Change the emails your students get

• the welcome and receipt when someone joins a course;
• a fresh sign-in link when they need their way back in;
• the list of courses they can open; and
• the email that says a certificate is ready.

You can put each one into your own words. The version you write is for the whole site, so every course uses it. Words that belong to one course, such as how to prepare for its first lesson, belong in Email my students when they reach each point in my course or the Look after a new student automatically journey.

Start with the email that already works

Ask Bernard to show you one of the four emails. He reads the exact subject and wording first, along with the address it comes from and where replies go. A site needs its own sending address before it can save its own wording. If yours does not have one, How does email sending work, and do I need my own address? explains the setup. If you want to look before changing anything, start with See the welcome email my students get when I enrol them.

Say what you want to sound more like you. Bernard keeps the working parts:

• the student’s private sign-in link;
• the line that says what they can open and for how long;
• the receipt in a paid course welcome; and
• the certificate link in a certificate email.

Those parts are not decoration. Taking one out could leave a student without the key, the access promise, their receipt or their certificate.

Check, preview, approve

Bernard checks the rewritten subject, HTML and plain-text copy before anything is saved. You see the rendered preview and the exact digest of that version. Read it, ask for any changes, then approve that digest when it is right. A different version needs a fresh check and approval.

After the save, you can send the email to yourself alone. The test shows the same sending lane, From address and Reply-To address a student would see. See Send yourself a student email before your students get it for what its private link can and cannot open.

Put it back

Ask Bernard to put a student email back to bernard’s wording. That archives your version; it does not erase its history. If an email has already fallen back by itself, My student email went back to bernard’s wording explains why and what to check. You can restore an archived version later. Bernard names the exact revision first and waits for your approval before restoring it.