How to mass email your users via LearnWorlds

With the Mass Email feature, you can send bulk emails directly from your LearnWorlds school. You can target specific groups of users using filters and schedule communications such as announcements, promotions, reminders, and updates.

Use cases 

• Contacting inactive users. Learners who haven't logged in since a specific date or do not regularly study the material could end up dropping out of the course altogether.
• Promoting an important event that your school is hosting (either online or physically). 
• Sharing a coupon (e.g., seasonal discounts such as Black Friday).
• Alerting users about any important modification that may disrupt their learning flow (e.g., reschedule of a live event).
• Following up with users who have previewed a free section of a paid course, but did not purchase.

In this article, we will guide you through the steps of creating mass emails, exploring methods to analyze email metrics, and scheduling bulk emails for distribution to users. 

Before you start

Before using Mass Emails, make sure the following requirements are completed.

a. Whitelabel the sender email of your academy

This will ensure that the sender email for all emails from within your school matches your identity and brand. You can find more information on all the steps required to whitelabel your sender email, in this article.

b. Enable the user privacy settings

Mass emails must respect learners’ communication preferences and privacy settings. More specifically, for the mass emails option to be unlocked, you will have to navigate to Settings → School Settings → Privacy/GDPR. Enable one of the following:

• GDPR compliance for all users, or
• Custom data privacy management.

Depending on the email type you want to send, enable:

• Marketing opt-in to send out Promotional emails
    
  
• Operational email announcements and notifications to send out Announcements

This article provides more information about the email categories below and also explains how to set up the privacy settings.

Send a mass email

To create a mass email, navigate to Communication → Mass emails and click New email.

Create your email

In this step, you can craft the content of the email you are about to schedule or send. You can define the email details:

1. Email Title

This is the email title you will see in the emails section for this communication; you can use this internal title to distinguish each mass email in your communications log.  

2. Sender Name (from)

This is pre-filled with the name of your school, yet it’s editable per email while in this step of the wizard. 

3. Sender Email

The sender's email address is pre-filled with the current email address in your email domain settings. You can still customize the prefix that will be used in this specific email you are creating.

4. "Reply to" email

The Reply to email is by default pre-filled with the current email address in your email domain settings, yet you can customize it according to your preferences.

5. Email Subject

This is the subject line of the email that will reach your students.

6. Email Content

This is the content of the email that will reach your students.

You can format your email using images, links, or text formatting options. You can also include variables such as: 

{{logo}} →  school logo

{{school_name}} → school name

{{address}} → user email address

{{name}} → username

{{unsubscribe_link}} →  link to unsubscribe from the mass emails

7. Test Email

Before sending your email to users, you can send a test email to yourself. This helps you preview and fine-tune the email content details before sending it to its intended audience.  

The subject line of this test email will include a [test email] prefix, which will of course not be included in the actual mass email. Also note that when you click on an unsubscribe link from a test email and you confirm the selection (assuming that you are logged in with the correct user and not your admin account), the privacy settings will indeed be updated.

8. Email Category (Announcements or Promotional Emails) 

Define whether the email will be an announcement for your academy or include promotional material. This option will reflect which privacy setting the user will opt out of if they select to unsubscribe when receiving this email, as follows: 

• Announcements → This email category falls under the learner privacy setting about email notifications for their activity within the school. To ensure that users can receive these emails, please make sure the Opt in/out to receiving operational email announcements and notifications (c) option is enabled in your Privacy/GDPR settings.

• Promotional emails → This email category falls under the learner privacy setting about marketing and promotional material. To ensure that users can receive these emails, please make sure the  Opt in/out to receiving marketing communications (b) true option is enabled in your Privacy/GDPR settings.

Users who have already opted out from the respective privacy setting corresponding to the email category you have selected for a mass email will not be included in the recipients of this communication.

Using AI to craft your emails

You can use AI to generate email content from scratch or improve existing text. Click Create with AI and describe what you want in the prompt box.

If you already have text, highlight the content and click the AI button. You can use AI to improve wording and tone, rewrite content, shorten or expand text, or translate your email.

Important notes

1. Users who receive the communication and click on the option to unsubscribe: 

• Will be redirected to the platform, where they will see a pop-up to confirm their choice of opting out from the respective email category.
• Can toggle on or off their privacy settings, which correspond to their preferences in terms of receiving email notifications, either announcements or promotional material,  by navigating to their Account Page → Notifications & Privacy
  

2. You can choose to include or remove the {{unsubscribe_link}} variable from the content of your email, in case the option for learners to unsubscribe from communications you trigger does not apply to your business case or to a particular mass email you are creating and are about to schedule or send.

