Engage your students when they first enroll in your course by sending them a course welcome email!
In this article:
Set Up Your Course Welcome Email
About This Feature
Course welcome emails are another way for you to interact with your students and to give you a chance to brief your students on what to expect from the course. It allows your students to access their course right from their email and gives you the opportunity to market and sell by prompting students to explore new courses and join existing Communities.
The email includes a Join a Community section that shows the first 3 Communities that your student can enroll in. If the course purchased is associated with a specific community, it will be included in the email. The email also includes an Explore Courses section to promote the first 3 public and published courses on your website.
Course welcome emails are sent out to the student upon registration for a particular course and are customizable on a per-course basis.
Course welcome emails are not sent for students who enroll in a Free Preview of your course. See FAQ for details.
Set Up Your Course Welcome Email
- Go to Support Your Students
- Select Notifications
- Make sure you are on the Student notifications tab
- Select Course welcome email from the left menu
- Scroll through the list to locate your desired course and click Edit
- From here you can start customizing! You can include a custom Email subject and Email body. The Email body includes a text editor to add your own branding, images and more. You'll also see some email variables included by default; see below for how to set them up!
- Click Save at the top right periodically to make sure you don't lose any changes!
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Optional: If you'd like to cc yourself or another person, you can include an email under When sending this email, also cc. You can select a Site Admin from the dropdown menu or type an email into the field.
- Once you are happy with your customizations, click the toggle at the top of the page to turn on the notification (a notification is on when the toggle appears yellow and is on the right)
- Click Save to apply changes
Note: We recently released a security update for the text editor. The Upload File button is now restricted to document and media files.
Congrats! This email will now automatically be sent out to a student when they enroll in that particular course.
Variables
You can also use variables to automatically pull in the student's name, course name, and more. Simply copy and paste a variable into the Email subject or Email body.
To prevent any formatting issues, make sure to paste your variable without formatting. You can use Ctrl + Shift + V on Windows and Command + Shift + V on Mac.
Available variables are:
- {{user_full_name}}
- {{user_first_name}}
- {{user_last_name}}
- {{user_email}}
- {{course_name}}
- {{site_name}} — Name of your school
- {{site_url}}
- {{sign_in_url}}
- {{edit_notifications_url}}
- {{instructor_full_name}}
- {{instructor_first_name}}
- {{instructor_last_name}}
- {{course_link}} — Link to the Course
- {{course_review_link}} — Link to the Course Reviews
- {{express_sign_in_url}} — Inserts the user's Express Sign In link to allow them to set a password
For a more in-depth look at email variables, check out our guide on Email Variables.
Frequently Asked Questions
A student just enrolled into the Free Preview of one of my courses. Do they still receive the course welcome email when they sign up for the preview?
No, course welcome emails are only sent when a student enrolls in the full version of the course. If a student first enrolls into a Free Preview, then later enrolls into the full course, they will then receive the course welcome email you've configured.
A student just enrolled in a Pre-Order of one of my courses. Do they still receive the course welcome email?
Yes, students who enroll in courses set to pre-order will also receive the course welcome email if it is enabled for any of those courses.
I manually enrolled a student into one of my courses within the Admin Dashboard.
Do they still receive the course welcome email?
Yes, students manually enrolled with also receive the course welcome email if it is enabled for any of those courses.
Can I use the express sign in link variable in my course welcome email?
Yes, you can use the {{express_sign_in_url}} variable in your course welcome email. You can see more detailed instructions on how to use the variable as well as how to add a conditional statement with your Express Sign In here.
If a student re-enrolls in a course, will they receive another course welcome email?
No, if a student's enrollment in a course expires, and they then re-enroll in the same course, they will not be sent a second course welcome email.