Notification delivery

Every automated message your studio sends passes through the same delivery model. This page explains how the pieces fit together and what customers can and cannot control. To create or edit the automations themselves, see Notifications (campaigns & automations).

How a notification reaches a customer

Delivery follows the same hierarchy for every customer message:

1. Global Email preference. Each customer has an Email toggle in their account. Turning it off blocks booking, membership, receipt, marketing, and every other non-critical email, including messages in studio-managed categories.
2. Category preference. When Email is on, the customer's choice controls each customer-managed category. A studio-managed category cannot be disabled individually, but it is still subject to the global Email preference.
3. Critical exception. Critical account and payment notices sit outside both preference levels. The global Email preference and category choices do not suppress them.

Worked example: a booking confirmation

A customer books an evening session. Here is how delivery of the Booking confirmation automation resolves:

• The customer has Email on and the Booking updates category is on: the confirmation goes by email.
• The customer has Email off: no confirmation is sent, even when Booking updates is studio-managed.
• The customer has Email on but turned off the Booking updates category: no confirmation is sent, unless you have made that category studio-managed.

Booking confirmations include calendar tools. There is no separate upcoming-session reminder email.

The five customer categories

Customers manage these in the What you receive section of their account. Every category is either customer-managed or studio-managed. An untouched service category (booking, waitlist, membership, receipts) counts as on, so those messages keep arriving until the customer opts out. Offers & birthday greetings is the exception: it is off until the customer opts in.

Category	What's in it	Default	Lockable	Customer-editable
Booking updates	Confirmations, changes, and cancellations	On	Yes	Yes, unless locked
Waitlist updates	When a spot opens up	On	Yes	Yes, unless locked
Membership updates	Renewals and plan changes	On	Yes	Yes, unless locked
Receipts & refunds	Payment confirmations and refunds	On	Yes	Yes, unless locked
Offers & birthday greetings	Promotions and special occasions	Off until opted in	No	Always

When a category is studio-managed, the customer still sees it in their account but cannot switch it off individually. Their global Email preference still applies, so turning Email off blocks non-critical messages in that category.

What customers can and can't control

Customers can:

• Turn Email on or off for their account. Turning it off blocks every non-critical email.
• Opt out of any customer-managed category.
• Opt in to or out of Offers & birthday greetings at any time. Marketing is always customer-managed.

How customers opt in to marketing

Marketing email (campaigns, birthday, win-back, review and feedback requests) only goes to customers who have opted in. A customer opts in by:

• Ticking the optional marketing box when they create an account.
• Turning on Offers & birthday greetings in their account.
• Re-subscribing in a connected email marketing audience.
• Being imported from your previous booking system with a recorded marketing opt-in.

Customers created by staff, through guest or friend bookings, at membership or gift card checkout, or through a booking marketplace start opted out of marketing. Staff cannot opt a customer in on their behalf.

Customers from before marketing opt-in was recorded

Customers who joined before Elara recorded a marketing choice had their Offers & birthday greetings turned off, because there was no record that they had agreed to promotional email. Customers who ticked the marketing box when they signed up kept their opt-in. Nothing else changed for them: booking, membership, and receipt email still arrives, and their Email preference is untouched.

If you were mailing these customers before, your campaign audience counts will be lower. To reach them again, ask them to opt in, for example by mentioning Offers & birthday greetings in a booking confirmation or at the front desk. If you sync customers to an email marketing audience, the next sync unsubscribes them there too, so you cannot mail them from there either until they opt in again.

Customers cannot suppress critical notices through preferences. The global Email preference, category choices, and studio management do not block them because they require action or protect the account:

• Failed payments and payment plan failures.
• Payments that need extra authentication.
• Booking made without a required waiver on file.
• Chargeback opened and chargeback resolved notices.
• Account and signup confirmations.
• Gift card delivery containing a redemption code.

The automation editor warns before you disable selected high-impact automations. Disabling any critical-notice automation still prevents that notice from sending.

Studio-managed locks

On the Notifications page, under the Automations tab, you can mark any category except marketing as studio-managed. This forces the category on and makes it non-editable in every customer's account. It does not guarantee delivery: a customer's global Email opt-out still blocks non-critical messages in that category. Seeing the locks needs the brands:read permission and changing them needs brands:update, so an admin who can edit automations may still see these as read-only.

