule.

Provide an agenda, pre-read, or other resources

Hot take: every meeting needs an agenda. Better yet, send out the agenda ahead of time, so attendees can think through the topics and come prepared with questions. For meetings that follow a consistent format, like a sales discovery call or interview phone screen, include the agenda with your reminder to set expectations. Reminders are also a great vehicle for sharing helpful resources like a company overview or directions to your office without needing to send an additional email. You can even ask attendees to reply to the reminder email with questions!

“We used automated reminders as an opportunity to ask our free trial users what questions they had about our product. Not only are these reminders helpful, but they also make our meetings more to-the-point and shape the discussion for our sales team members and customers.”

Nick Jackson

Sales Manager at CallRail

You may be thinking “Of course I want to send reminders, but I don’t have time to manually email or text everyone.” Calendly has you covered with reminder Workflows. 

What are reminder Workflows? 

Think of Calendly Workflows as your personal meeting communications assistant. When you set up reminder Workflows, Calendly will automatically send email and/or text reminders to attendees or hosts before scheduled events. You can also use Workflows to automate post-meeting communications like thank-you and follow-up emails.

These automations take manual email and SMS sends off your plate, so you can spend less time on pre-meeting tasks, reduce no-shows, and improve meeting preparedness. 

Workflows are available on all paid Calendly plans. (Not a Calendly user? Sign up for a free 14-day trial of Calendly’s Teams plan, including Workflows!)

“Dealing with no-shows is no longer a challenge thanks to email and text reminders set up using the Workflows feature. Our sought-after advisors aren’t left waiting for students who missed appointments.”

Corey Trader

Academic Advisor at Des Moines Area Community College (DMACC)

Calendly reminder Workflows: 

• Send email and/or text reminders at reliable times, even if that’s outside your work hours. You choose how far in advance of the Calendly event you want the reminder to send (24 hours, 15 minutes, etc.) This is especially handy if you do business with clients outside of your time zone. Don’t worry — even if you’re out of the office, focused on other work, or sleeping, Calendly is in the background sending reminders for you!

• Are personalized for each attendee, thanks to dynamic fields. Calendly fills in the attendee’s name, meeting location and duration, the invitee’s answers to booking page questions, and more, so all relevant information specific to that event is passed along so you don’t have to manually copy/paste anything.

• Can feature links and additional resources you want your attendees to review before a meeting, like an interview prep guide or pricing sheet. If you find yourself sending the same documents to attendees of a certain meeting type over and over again, this automation is a game changer!

For admins who want to automate reminders for their team, use Managed Workflows for Managed Events. These admin-controlled features allow you to standardize and scale your team’s full meeting experience so everything from the event length to the timing of a reminder is consistent across team members. 

How do I craft the perfect reminder? 

Here are our top meeting reminder tips:

• Use a combination of email and texts: Catch attendees’ attention with a multi-device strategy so they don’t accidentally miss your meeting.

• Don’t be afraid to send multiple reminders: As a standard, it’s acceptable to send at least two reminder messages (e.g., 24 hours and 30 minutes) before a meeting. 

• Put a personal spin on messages: Include a sincere note, like "I'm looking forward to learning more about your experience and interest in this role." 

• Automate reminders to hosts, too: Trigger email and text reminders to yourself and other hosts so meeting leaders are prompt and calls can start without any delay. 

• Add a rescheduling or cancellation link: Make it easy for attendees who can’t make it anymore to let you know and find a new time that works for everyone. 

“By allowing us to put in cancellation policies, we can inform our customers, ‘we would like to at least hear from you if there's going to be a cancellation.’ Those things happen!”

Bradley Thomas

Senior Customer Onboarding Program Manager at Docusign

When you use Calendly Workflows to send email and text reminders, you can start from a template or build your own. Workflows are completely customizable, so you can tailor reminders to suit your needs. Plus, reminder Workflows can be applied to multiple meeting types — no duplicate setup work needed.

Get started with Calendly email and text reminders

Workflows are available on all paid Calendly plans. Using Calendly’s free plan? Upgrade now to add email and text reminders to your events. 

New to Workflows? We recommend you start with a simple reminder Workflow template to take pre-meeting work off your plate and reduce no-show rates. Check out this help center article for a video tutorial and step-by-step instructions. 

Not a Calendly user? Sign up for a free 14-day trial of Calendly’s Teams plan, including Workflows!