If you have already deleted it but want to reinstate it as an option, you can restore it by replacing the link in the link manager with this variable.

3. Users who have neither accepted nor denied cookies can still receive announcement emails. However, they will not receive promotional emails until they provide the required consent.

Select recipients 

In this step, you define who will receive the email. Use filters to target specific groups of users based on your criteria. You can narrow down your user base to the intended audience.

- In this step, you are defining the criteria that will determine the users from your user base that will be included in the recipients' list of this communication. Upon saving those criteria and before the actual email is sent, users who have already opted out from the privacy setting corresponding to the email category you have selected in the previous step will not be included in the recipients of this communication.

- When scheduling a new email, only users who meet the filter criteria at the time of creation will be shown as recipients. If new users meeting the criteria are added later, the Admin can edit the scheduled email and reapply the filter to update the recipient list. However, even if the Admin doesn't reapply the filter, the email will still be sent to all recipients who meet the filter criteria atthe time of sending.

-Suspended users will also receive the email unless you filter them out, so make sure to exclude them.

Schedule or send

In this step, you need to select the time that the email will be sent (now or scheduled time with a specific date, time, and timezone). As soon as you select your preference, click Proceed.

 When scheduling an email, the final list of recipients will be created at that scheduled time, based on the criteria set in Step 2.

Email statistics

On your Mass Emails Page → Emails tab, you can view basic deliverability KPIs for the communication you have created and sent, such as:

• Title of the email (visible only to admins)
• Number of recipients
• Recipients: All users that match the criteria set in the 2nd step of the wizard, the moment the email is actually being sent, excluding the ones who are already hard-bounced and the ones that have opted out of this email category (announcement or promotional email).
• Successfully delivered emails
• Delivered emails: Number of users the email was delivered to / Total number of recipients.
• Number of opened emails
• Opened emails: Number of users who opened the email / Number of users the email was delivered.
• Number of users who clicked unsubscribe
• Number of users who marked the email as spam
• Name of the admin that initiated the Mass Email
• Τime that email was sent
• Actions such as previewing the Email template or duplicating the email configuration to resend it

You can also access the same Email Statistics by clicking on the available links under columns. The sidebar that will appear consists of: 

• Basic email information such as the title of the email, the date and time it was sent, and the number of recipients 
• A summary of all basic KPIs 
• A search bar 
• A drop-down filter based on the email deliverability status 
• A table including:

→ The name of the user and the email of each selected recipient

→ The activity status, conveying the email deliverability status, per user with regards to this email

Moreover, you can view Hard or Soft bounced emails on your User Management Page.

• Hard bounced: A hard bounce occurs when an email is permanently undeliverable due to reasons like an invalid recipient address (incorrect domain name, non-existent domain, or unknown recipient).
  
  
• Soft bounced: A soft bounce occurs when the email address is confirmed as valid, and the email successfully reaches the recipient's mail server. Nevertheless, it may bounce back due to typical issues such as the recipient's mailbox being full (exceeding their allotted storage), the server being offline, or the email message exceeding the recipient's inbox capacity.

Scheduled emails

On your Mass Emails Page → Scheduled Emails tab, you can view information on when the emails are scheduled to be sent. Under actions, you can edit them if you wish, preview them, and even delete them.

The number of recipients here may change depending on the users that correspond to the user selection criteria you have determined in step 2 of the email creation process, as these criteria will be reapplied the moment the email is scheduled to be sent, respecting the users’ privacy settings at that moment too.

Limits per plan

Mass emails include a set number of credits per plan each month. For instance, if you are on the Pro Trainer yearly plan, you receive 2,000 email credits monthly, regardless of whether your subscription is yearly or monthly.

You are able to see the remaining email credits (for each billing period) in the top right corner of the Mass Email page. 

If you have used all your email credits when scheduled emails are about to be sent, then the scheduled communication will be canceled and will be depicted on the Email tab, with the respective 'Cancelled' status. 

If you need additional email credits, you can purchase the relevant add-on. Find more information here.

• A best practice would be to avoid sharing too many emails with your recipients. You can give them some time to process the content of the emails and fire, for example, up to one email per week. 
• Enhanced email templates in terms of design, typography, and layouts are currently unavailable. If you wish to use advanced templates or email variables, you can integrate with one of our supported email marketing tools.
• One credit is equivalent to one email. This means that if you send one email to one user you will consume one credit.
• If an instructor (who has the respective permissions) creates a mass email, then this will be delivered only to the users of the course they are assigned to.