Timed from their access date
Access at minute zero, orientation at 24 hours, the first-win nudge on day two or three, momentum at day seven. Per student, against their own enrolment — not a Friday broadcast to everybody.
Student onboarding email sequence: the first week, written out.
Seven complete emails for the week after somebody buys your course — access, orientation, the first-win nudge, the branch that fires when nothing has been completed, the week-one momentum email, and the two sends a cohort adds. Each one carries its fires-on condition and what changes between self-paced and cohort delivery. Works in any email tool.
07templates
02delivery modes
07days covered
What you are taking away
- Seven emails you can paste into any tool today, subject lines included
- The fires-on condition for every send, including the one that is a branch
- An access email with exactly one job, and the reason it has only one
- A first-win nudge that names the thing rather than encouraging the person
- A no-progress branch that suppresses itself the moment a student moves
- What changes between a self-paced programme and a cohort, send by send
Before you paste anything
One clock starts when they pay. The other only starts if they stop.
A student onboarding sequence goes wrong in the same place almost every time: it gets built as one list of dated sends. It is two mechanisms, and only one of them runs on dates.
Fired by the absence of progress
The branch is a condition evaluated at a point in time, not a delay. No completed unit by the end of day four, and it sends. Anything completed, and it stops — including after it has already been queued.
The brackets are the work
Everything in [brackets] is yours to replace, including the parts that read like instructions — those are there because a template that writes the specifics for you produces seven emails that say nothing. Swap them for your tool’s merge fields where a merge field exists; the field names differ by platform, so these are written in plain brackets rather than in any one product’s syntax.
The copy button gives you the subject, the alternate subject, the fires-on condition and the body as plain text. Paste it into whatever you send with, then read it out loud. If a line would be odd to say to one student, it is odd to send to four hundred — and in week one the whole sequence is trying to sound like one person who noticed.
The whole first week
Timings are a working default to adjust against your own course, not a benchmark to hit. If your units are long or your students are busy, everything below moves later together — the shape matters more than the days.
| When | |
|---|---|
| T+0 | The access emailOne job: get them in. Transactional, immediate, nothing else attached. |
| T+24h | The orientation emailHow the course works, and the name of the first thing they will finish. |
| Day 2 → 3 | The first-win emailOne named unit, an honest time estimate, a direct link. |
| Day 4 | The stuck-student branchFires on no completed unit. Suppresses on any completion. |
| Day 7 | The momentum emailProgress reflected back as a capability, not as a percentage. |
| T−3d | Cohort: before day oneCohort only. Dates into the calendar, one small piece of prep. |
| T−1d / T−1h | Cohort: first call reminderCohort only. The agenda, then two lines and the link. |
T+0 → T+24hThe first hoursBlock 01 / 03
Two emails, and the first one is nearly empty.
The temptation on the day of a purchase is to send everything at once: the link, the bonuses, the community, the roadmap, the thank-you note. Split it. The access email gets somebody in; the orientation email tells them what to do once they are.
Splitting them costs a day and buys two things. The access email becomes short enough that the only sensible action is the one you want, and the orientation email gets to arrive on day two — which is exactly when a new student, having looked around the portal once, is deciding what to actually do.
T+0
The access email
01 / 7SubjectYour access to [Course name]
Alt[Course name]: you are in
Fires onImmediately on a successful purchase or enrolment. Sent as a transactional message, on its own, never batched into a marketing send.
[First name] — You are in. Here is your way into [Course name]: [Portal link] Sign in with [the email address this was sent to]. If it asks you to set a password, that is expected and takes about a minute. That is everything for now. Tomorrow you will get one more email explaining how the course works and what to do first. [Your name] Order [order number] · [Amount] · [Receipt link] Trouble getting in? Reply to this email and a person will answer.
Why it is sent then
One job: get them through the door while the decision to buy is still warm. Every additional element — the bonus, the community invitation, the newsletter confirmation, the curriculum tour — competes with the single most important click in the entire relationship. It also has to be fast, which is a plumbing question rather than a copy one: the gap between paying and getting in is dead time that nothing later in the sequence recovers.
Change it for
- Self-pacedThis is the only email in the pack that has to be instant. Test it by buying your own course on a phone and timing the gap, because that is the version of this email your students actually receive.
