Carly’s App of the Week: Calendly

By Carly Bauer, Marketing Consultant at Heinz Marketing

Staying busy is good for business, but it makes scheduling an outright chore. That’s where an app like Calendly can come in handy. Calendly is an app for scheduling appointments, meetings, and events. Its goal is to eliminate the problematic back-and-forth when trying to nail down times. Rather than email chains and phone tag, you can send your availability with a Calendly link (even if the people booking time with you don’t use Calendly).

Unique Features

Availability Preferences: Be able to share your availability in just a click. Include a scheduling link or allow invitees to schedule a time from available times listed in the email or on a web page. Eliminate surprise meetings with pre-defined availability preferences you customize so you are booked as much or as little as your schedule allows. Set caps on meetings, or add buffer time before or after a meeting to protect your time. No matter where invitees are located, Calendly automatically detects time zones, and displays timeframes in local times for each individual.

Teams Scheduling: Give invitees options by displaying a variety of meeting choices on a single page for them to choose from based on the nature of the meeting. If there isn’t a predetermined recipient for invitees to schedule with, Calendly will round robin the meeting by availability or priority automatically, eliminating any manual tasks to come with routing or assigning meetings.

Embeds: Get booked directly from your website on any page. Embed Calendly on your website to streamline scheduling, increase conversion rates, and offer seamless customer experience. The scheduling tool can appear naturally inline with the body of your site, as a pop-up window with a CTA button, or as pop-up text.

Workflows: Be able to automate your communications using the Workflows feature. Increase show rates and decrease busywork by automating routine communications like reminders and follow-ups. With Workflows, you can schedule event reminders and confirmations via email or SMS to improve meeting attendance and results.

Calendar Connections:  With intelligent scheduling, instantly check availability across multiple calendars and eliminate the potential for double bookings. Calendly only shows available appointment times and never exposes your calendar contents to invitees. Calendly integrates with all the most popular calendars, including Google, Outlook, Microsoft Office, and iCal. When meetings are scheduled, they are directly added to the host

 and invitee calendars, removing unnecessary steps in between.

Integrations

For Individuals
Calendly makes it easy to work smarter while working solo. Meetings, sessions, and appointments become more efficient ways to achieve success and accomplish goals. When invitees select a meeting slot from your schedule, they only see the times you’re available, and only the length and type of meeting you want to have. It’s almost like having a personal assistant. Calendly automates administrative tasks like sending reminder emails and follow-ups, so you can focus on the work that builds your business. With Stripe and PayPal integrations erase billing hassles and enable your clients to submit payment as soon as they schedule a meeting. No bills or invoice, just on time payments, every time.

For Teams
Calendly gives you control over team scheduling with a standardized, scalable process. Integrate your teams’ favorite tools in an easy to manage, secure way so everyone can work as efficiently and effectively as possible. Control how your team gets booked. Calendly allows you to offer sessions that are a few minutes to a few hours, for one invitee or a group. With automated round-robin, first-available, or geography-based assignments, easily divide up meetings in any way that works for your team
Get a bird’s-eye look at team activity to understand how your team works and help them work better and smarter. At the team level, see the types of meetings that are happening and what they’re for. On the individual level, know who’s maxed out and can pick up slack.

If you are curious how Calendly could work for you, your team or even your business. You can learn more, here.