In this post, we’ll give you a series of email templates that you can swipe to use for your own onboarding automation with ActiveCampaign, LearnDash and Memberium for ActiveCampaign.
The great part about this is all these emails are inside of a pre-built automation that you can copy directly to your ActiveCampaign app!
Once it’s copied, all you need to do is fill in the blanks in a few key spots by adding your course or program name, make a few other minor tweaks and then you’ll be ready to use this email automation for your own membership site or online course.
This automation is only for people who are using LearnDash with Memberium for ActiveCampaign.
If you’d prefer to swipe a more straightforward automation of 7 onboarding emails that can be used without LearnDash, we have a simpler automation that you can check out here and download into your app…
In a nutshell, here’s how this LearnDash automation works…
It will send out automated email reminders to complete specific courses that students haven’t yet completed. If a student has already completed certain courses, they won’t receive any email reminders to complete them.
Memberium’s integration with LearnDash allows you to trigger off specific ActiveCampaign automations when a student completes a specific LearnDash Course.
This allows you to send out automated email reminders to a student dynamically based on where they had last left off in their training. Here’s an explanation of what that means in simpler terms…
Let’s say for example, you have a student who completes the first two courses in your program, then they stop making any progress for a week after that. This automation will send out emails reminding them to come back and complete the third course and so forth until they finish your full program.
If a student ends up completing all of the LearnDash courses inside of your site, they won’t end up getting any email reminders since they’ve already completed it.
In another example for students who don’t complete any courses after signing up for your course or membership program, this automation can be used to automatically send them a series of emails reminding them to complete the first course and get started.
This Automation Only Works For Courses To Be Completed In Sequential Order
It’s important to mention, this automation will only work with LearnDash courses that need to be completed in sequential order. Meaning you must complete Courses 1,2,3, etc. in order, before moving on to the next course.
If you’re looking for a simpler onboarding automation that doesn’t need to be used with LearnDash, you can check out our other onboarding automation here.
Here’s an overview of everything included throughout the rest of this article…
- Introduction
- How this Automation Works
- Why is onboarding for new customers so important?
- What’s included in each of the Memberium for ActiveCampaign + LearnDash Onboarding Email Templates?
- How Do You Download the Memberium for ActiveCampaign + LearnDash Onboarding Email Templates?
- Step By Step Instructions on How to Implement This Automation with Memberium for ActiveCampaign and LearnDash
Why is onboarding for new customers so important?
One of the most important and undervalued parts of a membership site or online course is it’s onboarding campaign.
How many times have you bought an online course only to never end up completing a single lesson from it? Or maybe you finished a few lessons at the start, but then never went in again after that?
It’s easy for people to get distracted with everything going on in their busy lives. Especially in 2019…
When it comes to successfully onboarding new customers to your course or membership site, one of the easiest things you can do is just follow up with them by email to remind them to come back and progress forward with the program they had purchased.
Another major reason to try to get more people completing your courses is if most people don’t end up completing that much of your course, they most likely won’t buy any other products from you in the future.
What’s Included in the Memberium for ActiveCampaign + LearnDash Onboarding Email Templates?
Here’s a breakdown of all the emails that are included in this pre-written automation and an explanation of how they all work together. All the emails together are spaced out about a week apart from each other. You can adjust the timers in the automation as you see fit for your own program.
To get the emails to work as they’re described below, you’ll need to follow the setup instructions included farther down in this article. Here’s an overview of all the emails included…
Welcome Email (#1)
This is a friendly welcome email that’s sent immediately to new customers who purchase your course or membership. It delivers their Memberium login info so they can access the site immediately and know how they can access your site in the future.
The secondary part of this email is to reassure the new customer they made the right choice in purchasing your course or program while motivating them to get started. It also lets them know you are there to help and where they can get help if they need it.
Course #1 – Email Reminder to Complete The First Course
Three days after joining, this email is sent to customers as a reminder to get started with the first course. This email will only be sent to them if they haven’t yet completed the first LearnDash course inside of your WordPress site.
If they have already completed the first course already, they won’t get this email or any other email reminders about the first course. This email welcomes them again to your course or membership site and encourages them to get started. It also encourages them to try to make a habit of going through your training every week and lets them know where they can get help if they need it.