- CohortAdd one line naming the start date, and say what is in the portal until then. A student who gets access to an empty portal three weeks before day one has no reason to come back on their own.
T+24h
The orientation email
02 / 7SubjectHow [Course name] works (and what to do first)
AltStart here: [the first thing you will finish]
Fires on24 hours after access is granted, per student. Send it whether or not they have logged in — this is the message that tells a student who has not started what starting looks like.
[First name] —
Yesterday you got the link. Here is how [Course name] actually works.
How it is built: [Number] units. Each one takes about [minutes]
minutes and ends with something finished.
Where to ask: [Where questions go, and who answers them.]
How fast: [The pace you expect — for example, "two units a
week finishes it in six." Then: slower is fine.]
Live sessions: [Next date, time and timezone. Cut this block if
there are none.]
Do this first: [name the first unit, and what they will have at the end
of it]. It takes about [minutes] minutes, and you need nothing except
[the one thing, or "nothing at all"].
[Direct link to the first unit — not to the course home page]
[Your name]
P.S. If something is confusing, reply here and tell me which bit. I
read these, and the confusing parts usually turn out to be my fault.Why it is sent then
This is the email that replaces the welcome video nobody watches. It answers the four questions a new student is quietly holding — how big is this, how long is a sitting, who helps me, and what do I do right now — and then removes the last one entirely by naming the first unit and linking straight into it. The link has to skip the course home page: a table of contents is a decision, and a decision is where a lot of first sessions end.
Change it for
- Self-pacedPublish the pace as an expectation rather than a rule, and say plainly that slower is fine. The number exists so that "behind" has a meaning later — for your signals and for the student.
- CohortReplace the pace line with the actual schedule, and put the first call date where it cannot be missed. For a cohort this email is the shape of the next several weeks, not a suggestion.
Day 2 → Day 7The first weekBlock 02 / 03
Three sends, and one of them is a condition.
Buying a course is a decision made once and then quietly re-made every day of the first week. These three exist to make the second decision easy: name one small thing, notice when nothing has happened, and show the student what they have got.
The middle one is different in kind from everything else in the pack. It is not scheduled — it is a branch, evaluated against what the student has completed, and it has to stop the instant they complete something. Built as a timed send it becomes the email that tells a student who finished two units yesterday that they have not started, which is worse than sending nothing at all.
Day 2 → 3
The first-win email
03 / 7Subject[Minutes] minutes: [the specific thing they will finish]
AltThe smallest useful thing in [Course name]
Fires onDay two or three after access. Goes to everyone: it is useful to a student who has started, and it is the second chance for one who has not.
[First name] — The fastest useful thing in [Course name] is [name the unit or the exercise]. It takes about [minutes] minutes, and at the end you will have [the artefact — the filled-in worksheet, the decision written down, the draft, the number]. [One or two sentences on why that particular thing is worth doing first: what it makes obvious, or what it stops you guessing about.] [Direct link to that unit] If you have already done it, [the next smallest thing] is the one after — same idea, about [minutes] minutes. [Your name]
Why it is sent then
Momentum in week one comes from finishing something, not from intending to. This email removes the decision about where to start, which is the actual obstacle more often than reluctance is — opening a course presents a list, and a list is work. Name one thing, size it honestly, link directly to it. An estimate that turns out to be accurate also buys credibility for every estimate you make afterwards.
Change it for
- Self-pacedPoint everybody at the same unit. Personalising this by progress sounds better than it reads; the branch below is the send that handles students who need something different.
- CohortPoint at whatever has to be finished before the first live call, and say that is why. A deadline with a reason attached is easier to meet than a suggestion with encouragement attached.
Day 4 · branch
The stuck-student branch
04 / 7Subject[Unit name] is where most people stop
AltA hand with [Course name]
Fires onFires on: no completed unit since access was granted, evaluated at the end of day four. Suppresses the moment the student completes anything, and never sends to a student who has completed a unit at any point. If your platform records where somebody stopped, use that unit by name; if it only records a last-seen date, send the version below with the first unit named instead.
