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

Two things decide whether a customer gets a given message. They apply in this order:

1. Email opt-in. Each customer has an Email toggle in their account. A customer can only be reached when they are opted in.
2. Notification categories and studio locks. Each customer chooses which kinds of message they want, grouped into six categories (see the table below). A category the customer has never touched is on by default. The studio can mark a category (except marketing) as studio-managed, which keeps it always on for every customer.

Critical account and payment notices sit outside all of this and are always delivered, regardless of the customer's opt-in or category choices. More on that below.

Worked example: a session reminder

A customer is booked into an evening session. Here is how delivery of your Session reminder automation resolves:

• The customer has Email on and has not turned off the Session reminders category: the reminder goes by email.
• The customer has Email off: no reminder is sent.
• The customer turned off the Session reminders category: no reminder is sent, unless you have locked that category as studio-managed.

The six customer categories

Customers manage these in the What you receive section of their account. A missing or untouched category counts as on, so customers keep getting essential messages until they opt out.

Category	What's in it	Default	Lockable	Customer-editable
Booking updates	Confirmations, changes, and cancellations	On	Yes	Yes, unless locked
Session reminders	A heads-up before a session starts	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	On	No	Always

When a category is locked, the customer still sees it in their account but it is shown as Managed by the studio and cannot be switched off.

What customers can and can't control

Customers can:

• Turn Email on or off for their account.
• Opt out of any category that is not locked by the studio.
• Opt out of Offers & birthday greetings at any time. This choice always wins.

Customers cannot suppress critical notices. These are always delivered regardless of the email opt-in, category choices, or locks, 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.

The automation editor shows a warning before you disable one of these, because turning it off usually creates more work than it saves.

Studio-managed locks

On the Notifications page, under the Automations tab, you can mark any category except marketing as studio-managed. A locked category is always delivered and appears as non-editable in every customer's account. 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 locks sit below the automations because they are the second gate on the same messages: an automation decides whether the studio sends something at all, and the lock decides whether the customer may decline it. An automation that is switched off sends nothing regardless of its category's lock.

Use locks sparingly. They override the customer's own preference, so reach for them only where a customer opting out would harm the experience or your operations:

• Lock Session reminders if no-shows are a real cost and reminders measurably reduce them.
• 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. When an email hard-bounces or the recipient marks it as spam, their Email toggle is switched off automatically so future sends don't hurt your sender reputation. If a customer says they stopped getting email, check their contact's Email opt-in: a bounced address stays off until it is corrected and re-enabled.

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: Sauna CRM 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, reminders, waitlist, membership, and receipts are the messages customers expect. Leave them enabled by default.
• Lock only where opt-out hurts. Consider locking reminders if no-shows are costly, but 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.
• Session reminders off: more no-shows.
• 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.