Better Messages, Better Bookings, Better 2026

0:00 we start with the the new automated message changes that'll be landing. Yeah. Oh, so one of the things that um you know with Cherry's automated messages, you know, they're they're pretty flexible, but you know, I think um it's not uncommon that people have kind of challenges figuring out how to um how to use them, how to create messages, uh what's going out,

0:21 things like that. So, um so we kind of took a stab at redesigning the uh interface for that. Um hopefully it's not too different for people that are kind of familiar with it. But basically the goal is to kind of make things organized a little bit more logically. Uh make it a little bit easier to find things that you're looking for. And um I guess to step back a little bit. So in checker,

0:46 you know, there's a number of different ways that messages might go out. You know, if you have a proposal, you might, you know, uh put that proposal together and send it manually. you know, you might send out an email and we're going to pull in one of your templates to do that. You can edit these templates. Um, but with our with uh automated messages, um, those are messages

1:06 that are going to go out without you needing to do anything necessarily. So, that can be used for things around your booking, you know, it can be, uh, staff reminders, customer confirmation emails, um, prompting them to choose templates, [clears throat] things like that. And it can also be used around your sales process. So things like following up with leads, following up with your

1:30 proposals and things like that. And I think we'll, you know, we might, depending on time, touch base on some different different types of emails, different um things you might want to send a little bit later. But for now, let's let's go to manage automated messages. And this is not live on the website yet. So, if you go there now within your own account, you're going to see the

1:54 old version, but hopefully within the next day or so, we should be able to to roll this out. And kind of the first thing you'll noticed is that all of the different what we call triggers, you know, anchors, time, you know, basically like when the when the emails go out, basically. Um, we've kind of grouped these together in a way that I think is a little bit more logical. So when um

2:17 you know when a booking comes in, you might have several emails that go out based on that booked date, you know. So if somebody books you today for a spring wedding, um you know, we're going to you can set up emails that go out based on that booked date. And so what we're doing now is um you know, everything within this trigger we're going to organize chronologically by when it goes out. So,

2:40 sends immediately. Um, these are things that are going to go out immediately when somebody books you. You know, they once they make that booking, uh, we've got it set up so that the business owner gets a notification, you know, so that you know that somebody booked you. And then we've got this customer confirmation email as well. And now you can click view details to kind of see that

3:01 email in line rather than needing to go over to another page. Um, and so you can kind of take a look and see what types of information are being included in your emails more easily. Um, if I kind of go down the list here, you know, I've got this followup five minutes after uh asking the customer to choose a design template and, you know, I can take a look at that, see what what's there. Um,

3:24 I can see the condition here. You know, I've got a special condition here that a design template um has an unselected template. So, this is only going to go out if they haven't yet chosen a template. You know, we can continue here. 3 days after I've got um something going to my wedding customers, you know, helping them plan. And again, if I look at these conditions, this is only going

3:48 out to certain wedding packages in my system. Um, and then you might have, you know, a whole series of additional reminders, things like that. Uh, you know, I've set up a few different template reminders, you know, one week after, two weeks after, and you can create as many or as, you know, few of these as you want. Um, but the good thing is with conditions, that's only going to go out

4:08 if it applies. So, if somebody actually picks their design template, great. They won't get any more of these. These will only apply if if they haven't yet. Similarly, if I scroll down here, um I've got the scheduled date uh emails or you know uh the scheduled date trigger and that's going to be the date that the event is happening. So if the event is you know scheduled for uh New

4:34 Year's Eve, um then this message is going to go out two months before New Year's Eve. And again, it's all going to be chronological now. So you can say, okay, this one goes out two months before, this one goes out one month before, one week before, uh, two days before, two days after, and things like that. And again, this can be things like, you know, most commonly reminders to

4:57 customers to do things, you know, if you need them to to pick a template, fill out a questionnaire, u pick a backdrop, all that type of stuff, you can automate that so that they get reminders there. Uh but it can also be things like uh staff reminders, you know, hey, just a reminder, you've got a an upcoming booking in two days or uh things like that. And then we've got uh two days after we've

5:20 got a customer review request. And so that's going to be um just kind of a reminder to them that hey, you know, we hope you had a good time. Come here to fill out our uh um to leave us a review. And probably the other most common one is is things based on the payment due date. So, you know, two weeks before the payment due date, you might want to remind them, you know, one week before,

5:42 a day after, and you can even set an an admin saying, "Hey, 3 days after, I want to, you know, I want to uh notify the the business contact, um, in this case, you um, that something's up." And if I continue scrolling down, you know, I can see all the different triggers that Check Cherry supports. So, you know, things like when a staff is assigned to a booking, you might want to send out

6:05 notifications. if a staff is removed from booking, staff's request booking, all that type of stuff. And basically, you can kind of just go through and what we try to do is to kind of put the most um what we think is the most um you know, the the most important up top. So, if I'm just looking at these bookings, you know, these are kind of the most commonly used, but if you keep scrolling

6:28 down, you can see everything else as well. Um including things that you don't have any automations around. So in this account, I don't have anything set up when a booking is canceled. And so if you know, if you want to add something, you can. So I really like this part of the new UI because it just kind of like maybe people didn't know you could do something with Check Cherry.

6:46 Exactly. So that that's really cool. I like that. And then similar with proposals, you know, you can kind of see uh most common use cases I would say with proposals are just kind of follow-ups, you know, reminding them, hey, uh just a reminder, you know, you haven't signed yet. And the most common triggers there are, you know, if you want to send, you know, two days after a proposal,

7:05 four days after a proposal, things like that. Uh, we can also do proposal viewed. So maybe you want to send a a email, you know, an hour after or even a few minutes after maybe if somebody views something if they haven't signed it. Um, and then we've got some other other, you know, uh, things available. Yeah. Yeah. And then similar for leads, you know, for your leads that come in,

7:27 you can set follow-ups. You know, you can target them based on wedding, things like that. And then up in the top right here, we've got a few filters. So, if I'm just looking for, you know, a confirmation or, you know, a review or something like that, um, just use a search makes it really easy to find things. You can also search by package now. And so, if I use the package search,