[First name] — You have not got into [Course name] yet. After four days that usually means one of three things. [If you have the data, replace this line: "You stopped partway through [unit name]" — and rewrite the list below around that unit.] — No time yet. [The smallest unit] takes [minutes] minutes. Start there rather than at the beginning: [direct link]. — Something did not work. Reply and tell me what you saw. Access problems are ours to fix, not yours. — It is not what you expected. Also fine, and worth saying out loud. Reply and tell me what you were hoping for. [Your refund, pause or transfer policy here, in one plain sentence, if you have one.] No pressure either way. I would rather you finish one useful unit than carry a vague sense of guilt about twelve. [Your name]
Why it is sent then
The behavioural branch, and the one email in the pack that must never go out on a schedule. It exists because a student who has completed nothing needs a different message from one who is moving slowly, and sending the encouraging version to somebody who finished two units yesterday costs more credibility than the send is worth. Name the place, offer the exit, and refuse the guilt — a message that makes returning feel like admitting something produces fewer returns, not more.
Change it for
- Self-pacedSanity-check the four-day threshold against your own pace. If your units run ninety minutes and your students are working parents, four days is not a stall, it is a Tuesday.
- CohortFire it against the cohort schedule instead — nothing completed by the end of the first scheduled week — and add the next call date. For a cohort, the fastest route back in is a room rather than a lesson.
Day 7
The momentum email
05 / 7SubjectWeek one of [Course name]: what you have got
Alt[Number] down — here is what is next
Fires onEnd of day seven, per student. Branch it on whether anything has been completed: the version below for students with progress, and a short re-invitation pointing at the smallest unit for those without.
[First name] — One week in. Here is what you have finished: [List the completed units by name, or the merge field that does it. If you cannot pull this automatically, "you are [n] units in" is still better than nothing.] Which means you can now [the capability those units add up to, written as something the student can do — not as a count of modules]. Next up: [the next unit], about [minutes] minutes. It gets you to [the next capability]. [Direct link] [If there is a live session: the next date, time and timezone, and one line on what it is for.] Anything unclear so far, reply and tell me which bit. [Your name]
Why it is sent then
The end of week one is when a course either has a place in somebody’s week or does not, and reflecting progress back is what makes progress feel like progress. Reporting it as a capability — what they can now do, rather than which modules they cleared — is the entire point of the email; a progress bar can already tell them the percentage. It is also the least awkward place to reset expectations for anybody running behind, because it never mentions being behind.
Change it for
- Self-pacedSend it seven days after that student’s access date, not on a Friday to everybody. A weekly broadcast reaches half your students in the middle of their first week and the rest in their third.
- CohortSend it to the whole cohort on the same day and write it in the plural: what the group covered, what comes next, what somebody said that is worth repeating. Shared progress is one of the two things a cohort has that a self-paced course does not.
Where a tool decision changes the plan
Five of these seven can be scheduled. One of them has to know what the student did.
The branch needs a completion state at the moment of sending, and the momentum email needs the unit names to report back. When lesson progress lives in one system and email lives in another, that is a weekly export and a paste. In Agorix, available lesson activity, milestones, inactivity and purchases can sit on one customer record, so a workflow reads them directly — see how courses connect.
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T−3d → T−1hWhat a cohort addsBlock 03 / 03
A shared start date changes three things, and adds two emails.
The five sends above work for a cohort unchanged in structure. What changes is when they fire, who they are addressed to, and the fact that a cohort has a period between enrolling and starting that a self-paced course simply does not have.
- Timing moves to a shared calendar. Self-paced sends are timed against each student’s access date. Cohort sends are timed against the cohort — which is simpler to build and much less forgiving, because a badly timed send is badly timed for everybody at once.
- The voice moves to the plural. What the group covered, what somebody asked that is worth repeating, who is ahead. Shared progress is one of the two things a cohort has that a self-paced course does not, and the emails are where most students actually experience it.
- The branch changes threshold. No longer four days since access, but nothing completed by the end of the first scheduled week. And it should point at the next call rather than at a lesson, because for a cohort the fastest way back in is a room.
Then two sends appear that have no self-paced equivalent: the pre-start email, which exists because the gap between paying and starting is where cohort attrition quietly happens, and the first call reminder, which protects the session that decides whether the cohort becomes a group. Both are written out below.
Running a self-paced programme does not mean doing without either. A recurring office hours slot or structured group call gives an evergreen course the one thing it is missing — a date — and the reminder template below works against it unchanged. Cohort versus self-paced is the decision underneath all of this.
