Boulevard’s texting capabilities allow your business to deliver clients a premium, interactive communication experience at every step of the appointment journey, through 2-way conversational texting, client notification texts, and a centralized Messages inbox to manage communication history.

The functionalities listed above require the setup of a dedicated phone number. A dedicated phone number is unique to each business location, offering clients a direct and personal way to reach you via text, at any time — through one consistent number. Texting clients from a dedicated phone number is not only best practice for building trust and brand awareness, but it allows your business to see client replies, converse with clients via text, and view a historical account of all text communications — all from your Boulevard dashboard.

Once a dedicated phone number has been activated for a location, Boulevard begins tracking each location’s text usage, and you are billed monthly based on each location’s sent and received text segments. You can view your usage at any time through the “View usage” link in the Messages tab.

Boulevard has designed usage tiers to account for flexibility in monthly text usage while making it clear and easy to understand what you are being billed for each month. For each location with a dedicated phone number, we track the total number of text segments you send and receive each month. Based on that monthly total, you will fall into a usage tier below and be billed for that tier. For example, if your location’s usage is 750 (sent & received) text segments for the month, you will be billed $40 for that month.

NOTE: A text segment contains 160 characters. A message may contain multiple text segments, but you are charged for the total count of all sent and received text segments. If a message contains any non-English characters (emoji, non roman-alphabet characters, etc.) then a segment is 70 characters instead of 160 because of the encoding overhead for the unicode characters.

Boulevard’s texting capabilities are available to customers on all Boulevard plans, but enablement of full texting functionality requires the setup of a dedicated booking line.

Boulevard offers the capability to have 2-way text conversations with your clients. In the Messages tab, you can see client replies, send texts to clients in real-time, and see a full history of all text-based client communications. A dedicated phone number is required to enable 2-way conversational texting.

For each of your locations with a dedicated phone number, usage rates apply for sent and received text segments.

Boulevard offers automated appointment notification texts to help your business reduce no-shows and elevate the client experience.

Basic appointment reminder text: Included in every Boulevard plan is a basic appointment reminder text, enabled by default to send to unconfirmed clients 2 days before their scheduled appointment. This basic text reminder is not customizable.

Booking confirmation text: A dedicated phone number is required for a location to enable booking confirmation texts. Once enabled, clients are sent a booking confirmation text immediately after they book an appointment. This confirmation text is not customizable. By default, it includes the client name, your business name, and the appointment date and time. Usage rates apply.

Same-day reminder text: A dedicated phone number is required for a location to enable same-day reminder texts. Once enabled, an automated text reminder is sent to clients on the day of their scheduled appointment, to help reduce no-shows and keep clients engaged on the day of their service. This confirmation text is not customizable. By default, it includes the client name, your business name, and the appointment date and time. Usage rates apply.

For more information on managing client notification texts, see the Client Notifications support article.

Boulevard’s Marketing Suite consists of two features: One-Time Blasts, and Automated Campaigns.

One-Time Blasts allow you to send a one-off marketing email to a targeted client audience. One-Time Blasts are available for all plan types from within the Marketing tab, and each plan comes with free emails to get you going.

Automated Campaigns help you streamline and simplify your email marketing strategy, boost bookings, and keep your clients engaged. Our pre-built campaigns focus on driving clients to book, and we target clients who haven’t been in in a while–so, we only bill you once we’ve got you results in the form of completed appointments.

For every appointment that is booked within a 7-day window of a client getting an automated campaign email, you are charged $2 (but only once that appointment has actually been completed).

To view text usage billing for the current billing cycle, navigate to either the messages tab or manage location > client notifications and click view usage. This provides you with a text usage summary that includes the usage period and message totals for both sent and received segments. The usage shown in the popup modal always reflects the current billing cycle.

To view usage for a previous billing cycle, navigate to manage location > billing. From here you can see previous invoices for both text and marketing.