7:50 um, that's only going to show me messages that apply to a certain package. So, if I've got a wedding versus something else, you know, maybe I have different different messages coming in or set up for that. So, emails real quick. We've had people ask, hey, want they want to see kind of like what's the sequence, what's the flow, what's the workflow, and that's not really something that

8:09 CC cherry doesn't really have this concept of like build all these email sequences and you attach to a package. Um, so it's a complicated thing, you know, because there's so many different triggers and all that stuff. And so this is kind of a this is the next iteration I suppose and kind of giving somebody visibility as to what is happening at a package level if somebody books. Um so you can

8:30 kind of just scroll through. It looks good though. Yeah. Exactly. And then kind of the next thing that comes up is you know people want to create new new automations. You know I want to I have a process and I want to want to automate it. So um one another change we made here is to centralize all of the templates we have in one place. And you know, we might go through and add new templates,

8:52 kind of reorganize things from time to time, but basically if you click this browse templates, uh you can see everything in one place. And so again, if you're looking for a review reminder, you know, just search for that and see what comes up or uh feel free to look through. And um so we think that'll make it easier. That way you don't need to think about what trigger this

9:10 is based on. You know, is it schedule date or booking created or payment, you know, things like that. we've got kind of some some uh you know easy way to see everything in one place. Um and so the next thing I I kind of want to mention is um you know we've always supported uh what we call tags on on these messages. Doesn't look like I have it set up but basically you can

9:35 set different tags on the messages. Uh those are going to show up on the left now as well. So, if you go through and and tag all your wedding uh messages with wedding, then you'll be able to see those on the left here and filter more easily as well. We got a comment here. Derald says, "Love this." Uh helps organize better. Awesome. Yeah. Yeah. This kind of gets us more close to We never

9:57 folders because it's common. You know, you might want to have something in in multiple, you know, places. Um, so this way we can kind of do folders, but but you can assign it to multiple places if you need to. Um, next let's take a look at, you know, once I actually go to, you know, I can still preview it. Uh, this hasn't changed and you can kind of get some live previews with with different

10:20 um data in your system. Um, but what is new is the edit view. We've kind of revised that a little bit as well. Uh, let me go to one that's a uh an email rather. Um, and so we kind of consolidated this view a little bit to hopefully be a little uh, you know, little less unwieldy. Um, again, most of the same stuff is here, but one of the changes we made is we had the package selector

10:48 over on the right here. Uh, we moved this over into the conditions now. And the reason being that, you know, ultimately it's a condition like anything else. So, if I want to come in and and limit something to just DJ packages or just photo booth packages, um, you know, I can still do that. And I can also add other conditions as well. And so, if I want to say, you know, this is only for

11:13 customers that have unselected templates, I can come and do that as well. Um, one thing that is new as well is I can also select multiple conditions. So if I want to come in and say, you know, several conditions, it looks Oh, look at the UI. Yeah. Make that a little more readable, but uh but you can come in and and select multiple conditions, too. Um I think where that probably is

11:38 most useful is with our um you know, when you're dealing with leads. We find it real common that hey I've got you know I want to send you know one message to my wedding people and then I want to send um another message to all my other you know everything that's not a wedding. Um it was kind of uh awkward to do that before. You would have to create like five different templates for that. So

12:02 um now you can come in you can say okay I'm using this event type condition and I'm checking all of the all of the things that I want there. kind of just like a common point of confusion that would re re repeat itself. You know, it's like and it's like h we don't have an elegant solution for that. Totally get it. So, this is going to let us um kind of add some new conditions as well. So,

12:24 um, you know, things like if you want to send out an email based on specific questionnaires, um, I think that's kind of a no-brainer to add and and just some things like that where right now, you know, the the way the way we used to have it, you know, all of the conditions were in a drop down and so it just got really unwieldy if we if we wanted to add a million things.

12:43 But this is pretty um this should kind of let us do uh do some things we couldn't do before. So, um, and the other thing I want to kind of call attention to, so recipients pretty much works the same. You know, most of the time you're going to choose either client account to, uh, go to your client or business account, you know, business contact if you want it to go to you. Um,

13:04 you can still control where where any replies are sent to. And then over on the right here, we kind of rename or changed this um this token thing a little bit. Uh we've always had the token, you know, different tokens you can add to your message. Uh we added a quick search here. So if I search for customer or client or things like that, you'll see anything that that uh that comes up

13:25 there. And we've also made it so we can have some descriptions and and you know provide a little bit more information about what these different tokens are. So um again, this is something we'll probably be kind of building out. You know, if something's confusing, let us know. will will uh you know update descriptions, you know, flesh them out a little bit. But hopefully that

13:45 makes it a little bit easier to find what you're looking for. And yeah, you can just click the copy icon as well if you want to just add something. Um we had a comment from Kayla. She said, "Love the search feature for tokens." Yeah. And the copy. Yeah, that search feature is long overdue. Yeah. Yeah. It just Yeah. So Yeah. And and we might do some things like, you know, sort by most popular,

14:06 things like that as well. So kind of now, you know, now it kind of solves at least a part of the problem of, you know, before when we would add tokens, you know, this list just got longer and longer. It's kind of getting a little lease. So, and then here's where you can set those tags now. So, if you have uh a tag that you want to add, um just type it in and hit enter or,

14:27 you know, even multi multi-word tags. Um you know, things like that. You can uh you can add as many tags as you want to a message. And that doesn't do anything. You know, it doesn't change the the functionality of your message, but it does um it does make it easier to um uh to find, you know, now you're going to see this the grouping. Yeah. And then one other, it's not a new change, you

14:53 know, we've supported a little while, but um but it is something I want to call attention to. So, you can add attachments to your uh message templates as well now. So this, you know, we didn't always support that, but um you can use, you know, pick from your media library, upload something, and those will automatically be um be included on on outgoing messages as well. And so

15:14 those are kind of the main things under automated messages. Um you'll kind of find, you know, under custom templates. So templates are more for things you want to manually send. uh you know, if you've got like FAQs or just, you know, certain questions that come up a lot or you have a certain message that you send out, um custom templates let you set up things like that. And again, we've got

15:37 some templates you can you can browse from, you can create from scratch, uh things like that. And then system templates is kind of similar as well. So with system templates, you can't add or remove these. These are tied to built-in uh functionality with Check Cherry. um you know for instance you know the uh the staff invitation you know we need some way to to send out a message when when you

