Workaround - Custom meeting reminder / email follow ups

[Jwberry]

Quite often Users ask for help with meetings, and so often what they want is just not possible.. like editing the default confirmation email that is sent after the meeting is booked. But wait!?!?!?!??!? 

WOrKARouNd!! 🕺

There's a clever workaround I learned to send a custom "automated email" prior to the meeting event! For this to function successfully we need to use a combination of Contact Properties, Workflow filtering logic, and Delays. Check out this video to learn more: 📼😝

[karstenkoehler · Accepted solution]

Hi @Jwberry and everyone,

Great news, there is now a beta for a native feature!

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Meetings

 

[Public Beta] Reminder Defaults, Reminders for CRM bookings, and Reminders for Proposed Times bookings

Sep 27, 2023

What is it?

You can now configure default reminder intervals, send reminders for meetings booked through the CRM, and send reminders for meetings booked through the proposed times feature in Meetings! Previously, reminder emails could only be configured automatically through scheduling pages.

Why does it matter?

Previously automatic reminder email functionality was only possible for meetings booked through scheduling pages. Now, users will have the ability to configure reminder emails to send prior to meeting time through all scheduling flows (meetings booked via scheduling pages, meetings booked via CRM records, and meetings booked via the insert proposed times functionality). Portals will also be able to configure default reminders that will be automatically suggested for newly created scheduling pages and all CRM and Insert proposed times bookings, making reminder configuration efficient and standardized when desired.

How does it work?

Portals can enable default reminder intervals to send reminder emails leading up to a scheduled meeting by going to Settings > Tools > Meetings and enabling the toggle "Turn on meeting reminders by default".

Turning on default reminders will not impact any already scheduled meetings and will not change any reminder configuration that you already have in existing scheduling pages. What the new default reminder setting will do is make sure that newly created scheduling pages inherit this default configuration automatically. However, you can choose to configure scheduling pages to not follow this default, if desired.

Along with a new default reminder option, users are now able to automatically configure reminder emails to send for meetings booked through CRM records (contacts, deals, companies, tickets, etc.). When you click the "schedule a meeting" button on an object record, the scheduler has a new reminder section. If your portal has default reminders configured, this configuration will inherit the reminder intervals set on the default. However, users are still able to make changes to these reminders in the CRM scheduler ad-hoc prior to booking the meeting.

Users can also send configure reminders to send for meetings booked via the insert proposed time feature in emails. When you are sending an email through HubSpot and select the "insert proposed times" functionality, the modal has a new reminder section similar to what users would find in the CRM scheduler and meeting's scheduling pages. If your portal has default reminders configured, this configuration will inherit the reminder intervals set on the default. However, users are still able to make changes to these reminders in the insert proposed times modal ad-hoc prior to booking the meeting.

Who gets it?

All hubs and tiers

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This can be found in the beta section of the product updates:

Have a great day everyone!

[HWerntz]

I'm specifically interested in how to add a link to the meeting in the reminder email - can you provide more instructions on how to set that up?

[rmcnaught26]

Is this feature still available?

[Zzzzz]

Hi @karstenkoehler ,

Now after the new changes there is a field for Meeting Start Time, is there a way to send custom meeting reminders instead of using the default?

I keep getting stuck when setting up the delay, because it only allows to delay until the DATE of the field and not the TIME of the field. Is there any workaround for this?

[JTurrell]

Thanks for this. This wouldn't work for us because our contacts book meetings for different reasons (e.g. different products), and we'd want the automated email to be tailored based on the meeting. Are there any other properties we could use to trigger a particular sequence, such as meeting link name? That would enable us to choose a message that makes sense for the particular meeting booked. 

[aalthaus_revriv]

It's been a couple of years since the original workaround was shared. I'm curious if any new features or functions improve this capability. I published my workaround here and wanted to share in case it helps. 

[kvlschaefer]

Hi @aalthaus_revriv,

Thank you for sharing your workaround with the Community! 🙂 

I would recommend subscribing to this submitted idea in order to receive a notification when our Product Team makes an update to the idea. You can subscribe by either commenting on the idea or clicking the "Follow" button. 

Best,

Kristen 

[cfinsness]

In this custom reminder email, it would be helpful to include what exact TIME the upcoming meeting will occur. When trying to add the contact property 'date of last meeting booked in meetings tool' (which is actually a time value) into the email, it just renders the date which isn't very helpful in the context of this reminder email. I put this request in this post, if you think it would be helpful please upvote it ! 

https://community.hubspot.com/t5/HubSpot-Ideas/Allow-date-time-to-render-in-an-email/idi-p/643516 

[cfinsness]

Hi, thanks for this workaround! Is there a way to include the meeting "reschedule" or "cancel" tokens in the email sent via a workflow? 

[cfinsness]

Also another question - the condition in this workflow is not eligible for 're-enrollment'. If someone books multiple meetings (and so should go through this flow multiple times), what have you found is the best way to re-enroll them? 

[adrianne]

That's awesome, will give it a try!

[pilottravis]

I owe you a beer

[msa_cocolab]

Hi Jimmy

I have a lot of manually scheduled meetings and therefore the "Date of last meeting booked in meetings tool" is often empty. However I found out that there is a Company property called "Last Booked Meeting Date" which covers both meetings booked from the meeting tool and manually scheduled meetings. However I do not get the option to use the trigger "is less 1 days from now" when I want to use that property in a workflow. Do you know why that is?

[EdMcKnight]

Hi James, the trouble with this approach is that it still lacks the ability to pull out any serious data about the meeting. You can't pull out meeting location or who the meeting is with. 

Let me give you an example of the gold standard that we're trying to build:

• Contact has meeting with Y sales member in 1 day time.
  • Meeting Type: This is an initial consult
  • Meeting Location: Which will be held in our Southern Office (as opposed to our Northern Office or Online).
• Send the contact an email from the person who the meeting is with stating:
  • When the meeting is
  • Where the meeting is
  • And the appropriate briefing for that meeting including text and videos. 

All of that can be put into a marketing email and done with logic using Smart Rules and active lists that you use solely for segmentation. 

The issue is that Hubspot's data structure doesn't let you pull out or use any of that data which you could conceivably get by using the form submission trigger ... except only the contact data comes through ... not the meeting data. 

Excuse my vent, this is very frustrating for a Marketing Enterprise customer who spends a significant amount of budget on Hubspot each year.

Then my team wonder why we can't do any reasonably sophisticated automation that the hairdresser down the road seems to do 😅 I'm exaggerating, but this is seriously lacking in Hubspot.