A school group of 60 books a field trip in October for a date in May. Between those two moments, a lot can drift: the teacher who booked it changes, the bus company moves the arrival time, the chaperone count doubles, and nobody remembers the lunchroom rules. The reminder email a week out is what catches most of that. The trouble is that someone usually has to remember to send it.
This article covers what a group reminder needs to contain, how to find the right reservations in Altru, and the realistic options for getting those emails out without a person scrolling the group sales calendar every Monday.
Start with the list, not the email
Every automated reminder, whatever tool sends it, depends on one thing: a dependable way to pull “groups visiting in X days” out of Altru. Get that right first.
Build an ad-hoc query on group sales reservations (or orders, depending on how your organization records groups) that returns:
- The reservation’s visit date and arrival time
- The group contact’s name and email address
- The group or organization name
- Reservation status, so you can exclude canceled or tentative bookings
- Headcount, balance due, and any itinerary items you want to mention
Filter on a relative date range (for example, visit date is 7 days from today) rather than fixed dates, so the same query keeps working every day. Run it for a few weeks and compare it against your calendar. You’ll usually find a few surprises: contacts with no email on file, reservations still marked tentative that are clearly confirmed, or groups booked under an individual rather than the school. Fix those at the source. A reminder process is only as good as the contact data behind it.
One query per touchpoint
Most organizations end up with two or three reminders, each with its own query:
- Confirmation follow-up (2 to 4 weeks out): confirm headcount, collect any balance, ask for final chaperone numbers.
- Pre-visit reminder (3 to 7 days out): arrival time, where the bus drops off, check-in location, lunch and bag policies, who to call on the day.
- Post-visit follow-up (1 to 3 days after): thank-you, a short survey, and a link to rebook for next year.
Separate queries make each email easier to test and keep one change from quietly breaking the others.
Sending from Altru itself
Altru has marketing and communications tools that can send email to a selection built from a query. That works well for a one-off batch. Where it gets harder is the “automatic” part. Whether your Altru environment can schedule a recurring send that re-runs a dynamic query on its own, without someone launching it, isn’t something we’d promise either way, because it depends on your version and setup. Test it in your sandbox, or ask Blackbaud support directly before you build a process around it.
If it turns out to be manual, a simple routine still beats nothing:
- Pick one day a week and one owner (group sales coordinator, not “whoever’s free”).
- Widen each query’s window to cover the full week, so a weekly send catches everyone. For example, visits 7 to 13 days out.
- Keep the email copy in a saved template so the weekly job is “refresh selection, review, send,” not rewriting.
- Log the send on the reservation or constituent record so the desk can see the group was reminded.
The weak points are vacations and turnover. When the coordinator is out, reminders stop, and nobody notices until a bus shows up at the wrong entrance.
What to put in the reminder
Group reminders get read by busy teachers and tour operators on their phones. Keep them short and practical:
- Date, arrival time, and group name in the first line
- Where to park or unload, and where to check in
- Final headcount on file, with a clear way to change it and the deadline for doing so
- Balance due, if any, and how to pay
- A day-of phone number that someone actually answers
- Rules that cause the most friction at your site (food, strollers, bags, photography)
Pull the date, time, headcount, and balance from the query rather than typing them. A reminder with the wrong arrival time is worse than no reminder.
Things that tend to go wrong
- Reschedules. If a group moves its date after the first email goes out, make sure the query reads the current visit date so the next reminder reflects the change.
- Cancellations. Exclude canceled statuses explicitly. Reminding a group that canceled reads badly.
- Multiple contacts. Decide whether the reminder goes to the booking contact, the day-of lead, or both, and store both emails somewhere the query can reach.
- Tour operators with many bookings. One contact may get several reminders in a week. Make sure the visit date and group name are prominent so each email is easy to tell apart.
Taking the person out of the loop
Once your queries are reliable, the remaining step is having something run them on a schedule and send the email. That’s what Email Designer does: it sends automated, branded emails from Altru queries without manual exports, so the pre-visit reminder and post-visit follow-up go out on their own while Altru stays where the reservations live. The query work above is the same either way, so it’s worth doing first regardless of how you send.
Quick answers
How far ahead should the reminder go out?
Five to seven days works for most groups. It’s close enough to be remembered and far enough out that a headcount change or balance payment can still be handled.
Should the post-visit email ask for a rebooking?
Yes, for schools especially. Teachers plan next year’s trips soon after this year’s, and a direct link to your group booking process is easy to act on while the visit is fresh.