16:01 uh assign staff so we don't have a way to like add or remove these but you can come in and edit these templates and make changes and things like that as well. So um so it's all kind of you know kind of similar um but slightly different depending on on what the what the use of the the templates and messages are. Um, and as before, whenever you go into one of your bookings, um, you can continue

16:26 to use the quicksend to trigger any of them, you know, manually. You know, if you do have a, you know, for for whatever reason you've got a review request, you want to send it out manually, um, you can use that quick send to do that. Or like before, you can use the the new message tab as well and manually write messages, choose from your templates, uh, things like that as well. So,

16:49 um, so all that's, you know, kind of the same as before, but but it's helpful to, uh, to be able to set messages manually if you need to as well. So, one thing that's interesting, uh, from our side with the UI changes like this is we we don't always know, you know, how how much of an improvement is going to be because like it makes sense to us, it looks better to us, but until we

17:08 put it out there and get feedback um, from people, it's always, you know, interesting. And of course, initially there's always feedback that it's different, so that's kind of harder to use. Um, but it looks good, man. I think, you know, this is a step in the right direction. Yeah, we'll see. So, we'll uh and definitely it, you know, all a work in progress, but hopefully this makes it a

17:26 little bit easier. And, um, you know, automated messages are a huge part of of checker. So, um, so definitely something we're going to kind of continue to to push the ball forward on too. Love it. So, um, if there's any questions, uh, you know, feel free to if you want to. Gel says, "Looks great. Is there a way to find out a lead status change date would trigger things like

17:52 that? I'll kind of give you a background on it. Like I have like wedding [clears throat] leads. I moved a bunch of things into one different lead capture thing and it shows the creation like when the actual lead was created, but I'm not I can't seem to find out when it actually when the lead sty changed and how long it's been in that status for. Uh yeah. So, you're referring to So,

18:15 like when you go into a lead, um, you can, you know, set different statuses, you know, hot, cold, things like that. Um, yeah, and I don't think we Yeah, I don't think we do show that. Um, it makes sense. I mean, we maybe we could add that below the on the tools or something. Um, because yeah, I could see that being useful information, but but no, I don't think we currently currently do. Um,

18:37 but as you know, I'm sure you know, but if if for anybody else, you can tie automations to that as well. Um, that is one of the triggers we support. So, if you want to, you know, set a send an email out when you do change the status, uh, I guess we call it lead type changed, but um, that can be useful for certain things. Where I had it, I had a bunch of, uh, I had two different wedding

18:57 shows that all basically logged in at different times. I pushed them all into one category because I kind of halfass responded to the first show. it was small. Um, but once I moved everybody in, um, I wanted to be able to time it off as far as for my automated message. And I didn't I couldn't really time it off the how long it had been in there because I didn't know how long some of

19:19 the people had been there like when I moved them into that group, they just were kind of in that group. So, okay. Just want to figure that out. Yeah. No, it makes sense. Yeah, I could see. Um, yeah, that's something we could add pretty easily, I think. So, yeah. Then Rick says, "Uh, signatures would be a nice feature." And so Rick, we have that. We can kind of show you. It's

19:38 a little different. Probably works differently than you would expect, I would say. So, so we didn't always support signatures and we don't like modifying people's existing templates. So, when we did come out, you know, I don't know how old your account is, but if if your account predates it, um, basically what it comes down to, I keep looking at an SMS here. Let me look at an email.

20:02 me edit this one. Um, basically we've got this signature token, um, brand signature. Um, and if you don't, you know, if it's not already in your account or in your templates, you can just include it at the bottom there. And what that'll do is that'll automatically pull from uh from your account signature, which is under a brand, business settings, and then edit brand. And

20:31 I think it's toward the bottom there. So you can kind of put in, you know, whatever whatever you want to put for a signature, you can put that in there. Um, and then that'll show up in this brand signature token. But have an older account, you'll have to you have to update those templates. We didn't we we thought about, you know, just adding them to the end, but but if people already have,

20:50 you know, things they've manually some people put signatures already in there. Yeah. You didn't want to conflate. Gotcha. Yeah, I think I did see that. But I wasn't curious on whether or not you could actually somehow customize based on the user that's sending the message. We don't now. I It's Yeah, not currently. Generally, it's not coming from, you know, it's coming from the

21:13 business owner, but yeah, there's there's probably room for us to add that. Yeah. Rick, what what are some examples? I'm curious in terms of like do you have like a staff member sending you know pick out your template or Yeah. I mean just for for general interactions um because you know there's two of us basically that are logging in with two different login and um you know we start a communication

21:37 with somebody and you know I want to have my my name on it um like manual messages basically. Right. Right. Yeah. No, it makes sense. Yeah, I I could see us adding something, right? Maybe there's even a separate signature. I mean, that's a little bit more straightforward even. Yeah, it' probably be a separate separate signature. It's interesting. Good feedback. Thanks for

22:05 Okay, so what do you want to cover next? Or any other comments or questions? Feel free to raise your hand or chat. So, we'll see how the new UI goes. I mean I say you know Matt says day or two uh it should be there. Um, so we'll, you know, we're interested to hear feedback and, you know, confusion or whatever and see see what the next

22:25 steps, but it's an important fe feature of Check Cherry and it's something that hasn't changed in a long time. And it kind of just one of the things that happens when we're building the service is things just get additive, right? Like we add this, we add that, we add this, and then it's sometimes it's really nice to go back and kind of rethink how the UI looks. Um, I think I saw Theo raise

22:46 his hand, but maybe put it down. Yeah. So, I I do have a question for you. So, when I'm at events and everything like that, the booth is gathering either an email address or a phone number. Is there a bulk way to add that into Check Cherry so that I can start like following up with people automatically or do I need like a separate CRM? So, um, when you're

23:11 at an event, you're collecting email and phones. Is that what you're saying? At a wedding show? Well, no, not even at a wedding show, but Sorry, this is my daughter. But like even at like just, you know, I take a picture in the booth. Yeah. Um, no. And I don't know. I mean, I don't I mean, you're going to run into deliverability issues, I think, if you're emailing everybody sales stuff.