T−3d
Cohort: before day one
06 / 7Subject[Cohort name] starts [Day]. Two things before then.
AltBefore we start on [Day]
Fires onThree days before the cohort start date, to everyone enrolled. Cohort only — a self-paced programme has no equivalent moment.
[First name] — [Cohort name] starts on [Day, Date] at [Time] [Timezone]. Two things before then: 1. [The preparation — one thing to read, bring, decide or set up. Keep it to one, and keep it under [minutes] minutes.] 2. Put the calls in your calendar: [dates and times with timezone, or the calendar link]. What the first week looks like: [Two or three lines. What gets covered, what gets finished, and what the first call is actually for.] The portal opens [when it opens]. [If they already have access: what is in there now and what is worth doing with it.] See you [Day]. [Your name]
Why it is sent then
The gap between enrolling and starting is where cohort attrition happens, and it happens quietly — nobody asks for a refund, they simply are not there on day one. This email exists to get the dates into a calendar while the enrolment is still recent, and to hand over one small piece of preparation so the student arrives having already begun. Keep the preparation genuinely small: a heavy pre-work assignment manufactures its own no-shows.
Change it for
- CohortSend it three days out, and again on the morning of day one if attendance at the first call matters to you. The first call sets the attendance pattern for the whole cohort.
- Self-pacedThere is no start date to write to. The orientation email above does the same job on the student’s own clock, which is why it lands at 24 hours rather than on a Monday.
T−1d / T−1h
Cohort: first call reminder
07 / 7SubjectTomorrow, [Time] [Timezone]: [Cohort name] kickoff
AltKickoff call — tomorrow
Fires onThe day before the first live session, and again about an hour before it. The one-hour version is two lines and the link, with nothing else in it.
[First name] — The [Cohort name] kickoff is tomorrow at [Time] [Timezone]. Join: [Join link] Bring: [the one thing — a question, the prep, or nothing] Length: [minutes] minutes What we will do: — [Item one] — [Item two] — [Item three] [Replay policy, stated plainly. Say it here even if you have said it before — this is the question you will otherwise answer by reply.] If you cannot make it, [what to do instead: watch the recording, send your question in advance, or come to the next one]. [Your name]
Why it is sent then
The first call decides whether a cohort becomes a group or stays a list of people who happened to buy the same thing. Attendance at it is worth protecting with a real reminder rather than a calendar invitation nobody re-reads, and the second send an hour beforehand is the highest-yield part — it catches everybody who did the timezone arithmetic wrong. Keep the agenda short and specific: the reason for listing it is to prove the hour has a shape.
Change it for
- CohortRepeat the pattern for every call, but only the first one needs the full agenda. After that, one line on what the session is for is enough.
- Self-pacedThe equivalent is your recurring office hours or group call. Same two sends, timed against the session rather than against a cohort schedule.
Mechanics
Eight settings that decide whether any of this lands.
The copy is the visible part. These are the settings around it, and an onboarding sequence with good copy and wrong mechanics performs worse than the reverse — the access email that arrives an hour late has already lost more than any subject line could recover.
- Send from a person. Week one is the week a student decides whether there is anybody behind this course. A brand name in the from-field answers that question badly, and it answers it before the first email is opened.
- A reply-to a human actually reads. Four of these seven invite a reply, and the replies are the cheapest curriculum research available — route them somewhere they get kept. A no-reply address on an onboarding sequence throws away the only unprompted feedback you will get for free.
- Access is transactional. The rest is not. Send the access email through whatever path your tools treat as transactional, separate from marketing sends. It arrives faster, it is less likely to be filtered, and it does not disappear because somebody once unsubscribed from your newsletter. Deliverability basics covers the rest of the setup.
- One link, and make it deep. Every email here points at a specific unit rather than at the course home page. A home page is a table of contents, a table of contents is a decision, and a decision is where a session that was about to happen stops happening.
- Per-student timing, not a weekly broadcast. These are timed against the student’s own access date. Sending the week-one email to everybody on a Friday means half your students get it mid-way through their first week and the rest get it in their third, where it reads as somebody else’s email.
