For the session that fills up and empties out
Set it once and the emails go out themselves: the one that lands the day before, the one an hour ahead, and the one that arrives as you start. Here is what they do, and what they cannot.
A register full of names two weeks ahead is not a room on the day. Between those two moments, ordinary life happens: someone's diary moved, a meeting landed, a link scrolled past and lost. Reminders exist for that gap, and the useful version runs itself once, then leaves you alone. Three emails go out to everyone registered at twenty-four hours, one hour and fifteen minutes before the start, and the switch that turns them off is yours.
That is the whole mechanism, and it is deliberately narrow. It sends nothing at a clever moment you invented, and it does not decide that a bigger nudge is needed. It goes to the list you already have, at the three points before the session where a person genuinely still needs to be told.
The recommit. The date, the time with its zone labelled, and the shape of the hour again, so the evening feels chosen rather than merely reserved.
The practical one. This is where people discover they need the link, and the private access link in their confirmation email is the thing they go looking for.
The last call, landing just as you open. It catches the guest who meant to join and got held at the office, and it is the final automatic message of the sequence.
Broadcasts to a chosen segment of the register. These are yours to write and time, and they are separate from the automatic three: one is a schedule, the other is you speaking.
The honest limit: a reminder does not make a session worth attending. It renews an intention someone already made, so if the register filled and nobody came, the problem is upstream — a promise too grand for the hour, a start time that was never realistic, or a description that invited the wrong room. No sequence of emails repairs an intention that was never really there.
Nor does it verify anything. Attendance is not watched from here; you mark who came and who did not, and the statuses are what they are. The calendar file and the Google Calendar link that arrive in the confirmation email do part of this work quietly, because a date written into someone's diary needs less persuading than one sitting unread in an inbox.
How it works
Reminders run off the list and the time you set, so the zone label and a realistic hour decide whether the three sends land in useful moments.
Twenty-four hours, one hour, fifteen minutes. They cover the gap between registering and showing up without a campaign to design.
If something changes or a segment needs a nudge — waitlisted people, the ones who registered first — send a broadcast to that segment from the list.
Set attended and no-show on the register, then send the follow-up links you supply yourself to the segment that needs them.
Questions
Not as a fourth automatic send. The schedule is the three fixed points. What you can do is write a message and send it to a chosen segment of the register whenever you like, which covers the one-off case the schedule was not designed for.
No. Attendees are reminded by email, and the three timed messages are email only. WhatsApp is used at the other end: it tells you, the host, that someone has just registered.
They do not. The three sends are automatic, and the switch that stops them belongs to the host. Turn them off and nobody gets chased; turn them on and you never think about the schedule again.
The confirmation immediately, with their own access link and the calendar file, plus whatever part of the sequence still lies ahead of them. Someone an hour out receives the two closest sends, not the day-before message.
Occasionally, and not reliably. A reminder renews an existing intention. Where the register filled but the room did not, look at the promise and the start time before you look at the email schedule.
Get Started
Set the schedule by leaving it alone. The day-before, hour-before and fifteen-minute emails go out themselves, and you keep the broadcasts you actually need to write.