23:37 Um, be my first thought. Um, yeah. Because they're not really Yeah. What we do have are like contact forms where, you know, you can set up a contact form, somebody can fill it out, things like that. It's kind of intended more for like, you know, on a website, but um, but you can you can use that for for inerson stuff, too. And Theo, one of the one of the challenges that we have is

24:04 basically email deliverability. And that means like basically getting emails into the inbox. And we've made great strides and always had great deliverability, but we've even improved it um over the past year, year and a half or so on. Um but yeah, and Mitch is coming, but basically those people aren't expecting to get a sales email from you, so to speak. So, um you know, you're going to

24:24 be sending a bunch of people who aren't expecting, they maybe not remember you, that type of thing. A lot of spam reports, you know, it's low quality, basically low qual quality leads. Probably what I would do is like have a QR code that goes to your booking engine. You know, you can do that with Check Cherry. So, if somebody's interested, they can scan it and see pricing and or have a QR code

24:44 go to a lead form to get a discount or something if they're interested. And that way, it's a much more qualified lead, you know, that they're interested um as opposed to uh going up. Yeah. Okay. Go ahead. No, I was just going to say like, you know, even at like a wedding show, you know, the little disclosure will say that basically they're opting in by taking the pictures. Yeah.

25:09 So, [clears throat] that's I mean, I guess yeah, Mitch is kind of saying, you know, it's illegal and I don't there might be ways around and you know, I don't know. I mean, but from a from our standpoint, you know, we want to manage. We want your emails to get delivered. And if you're doing that on every event, sending a bunch of junk emails, it's basically what they are.

25:26 You know what I mean? They're not high quality leads. It's going to damage your deliverability for your account. And you'll be on chat saying, "Hey, why can't my why doesn't my payment email get delivered?" And it's like, "Well, yeah, because 90% of the email people are marking spam or they're not responding. They're just low quality." Um, okay. I didn't I didn't realize

25:41 that. So, thank you. Yeah. That's what'll happen, basically. So, I would find a way to kind of have an incentive for them and then collect things up. That being said, um there's no way to bulk upload leads and I don't think it's something we'll add uh specifically for these reasons. People get leads from places that are, you know, slow quality, I guess, and I think it's just

26:02 it's not going to service them well. Um DJ Angel says you can uh be able to export out from your software of choice. Yeah. Um, but yeah, I don't I wouldn't expect a great response rate from that tactic personally. Like I wouldn't I wouldn't run with that. I would definitely have an offer, you know, book us, save 10%. You know, whatever it is, get a free

26:24 add-on, I don't even know, and have them fill out just even a name and email on a simple form, you know what I mean? Submit and then yeah, it just gives you a chance to kind of get that consent and make sure, you know, they're opting in. Um, and you'll get fewer leads, but they'll be higher quality and you could spend more time with them because that's somebody that's showing some

26:44 intent. Um, or on business cards, for example, as well. So, consider something like that. That's what I would do. Um, any other questions? So, I guess let's move on. What do you think? Mailchimp or Mailchimp? I think that's kind of a good topic, a tiein because Mailchimp is another, you know, and and we're open to supporting some other other uh things like that, too. But, um,

27:09 something like Mailchimp is a good way to send what I would call email blasts or bulk email or or exactly what what Theo's talking about where they're a little more optimized for um, you know, just sending it to, you know, a thousand emails you have. You still are supposed to get consent. you, you know, with with with any um any platform. But um but the the good thing

27:33 about using something like uh a Mailchimp for your bulk email like that is that's not going to generally affect your deliverability the same way. Um, you know, you'll generally still be able to send out emails from Check Cherry and, you know, from your, you know, unless you're really really abusing it and they start to to see your name as as uh, you know, flagging across different

27:58 domains. But in general, you it it won't impact your deliverability to send out uh email through a bulk mail service. And, you know, you're going to have lower deliverability when you use something like Mailchimp. Um, but the upside is that that's not impacting your personal account. It's not impacting your payment reminders. No. Yeah. Right. And because it it is a, you know, it's

28:22 a problem if uh, you know, obviously you want your lead messages to go through and stuff, but it's it's it's a much bigger problem when that proposal doesn't get through or that payment reminder or, you know, that that design template that you need them to sign off on. Um, so and Mailchimp Mailchimp's long been requested. I mean, it's long been a, you know, people have

28:43 constantly asked for Mailchimp integration. Um, so it's great that we finally supported. Yeah, we've always supported under sales reporting. You can always just download your client list real easy here. Um, you know, just click download. That'll give you a spreadsheet. So, if if you something besides Mailchimp, you know, you can continue to to download that and upload into about

29:03 anything. Um, but with the Mailchimp integration, um, you're going to find that under manage business settings, integrations, and I've already got it enabled, but it'll be down kind of in the right of your, uh, your account. And what you'll see when you enable that, um, it's going to have you log in to your Mailchimp account. Um, and it's going to ask you what, uh, what list you

29:27 want your contacts to be synced to or added to. And then it's going to ask you what date should we start syncing contacts from. And what that's referring to is um you know like the when the contact was created. So as an example, if I just want to add everybody that's come into my system since you know something like January 1st, um I can put that and or if you want to add everybody

29:54 um you can leave it blank as well. So we have a lot of test data in this account so I'm not going to do that. But basically, you can kind of put whatever start day you want. Hit save and we'll start syncing those over to um to Mailchimp. We've also got some debugging stuff in here if you kind of, you know, need to see a little bit like what's being synced uh you know, all that type of stuff.

