Letter Templates & Automated Emails

Letter Templates & Automated Emails#

Daobook's letter templates let you create reusable emails and letters with smart placeholders that automatically fill in client, appointment, prescription, and clinic details. You can send them manually from a client's profile, download them as professional PDFs, or set them to send automatically on events like birthdays and new client referrals — with optional gift vouchers attached.

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Creating a Letter Template#

Step 1: Open Templates#

Click Messages in the sidebar, then Templates. Your clinic's letter templates are under Clinic letters, organised by category, each with its subject and its placeholders shown as green chips, with Enable Easy CRM and Load Starter Templates at the foot of the box. (Settings > Notifications & Templates > Letter Templates leads here too.) Letters that send themselves are also listed under Messages → Automatic messages, each opening its letter. Click a template's name to read it as the patient receives it; Edit and Remove are on that page.

Step 2: Create a New Template#

Click New clinic letter at the top of the Templates page. You'll see a form with the following fields:

• Name — a descriptive name for the template (e.g. "Referral Letter" or "Happy Birthday")
• Email Subject — the subject line when sent as an email. Supports placeholders like {{client.first_name}}
• Category — organises your templates (General, Prescription, Referral, Birthday, Follow-Up)
• Send for clinic — on multi-location subscriptions, pin the template to one location or leave it as "All clinics"

Clinic templates like this one are shared with the whole practice, so only an owner or admin can create or edit them.

Step 3: Write Your Letter#

Use the rich text editor to compose your letter. You can format text with bold, italic, links, and bullet lists — just like writing an email.

The key feature is placeholders — dynamic variables that get replaced with real data when the letter is sent. Click the Insert Variable button above the editor to browse all available placeholders, grouped by category:

Placeholders appear as styled green chips in the editor, so you can clearly see where dynamic content will be inserted.

Adding an image or a file#

A template can carry images and files, the same way your reminder and confirmation emails can. Drag an image or a PDF into the letter body, paste it, or click the paperclip in the editor's toolbar. An image sits in the letter where you drop it; another file (a PDF, a Word document) is emailed with every letter sent from the template, and the letter says Attached: with its name.

A template's files can total up to 10 MB. When you send a letter from the template, any files you attach to that letter count towards the same 10 MB. When you download a letter as a PDF, an image prints in place; a file the template carries is not part of the PDF.

Step 4: Save#

Click Create Template. Your template is now available for use.

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Your Own Templates#

Every practitioner can also keep templates of their own — referral letters in your own words, say — without needing owner or admin access. On the same Templates page, under Your own letters, click New letter of your own. The form is the same minus the automation and location settings, because a personal template is always sent by hand.

Personal templates appear under Your own letters at the bottom of the page and at the top of the template picker when you write a letter. Only you can see, use or edit them.

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Sending a Letter from a Client's Profile#

Step 1: Go to the Client's Letters Tab#

Open a client's profile and click Letters in the navigation. You'll see a history of previously sent letters and a New Letter button.

Step 2: Compose Your Letter#

On the compose page, you'll find:

• Template — select one of your saved templates. The subject and body are pre-populated with placeholders already resolved for this client, along with any image or file the template carries.
• Appointment (optional) — select a specific appointment to fill in appointment-related placeholders like date, time, and type.
• Prescription (optional) — select a prescription to auto-populate formula name, dosage, and administration details.
• Contact (optional) — select a doctor or practitioner contact for referral letters. Selecting a contact also pre-fills the "To" email field with their email address.
• To — defaults to the client's email, but you can change it to send to anyone (e.g. a referring doctor).
• Subject and Body — editable after the template loads. You can tweak the content before sending.

Step 3: Preview, Send, or Download#

• Preview — click to see exactly what the client will receive, with all placeholders resolved.
• Send Email — sends the letter immediately. A record appears in the client's Letters tab marked Sent, and in their Communications history.
• Download PDF — generates a PDF on your clinic's letterhead with the client's address. It's saved to the client's Letters tab marked PDF, but not to Communications history, since nothing was emailed. Downloading again while you're still editing updates that same entry rather than adding another one, and a letter that's already on the list is never added twice.

You don't have to finish in one go. The composer saves the letter as you write it ("Saved just now" appears beside Preview), and if you leave the page it's kept under Letters marked Draft, visible only to you. Click it to carry on where you left off, or click Discard draft in the composer's footer to delete it. Sending or downloading the letter turns the draft into that letter. The one thing a draft doesn't keep is a file chosen with the upload button, so tick a document from the client's files instead, or add the file when you send.

