Medical spa marketing: a texting playbook for bookings and rebookings

The medical spa marketing that pays back fastest is texting the patients you already have. Follow up on consultations within the hour, remind people before appointments, and rebook each treatment on its own interval.

This playbook covers each message type a med spa sends. For each one you get sample copy, timing and the segment math behind the bill, plus a list of things that should never go in a text. Everything here runs in Ready. If a booking tool you already pay for handles reminders well, keep using it for that and use this playbook for the rest.

Set up consent and registration before the first text

Two things come before any campaign: a consent record you own and a registered number.

Consent. Add a separate, unchecked SMS opt-in box to your intake and booking forms. Use wording that names your business, says the texts may include promotions, says message frequency varies, and explains that replying STOP opts out. Store the opt-in time, the exact wording and the page URL for each patient in your booking system or CRM. Ready records your opt-in attestation for every campaign you send and every API send that attests consent: who sent it, to how many people, and when. That gives you an audit trail of your sending. It is not a per-patient consent record, so your own system has to keep that record. Text patients who opted in or who texted you first. Reach cold leads by phone or mail.

Registration. US carriers filter unregistered business texts. You register a brand and a campaign (10DLC) inside the Ready app. The charge when you submit is the first month, $25, with no setup fee. After that the monthly cost is $25/mo for registration and $2 per number. Most approvals take 2 to 7 days. A med spa sends both reminders and promotions, so pick a use case that covers both. This guide on matching the use case to what you actually send explains why picking the wrong one gets you throttled.

While you wait for approval:

• The first 20 texts are free, and they are one-to-one sends (a campaign is paid from the first text). Use them before you register, because they end the moment a registration is paid for.
• An account can send up to 500 texts a month before it registers, at the normal per-text rate.
• To send, you add a card and get a number, which is $2 a month with the first month charged when you get it.

Ready also handles STOP automatically. An opted-out patient can't be texted again from any campaign, and texts to opted-out numbers are refused and not charged. Ready holds sends outside permitted hours in the patient's local time and charges for them only when they go out. Campaigns, drip campaigns and automations wait up to 24 hours for the window; a one-to-one or API text is held only if the window opens within 6 hours, otherwise it is not sent, and you send it again once the window opens; a one-to-one reply to someone who texted you in the last 24 hours goes out at any hour. These features reduce your risk. They don't transfer it, and compliance stays your responsibility.

Consultation follow-up: the first hour matters

A consultation that ends with "let me think about it" is the warmest lead you will ever have. Send a short text within an hour, while the visit is still fresh:

Hi Maria, it's Ashby Med Spa. Thanks for coming in today. If any questions come up, just reply here and a provider will get back to you. Want us to hold a time for next week?

Keep it to logistics and an open door. Don't restate the treatment plan or the quote by text. Pricing for a specific treatment plan belongs in the consult or on a call.

If the patient goes quiet for two or three days, call them. The Ready Dialer puts click-to-call in the dashboard (and in GoHighLevel, if you run on it), with consented call recording and transcripts. It costs $0.025/min, and each started minute is billed as a full minute. As a worked example, 40 consult follow-up calls a month that average 4 billed minutes come to 160 × $0.025 = $4.00.

When a blue line helps

Many consult patients are on iPhones. A blue line sends one-to-one texts as iMessage, so they show up blue with your spa's name and photo. It costs $99 a month per line plus 6 cents a segment, and replies are also 6 cents a segment. It has limits:

• Each line can start up to 50 new conversations a day.
• You can send up to 2 texts to someone until they reply.
• You can send photos only after they reply.

Campaigns and drips still send from your regular numbers. Our blue bubble breakdown covers when the $99 is worth it. For a spa running a handful of consults a week, a regular registered number is usually enough.

Appointment reminders that cut no-shows

Most spas need two reminders:

1. 48 hours before: "Hi Maria, Ashby Med Spa here. You're booked Thursday at 2:30 PM. Reply C to confirm or R to reschedule."
2. 2 hours before: "See you at 2:30 PM today. Parking is behind the building. Reply if you're running late."

The first reminder gives you time to fill the slot if the patient reschedules. The second catches people who forgot. Write "your appointment," not the treatment name. A reminder can land on a lock screen that someone else can see. Our appointment reminder guide has more templates and timing options.

If your booking software already sends good reminders, keep using it. The two places Ready usually adds value are rebooking drips and promotions, which many booking tools handle poorly.

Rebooking drips: where medical spa marketing earns its keep

Every treatment has a natural return window. A rebooking drip texts each patient shortly before theirs. The intervals below are rough industry approximations. Your providers set the real ones.

Here is a sample drip text:

Hi Dana, it's Glow Med Spa. It's been about 12 weeks since your last visit. Want us to hold a time next week? Reply with a day, or STOP to opt out.

The text above runs about 147 characters, so it is 1 segment. Add a single ✨ and the whole message switches to unicode, where the limit drops to 70 characters (67 per part in multipart messages). The same text becomes 3 segments, which means you pay 3x for one sparkle. Ready swaps curly quotes and long dashes for plain ones before sending, so those don't change the count. Emoji do.

