Bulk Email Messages from the Course Team#
For courses on edx.org, you can send bulk email messages to course participants directly from the instructor dashboard: in the LMS, select Instructor, and then select Email.
Your messages can use HTML styling, and can include links to videos, social media pages for the course, and other material. All course team members who have the Staff or Admin role can use bulk email messages to communicate with course participants before, during, and after the course run.
Learners are less likely to read and respond to email messages from courses when they receive too many of them. As a best practice, do not send more than one email message per week to course participants, unless there is good reason to do so.
Note
Some courses use third party services such as MailChimp to send bulk email. Do not use both a third party service and the edX bulk email service. If you use more than one service to send email message, your messages are more likely to be marked as spam, and learners might not read them.
This section contains the following topics.
Message Addressing#
When you send a bulk email message from the instructor dashboard, you choose its recipients by selecting a Send to option. You can select one or more recipient groups for each message. For details about who is included in each of the preset recipient groups, see Who Is Included in Each Recipient Group?
When you send a message to more than one recipient group, duplicate recipients are filtered out, so that someone who belongs to more than one of the recipient groups only receives one copy of the message. For example, if you address an email message to learners in a particular cohort as well as to learners in the Verified enrollment track, a learner who is in the cohort AND is in the Verified enrollment track will only receive one email message.
The following preset recipient groups are available.
Myself. Send an email message only to yourself, to test and review the message before sending it to a larger group.
Staff and Administrators. Send an email message to members of the course team who have Staff or Admin privileges. For information about course team member privileges, see Planning Course Staff.
All Learners. Send an email message to all currently enrolled learners. This group does not include learners who have not activated their accounts, or who have opted out of receiving email communications. This group does not include course team members, even if they are enrolled in the course.
If you have more than one enrollment track in your course, each enrollment track is available as a separate recipient group. For more information, see Sending Email Messages to Learners in Different Enrollment Tracks.
If you have cohorts enabled in your course, each cohort is available as a separate recipient group. For more information, see Sending Email Messages to Learners in Cohorts.
Who Is Included in Each Recipient Group?#
When you send a bulk email message to one of the preset recipient groups, you should be aware of who is included in each group.
Note
It is considered good practice to only send messages to active and engaged learners. For this reason, regardless of the recipient groups selected, edX will only send email messages to learners in a course run who have logged in within the last 18 months. This helps reduce the risk of messages being marked as spam (or bouncing) and helps ensure the continued delivery of bulk course email messages through edX’s email providers.
Recipient Group |
Includes |
Does Not Include |
---|---|---|
Staff and Administrators |
|
|
All Learners |
|
|
Sending Email Messages to Learners in Different Enrollment Tracks#
If you have more than one enrollment track in your course, each enrollment track is available as a separate recipient group. If your course includes only a single enrollment track, you will not have a track-based recipient group.
For example, if your course includes an audit track and a verified certificate track, you have two additional recipient groups: Learners in the Audit Track and Learners in the Verified Certificate Track.
Sending Email Messages to Learners in Cohorts#
If you enable cohorts in your course, each cohort is available as a separate recipient group. The recipient groups for individual cohorts only include enrolled learners who have been assigned to a cohort, whether they were automatically assigned when they accessed the course or manually assigned to a cohort by a member of the course team.
The recipient groups for cohorts do not include enrolled learners who have not been added to a cohort. This might be the case if they have not accessed the course or have not been manually added to a cohort by a member of the course team. To make sure such learners are included in email messages that are intended for all enrolled learners, select the All Learners recipient group instead of selecting all of the cohort recipient groups.
If a default cohort exists in your course, a recipient group named Cohort: Default Group is also available.
Note
The default cohort is created only if you have not created at least one automated assignment cohort in your course by the time the first learner accesses course content. If learners access the course before you have created any automated cohorts, they are automatically placed in the default cohort, to ensure that all learners in the course belong to a cohort. You can manually reassign learners from the default cohort to another cohort. For more information, see Ensuring That All Learners Are Assigned: The Default Cohort.
Composing Email Messages#
When you compose an email message, you can use the following options.
Styling#
Messages can include HTML styling, including text formatting and links.
For more information, see Working with Text Components.
Restricted HTML Content#
The Bulk Course Email tool restricts use of specific HTML elements from being used in messages. The following HTML elements may not be used in messages authored with this tool:
iframe
svg
form
script
Images#
Messages can include images. To include an image, you must first add the file to your course on the Files & Uploads page. For an email message, you copy the Web URL that the system assigns to the image. Then, in the email message editor, you select the Insert/edit image icon to add the web URL.
Note
Scalable Vector Graphic (SVG) images are restricted from use in messages authored with the Bulk Course Email tool. Please see the above note in the Restricted HTML Content section.
