Email notifications: emails to clients

Abonio can email your clients in the studio's name: session reminders, bookings, reschedules and cancellations, a spot from the waitlist, attendance marks, membership deadlines and payment receipts. These are the same notifications the Telegram bot sends, only by email, with answer buttons right in the message. Email helps when a client doesn't use Telegram or hasn't connected the bot.

How to connect

1. Open Integrations

   Go to Settings → Integrations and find the Email card.

2. Enter the address for replies

   In Client replies go to, enter the studio's mailbox: when a client taps Reply in an email, the answer lands there. The field starts with your account's address; you can change it.

3. Choose who gets emails

   If the studio has a Telegram bot connected, pick one of the two modes described below. Without a bot there's nothing to choose: every client with an email gets emails.

4. Click Connect email

   The card shows the Connected status.

Emails go out in the studio's name from noreply@abonio.app, for example "Abonio Studio" <noreply@abonio.app>. You don't need a mailbox on your own domain. If you leave the reply address empty, the card warns that client replies go nowhere.

Connecting, changing and disconnecting email takes a role with the Integrations: edit permission.

The Email card

• Sender - the studio's name and the address emails come from.
• Client replies go to 1 - the studio's mailbox for replies.
• Who gets emails 2 - the chosen mode. It shows when a Telegram bot is connected too.
• Send a test email to myself 3 - an email to your account's address, in the studio's interface language. It shows what the email looks like and lets you check that it doesn't land in spam.
• What clients get by email 4 - a short list of the emails, covered in detail below.

Edit opens the reply address and the mode. Disconnect turns email off: clients stop getting emails, while calendar subscriptions already set up keep working.

Who gets emails

With a Telegram bot connected too, pick a mode under Who gets emails:

• Only clients Telegram can't reach - the default. A client the bot can message gets the Telegram message only. An email goes out when the client isn't linked to the bot, has blocked it or deleted their Telegram account, when the bot's token stopped working, or when this notification is off for Telegram. For example, Payment receipt is off in Telegram by default, so a client on the bot gets the receipt by email. If Telegram didn't take a message because of a temporary hiccup, no email goes out instead. A client who unsubscribed from the bot with /stop doesn't get emails instead of Telegram either: they asked not to be notified.
• Every client with an email, alongside Telegram - a client on the bot gets both the Telegram message and the email.

The email goes to the address on the client's card. If the client has none of their own, their contact person, such as a parent, gets it when they have an email. Clients without an email get no emails. Clients over the plan's limit get neither emails nor Telegram messages.

What clients get by email

The emails follow the notifications on Settings → Notifications:

• Session reminder (tomorrow) - with "I'll come" and "I won't come" buttons and an "Add to calendar" link.
• Session booking - with an "Add to calendar" link.
• Session rescheduled - the new time and place, "I'll come" and "I won't come" buttons and "Add to calendar".
• Session cancelled by the studio and Taken off a session.
• Spot from the waitlist - with "Book it" and "Can't make it" buttons.
• Visit confirmation, Session cancelled and Missed session - marks in the journal.
• Last visit left and Subscription expiring.
• Payment receipt - when a staff member records a client's payment by hand.
• Client hasn't visited for a while - a nudge from the studio.
• Email welcome - email only, see below.

By email everything is on by default except two notifications:

• Visit confirmation - an email after every class easily reads as spam. In Telegram it's on.
• Client hasn't visited for a while - it's a nudge, so the studio switches it on itself, separately for each channel: say, by email only or in Telegram only. Until you switch it on, it goes out over no channel.

Setting it up on the Notifications tab

With both the bot and email connected, each notification shows Channels 1 instead of a switch. Click Telegram or Email to turn the notification on or off in that channel; a channel that's off is struck through. With email alone, notifications have the usual switch.

The send time and the text are shared by both channels. When you Edit, emails also have an Email subject 2. The subject takes the same placeholders as the text, such as {{groupName}}. An empty field means the built-in subject, shown in grey. If the studio has several languages, the subject is set per language, next to the text.

Run notifications now works with email too. To see who got an email, open Chat and the Statuses tab: each row shows its channel, and an email also shows the address it went to.