30:16 Um if you go into the settings, we've got this record section and that'll show you the the actual data that's being added to Mailchimp. Um, so, um, that'll include tags, you know, um, you know, what the what the information was and so forth. So, um, currently what we sync over is, um, uh, name, email, um, brand if you have multiple brands, um, lead, whether it's a lead, a proposal, or a

30:45 booking. And then we'll even sync over uh you know sometimes staff accounts get you know they'll they'll get synced over with the staff label as well. So um so based on that you can kind of see you know any of your uh any of your accounts. Um you'll be able to see what the status is on I had a couple of comments here. So uh Damian says I like Mailor light also if you're looking

31:08 for others to integrate but I can work with Mailchimp. Um and it looks like Miller Lightite. I haven't heard of them and we're I guess we're not evaluating these services often. Um but they do a lot of the same stuff. website builder and you know and I you know what's interesting is I think a lot of these features complement check Jerry well you know it's stuff we don't offer um so

31:25 thanks for the uh heads up on that and then Gerald says can this be separated by brand so not every contact is going into the same Mailchimp same list in Mailchimp it is going to go into the same one um we only support one one Mailchimp account um that said you can tag we will sync over the brand name. So you can filter um yeah, you can segment an audience or something like that based

31:52 on the brand tag. Um and we thought about that the it just becomes since you can pretty easily change um change brands on bookings and leads and stuff like that. It just kind of kind of turned into a mess with with how that would actually work in practice. So wouldn't really want like like different Mailchimp account. It's just the ability to actually say this brand go to this list, this

32:16 brand go to this list. Uh, oh, gotcha. Well, yeah, like because if everything like if I got a DJ company that does weddings, I got a corporate photo booth. Having all the contacts all dropped into one is not So, again, they'll have tags so you can you can create a segment basically and hit them up different. Yeah. So, I think it'll work. Yeah, the segments should work. They're they're

32:38 pretty pretty good for that. They'll Yeah, and I think you can even set up automations in Mailchip, too. Yeah, they have automation that I think that should should let you do. And if not, let us know. You know, we can, you know, maybe maybe there are things we can do, but but I think that um I think those tags will work pretty well. And we're going

32:55 to update those tags, too, as things change. So, that's the other part of it. You know, obviously, it's real common somebody comes in as a lead, you eventually convert it to a proposal and send that to them. You know, they accept that proposal, become a booking. um we're going to update those tags along the way. So, um you know, so if you do have a lead sequence in Mailchimp,

33:17 you know, I would use those segments, you know, make sure that you're only sending it to leads and then um you can have those follow-ups go out, then once it goes to a proposal, you know, that'll automatically take them out of the out of that tag. Um, similarly, if somebody has, you know, maybe you've got a somebody that's a lead and a, you know, they come back and they booked you

33:37 last year, but then they come in and and they're another proposal. Um, we'll have both of those tags on there as well. So, you can, um, you know, kind of have those segments that that, uh, pick that up as well. So, so once you're syncing this, this will just automatically do it for every contact or everything that comes in. It'll just automatically push everybody that all new leads,

33:56 all new everything's Yeah. And if the status is changed, does it do anything? Does it resend it under a different status or how does that Yeah. So, exactly. So, once the status changes, we'll we'll update the tag. It'll be the same record in Mailchimp, but it'll have a new tag. So, the the lead tag will come off and then the proposal tag added on. Yeah. And show the debug

34:19 show the debugging again because I think that's, you know, so it's going to change it in Mailchimp for us. You don't have to go in and manually flip it a lead to a booked or to a see those tags right there. It'll like kind of recalculate the tags and reapply them. Remove and add contents on here. But yeah, it's uh in general it's going to have um yeah, just the uh this one is only a lead

34:40 because and we'll we'll put it you know, we call them CC [clears throat] lead CC proposal just to kind of you know their name. Yeah. Yeah. Um, if for some reason we're not able to, you know, this fake email uh will will also show there that hey, it's got um it's got a fake uh or that you know that we can't sync for whatever reason. And once this proposal gets turned to a booking, then that

35:05 that proposal tag will go away and a booking tag will add it get added on. Um but it is possible that they'll have multiple tags, you know, in certain cases as well. But everything would have to be in the same list and you could never move it out of that list or else check cherry wouldn't be able to update or even find it. Well, uh, Joe, how it works basically is in the Mailchimp side is

35:24 you add an email address and then you can kind of segment the the email address to a to a list. Does that make sense? So, yes, it's all going to be in one list, but you could have one segment or list if you want to say uh for one brand and another segment for another. You could have a segment that says, "Hey, if the tag is lead and this brand, do these things. These are different groups."

35:45 I think it'll work. Mailchimp is basically like a dynamic list. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yep. Yeah. We think it it's going to be interesting to see. And um there was another uh service request in the Facebook group. I forget was was it Flow Desk or something? Uh yeah, they have a big special on till the end of November. uh unlimited contacts or something. We use flowes. Okay. Yeah, Flowesk.

36:12 And I don't know what I don't know is if they offer kind of like the website builder and the do they offer the kind of the flows or you know workflow. They they do like templates like we go in and just quick put together like a little email blast. We don't do it very often, but uh currently right now I'm actually synchronizing using Zapier to put stuff into Flow Desk, but

36:34 Uhhuh. Yeah. Yeah. And and uh I know they're priced much more affordably. I think they're like 35 bucks unlimited context, which I don't Yeah, it's somewhat concerning for me quite frankly, but I mean I in terms of but um you know, maybe the deliverability is okay. I don't know. Yeah. And of course it is possible um as as Mitch me mentioned you can use Zap year to uh to probably sync with

37:02 about anything um including Mailchimp. You know if our if our Mailchimp flow doesn't work for for what you need to do. Um you can use Zap year it's you know it's going to be more more setup more configuration but uh but yeah that that is of course still an option as well for and and expect more of these. I mean this is we don't want to be in the business of mass email I think is the what

37:22 you can take from this. It's just not something, you know, I mean, the email deliverability on Check Cherry is so important. Um, you know, to get all those messages delivered that this isn't this isn't something I think we're ready to take on anytime soon. Yeah. Speaking of screens real quick, what's [clears throat] next? So, I guess we've got Well, here's uh Rick. any any

37:45 future integration with other uh credit card gateways in plan uh and or capability to charge different fee amount based on payment type. So no, I I don't think that'll that'll be something that happens um anytime soon. Basically, uh you'll be at 2.9% plus 30 cents for all cards. Um, if you're sensitive to payment processing fees, um, I would recommend increasing prices and just

38:13 making it easy for people to pay. But you can also pass along processing fees. Um, but I don't think we'll be entering adding any gateways um, you know, anytime soon. Um, how do you pass along the um, processing fees? There's a feature. Yeah, go ahead, Matt. Yeah, under manage payment settings um over on the right here we've got you know you'll see whatever uh you know by

