If you own a small business, you’re probably already using multiple solutions for scheduling appointments and related tasks. However, this isn’t always the best solution, considering that your phone calls and offline calendar won’t sync with your digital business management tools. And even if you’re using software to handle some of this workload, desperate apps often don’t integrate so seamlessly with one another.
Ideally, you need various marketing and business management features built into your online scheduling app to effectively run routine business operations. These include lead capturing, landing pages, generating estimates, invoices and payments, contact management, and email and SMS marketing. You also need a powerful client portal to help you communicate with your clients and track payment and appointment history.
All of this is possible with vCita, a powerful online scheduling tool that is designed to help SMBs and solopreneurs streamline appointment bookings, automate email marketing campaigns, better manage clients, and receive payments.
With this in mind, in this article, we’ll take a closer look at what you can do with vCita and see how its features can help small businesses and solopreneurs best meet their online scheduling needs.
vCita Overview
vCita is an online scheduling tool with built-in marketing and business management features including lead capturing, landing pages, payment tracking, email marketing, a custom calendar, and client portal.
You can use it to minimize no-shows with automated reminders and pre-billing. Additionally, vCita allows small businesses to improve their team workflows by assigning client appointments to specific team members and syncing bookings with each team member’s calendar.
What’s more, vCita enables SMBs and solopreneurs to offer a seamless experience to their clients. It’s a complete platform, which means you won’t have to switch contexts to get things done. It helps you perform various administrative tasks from a centralized dashboard, saving you from having to subscribe to multiple apps to get the same features individually.
Here are some of the features which make vCita such a huge game-changer.
Online Scheduling
vCita is a powerful online scheduling solution that lets your clients easily book meetings, both on a one-off basis and for recurring series of appointments. It’s a potent tool for businesses that need help with improving their deal pipeline and scheduling workflows.
For example, you can use its website widget to add powerful lead capture and conversion mechanisms to all pages on your business website. Alternatively, if you don’t have a business website, you can enable clients to schedule appointments themselves by adding an online scheduler to your vCita landing page.
With vCita, you can also link to your scheduler interface from your Facebook page, Google My Business page, or use the built-in client service portal to make it easier for clients to contact you through their platform of choice.
It also gives you the option to allow your clients to schedule their own appointments directly from emails, further improving your business’ online scheduling workflows.
vCita offers a branded client portal which helps increase client engagement and makes it easy for them to quickly view upcoming appointments, share documents, and make payments.
Whether you run a one-person business or work with a team of employees, vCita gives you the tools you need to boost productivity. You can assign staff to client appointments and easily view each staff member’s calendar from a centralized place.
In addition to this, it enables you to automatically confirm, reschedule, or cancel client scheduling based on your availability, saving valuable time you’d otherwise be spending on back-and-forth email coordination.
Email and SMS Marketing
Your online scheduling tool can also help you manage your company’s email and SMS marketing activities from a centralized hub.
vCita comes with email marketing capabilities to help you connect with your customers and leads. Whether you’re looking to create beautiful campaigns quickly or drive audience engagement, vCita has got your back.
Its library of pre-built, conversion-optimized templates help you create visually-attractive, mobile-friendly marketing campaigns.
You can leverage its segmentation and personalization features to tailor marketing messages to individual contacts.
vCita allows you to automate your marketing campaigns so you can spend more time on core business activities and less time setting everything up.
For example, you can use it to schedule and send automated campaigns to clients who meet specific criteria.
With vCita, you can track client activity in order to measure the success of your email marketing efforts. You can also display calls-to-action and online scheduling buttons in your emails to make it easy for clients to fill out forms, make payments, and book appointments.
You can create single-message or drip sequence campaigns using built-in templates that are optimized for client retention and engagement. For example, you can send birthday greetings, invitations, customer reactivation campaigns, and social media engagement campaigns. You can also set up campaigns, and associate them with various dynamic segments of your contacts, from scratch.
In addition to email, vCita also lets you set up SMS campaigns which are great for reminders and running quick last-minute promotions.
Client Management
As an SMB or solopreneur, you need an online scheduling tool that helps you stay on top of client management. For instance, it should give you a bird’s eye of each client’s history, so you’re in a better position to prepare for your appointments effectively and track any cancellations in time to squeeze in more clients.
With vCita, you get all this information – including appointments, invoices, payments, conversations, and documents – in a centralized platform, which also makes it easy to assign staff to client appointments. This increases work efficiency and improves the overall experience your business delivers. vCita’s powerful CRM allows you to store contacts and leads in one centralized platform so you can always have quick access to them.
Plus, its built-in, self-service portal for clients allows them to view recent and upcoming appointments and pending payments via a user-friendly dashboard. The client service portal also lets your clients get in touch with you by sending direct messages. Additionally, they’ll be able to upload files to your website and download and view the files you share with them.
You can customize the client portal to match your business branding style and color scheme. Its personalized dashboard lets your clients view their status and see what they need to do next, like paying pending fees or uploading a document.
vCita offers client segmentation based on various factors like client interests and location. This is great for creating and sending targeted marketing messages and delivering tailored user experiences. For instance, you can label leads as prospective clients, new clients, and repeat clients.
Estimates, Invoices, and Payments
Having the ability to quickly send invoices, estimates, and receipts to clients – and to easily receive payments from them – is vital. This is especially great for service-based businesses that need to share quotes with clients while on calls.
vCita allows you to deliver a consistent user experience so your clients can make payments from within the platform without having to interact with multiple apps.
With vCita, your clients will be able to make payments around the clock, enabling you to receive money beyond normal business hours. In addition to this, vCita’s client portal lets your clients view and approve estimates, pay invoices, and download receipts. You can also set up automated payment reminders to stay on top of pending and overdue payments.
You’ll be able to quickly receive payments in-person, over the phone, or via email.
In addition to this, vCita gives you the flexibility to accept payments online through PayPal or credit card by adding a payment button to your invoices and estimates. As a result, your clients won’t have to go to another page to make the payment, which simplifies the user flow.
vCita offers integrations with a number of accounting and payment integrations including QuickBooks, Square, PayPal and Stripe, to help streamline and automate finance and bookkeeping tasks.
Conclusion
vCita is a powerful and robust online scheduling tool that helps small businesses and solopreneurs manage their appointments while improving work productivity, boosting client engagement, and increasing conversions. It offers a wide range of useful features like online scheduling, client management, email and SMS marketing, and sending estimates and invoices to clients.