The welcome email

When a client gets an email address (a new client with an address, or an address added or changed in the profile), Abonio sends them the Email welcome: who their notifications will come from, plus Add my schedule to calendar and Notification settings buttons. Each new address gets the welcome once. Clients imported from a file don't get it. In the Only clients Telegram can't reach mode a client the bot can message gets no welcome either: they won't be getting emails.

How a client answers from an email

The email has answer buttons 1, an Add to calendar link 2 and, at the bottom, Manage notifications or unsubscribe 3. If the client taps Reply in their mail app, the reply goes to the studio's mailbox.

A button in the email opens a studio page in the browser. The answer is recorded only when the client taps the button on that page: mail services and virus scanners open the links in emails by themselves, and without this confirmation they would answer for the client. The page speaks the client's language.

• I'll come and I won't come. The page shows the class, with the answer from the email as the first button. If the client has already answered, the page shows the current answer. They can answer or change their answer until the class ends. The answer shows in the journal at once, like an answer from the bot, with the hint "The client answered by email", and the session's attendance history records it as "Client, from a link in an email". If the client cancels late, the page says whether the class is charged under the studio's rules. A cancelled or past class can't be answered any more.
• Book it and Can't make it for a spot from the waitlist. After "Book it" the client is booked and gets the usual booking confirmation. If the offer is no longer available, the page says so.
• Add to calendar - Google Calendar and iPhone, Outlook and others (.ics) buttons for that class.

Answer and calendar links work until two days after the class, a waitlist link until a day after it, and the notification settings link for more than a year. An expired link shows "This link doesn't work". A client over the plan's limit can't answer from an email.

The schedule in the phone's calendar

Add my schedule to calendar in the welcome email opens a page where the client subscribes to their schedule once: iPhone and Apple Calendar, Google Calendar, Outlook or Copy link. Their classes appear in the calendar by themselves, moved ones update, cancelled ones disappear, and the calendar sends the reminders. The schedule link is created with the welcome email; from then on the same subscription is also on the notification settings page, linked from every email.

The Email block on the client card shows whether the client is Subscribed to their schedule in a calendar or the link was issued but not used yet. Reset the calendar link stops the old subscription, for example if the client forwarded the link to someone else. The new link appears on the notification settings page.

Unsubscribing

Manage notifications or unsubscribe at the bottom of every email opens a page with the client's address (partly hidden) and an Unsubscribe from emails button. There the client can also turn emails back on with Get emails again. Mail services such as Gmail show their own Unsubscribe button next to the sender: it works in one click, without opening the page.

Unsubscribing covers only your studio's emails and only that address. It doesn't turn off Telegram messages.

Email on the client card

While email is connected, the client card has an Email block: where emails go (marked "representative's address" when it's a contact person's) and the state of that address:

• Gets emails - emails go out. Send a test email sends the client a test email in their language.
• Unsubscribed from emails - the client unsubscribed.
• Undeliverable: emails bounce - the mail service said the address doesn't exist. It's usually a typo: fix the address in the client's profile, and emails go to the new address again.
• Marked an email as spam - no more emails go to the client after that.

Email this address again resumes sending to the address. Only use it if the client asked for it or the address was fixed. If emails to the address bounced, the client can't turn them back on themselves: their page tells them to write to the studio. The block's buttons need a role that can edit clients.

Email language

Emails go out in the client's language, like the bot's messages: if the client has a language set (the Bot language line on the card) and the studio offers it, the email is in that language, otherwise in the bot's main language. English is not used in place of a missing translation. In the client's language come the subject, the text (the studio's own or the standard one), the buttons, the email's footer and the page a button opens, plus the studio's translations of group names, addresses, names and the studio's name. Languages and translations are set up under Settings → Languages; see the Telegram bot article. Several languages come with the Business plan; on other plans emails go out in the main language.

If an email didn't arrive

• Open Chat → Statuses: the email row shows the reason, for example "The client has no email", "The client unsubscribed from emails" or "Not delivered: the address doesn't exist".
• Check the address in the client's profile and the state in the card's Email block.
• Ask the client to look in their spam folder and add noreply@abonio.app to their contacts.
• Make sure the notification is on for the Email channel on Settings → Notifications, and that the mode on the Email card fits.

Next: the Telegram bot and studio settings.