- The branch has to suppress. The moment a student completes anything they leave the no-progress branch, including mid-flight. A stall message arriving after somebody has just finished two units is worse than sending nothing — behaviour-triggered workflows are the mechanism, and the suppression rule is the part people forget to build.
- Time estimates you have actually checked. Say twelve minutes only if it is twelve minutes. The first estimate that turns out to be wrong is the last one a student believes, and every email in this sequence leans on being believed about how long things take.
- Buy your own course. Enrol with a personal address and a real card, on a phone, then do nothing for a week and watch what arrives. It is the only reliable way to find the link that points at the wrong unit and the branch that never fired.
When the calendar is against you
If you can only send two, send these.
Seven is the full week, not the minimum. Two emails cover the moments that matter most, and two done properly beats seven done badly — particularly the branch, which does real damage when it is half built.
- The access email. Not optional, and the one place a delay costs you something you cannot get back. Add one line naming the first thing to finish, with a direct link.
- The first-win email. Day two or three, one named unit, an honest time estimate. This is where week-one momentum comes from, and it works as a broadcast if it has to.
Common questions
Six questions about the first week.
How many emails should a student onboarding sequence have?
Five in the first week covers a self-paced course: access on purchase, orientation at 24 hours, a first-win nudge on day two or three, a branch that fires on no progress around day four, and a momentum email at day seven. A cohort adds two more around the start date. If you can only send two, send the access email and the first-win email — the first one is not optional and the second one is where week-one momentum actually comes from. What the sequence is trying to produce is covered in course completion systems.
When should the course access email go out?
Within minutes of the purchase, as a transactional message sent on its own. The gap between paying and getting in is dead time, and nothing later in the sequence recovers it — a student who cannot get in on the evening they bought has already had their first session without you. This is a plumbing problem rather than a copy problem, so test it by buying your own course on a phone and timing the gap.
What should the first email after a course purchase say?
As little as possible. It has one job: get the student through the door while the decision to buy is still warm. The link, how to sign in, the receipt, a named person to reply to, and one line promising a second email tomorrow. Bonuses, community invitations, curriculum tours and newsletter confirmations all compete with the most important click in the entire relationship, and they all lose you some of it.
How do I email a student who has not started the course?
With a branch rather than a broadcast. It fires on the condition — no completed unit since access was granted, evaluated around day four — and it suppresses the moment the student completes anything, including mid-flight. The message names the unit they stopped on if you have that data, gives the three usual reasons with a fix attached to each, and offers a genuine exit rather than encouragement. Building the trigger is a behavioural workflow, not a scheduled send.
Should cohort and self-paced onboarding emails be different?
The five core sends stay the same; three things change. Timing moves from each student’s own access date to the shared cohort calendar. The voice moves from singular to plural, because shared progress is one of the two things a cohort has and a self-paced course does not. And two extra sends appear around the start date, both written out in Block C above. The no-progress branch also changes threshold — from days since access to the end of the first scheduled week. Cohort versus self-paced is the decision underneath it.
Should onboarding emails come from a person or the brand?
A person, with a reply-to that a human reads. Week one is when a student decides whether there is anybody behind this course, and the from-field answers that question before the email is opened. It also matters practically: four of these seven invite replies, and those replies are the earliest and cheapest signal you will get about which part of the course is confusing.
Do these replace a welcome sequence?
No — they run alongside it and they are aimed at a different thing. A welcome sequence introduces somebody to you and your work; this one gets a paying student to finish a unit. If a new student is receiving both at once, pause the marketing sequence for the first week and let the onboarding emails have the inbox. The welcome sequence and email frequency cover how the two fit together.
Keep going
What these emails are part of.
GuideCourse completion systemsThe operating guide this sequence is one chapter of — signals, checkpoints and the drop-off curve.PillarHow to create an online courseThe first unit these emails point at, and everything that has to exist behind it.Template packWelcome email sequenceThe sequence that runs before somebody buys, and how to keep the two from colliding.PlatformCoursesLesson progress, milestones and inactivity on the same record the emails send from.
From seven templates to a week that runs itself
You have the emails. Agorix is the system that sends them.
Checkout, course access, the onboarding sequence timed against each student’s own enrolment, and a branch that already knows which unit somebody stopped on — on one customer record, so the message that names the lesson does not start with an export.
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