Every booking triggers a series of touchpoints with the guest — email always, and text messages too if you've added guest texting. Here's what gets sent, when, and how to troubleshoot when something doesn't arrive.
What we send automatically
| Trigger | Email (always) | Text (with the texting add-on) |
|---|---|---|
| Booking confirmed | Confirmation email with date, time, address, contact info, the payment expectation, and your cancellation policy — plus the guest's "Manage your booking" link | Short confirmation text with the essentials and the manage link |
| 24 hours before the experience | Reminder email | Reminder text |
| Cancellation or refund | Confirmation of the cancellation, the refund amount, and the timing ("refunded to your original payment method… within 5–10 business days") | Cancellation text |
Everything is sent under your venue's branding — emails carry your logo, colors, from-name, and signature; texts lead with your business name.
The "Manage your booking" link in the confirmation is worth calling out: it's where guests cancel, reschedule, or change party size on their own, within your policy window. The window is enforced server-side — a guest can't reschedule their way out of a late-cancellation fee — and every change they self-serve is a phone call your team doesn't take. In texts, it's shortened to a compact link so the message stays a single SMS.
Guest texts (add-on)
Text messaging is a $15/month add-on — turn it on under Settings → Guest texts, cancel anytime from your billing portal. It's transactional only: booking confirmations, reminders, and cancellations, never marketing.
A few things to know about how it behaves:
- Guests opt in at checkout. Texts only go to guests who gave their mobile number and said yes to texts when booking. No opt-in, no text — the email still covers them.
- You choose which texts send. A master switch plus per-type toggles (confirmation, reminder, cancellation) live in Settings → Guest texts.
- You can edit the wording. Unlike the guest emails, each text's wording is yours to edit — merge fields like the guest's first name, date, and time fill in per booking, and a live preview shows the message with your real venue details as you type. Leave a template untouched and you get our standard wording, including any improvements we ship to it.
- Last-minute bookings don't get double-texted. A guest who books within a day of their experience gets the confirmation text, and we quietly skip the reminder that would have landed minutes later.
- Opt-outs are automatic. The first text tells guests they can reply STOP; if they do, texting to that number stops instantly and their profile is marked opted out. HELP gets an automatic assistance reply.
Guests can text back: the Messages inbox
Texting is two-way. When a guest replies — "running 10 late!", "can we add two more?" — the conversation lands in Messages in your admin, threaded per guest with their booking texts shown for context. Anyone on your team can read and reply, and replies go out as texts under your business name.
- You'll know when something arrives. The Messages item in the nav shows an unread count, and staff get a push notification on their devices by default. (Email alerts for guest texts are off by default — each person can turn them on under Settings → Notifications.)
- One tap from the run sheet. On a booking's card, Text guest opens that guest's thread with a ready-to-edit "are you still able to make your booking?" message — built for the party that's ten minutes late. Nothing sends until you hit Send.
- Replies respect consent. If a guest has opted out (or never opted in), the reply box says so instead of sending.
Guest recovery emails (off by default)
Two operator-branded campaigns that most booking platforms don't have. Both are off until you turn them on, both send under your venue's branding, and each has a short "core message" you write yourself.
Abandoned-checkout recovery. A guest who starts booking but doesn't finish gets a gentle three-touch sequence inviting them back: about one hour later, one day later, and three days later. No discounts, no pressure — just a warm path back to the seat they were about to book.
Declined-fee recovery. If you charge a late-cancellation or no-show fee and the guest's card declines, the guest gets a "book again within 24 hours and we'll waive the fee" email. It turns a bad moment — a fee, a declined card — into a returned party more often than you'd expect.
Turn either campaign on from Settings → Guest recovery, and edit its core message until it sounds like you.
How emails are sent
All guest emails are sent through Resend from noreply@bookings.artistryhost.com. The display name on that address is your venue's brand name (or a custom from-name if you set one), so guests see your business in their inbox, not "ArtistryHost." The reply-to is your venue's contact email, so when a guest replies, it goes straight to you.
Set your contact email under your business details. If you leave it blank, replies fall back to the no-reply sender and you won't see them — so it's worth filling in.
There's nothing for you to configure for deliverability. Email authentication (SPF, DKIM, DMARC) is set up on our sending domain, bookings.artistryhost.com, and we hit inboxes reliably across the major providers (Gmail, Outlook, Apple Mail, Yahoo). There's no custom sending domain to verify.
Texts are sent through our shared, carrier-registered texting infrastructure — there's no phone number to buy or register, and the compliance work (carrier registration, opt-out handling) is already done.
"My guest didn't get their email"
When a guest tells you they didn't get a confirmation, work through this list in order:
- Check the spam folder. Easy first ask. Solved 60% of these cases in our experience.
- Confirm the email address. Open the booking. Is the email correct?
gmial.cominstead ofgmail.comis the single most common cause. If it's wrong, fix it on the booking. - Send a fresh email. On the booking card, click Send reminder. It re-emails the guest (the wording adapts to how far out the booking is). This is the one manual guest email you can trigger — there's no separate "resend confirmation" button, and there's no delivery/open tracking to check, so a successful send is your signal that it went out.
- If it still doesn't arrive: the receiving inbox is blocking us. Send the guest the booking details in a personal email from your own inbox, and let them know they may need to whitelist your reply-to address for future bookings.
And if a guest didn't get a text: check that they opted in (their guest profile shows it), that their mobile number is right, and that they haven't replied STOP at some point. When in doubt, the Messages thread shows every text that actually went out to them.
What you can customize
The email bodies are fixed — you can't rewrite the wording of the confirmation, reminder, or cancellation emails. What you can control is how they're branded and who they come from, under your business settings:
- Logo, brand colors, and email signature — applied across every guest email.
- From-name — the display name guests see in their inbox (defaults to your business name).
- Contact email — the reply-to address guests reach when they respond.
The text bodies, by contrast, are fully editable per message type under Settings → Guest texts (see above). The other guest-message copy you write yourself is the two Settings → Guest recovery core messages. A few brand-consistency tips for that copy and your signature, in case you want them:
- Skip exclamation points unless you really mean it.
- Use specific operator language ("your booking" not "your reservation," "guests" not "customers").
- Sign from "the [Venue Name] team" rather than a single person. It's more honest as your team grows.
Replies
Email replies go to your venue's contact email — the reply-to on every guest email. If you haven't set a contact email, replies land on the no-reply sender and you won't see them — so set one under your business details.
Text replies land in the Messages inbox in your admin, where anyone on your team can answer (see "Guests can text back" above).
Either way, we don't auto-respond. Reply personally. Guests appreciate it, and it's part of the reason ArtistryHost exists.