How to use E-Mails to improve your online training project engagement

• 3 min read

When delivering an Online Traning project, you really have to care about how to engage your users in the Learning process. An effective students engagement is actually needed in order to increase the courses completion percentage: this is why you have to find the best way to interact with who is going to attend the online course.

In this article we are going to explain how you can engage your students by using a simple yet effective tool like the E-Mail.

E-Mail: why?

One of the most interesting advantages of the E-Mail, is that you are able to send-out a message to a large group of students at the same time. Even if you use the same text for everybody, the E-Mail is perceived as a specific and personal message by each of the students.

Furthermore, an E-Mail can be used to convey a specific message while delivering a strong Call to Action. In other words, you can engage the users and ask them to do something inside the Learning Management System.

Engaging the users for a better Online Training

Creating a logical pattern

While sending out the E-Mails, you have to follow a logical progression: let’s engage the users in a training pattern that helps them to attend the entire E-Learning course in the best and most effective way.

You can also increase the complexity of the E-Mails, step by step, as long as you take your time to check the feedback resulted from each blast (by this way, you’ll be also able to improve the targeting of the following message).

Send E-Mails according to the eLearning workflow

Let’s build a 5 E-Mails engagement project

The E-Mails blast must be planned according to the entire training workflow. In order to get the best results, be sure to give users the right time to perform the requested/suggested action. The total number of E-Mails is another crucial element in your engagement strategy: don’t overwhelm your users with tons of E-Mails!

Let’s figure out an hypothetical 5 E-Mails engagement project.

Let's engage the elearning users in 5 emails

E-MAIL 1 – In the first E-Mail you can just ask users to log-into the E-Learning platform by using their username and password. Once inside the LMS, they will be able to see that a new course has been made available. You can also spend some words to introduce the course: be sure to ask the users a few minutes to better understand the course content.

This is a very simple call to action. Right after a couple of days you’ll be able to check how many user have accepted the invitation and have already logged into the LMS. This first analysis allows you to plan the second E-Mail blast (or you may want to send a reminder to users who haven’t performed any action).

Important: in all the E-Mails you must include a direct link to the Learning Management System, so that users are able to easily perform the log-in.

E-MAIL 2 – The second E-Mail is intended to invite the users to start the course: for best results, try to engage the users by presenting something cool and interesting, like a video presentation or a minigame. The final purpose of this E-Mail is more complex: you want users to be involved by your training materials, and also to complete the first part of the training session.

E-MAIL 3 – Before to send the third E-Mail, you have to wait a reasonable amount of time. If you have uploaded a 1-hour long course – expecting that users will complete at least 4 training sessions – give them enough time to complete this task.

The third E-Mail can be used to invite the user to c0mplete a test. If you have activated a forum, you can also use this E-Mail as an invitation to join a specific discussion.

E-MAIL 4 – Use this E-Mail to invite the users to download the course certificate or print it.

E-MAIL 5 –  In the last E-Mail you can add a survey quiz – not only about the course, but also related to the entire training process. By this way you’ll be able to evaluate your 5 E-Mails engagement project!


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