38:41 default credit card but you can also add bank account and even CLA and what you can do is come in and say um there's a setting do you want to pass along payment processing fees yes or no and then you can um you can put that rate um to break even you would put in 2.9 plus 30 cents but you could um you If you want to make it easy, just say 3% or things like that, you can do that

39:06 as well. So, um, and then the other thing you can do, a bank account is a little bit cheaper, uh, about half 1.5%. Um, so sometimes people will put, you know, you can put in a price for bank account and things like that. And so it's a great way to kind of let the customer choose like, do I want the, you know, convenience and safety of a credit card? do I want, you know, I'm fine, you know,

39:27 with kind of the the little bit more of a hassle of putting in a bank account or, you know, going through a zel or something like that. And so, um, so yeah, so it's kind of a good middle ground. Kind of let the customer choose a little bit. So, um, so yeah, maybe we'll go on to our next feature, which is, um, this will be a quick one, I think. But you've probably noticed in your

39:52 inbox the last few days, um, we've updated the Czech Sherry daily mailer. Um, so keep an eye out for that. And basically what we want to do there is just kind of, you know, we've always sent these messages awaiting review. Um, it was kind of ugly, kind of hard to read. And, um, you're going to find, um, hopefully that message be a lot more useful now. So, um, we'll continue to have the

40:13 messages awaiting review. Um, we're also going to have any proposals awaiting review, any time off requests from staff that you have uh that you need to act on. Um, any uh uh staff booking requests, you know, so if if you've got bookings that are um you know, your staff are awaiting approval. And couple other things that are going to show up now. um if anybody unsubscribes or you know

40:40 a message is undeliverable. You know, say you have a bad email address, uh there's a typo or something, those are going to show up now. You know, if somebody hits the spam on on one of your messages, things like that, you're going to see um see those in that in that daily message as well. And I think it's, you know, we that's good information. If you see somebody's

40:58 unsubscribing and stuff, take a look at it. Um, we had a customer, I forget who it was, but they were basically sending an email a day, you know, for whatever, six days after a lead was created and getting people to unsubscribe and um, you know, he didn't I guess he didn't realize he was doing that and, you know, he's tailing it back, but um, yeah, so I think it should maybe add some

41:19 insights, you know, into what what messages people are like and, you know, what's too much basically. And by default, that goes out to admins. So, um you know this um if you go into an admin account um there is an option to turn that off if you want to turn off the what we call the daily digests. Um that's like I said that's been there for a while but but previously it just included

41:44 those um those uh does does that turn that off for all admins or just maybe just for that admin? Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Person by person. So, you know, if you've got a couple people on there that you do want to get that or that you don't, you can you can toggle that for for each account. So, all right, cool. Good. And, you know, probably nothing, you know, this isn't going

42:06 to go out to regular staff, only to admins. So, um there's probably nothing, you know, overly uh sensitive in there. Um we're not going to send out like payouts or anything like that in there, but um but it will have, you know, contact information or things like that. So, um so yeah, so it's helpful. And then for a for a regular staff, um we might have something similar for staff, but

42:28 that's going to have to be kind of a different thing. You know, we don't want to see stuff that that they should have access to. So, um so yeah, you'll you'll hopefully already seeing that in your inbox or um or will soon. So, so I think that's all we had for that one. And I guess we got our auto open likely. Yeah. I don't know. So, we have Yeah. So I don't know if I've got an example

42:51 here, but you might be able to go to the email history report, but so when emails go out and check cherry um you know we tag we you know say you send a message to three people will um you'll see these labels next to it and it's kind of a not infrequent question that that people ask what what those labels mean. Um, and so I guess just to kind of walk through the the status, you know, when

43:21 a message is first sent, it's going to just show sent. Um, almost immediately it'll usually change to delivered. And that just means that we got an acknowledgement that, you know, that it made it to the the the customer's uh email server. Um, what the customer's email server does after that, you know, we don't have a ton of insight. you know, we don't know if they put it in the inbox or

43:45 a spam folder or anything else. Uh, you know, obviously they don't they don't want spammers or anybody else to know that. So, uh, so we can tell that it made it to a recipient. We don't know, you know, where what inbox after that. Um, conversely, if it didn't make it, you know, say you've got a typo in that email address, then you're going to see something that says like bounced or, you

44:07 know, undeliverable. Um, so generally that that just means that you know there was a typo is 99% of the time what happened there. Um, the next status you'll see uh ideally you're going to see this open status and the way open tracking works is it's a little bit of a of a you know of a trick. Like basically what it is is there's a little tracking uh a little tracking image in the

44:34 email and how Check Cherry or you know pretty much any platform any CRM or or other platform works is we'll listen for somebody to load that image and then when somebody loads that image we know that the that the email has been you know opened so to speak. um you know from there uh you know maybe they'll click something in the email they'll click a link or click something in the email and what

45:00 happens then is Check Cherry will uh you know we'll track that they clicked it because what we've got you know instead of sending it directly to uh to that proposal we've got a little uh bit of tracking that will track it and then forward it along to the proposal. So one thing we've found in the last couple of years it's increasingly you know privacy has become increasingly

45:25 important and as a result a lot of different uh email platforms you know tools and things like that have kind of tried to avoid allowing you to to you know to do the open tracking and there's a few ways they can do it. Um one strategy is to prevent any images from loading at all. So, you know, sometimes you'll see that sort of thing. And when that happens, you know, that means that

45:51 they may be able to read the text, but you know, they didn't see any of the images in your message. Um, another thing that we're seeing in the last, I think, what was that, six months ago, a year ago, um, you know, what what really kind of changed things is that Apple added some uh a feature where basically they they automatically open every message. you know, they load all of

46:14 the images for everything that that you know, every email. And what that meant is that it kind of messes with the open tracking. Um, so one of the changes we're making now is we're adding a new status called autoopen likely. Uh, to just kind of give a little bit of insight into that. Uh, previously what would happen is, you know, you'd send a message and then 10

46:37 seconds later it shows as opened. And, you know, sometimes that's true. you know, the client really is sitting there and they get your message, but sometimes, you know, it's that one of these automated systems opened it. And so, um, so this is something that, you know, we can't detect 100%, but we can, I think, do a pretty good job of detecting that it was autoopened and, um,