Course #1 – 2nd Email Reminder to Complete The First Course
A week later, if a new student hasn’t completed the first course in your program, this email will remind them again to get started. This email is a quick reminder to get started, asking the new customer, “Why don’t you jump in and complete a few lessons really quick? All the lessons are just a few minutes long and are easy to watch…”
It then links back to your site using a Memberium autologin link that will automatically log them into your site after they click it. This allows them to resume the first course instantly without having to manually enter their login info.
Course #1 – 3rd Email Reminder to Complete The First Course
If they still haven’t finished the first course a week after the last message, this third email is sent out reminding them to get started. The email encourages them again to get started with the course and dive in.
It’s important to follow up with them in the beginning and try to motivate them to get started. It’s also easy for them to get distracted with other things they have going on in their lives which is why these email reminders are so useful.
Looping Email Series Starts Generic Reminders to Get Started
At this point, if a student still hasn’t completed the first course, they’ll be sent to a looping series of four emails (one email being sent out once every two weeks) reminding them to come back and resume their training. You can adjust the timing of these as you see fit for your own list.
These short emails will send students back to their course dashboard page where they can pick up wherever they last left off in their training. If at any point they complete the first course, they’ll automatically be pulled out of this looping sequence and will start to receive reminder emails for the next course. Each of the four emails is worded slightly differently with different subject lines, so they don’t get the same email each time.
Course #2 – 3 Email Reminders to Complete the Second Course
This section consists of three short and quick emails that remind your customers to complete the second LearnDash course in your program. They’ll only get these emails if they’ve completed the first course, and haven’t fully completed the second course they should take. The first email in this series is sent out a week after they complete the first course. A week later, the second email reminder is sent, then the third email another week after.
Once they do successfully complete your second LearnDash course, Memberium will apply a tag in ActiveCampaign pulling them out of that part of the automation and will queue up the email reminders for the third course.
If they don’t complete the second course after the three emails, they’ll be sent to the looping email reminder sequence until they complete the second course.
Course #3 – 3 Email Reminders to Complete the Third Course
This section is basically a repeat of the 3 email reminders that are sent out about the second course. The only difference here is you’ll want to add an auto login link leading to the third course that they should take. The name of the course that’s listed in the email body copy and subject line will also match the name of the third course they should take.
The three emails are spread out to be sent a week apart from each other. Again, you can adjust the timing as you see fit for your own list.
Course #4 and beyond – 3 Email Reminders to Complete the Fourth Course
This section is a repeat of the 3 email reminders sent out about the third course. Each of the emails and subject lines is worded slightly differently, so your students aren’t getting the same email each time.
This automation only includes emails for four learndash courses. If you want to include email reminders for more than four courses, you can copy the same emails each time and copy the way the automation is structured to be able to do this.
Looping Email Series Starts Generic Reminders to Get Started
After the emails are sent out about a specific course and the student still hasn’t completed that specific course, they’ll then be passed on to the looping automation that consists of 4 emails that remind them to come back to their course dashboard and resume their training. One email is sent every two weeks.
The next time they complete a specific course, they’ll automatically be pulled out of this looping sequence and will start to receive reminder emails for the next course that they have to complete.
That’s all the emails that are included in this automation. You can modify and adjust these emails as you see fit for your own business.
Ready to implement this in your ActiveCampain app?
Throughout the rest of this article we’ll show you how to use this automation with Memberium for ActiveCampaign and will walk you through how to set it up step by step!
How Do You Download the Memberium for ActiveCampaign + LearnDash Onboarding Email Templates?
These emails are included in two ActiveCampaign automations that you can instantly import into your AC app. All you need to do is click the two unique automation links that we give you and everything will instantly get loaded into your app.
To download the automation, click the button below then enter your name and email and submit the form. After, you’ll instantly get the two unique links that you’ll be able to use to install the automations to your ActiveCampaign app.
