How to Use Apptoto Campaigns for Covid-19 Vaccination Scheduling

System Overview

Carvajal Pharmacy in San Antonio, Texas, is one of Apptoto’s clients using our Campaigns and Scheduling products to maximize their efficiency and productivity for administering Covid-19 vaccines.  If you are interested, you can read their story here.

In summary, Carvajal Pharmacy uses their own intake form to accept patient sign-ups. The intake form qualifies patients per their specifications (for this instance it was based on the age categories set by vaccine officials.) Once the form is completed, the system then adds the patient into an Apptoto Address Book via Apptoto’s API. An Apptoto Campaign monitors the address book and whenever a new patient is added to it, a message is sent to the patient asking them to book an appointment for their first vaccination appointment.

Once the first vaccination appointment takes place, a 2nd Apptoto Campaign monitors the vaccination calendar and starts sending messages to patients 18 days (again, according to vaccination guidelines) after their first vaccination asking them to book their 2nd vaccination appointment.

Here is a quick diagram explaining how it works:

Steps for Setting Up This System

Setting Up the First Campaign

The Address Book Campaign is very straightforward.  You can set it up by creating a new Address Book Campaign in Apptoto and choosing “Standard Booking Campaign” for the template.

Be sure to choose the Address Book that your intake form will add contacts to (either via our API, or Zapier).

The Booking Page you use for the 1st campaign should be an Apptoto Booking Page that will put clients on the calendar you are using for the initial vaccination appointments.  We’ll call it “1st Vaccination Calendar.”

Once you’ve made those selections, click “Create Campaign.”

You should edit the messages on the Messages tab, and then launch the campaign once you are ready.

Setting Up the Second Campaign

 The second campaign is a little different.  This time you should create a “Calendar Campaign” like so:

Note that you should tell the Campaign to monitor the 1st Vaccination Calendar and you should also specify “All Time” for the Date Range.

Lastly, set the Booking Page to be a Booking Page that places patient appointments on the “2nd Vaccination Calendar.”

Once you’ve made those selections, click “Create Campaign.”

Now we need to tell this second campaign to start sending messages 18 days after the 1st vaccination appointment occurs.  To do that, head over to the “Messages” tab and select “Based on Appointment date” for the “Start Sending” option here:

Then click on the first two default messages included in the campaign and set their timing to be 18 days after, like so:

You can then remove the extraneous messages that are included as default using the trash icons.

The second campaign is now ready to launch.

At this point with both campaigns created and launched, any new contact added to the Address Book will be ushered through this full vaccination scheduling process.

Preventing Patients from Booking More than Once

If you are concerned with patients misusing the system and booking more than one appointment, or booking an appointment for someone else when they shouldn’t, you can make a few changes to your booking pages to avoid that.

Edit the settings for both your 1st Vaccination Booking Page, and your 2nd Vaccination Booking Page, by making the following changes:

First, the first two checkboxes should be checked.  This will ensure that only clients in your Address Book will be able to book appointments through your booking pages.

Second, the “Authentication” option of “Require Campaign Booking Link” will tell Apptoto to only let patients who click on the special link sent through the Apptoto Campaigns to book appointments.  This will only allow patients in the system to book.

At Apptoto, we are so thrilled when our clients can use our system in unique and complicated ways that might help to make their lives just a little bit easier and less stressful!  If you are interested in setting up an Apptoto system similar to this one for the same or different purposes, we are always here to help.  Contact our amazing support team today if you need assistance, by visiting our Support Center.