46:57 hopefully flag it. So, you know, unfortunately, it doesn't mean you necessarily, you know, know for sure if after that, you know, if we're able to track that they open it, you know, for real on a different device or something like that later, we'll we'll change the status to opened. Um, but if you see that auto open likely, that's basically what's happening there. Um, and

47:18 so this is kind of, you know, you you'll kind of see similar things. I think Mailchimp calls it like Apple MPP or something like that, but um, but it's not just Apple. there are a number of systems that do it and um it's something you're going to kind of see increasingly you know across across all platforms with open tracking um you know lately so until everybody does it

47:39 and open tracking becomes right worthless which is basically Apple's goal uh which is fine I mean is you know it's their prerogative new users they got to protect their privacy um but for us yeah we say likely because um we've got some tricks to identify it but it's never a 100% sure. And a lot of times people would think it was kind of, you know, a bug with Check Cherry or something

48:05 like that. So that's also something we want to be clear like, hey, this is what's happening. Um, you know, it's just, you know, maybe they'll ask that question, you know, if they see it, something like that. But yeah, um, I've got another comment here, uh, or a question from Gerald. Any progress on having the appointment feature? Check a Google calendar for availability. So, want to book an

48:27 appointment when we have something else booked on my calendar. It's the one thing that stops me from using the check cherry feature. And so, no, we don't have an update. Makes sense. Totally get it. Um, you know, where we have Yeah, basically a user level calendar sync, I guess, on with Google and probably others I think is what will be required. Yeah, we need to change change our our sync

48:52 in a way that um yeah that uh makes it user level instead of instead of business wise the Google calendar syncing stuff's been a challenge in some ways um but I mean it works well but you know there's been a few things and um you know it makes a lot of sense and I we and Gerald we totally understand why that's an important feature I use to close my office like

49:15 I can just go to Google calendar office closed and then all all all the other programs I have that can book appointments including Zoom and all that. So makes sense. Yeah. Other than that, I love I love the feature until I found out that I can't actually check my calendar. I can't I can't use it because I can't let something double book me on something. So there's a gotcha. Yeah. So,

49:37 well, we don't have much time, Matt. Um, you know, I thought we were going to go over some tips and tricks on the automated. I thought we were going to be light on time, so we kind of had to backfill with, you know, tips and tricks for uh messages, but we've only got 8 minutes or so left. Um, does anybody have other questions um or want to open up and and uh share uh thoughts or anything

49:58 uh in the closing uh minutes? Real quick, I got a question. Uh once in a while on texting, um they'll get a message that their status will be something like undelivered or undeliverable or something that I think it's just undelivered. um or undeliverable I believe it was. And then I can turn around and I can send it again and it goes through. H is that a text message?

50:21 Yes. Yeah. You know, I don't know. That's interesting. Um I think maybe um just chat with us next time it happens. Have you done that? No, I haven't. Yeah, just chat so we can look at a specific because a lot a lot of times what happens is so I haven't seen that. I don't know if Matt has an The other thing too, um, we may be able to tell. You may want to look in

50:45 your, um, Twilio does have like a log of of all the errors. Um, some certain errors were able to get, certain ones we're not. Um, so you may want to check if there's any errors. Yeah, I did I did check there, but they're not even hitting it. They're not even getting an error there. Next time it happens, just bring it up. Let's look at a specific example because we can dig into it and

51:11 debug. Yeah, but thanks for bringing that up. Um, and then we got another comment. Can we suggest a tip percentage instead of an amount? And so I suppose that's just, you know, maybe we have a helper or something, you know, that they can click a button or something to fill in a tip amount. Um, yeah, because right now it's just tip amount. There's a dollar. I mean,

51:32 I, you know, I even think maybe just click a percentage and it fills autofills little boxes. Yep. What are the common tip percentages you would expect? Like 10 is like the restaurants 10, 15, 20. 100% sounds good. [laughter] I love it. Yeah, definitely 20%. 20%. Yeah. And maybe that's even like a setting or something. I could see, you know, just use the same thing

52:00 that Starbucks does in the in the drive-thru. That's funny. 20, 50, 100. [laughter] Believe it or not, some people turn the tip feature off. It's uh it's interesting. Um yeah, 20 bucks for a $1,500 contract is low. I mean, I I get that. Um you know, I don't know that. Um you know, yeah, we'd probably have to make it configurable because I think I think different

52:26 people would want different things. But yeah, but yeah, makes sense. Even text with like, you know, a couple of options, you know, but yeah. I get it tips. Um there is a place you can edit the message the the tip message. Um so that is one you know you put in text oh you know 20% conventional or something but but I get it like having some like predefined most customers

52:48 tip a tip us 50% and they get goodwill and luck for the next year. Um yeah good suggestions. Well I thought this was this went well. Uh you got you got anything you say? Yeah I got a quick question. Do you guys provide any support with helping with getting text messages set up? I'm like struggling with that hardcore. No, if you chat with us, we can look at it. Um Okay.

53:12 But problems getting uh approved by Twilio I think it's the ATP. Honestly, it's been declined twice. And what do they I mean I think just chat with us, share us a screenshot. I mean we've got many customers that have gone through it. Um it is I hope it's gotten better. It was horrible uh when it first went on. Um but you know, and then you can also post in the Facebook group. I know there

53:41 was somebody that was helping people. I forget who that was. Um but you might post in, hey, can somebody help me? And they were doing a service uh for helping people get set up. Yeah. Okay. I I may have to do that. I don't even know if I'm in the Facebook group, so I'll have to look at that. Yeah. Yeah. Check our user group. U but chat with us, too. We you can share the message.

54:01 I mean, you know, and we can kind of point you in the right direction. Um, but we've got all the features. Common things I see. I mean, they do verify your business information. So, if there's something, you know, an email address that isn't valid, a website that isn't there, um, they really do verify it. And um I think you know I think Twilio doesn't do a very good job

54:22 of uh of their UI, but actually what they're doing is they're collecting the info and passing it along to um either the phone companies or the phone companies have a service. I'm not sure. But basically it it goes directly to the phone companies to get approved. Um so even if we had kind of a built-in thing, we' we'd still kind of have to go through that same that same uh process.