To ensure that your course assets are transmitted securely, add the
https://
preface to the web URL. An example follows.
https://courses.edx.org/asset-v1:{course}.x+{run}+type@asset+block@{image}.jpg
For more information, see Adding Files to a Course.
Keywords#
Messages can include variables that represent values that are specific to each message recipient, such as learner name or user ID. The LMS substitutes these variables, called keywords, with actual values when it sends a message.
For more information, see Use Keywords in Messages.
Managing Scheduled Email Messages#
Once a message has been scheduled it will appear in the Scheduled emails table. Each entry will describe when the message will be sent (in local time), the recipient groups selected, the subject of the message, and the author of the message.
Each scheduled email entry in this table will support the following actions:
The View button will open a modal that allows you to view the contents of this message.
The Delete button will cancel the scheduled bulk email task and the message will not be sent. This sets the bulk email task’s status to REVOKED.
The Edit button will allow you to edit the bulk email message. You will be able to adjust the recipients, subject, message contents, and/or the date and time the message should be sent.
Use Keywords in Messages#
You can include keywords in your messages. A keyword is a variable: when you
send the message, a value that is specific to the each recipient is substituted
for the keyword. For example, when you use the %%USER_FULLNAME%%
keyword,
each message contains the name of the recipient.
Note
Do not use keywords in the Subject line of a message. The keyword in the subject will not be assigned a value, and the recipient will see the keyword text.
Supported Keywords#
You can use the following keywords in your messages.
%%USER_ID%%
- the anonymous user ID of the message recipient%%USER_FULLNAME%%
- the full name of the message recipient%%COURSE_DISPLAY_NAME%%
- the display name of the course%%COURSE_END_DATE%%
- the end date of the course
Keyword Formatting#
You format keywords as: %%Keyword%%
. You can include keywords in any HTML
tags in an email message. An example follows.
<h2>%%COURSE_DISPLAY_NAME%% Updates</h2>
<p>Dear %%USER_FULLNAME%%, this is a reminder that the last day of the course
is <b>%%COURSE_END_DATE%%</b></p>
. . .
Message Workflow States#
When you select Send Email for a message, the server begins to process a bulk email task. The server assigns a series of different workflow states to the task.
When you select Schedule Email for a message, the server creates a bulk email task and sets it to the SCHEDULED state. This task will remain in this state until it is ready to be processed.
Bulk email tasks can have the following workflow states.
Queuing: The bulk email task is created and being queued for background processing.
Pending: The task is queued and is waiting to run.
Scheduled: The task has been created and is scheduled to run at a future date and time.
Started: Background processing is in progress to create emailing subtasks.
Progress: The emailing subtasks are in progress.
Success: All emailing subtasks are complete. Note that the bulk email task can be in this state even if some or all of its emailing subtasks failed.
Failure: An error occurred and task processing did not complete successfully.
Revoked: The task was cancelled before it was processed.
While the bulk email task is in progress, you can find out what stage it has reached in the workflow by checking the Pending Tasks section on the Course Info page of the Instructor Dashboard.
When the bulk email task is complete, you can find its final state by checking the Email Task History report. For more information, see Email Task History Report.
Email Task History Report#
The Email Task History report can help you keep track of who sent messages, when, to which groups, and how many messages were successfully sent. For each message sent, the report includes the username of the requester, the date and time it was submitted, the duration and state of the entire task, the task status, and the task progress.
You can use this history to investigate questions relating to bulk email messages that have been sent, such as these examples.
How frequently learners are sent course-related email messages.
Whether a message was sent successfully.
The change in the number of people who were sent course-related messages over time.
To produce the Email Task History report, follow these steps.
View the live version of your course.
Select Instructor, and then select Email.
In the Email Task History section of the page, select Show Email Task History. A report like the following example displays on the instructor dashboard.
Review Email Task History#
For tasks with a State of Success, the Task Progress column shows an informational message. These messages can have a format such as “Message successfully emailed for 13457 recipients (skipping 29) (out of 13486)”. To interpret this message, note that:
The first number (“recipients”) indicates the number of messages sent to the selected recipients.
The second number (“skipping”) indicates the number of enrolled and activated users who were not sent the message. This count is of learners who have opted not to receive course email messages.
The final number (“out of”) indicates the number of users in the set of recipients you selected who were enrolled in the course (and had activated their user accounts) when you sent the email message.
If the “recipients” and “out of” numbers are the same, the message reads “Message successfully emailed for 13457 recipients” instead.
Other Task Progress messages for tasks with a State of Success indicate that some or all of the emailing subtasks did not successfully send email:
“Message emailed for {number succeeded} of {number attempted} recipients”
“Message failed to be emailed for any of {number attempted} recipients”
“Unable to find any recipients to be emailed”
No Task Progress messages display for tasks that have a State of Failure.
See also
Send an Email Message to Course Participants (how-to) Review Sent Messages (how-to) Example Messages to Learners (reference)