Download the Memberium for ActiveCampaign + LearnDash Onboarding Email Templates and Pre-built ActiveCampaign Automation To Your App
Enter your name and email to instantly get the automation…
Once you’ve imported both automations into your app, you can then follow along with these simple instructions that will explain step by step how to implement this for your own site…
Step By Step Instructions on How to Implement This Automation with Memberium for ActiveCampaign and LearnDash
Here’s the step by step list that will walk you through how to set this up after you’ve imported both automations into your app. If you haven’t already, click here to download them and then follow these steps…
Step 1: Add Your Start Trigger
In ActiveCampaign, open up the automation that’s titled, “Memberium + LearnDash Course Reminder Sequence”.
You’ll want to use your Memberium membership level tag to trigger off the automation. You can also use the “Makes a purchase” goal to start the automation if you’d prefer to. So whenever a new user purchases your membership program, this automation will get triggered.
In order to use the membership tag to start this automation, the ecommerce platform that you’re using will need to be able to apply the ActiveCampaign membership level tag after someone purchases your course or membership or you can use the “Makes a purchase” goal if it can’t apply a specific tag.
In your WordPress admin dashboard, you can find your membership level tag name under the: “Memberium -> Settings -> Memberships” screen.
- Click the existing tag goal at the top…
- Then insert your exact membership level tag name and click the ‘Save Start’ button after.
Step 2: Add Your Password Generator Link
Insert your password generator webhook to generate a password for the new user. You can copy your password generator webhook from Memberium -> Settings -> Web Hooks/ Links screen.
- Go to ‘Memberium -> Settings -> Web Hooks/Links’ screen and copy your Password Generator link…
- Click the webhook element
- Paste your unique password generator link and click the ‘Save’ button…
Step 3: Update the Placeholder sections in the Welcome Email and Add Your Password Field
Now you’ll want to update the placeholder text in the welcome email. For example, you’ll want to replace the placeholder text ‘[Insert the Name of Your Membership Program or Course]’ with your membership or course name. You’ll also want to read through it to make sure you don’t miss any of these sections.
- Click on the first welcome email in the automation, then click the ‘Edit’ button…
- Replace the placeholder texts as pictured…
- If you’ve used a different name for your password field, make sure you insert the correct ActiveCampaign placeholder for it. You can verify your password field name in WordPress by going to the “Memberium -> Settings -> Login” screen as you can see in the below screenshot…
You can watch this video tutorial if you need more details about setting up your password field.
- Select the Password placeholder and click the ‘Personalize’ button…
- Click the ‘Next’ button in the top right…
- Update the ‘Address’ section at the bottom to use your own address…
- Replace the placeholder text in the subject line with your membership program name. You’ll also want to enter your name and email in the ‘From’ section. Click the ‘Close’ button to save the changes.
- Click the ‘Finish’ button…
Step 4: Update the First Course Email Reminders – Change Placeholder Sections, Add Your Autologin Link and Configure Your Course Completion Tag
Next, you’ll want to go through the next three emails for the first course in the automation. The main things you’ll want to do is replace the placeholder texts in each of them, add your own autologin links and configure your course completion tags as we’ll show you.
Step 4.1: Update the First Course Reminder Emails
- Click the 1st Reminder Email
- Click the ‘Edit’ button
- Replace the placeholder text as highlighted in the below screenshot with your own details
Step 4.2: For the rest of the reminder emails about your first course, we’ll add an autologin link. To do this…
- Click the link in the email and then click the ‘Hyperlink’ icon
- You can find your autologin link in your WordPress admin area by going to: Memberium -> Settings -> Web Hooks/Links screen
At the end of the link, you’ll want to replace the /yourpage/ placeholder with the link to your first course.For example, if the URL to your second course is: https://yourdomain.com/course-1/This is what you’re autologin link should look like…https://yourdomain.com/?memb_autologin=yes&auth_key=YOURAUTHKEY&Id=%SUBSCRIBERID%&Email=%EMAIL%&redir=/course-1/
- Once your link is ready, add your autologin link to the email and click the ‘Ok’ button. You’ll want to save this link to add to the other emails after this step.
Step 4.3: Update the emails ‘From’ info, subject line and address with your info.
- Click the ‘Next’ button
- Select your address for the address dropdown. If you haven’t added your address yet, you can click the ‘Add New Address’ button for adding your address.
- Click the ‘Edit’ button
- Add your name and email address in the from info section. Change the placeholder text in the subject line with your program name. If you want to test the email, you can use your test email address.
