A great way to engage your users and get closer to them is by including a Course Welcome Email. These 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 yet another useful way of interacting with your users and give you a chance of briefing your students on what to expect from the course, for instance.You can decide which (or all) of your courses have welcome emails.
Configuring Your Course Welcome Emails
Under the Support Your Students menu, go to Notifications on your admin dashboard to access this feature.
Use the toggle next to a course name to switch your course welcome emails on and off. If the toggle is selected, then the email will automatically be sent out to a student when they enroll in that particular course.
Both the body of the email and the subject line are fully customizable - hit 'Edit' to get started with creating your welcome message (remember to save your changes when you're done!)
Variables
You're also able to use variables to automatically pull in the student's name, course name, etc.
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
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 into 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.
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, but you will need to populate the link using the {{user_email}} variable instead of the express sign in link variable. When linking the text in your Course Welcome email, you will want to set the URL to be the following:
https://mysite.thinkific.com/users/express_signin?email={{user_email}}