An important step in scaling your online course business is building and managing email workflows that support and engage your students automatically along their journey.
Workflows are powerful solutions for course creators who are experiencing growth and don’t have the time and resources to continue engaging students and prospects manually.
Email Workflows for Course Creators
Automated email workflows can be used in a wide variety of ways to optimize different aspects of your business. Here are a few ideas:
Welcome Emails
Welcome emails are simple workflows that—you guessed it—welcome your students to your course! In its most basic form, it’s an automatic email that is sent out as soon as students enroll with a thank you message and any necessary details or instructions for them to get started.
Student Onboarding Emails
Onboarding email workflows are built to support students in the early stages of using your course, helping them get through any roadblocks that might prevent them from getting started. These workflows range in complexity and layout, and depend on the unique content of each course, the characteristics of the students, and their learning objectives.
Inactivity Emails
Inactivity workflows flag inactive students and send out encouraging messages, helpful reminders, or supportive content to re-engage them.
Course Completion/Upsell Emails
Course completion email workflows celebrate students who have recently completed their course, provide any necessary additional information that will add value, and suggest other courses that might build on what they have just learned.
Feedback Emails
Feedback emails are critical for early stage course creators. They gather feedback for two main reasons: to improve and iterate on the course that was just taken, and to add glowing testimonials (known as social proof) to marketing materials so that prospects can hear from real people who have taken the course and loved it!
Ready to create some email automations of your own? Here are the most powerful email automation apps in the Thinkific App Store.
Mailchimp
Automatically add new students to your mailing list.
This is for you if...
- You want an easy-to-use tool for email campaigns
- You're looking for an automated way to grow your email list
- You need to reach people across multiple channels
It helps you...
- Create eye-catching campaigns
- Easily set up marketing atuomations
- Bring your audience data, marketing channels, and insights together
ActiveCampaign
Create and update contacts based on student behaviour and engagement.
This is for you if...
- You want to engage more meaningfully with your students
- You're looking for pre-built automations
- You need a tool that combines email marketing, automation, and CRM
It helps you...
- Create beautiful, branded marketing emails
- Trigger personalized emails based on actions in Thinkific
- Automate creating and updating contacts
ConvertKit
Create custom automated funnels by tagging students based on actions in Thinkific.
This is for you if...
- You need to sync transaction information with email marketing funnels
- You want to test new ideas with your audience
- You're looking to spend more time doing what you love
It helps you...
- Segment your contacts
- Increase conversion with visual automation tools
- Tag contacts in ConvertKit based on actions in Thinkific
Constant Contact
Automatically segment new users to the right mailing list.
This is for you if...
- You want to find new customers
- You're looking for easy ways to nurture existing customers
- You love templates, but still want to customize to make it your own
It helps you...
- Utilize beautiful, mobile-optimized email templates
- Access robust analytics and real-time reporting
- Automatically add new Thinkific sign-ups to your desired Constant Contact list
AWeber
Create targeted email automations and autoresponders.
This is for you if...
- You want to send time-based autoresponders
- You like drag-and-drop editing
- You prefer subscribers to double opt-in
It helps you...
- Create beautiful emails either custom or from a template
- Build a custom landing page in minutes
- Segment your audience
There you have it! We hope you found the right app to create automated email workflows that help you scale. If not, stay tuned! The Thinkific App Store is growing, and more apps are on the way. Request an app»
Feeling social? Share your course-building creativity with the community! Tell us what apps you’ve connected and how you’re using them to generate more enrolments.
Thanks for reading! If you found this article helpful, be sure to check out our recaps of apps for improving the student experience, selling more courses, and tracking and analyzing your students’ behaviour.