- Click the ‘Close’ button
Step 4.4: You can repeat these exact same steps for the next two reminder emails for the first course. As a recap, you’ll want to update the placeholder text sections, add your autologin link, update the ‘From’ info and subject line.
Step 4.5: For the first goal listed in the automation titled, ‘Completed 1st LearnDash Course’ goal. You’ll want to use your own course completion tag in place of the dummy tag that we’ve added to the automation.
When a user completes the first LearnDash course on your site, this tag will be applied to their contact record in ActiveCampaign.
In your ActiveCampaign app’s main menu, go to ‘Contacts > Manage Tags’.
In the “Add tags here” section you’ll want to create a series of completion tags for all of your LearnDash courses that you can easily understand.
As an example, a tag name for a specific course in a membership program could be “M4 Coaching Program – Your 1st Course Name – COMPLETED”.
Create new tags for all of your LearnDash courses. Once you’ve done that, go back to the automation called ‘Memberium + LearnDash Course Reminder Sequence’.
After you’ve created your tags, you’ll want to sync your WordPress site so they show up for you. To do this, go to your WordPress admin area and go to Memberium > Support -> Dashboard screen and click the ‘Synchronize ActiveCampaign’ button…
Next, we’ll take the following steps…
- In your WordPress admin dashboard, click the ‘LearnDash > Courses’ link in the main admin sidebar.
- Click to edit the course that you want students to complete first. In the right-hand sidebar of the page further down, you’ll see a section titled, “LearnDash Memberium Integration”. In the field called “Apply these Tags”, type in the name of the tag you want users to get once they complete that LearnDash course.See the below screenshot as an example…
Then click “Update” to publish your changes. Now anytime someone completes that course; they’ll get that tag applied to their contact record in ActiveCampaign.
- Next, we’ll go back to the automation, click the ‘Completed 1st LearnDash Course’ goal in the automation as pictured here…
- Click the goal condition link and replace the dummy tag we had added with your own tag for your first course…
- Click the tag field and paste the name of your tag (for your first course) in the goal editor, then click the ‘Save’ button..
- Click the ‘Save’ button to save the changes…
Step 4.6: Now, you’ll want to repeat this same process for the rest of the course completion goals listed in the automation. Here you’ll want to replace each of the placeholder tags that we have in place with your own tag.
Be sure to paste in the exact tag names as they’re added in your ActiveCampaign app.
Step 4.7: For the rest of your LearnDash courses inside of your WordPress site, go to LearnDash > Courses and for each of your courses, set the tag to be applied when each of the LearnDash courses is completed. This is added in the ‘LearnDash Memberium Integration’ section here under the ‘Apply These Tags’ section, as pictured here…
There are only 4 courses included in this example automation. To add reminders for more LearnDash courses, you can repeat the same automation structure and reuse the reminder emails we’ve given you.
Step 5: 2nd, 3rd and 4th Course Email Reminders – Add Your AutoLogin Links, Replace Placeholder text and ‘From’ Info
The next step is to update the rest of the email reminders in the automation and update them as we did for the emails about the first course.
For each of these individual emails, you’ll want to update the placeholder text sections, add your autologin link to each course (or your course dashboard), then update the email ‘From’ info and subject line.
Here’s a recap on how to add an autologin link to the emails…
- Click the link where you want to add an autologin link in the email, then click the ‘Hyperlink’ icon
- You can find your autologin link in your WordPress admin area by going to Memberium > Settings > Web Hooks/Links screen
- The field ‘Email Autologin Example’ is your autologin link. At the end of it, you’ll want to and replace the ‘/yourpage/’ placeholder with the link to the course you want to send them to (or you can link to your course dashboard page).For example, if the URL to your second course is: https://yourdomain.com/course-2/This is what you’re autologin link should look like….https://yourdomain.com/?memb_autologin=yes&auth_key=YOURAUTHKEY&Id=%SUBSCRIBERID%&Email=%EMAIL%&redir=/course-2/
- Copy your autologin link to each of the course reminder emails and make the other updates to finalize each of them.You can also just send them to your main course dashboard page if you don’t want to have to create a new autologin link for each individual course.Once you’ve got this far, great job! Your automation is close to being ready! There’s just one last part finalize…
Part Two: Setting Up The Looping Email Reminders
You’ll notice in the automation there’s a tag (‘Memberium – START LearnDash Course Reminder Loop’) set to be applied after the end of each course.