Two rules keep drips from annoying people:

• Stop the drip once someone books. No one should get a "time to rebook" text the day after they rebooked.
• Cap the drip at two texts per cycle. A patient who doesn't reply to two rebooking texts gets a call, or nothing, until the next cycle.

Membership and package offers

Memberships and prepaid packages turn rebooking into recurring revenue. Send them as a campaign to opted-in patients, at most about once a month. Some suggestions:

• Lead with what the patient gets: "Members get a monthly facial and a set discount on injectables." Avoid vague "VIP savings" lines.
• Give one clear action: "Reply JOIN and we'll call you to set it up." Then call from the dial pad.
• Run the draft through Ready's spam-filter check before sending. The AI message writer can tighten copy and flag wording carriers tend to filter. Someone on your team answers each JOIN reply from the inbox.

If campaigns get delivered unevenly even after approval, this post on content-level filtering explains what registration doesn't fix.

A note on old lists. If you're importing years of patients from a previous system, consider the standalone TCPA & DNC Litigator Scrub first. It costs $0.005 per contact and checks each number against known TCPA-litigator lists and DNC-complainer lists, flagging matches before you send. TCPA exposure is often cited at $500 to $1,500 per text, so a scrub across 1,500 contacts ($7.50) is cheap insurance. It doesn't make you lawsuit-proof, and it doesn't replace consent.

What never goes in a med spa text

Many med spas operate under a medical director and may fall under HIPAA. Ask your compliance advisor where your spa stands. Regardless of the answer, the safe default is the same: a text can confirm that an appointment exists, and nothing more about the patient's health.

Leave these out of texts:

• Before-and-after specifics. Don't send patient photos by MMS. Don't write "your forehead lines should be softening now." Don't reference a past result in a promotion to that same patient.
• Health details. Leave out medications, conditions, allergies, pregnancy questions and post-treatment complications. If a patient texts you about a reaction, move to a phone call.
• Treatment names in reminders. "Your appointment" works everywhere and leaks nothing.
• Outcome promises. "Look 10 years younger" and "lose 20 lbs" invite complaints and carrier filtering.
• Prescription drug promotion. Texts promoting prescription medications, such as weight-loss injection programs, draw extra carrier scrutiny. Promote the consultation, not the drug.

What a month of texting costs: a worked example

Here are the assumptions for a single-clinic spa with about 1,500 opted-in patients. Every message stays under 160 plain characters unless noted.

• 300 appointments × 2 reminders = 600 segments
• 250 patients in rebooking drips × 2 texts = 500 segments
• 1 membership campaign to 1,200 patients × 2 segments (a ~200-character offer) = 2,400 segments
• Patient replies, which are billed like sent texts: 400 segments

That totals 3,900 segments. On Ready's one Standard rate the math is:

• Texts: 3,900 × $0.0075 = $29, plus 3,900 × $0.0045 in carrier fees, itemized separately on the bill.
• Registration and a number: $25/mo registration plus a $2/mo local number.
• Optional compliance features: scrubbing and landline validation are off by default. Turned on, each adds $0.003 per segment, so $11.70 each on 3,900 segments. The rate quoted above excludes this surcharge.

Billing is prepaid credits through Stripe. The pricing page shows the per-segment card.

Throughput. A fresh standard campaign sends roughly 1 to 4 segments per second. At an assumed 2 per second, the 2,400-segment membership campaign finishes in about 20 minutes. The lowest T-Mobile daily tier is around 2,000 messages, so a list this size may need to go out over two days until your trust score rises. Brand vetting ($79 Standard / $179 Enhanced, one-time) raises the score, but most single-clinic spas don't need it.

If you run on GoHighLevel, Ready installs natively. Inbound and outbound messages sync both ways, and each GHL location stays isolated in its own sub-account. If you don't use GHL, the Ready app and API work on their own (quickstart).

The practical takeaway

Get consent stored and your 10DLC registration submitted. Then build four message types in this order:

1. Consult follow-up
2. Reminders
3. Rebooking drips keyed to each treatment's interval
4. A monthly membership offer

Keep every text free of health details and photos, and keep most texts at one plain-character segment. Rebooking drips usually pay back first, because they bring existing patients back for treatments they already know they want. If you want to try it, sign up and use your 20 free one-to-one texts on consult follow-ups before you register.

FAQ

Can a med spa text patients about their treatments? Keep texts to scheduling: time, date, address and "your appointment." Whether HIPAA applies depends on how your spa is structured, so ask your compliance advisor. Either way, handle health details by phone or in person.

How often should a med spa text its patient list? Send reminders per appointment, two rebooking texts per treatment cycle, and roughly one promotion a month. Sending much more often than that usually drives up opt-outs.

Do I need 10DLC registration to text patients? Yes, for ongoing business texting from a local number. Registration costs $25 at submit for the first month, then $25/mo for registration and $2 per number. Most approvals take 2 to 7 days.

Can I send before-and-after photos by text? Don't send patient photos by MMS. Before-and-after galleries belong on your website or in-clinic, with the patient's written permission.

What does texting cost on Ready? $0.0075 per segment, plus a $0.0045 carrier fee per segment, for sent texts and received replies alike. Scrubbing and landline validation are optional at $0.003 per segment each. Registration fees are listed above.