The controls apply in order. An automation decides whether the studio sends a message at all. The global Email preference then gates non-critical delivery. Finally, studio management decides whether the customer may turn off that individual category. An automation that is switched off sends nothing regardless of the category setting.

Use studio management sparingly. It overrides the customer's individual category preference, not their global Email preference, so use it only where a category opt-out would harm the experience or your operations:

• Lock Booking updates if opted-out customers routinely miss changes and generate support requests.

Leave the rest customer-editable. Respecting opt-outs keeps your sender reputation healthy and your customers trusting the messages they do get. Offers & birthday greetings can never be locked: marketing always honors the customer's opt-out.

Opt-outs and delivery problems are handled automatically

• Marketing email footer. Every marketing email (campaigns, birthday and promotional automations) automatically includes an unsubscribe link and your studio's mailing address, as commercial email law requires. The address comes from your oldest active location, so keep a street address on file under Settings → Locations.
• Bounces and spam complaints. These suppress the address for non-critical email without changing the customer's Email preference or category choices. If a customer says they stopped getting email, check and correct the contact's address. Turning Email back on does not clear a mailbox suppression; a new address must be verified before delivery resumes.

Branding and engagement tracking

Every customer-facing email is automatically wrapped in your studio's branded template: a header with your logo and brand color, the message, and a footer carrying your mailing address plus, for marketing, the unsubscribe link. You write only the message body. Set your logo and color under Settings → Design Settings.

Emails also track engagement so you can see how they perform. Opens are counted by a tracking pixel and clicks by rewriting links to pass through a redirect; the unsubscribe link is never tracked. Both numbers are directional: opens undercount because many clients block images, and both opens and clicks can be inflated by security scanners that fetch content automatically. Trust Delivered for confirming an email arrived. For reading these stats, see Notifications.

Per-payment receipts

Payment receipts are sent at most once per payment, automatically. A retried or recovered payment does not send a second receipt for the same charge. The one exception is a database error while checking for a duplicate, which is rare: Elara sends anyway rather than risk a customer never getting a receipt.

The duplicate check is recorded before the send is attempted, so a receipt that fails at the email provider is not retried automatically. If a customer says a receipt never arrived, resend it by hand rather than waiting.

Staff can send an extra copy on purpose: Email receipt on an order in Recent Orders resends it, as many times as needed. That is a deliberate action and is not deduplicated. The button needs permission to update payments, and it only appears on a completed order that is linked to a customer, so a walk-in sale with no customer attached and a fully refunded order both show Print receipt alone.

Staff alerts

An automation can target staff instead of customers. Staff alerts always go by email and are not affected by customer preferences.

Each admin controls which alerts they personally receive in Settings → My Notifications. These preferences only affect that admin's own account. The groups are:

Group	What it covers
Sessions & bookings	Bookings, waitlists, and cancellations
Memberships	Purchases, pauses, and expiries
Customers	Signups, birthdays, and first visits
Waivers	Customers booked without a signed waiver
Payments	Receipts, failed payments, and chargebacks

An admin only receives an alert if your studio has an automation configured to notify staff for that event, so what lands in an inbox depends on both the personal preference and your automation setup.

Recommendations

• Keep transactional categories on. Booking updates, waitlist, membership, and receipts are the messages customers expect. Leave them enabled by default.
• Lock only where opt-out hurts. Keep locking rare so customers keep control of their inbox.

Effects of turning things off

Disabling automations or categories has predictable costs. Weigh these before switching one off:

• Booking confirmations off: more support requests and disputes, and more no-shows, because customers aren't sure a booking took.
• Receipts off: more refund and chargeback friction, because customers have no record of the charge.
• Cancellation and change notices off: more confusion when customers show up to a session that moved or was cancelled.
• Waitlist promotion off: opened spots go unfilled because waitlisted customers never hear about them.

For critical automations the app shows a warning when you disable them. Read it before confirming.

Related

• Notifications (campaigns & automations): create and edit the automations and one-off campaigns themselves.
• Customer account: where customers manage their email opt-in and category preferences.
• Customer settings: which customer details are required.