Email Templates

This article reviews how to use the email template editor to customize and adjust the emails that are sent from your school.

Overview

On Teachable, users receive automated emails when completing specific actions or triggering certain events in a school. Schools on the Basic plan and up can modify templates for the emails sent from your school in the email template editor.

You can use the email template editor to replace certain default text contained in emails sent to users. If you’re familiar with HTML, CSS, or Liquid template language, you can alter the format, syling, and dynamic content of emails as well.

You can access the email template editor by navigating to the Emails > Template Editor page.

How to edit and customize a template

To edit an email template:

1. Navigate to the Emails > Template Editor page from your admin side menu.
2. Select which email template you’d like to edit from the Select a Template dropdown menu.
3. Edit the body of the template using text, HTML, CSS, and/or Liquid template language.
4. To save your changes, click the Save button. To preview your changes, click Preview. To publish the changes to your template, click Publish.

To understand more about how to customize certain elements of your email templates, see the scenarios below. Please note that these are intended as guidelines, and that Teachable Support can not troubleshoot or support changes made via custom code.

Customize the text content of an email

The email template editor can be used to customize some of the default text that is included in automated emails. For example, you might want to replace the word “Hi” with the word “Hello”. This can also be helpful if you’re interested in translating the emails into a different language.

To customize the text content of an email:

1. Navigate to the Emails > Template Editor page, then select an email from the Select a Template dropdown menu. (For this example, we’ll be using the Upcoming Subscription Reminder template.)
2. Find the text you’d like to replace—in the template editor, text is displayed as white. For our example, we'll customize the word “Hi” in line 7.
3. Using your keyboard, type and replace the plain text with your desired content.
4. Click Save to save your changes. You can preview the email by clicking the Preview button—if you’re satisfied with the change, click Publish to update.

Customize the dynamic content of the email using Liquid

The email templates are built with Liquid—this is a template language that allows you to add dynamic content to your emails. For example, if you want to include your student’s names in the email, you’ll need to use Liquid. This is how the template personalizes each email with the name of each recipient.

To understand more about using Liquid on Teachable, and to see a list of available Liquid objects, refer to the Liquid on Teachable article. Some common Liquid tags that you might use in an email template include:

- {{ school.url }} - your school’s URL
- {{ to.name }} - name of a student
- {{ school.email_from_name }} - the “from” name that appears in emails from your school, as set in your Settings > General menu
- {{ course.name }} - name of a specific course

It’s important to note that not all Liquid tags will work in each template.

In the below example, we’ll walk through how to use Liquid to dynamically add the school URL in the Reset Quiz Notification email.

1. Navigate to the Emails > Template Editor page, then select an email from the Select a Template dropdown menu. (For this example, we’ll be using the Reset Quiz Notification template.)
2. Identify the line you want to add the dynamic content to. In this example, we’ll add the liquid object {{ school.url }} (along with some other text) to line 13 of the template.
3. Add in the desired liquid object. Be sure to include the double curly brackets around the object.
4. Click Save to save your changes. You can preview the email by clicking the Preview button—if you’re satisfied with the change, click Publish to update.

Email header and CSS

There are two email templates that apply to all email templates: the Email CSS template and the Email Header template.

The Email CSS template allows you to modify the CSS stylesheet shared among all of your email templates, while the Email Header template allows you to customize the email header shared among all of your email templates. These are both advanced templates that require knowledge of using HTML, CSS, and Liquid to write custom code.

Alternatively, if you don’t want to adjust the Email CSS template directly, you can adjust the default colors that appear in your emails in Site > Theme > Colors. The color of email text will be black by default.

Additionally, the image that appears on your emails will be your site's favicon, which can be modified in Site > Theme > Logo & Branding.

Emails to students

There are several types of emails that students may receive from your school. The templates for these emails can be modified in the Students section of the Template Editor:

• Receipt - The template for the email sent to students when they initially purchase a product.
• Custom Email - The template for any custom email sent to students from your Emails > Compose menu. Please note that Liquid is not available in the Custom Email template.
• Reset Quiz Notification - The template for the email sent to students after their graded quiz attempts has been reset by a school owner.
• Payment Authorization Required - The template for the email sent to students when their bank requires additional authorization to complete a purchase.
• Upcoming Subscription Reminder - The template for the email sent to students 30 days before their upcoming subscription payment. Sent for all subscription cadences greater than one month (i.e., quarterly, semi-annual, or annual subscriptions).
• Nonpayment Cancellation - The template for the email sent to a student when their subscription ends due to a payment issue.
• Free Trial Reminder - The template for the email sent to a student seven days before a free trial ends. (If the free trial is less than seven days, no email is sent).
• Drip Content Release - The template for the email sent to a student when drip content is released. It is recommended to make updates to drip emails within the Curriculum of a course.
• New Lecture Comment Notification - The template for the email sent to students when another comment is posted on a thread they participated in that includes the comment and comment link.
• Free Trial Receipt - The template for the email sent to a student after purchasing a free trial or course with the first period 100% discounted by coupon.
• Automatic Product Unenrollment Notification - The template for the email that is sent to students when they are automatically unenrolled from a product with a limited product access duration period.
• Failed Payment - The template for the email sent to students when a recurring payment fails. This email sends to students on 3rd, 7th, and 14th day after the first payment attempt. If the final payment attempt fails, they will be unenrolled from the course and receive the Nonpayment Cancellation email template.
• Issued Certificate - The template for the email sent to students when they complete a course and are issued a Certificate of Completion.
• Gift - The template for emails sent to recipients of gifted products from another purchaser. 

Some student emails can be disabled. To do so, navigate to the Emails > Settings menu and toggle on/off student email notifications.

Emails to admin

There are several types of emails that owners or authors may receive from your school. The templates for these emails can be modified in the Owners and Authors section of the Template Editor:

• Student Details - The template for the part added to the bottom of the New Enrollment and New Student Signup templates that contains additional information about the student, including their full name, country, email address, etc.
• New Lecture Comment Awaiting Moderation - The template for the email sent to owners and authors when comment moderation is enabled and a student posts a new comment in a lecture.
• Student Outreach - The template for the email sent to owners and authors when a student uses the contact form.
• Manual Subscription Cancellation - The template for the email sent to owners and authors when a student cancels their subscription.
• New Enrollment - The template for the email sent to owners and authors when a new student enrolls in a product.
• Billing Error - The template for the email sent to owners and authors if a billing attempt for a student’s recurring payment is unsuccessful due to a payment issue.
• Nonpayment Subscription Cancellation - The template for the email sent to owners and authors when a student's subscription is canceled due to a payment issue.
• New Student Signup - The template for the email sent to owners and authors when a new student signs up for their school.
• Affiliate Onboarding - The email sent to users when they are added as an affiliate in a school. If the affiliate is added as a new user to your school, this email replaces the standard account confirmation email.

School owners/authors can disable some of these automated emails from their email notification settings. To do so, navigate to the Settings > Notifications menu and toggle on/off email notifications.

Additional resources

• Email Users - Learn how to send emails to your students, and view email history for both custom and automated emails sent from your school
• Email Opt-in/Opt-out - Learn how users can opt-in or opt-out of school emails and identify which emails are affected by student opt-in status.
• Email Notifications - Learn how to turn on/off email notifications for automated emails sent to school admin and students.
• Email Service Providers and Teachable - Learn how to integrate your school with a third-party email marketing service or platform.