54:42 Um, and but the most common things I see are like if if any of the business information doesn't match, they'll reject it. So, be real careful on, you know, that email addresses, uh, EIN, all that stuff is correct. And then the other thing is, um, they really want to see that consent message. Uh, they want to see that, you know, that check box saying that that I've agreed to receive text

55:08 messages. And so if you've got a a form on your website, even if you're not planning to text people, uh if it doesn't have that checkbox, they'll, you know, they'll they'll reject it. So, um yeah, so take a look at your website, you know, even take the form off if you need to get get through or, you know, and just point them to to the check someone or something. But um but yeah,

55:30 those are those are the things I see that it's all stuff related to basically I think laws that were implemented uh to help reduce spam texting is effectively that's going on here. So this is the pain point for us all. It's probably that checkbox because like I've got a Google My Business account [clears throat] with reviews EIN all that's right. It's probably the checkbox I think that you're

55:52 saying. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You can enable that. Yeah. or even if you've got a website, you know, if you've got a form you're using, you know, generally you you know, most form builders have a little like checkbox option. So, give them um you know, just kind of like Google or chat GPT the wording, but like they want kind of specific wording, too. Um you know, just you know, whatever

56:10 I I agree to whatever. Um just make sure you're you're kind of your wording is more or less in line with what they're looking for. Yeah. And hey, Angel, I saw you had your hand up. You still got a question? Let's hear it. Sorry about that. You're good. Um unrelated to what Gai's covered today, but I was trying to figure out how to do um the integration with

56:32 I guess booking the services. I I do like that feature, but I haven't been able to figure out how to be able to keep them on my website. So, I know there's a way you could kind of like have a banner on top so that the booking service kind of um goes to Check Cherry, but it doesn't look like they're leaving your website. Is there anything any videos on in your library that kind of shows

56:53 that? Because I've seen a lot of um people using Check Cherry accomplish that. I just don't know how they're doing that. Sorry to throw you for a loophole there. It's just So, generally they're they're just kind of matching up the colors and the the um the uh logo and all that so that it looks pretty seamless. Um we do so under website integration you'll see like at the top we've

57:19 got a few like just kind of link only things and then um down below there are some website widget libraries. Sometimes I've seen people do things with the booking calendar where that's embedded directly within there. Um but any of whether it's a lead form, the booking calendar, these can all be embedded within your website and they can include a book now link. Um, but once once they're

57:41 on, you know, as far as actually booking, you know, where they're seeing the package. Yeah. Be on on our website. And the reason we do that is, um, you know, and as long as the the colors and the logo match, usually it looks pretty pretty seamless. You even skip to here. Um, but the reason we we do send them over to off of your website is, uh, basically we want to avoid the

58:07 whole is, you know, issues with PCI compliance, um, and you needing to to go through, uh, through that whole review process. And we do a lot with, uh, allowing people to kind of resume, you know, resume booking links and things like that. Um, you know, some of our integrations that we support, things like that just make it difficult to, you know, Yeah. just kind

58:28 of unwieldy if it were fully embedded. Um, that said, I you know, I would like to to kind of explore some different options. But yeah, that's that's that's the only reason I haven't integrated yet because I don't want them coming off my site. Um, so it is doable. I mean, they could still be on this link here, but you're just creating a banner over it so that this seem so

58:53 the only button they can't hit is your homepage. Like if they Go ahead. I'm listening. you I'm sorry. You can look at my website. I think it um goes into the check cherry for the booking piece like pretty amazing. I've gotten a a hu a quite a few number of compliments on how well it flows. It's seaside sipper.com. Okay. And then under the services section under the services tab

59:19 um book and pay and it goes right. Look at that. And it doesn't. Yeah, but but it's coming off your homepage. Angel, I wouldn't worry too much about it because keep in mind, they're going to a salesunnel, you know, and they've decided they want to proceed. Most from what we've seen, it doesn't impact conversion rates or anything like that. Um I think your

59:48 business, it's just my preference. Yeah. No, I understand that. Yeah, I totally get it. But yeah, it's uh it's not something that we we support at this time. Um like I say, you would have to go through a a like a a PCI compliance review and and all that type of stuff. Um so it is does continue, you know, if it's fully if it is fully embedded within your website,

1:00:12 it would would raise some different barriers, which is why we haven't done it yet. Even if it's embedded within an iframe, um you're still still required to go through that. But um but yeah, all that being said, I mean, you know, we're always, you know, considering ways to kind of improve things and and um you know, maybe maybe we'll have some some type of mode or something or other

1:00:32 at some point. Okay. But yeah, this time it does have to go off site. So, appreciate it. Gerald comments here. Your whole website's job is to get them into the booking system. Yeah. Yeah. I think like I say, if you can push in the salesunnel, you you'll be winning. Uh because they'll quickly be you'll get leads basically that are qualified. But well, we're we're past time a few minutes.

1:00:52 Um, yeah, Rick says you can still tie the Google Analytics as well. Yeah, we have the Google Analytics integration. So, we've got a lot of, you know, measures in place that should help. Um, Matt, it went great. Thanks for driving again. Um, as usual, u, I'm curious to see, uh, the feedback and how when it hits the production servers, what happens, but it looks, you know, I think

1:01:14 those changes will help people. Um, and it lays the groundwork as you were mentioning for some other features and you know, maybe uh maybe we'll have to do another uh webinar with some some more general tips and Yeah. And we didn't get to any tips on messaging and stuff and that would have been cool. But hey, that's how it goes. I totally forgot about

1:01:31 the new timing. I came a little bit late. Oh, he came now. Hey, I'll hang out with you for an hour. No, I'm joking. [laughter] My bad. I totally forgot about the new time. Sorry about that. It's okay, man. Well, we miss you. I thought about you. I was like, "Oh, maybe he's, you know, maybe maybe he's at a gig." You never [clears throat] know. Um, happy uh happy

1:01:50 Thanksgiving to everybody in the US as well. So, yep. Yep. Thanks for coming, guys. We appreciate you. Have a great night. Enjoy. Thank you. And we'll see you. Yep. We'll see you in a couple weeks. Okay. Good Bye guys.