Step 4: Reopen a Letter Later#

Every letter you've sent or downloaded is listed under Letters in the client's profile, with any letter you're still writing at the top. The icons on the right of a row resend or download it; click the letter's subject to open it, where you can edit it too:

• Resend (on the row or the letter's page) — emails the letter again.
• Download PDF (on the row or the letter's page) — downloads the letter again exactly as it stands, keeping its original date. Nothing is added to the list, so this is the way to reprint a certificate or get a PDF of a letter you emailed.
• Edit (on the page of a letter you downloaded as a PDF) — reopens the letter. When you click Download PDF in the composer it replaces that letter rather than adding another. To keep the original and write a separate letter from it, click Save as a new letter instead at the top of the composer first.
• Edit a copy (on the page of a letter that was emailed) — a sent letter is never changed, so this opens a copy you can adjust, then send or download.

To take a PDF letter off the list, open it and click Remove from Letters at the bottom right. Letters that were emailed can't be removed.

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Setting Up Automated Emails (Easy CRM)#

Daobook can automatically send personalised emails to your clients on key events — no manual action required. The easiest way to get started is the Easy CRM button, which loads starter templates and enables all automations with sensible defaults.

Quick Start: Enable Easy CRM#

On Messages > Templates, click Enable Easy CRM at the foot of the Clinic letters box. This sets up five automated emails:

All automated emails send at 8am in your clinic's timezone. Each client only receives one of each type per occasion (e.g. one birthday email per year, one re-engagement per absence) — no duplicates. Re-engagement only writes to clients as they reach the 3 months, so turning it on doesn't email everyone who hasn't been in for a long time.

After enabling, each automated template says when it sends itself, right under its name, so you can see exactly what's running.

Marketing Consent & Automated Emails#

All automated letters are treated as marketing emails under Australian law. This means they will only be sent to clients who have opted in to marketing emails. If a client hasn't opted in, automated letters will be skipped for them — but you can still send them manual letters from their profile at any time.

How clients opt in to marketing emails:

1. Public Booking form — if you enable the Marketing Email Opt-in field in your Public Booking settings, clients can opt in when they book online. To enable this, go to Settings > Public Bookings and tick Marketing Email Opt-in in the form fields section.
2. Intake forms — if your intake form includes a marketing consent question, the client's preference is recorded automatically.
3. Manually — you can enable it in any client's profile under Communication Preferences by ticking the Marketing Email checkbox.

Every automated email includes an unsubscribe link in the footer. If a client clicks it, their marketing email preference is turned off and they will stop receiving automated letters.

Recommended setup: If you're using automated emails, make sure the Marketing Email Opt-in field is enabled on your Public Booking form so new clients can opt in during booking.

Customising an Automation#

Click Edit on any template to customise it. In the Automation section at the bottom of the editor, you can:

• Change the trigger — Birthday, Post-Appointment, Re-engagement, New Client, or Client Referral
• Enable or disable — toggle the automation on or off without deleting the template
• Set a delay — for triggers like Post-Appointment and Re-engagement, configure how long to wait (e.g. "send 1 day after appointment" or "send after 3 months inactive")
• Attach a gift voucher — when enabled, a real gift voucher is automatically created for each recipient. Use the {{gift_voucher.code}}, {{gift_voucher.amount}}, and {{gift_voucher.expiry_date}} placeholders in your template to include the voucher details.

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How the Client Referral Automation Works#

The referral thank-you is a special automation. Here's the flow:

1. You create a new client and set their Referral Type to "Patient" with a Referring Patient selected (an existing client who referred them)
2. Daobook detects the referral and automatically sends the "Thank You for Your Referral" template to the referring client — not the new one
3. The template can reference the new client's name using {{referred_client.full_name}}, so the thank-you message says something like "Thank you for referring Sarah to our clinic"
4. If a gift voucher is attached, it's created for the referring client as a thank-you

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Starter Templates#

Daobook comes with 10 ready-to-use templates. Click Load Starter Templates to add them to your account:

• General Letter — a blank letterhead format for any purpose
• Referral Letter — formal referral to a doctor or practitioner, with contact placeholders
• Happy Birthday — automated birthday greeting with gift voucher
• Your Upcoming Appointments — automatically lists all the client's future appointments
• Your Herbal Prescription Details — pulls formula, dosage, and administration from a prescription
• We Miss You — automated re-engagement for inactive clients
• Thank You for Your Referral — automated referral thank-you with gift voucher
• We Missed You at Your Appointment — automated note after a missed appointment
• Welcome — automated welcome email for new clients
• Progress Report — for an insurer, a case manager or a referring doctor: the claim, the sessions so far and the patient's progress, with headings for you to write the treatment and plan. Write it from the case: on the case's page, open the ⋯ menu and click Write a letter

You can edit any of these or create your own from scratch. Clicking Load Starter Templates again will update existing defaults with the latest content without overwriting your customisations.

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Tips:

• Use Preview before sending to verify all placeholders resolve correctly
• The Upcoming Appointments template dynamically builds a full list — no need to type them out
• Gift vouchers created by automations appear on the Gift Vouchers management page — to find a particular client's vouchers, search there by their name or email
• All sent letters are tracked in the client's Communications tab for a full audit trail