How to Create Email Templates for Automations

Before we can set up an automation, we have to create WHAT to send.

In most cases this means, create an email template. To do this, you need to go to email settings, templates, and custom.

"Custom templates" is where EnrolHQ keeps all automation templates.

We need to click on add in the top right corner and select TYPE, "CUSTOM", and name our automation.

In this case, I will give you an example of how to create an event reminder for the parent.

The "name" is an internal field, so you can specify that this is an automation by adding "automation" to the back of the name section. To make it clear that this template is automated.

The subject template, however, is what goes out to the parents.

We might want to put in "event reminder" and then include a merge tag here, which we will do in just a bit.

First, you would put in the message template, which is what you want to send.

I have highlighted the yellow pieces, which we need to use our merge tag inserter for.

Merge tag inserter has a separate video, but, in short, it will pull the details from the student profile so that you can send the email in bulk or have it automated.

The one thing that we need to make sure of when creating automation templates, is that we use the correct tags.

As an example, we can look at "event name."

Sometimes we want an event name to be a manual custom email that we send out.

For example, for event attendance, we might not want to automate that, but we still need to pull the event name.

Other times, we do want to automate the event name, and in that case, we need to use a different type of merge tag.

We will go through this in depth, in a second.

To start off, I want to select the PARENT tag.

I go to my merge tag inserter and search "user", or "name".

From my options I choose, "USER, PARENT, FIRST, NAME".

The tag is automatically added to your template.

I then do the same search for "USER PARENT, LAST, NAME" and click ok to confirm the tag.

So far, the template reads: This is a friendly reminder that you have registered for, "EVENT, NAME".

Because this email is an automation, I need to pull the correct automation tag.

I search in the merge tag inserter for "event name," and you will see that we have special automation tags with "automation" in front of it.

I will also have a second "EVENT, NAME" tag except it won't have "automation" in front of it. Instead, it will have "LATEST, EVENT, NAME", and this is used for custom emails only.

The important lesson here is that, if you ever need to automate an email template, use the automation tag. But, if you want a custom template that you send manually through the comms log, you would use the latest event, instead.

The next tag, is "SCHOOL, NAME".

Click on the merge tag inserter, and search for "SCHOOL, NAME".

Find the tag and click ok to confirm.

Next one is "EVENT, DATE". And for this one, we need to make sure that we're using the automation tags again.

Search for "event" and find "event date." In this case, we want the "event session date."

We can also use the "event session time," but in this case, we have time as a separate tag.

Again, we would click on the merge tag inserter and use the automation tag.

We are looking for: "event session time."

When you're ready and think you've found the right merge tags, click on preview and search for any student to test if this is what you want.

When you preview it, it reads: "Dear Allusha Test, this is a friendly reminder that you have registered for Test Event at Test Instance on 2024-10-29 at 1:00 AM."

This date format, may not be the best way to present.

In that case, you can go to the tag inserter and make a change to a different tag.

Find the tag you want to replace with: "event session date and time." And then preview that to see how it renders.

The preview reads: this is a friendly reminder that you have registered for Test Event at Test Instance, commencing on Tuesday, 29th of October, 1:00 AM to 9:00 AM.

So far, this format is what I want. In that case, I will leave that and do my final changes.

When I'm ready, I will click save and back.

I will now be able to go to step two, which is to create and automate this email.