The idea here is, if a student doesn’t respond to the three emails about a specific course, they’ll then be passed on to a generic series of email reminders to resume their training.
Whenever they do complete the next LearnDash course, they’ll then be pulled out of the looping email reminder automation and will receive email reminders for the next course in front of them.
Here’s an example of where this is in the main automation called “Memberium + LearnDash Course Reminder Sequence”
Once this tag is applied, it will stop this automation and pass the student to the second automation titled “Memberium + LearnDash – LOOPING Course Email Reminder Sequence” that sends them a series of emails reminders that are spread out longer.
You can adjust the timing of these as you see fit for your list. Here’s an overview of the looping automation that they’ll get sent to once the trigger tag is applied…
The student then gets four email reminders to resume their training. If they don’t complete any courses by the time they get to the end of the automation, the automation will start over and send the same reminder emails until the student finishes a course.
Again, you can adjust the timing of these emails as you see fit for own list. If you’d prefer NOT to email your customers in a looping sequence like this, you can delete the last step called “Go to another action” at the bottom right of the automation.
What You Need to Change In the Looping Email Automation
The emails in the ‘reminder loop’ sequence are generic, so there’s not a ton of changes that are needed. Here are the next steps to get this part setup…
Step 1: Edit The Email
- Click the first email in the automation
- Click the ‘Edit’ button
- Change the placeholder text in the email with your details, including your signature at the bottom.
- Add your logo at the top of the email or delete the top logo block if you don’t want to include a logo in the emails.
- Next, we’ll replace the link in the email with your autologin link to your members home page or course dashboard. Click on the link in the email, then click the ‘Hyperlink’ icon
- You can find your autologin link in your WordPress admin area by going to: Memberium -> Settings -> Web Hooks/Links screen in your WordPress admin dashboard.
The field ‘Email Autologin Example’ lists your autologin link to copy. At the end of it, you’ll want to and replace the ‘/yourpage/’ placeholder with the link to the page you want to send them to (it should be your course dashboard page or members home page).For example, if the URL to your dashboard is: https://yourdomain.com/dashboard/This is what you’re autologin link should look like….https://yourdomain.com/?memb_autologin=yes&auth_key=YOURAUTHKEY&Id=%SUBSCRIBERID%&Email=%EMAIL%&redir=/dashboard/When you have your link ready copy and paste your autologin link to the email, then click the ‘Ok’ button. Save your autologin link to add to the other reminder emails after this step…
- Next, we’ll update the email’s subject line and ‘from’ info to list your name and email. Click the ‘Next’ button in the top right section of the screen…
- Edit the subject line and insert the name of your course or program…
- Update the emails ‘From’ info to use your name and email address.
- Last update your mailing address.
- Click the ‘Finish’ button…
- Click the first email in the automation
- After doing this for the second email, you’ll repeat this same process to update the other three emails that are included in the automation.
Step 2: Add Your Course Completion Tags to The End of The Looping Automation
In the conditional statement at the bottom of the automation, you’ll want to click the dark gray section titled “Does the contact match the following conditions?”
When you click that step, you’ll want to copy and paste all of your LearnDash course completion tags (exactly as they’re spelled in ActiveCampaign), into the following fields listed below.
If needed, you can reference your tag names in ActiveCampaign by going to Contacts > Manage Tags
Once all your tags are added, click the ‘Add’ button at the bottom and that’s it! Your two automations should be ready to go. To make sure you set up everything correctly we recommend you also follow the next steps to make sure everything is working as it should.
How to Test Everything and Make Sure It Works
The first step to test the automation is to create a new test user in ActiveCampaign. All you need to do is create the new test user with a first name and email address added.
Once you’ve done that, apply the membership level tag (the one that triggers off the main automation) to simulate the same events that will happen when someone signs up for your membership site or online course.
You can take a look at your test contact’s record in ActiveCampaign and look for the ‘Recent Activities’ section. In the right sidebar, you can also click on any of the emails to verify they’re working. Additionally, you can also simulate courses being completed by applying any of your course completion tags to the test contact.