Mailing lists

Why use mailing lists

Mailing list can be used to group like-minded contacts to allow you to contact groups of people easily. Mailing lists are a special type of tag and work very similarly.

Students can subscribe and unsubscribe to mailing lists from your website and subscriptions can be manually managed from within onCourse.

Mailing lists are particularly effective when used in combination with the HTML newsletter function

Creating a mailing list

Creating a new mailing list

Go to the menu People and select Mailing Lists.

Click the plus + button to create a new mailing list. Give you list a name and description (which will be available on your website) and select if you wish to allow online subscriptions, or limit the mailing list to tutors only.

Mailing lists could be used for various purposes such as:

• Focus on classes or local events in a specific category your college offers e.g. Art
• Provide a regular newsletter to your staff
• Advertise special promotions and deals, or new courses – a whole college newsletter
• Regularly contact students who meet a particular criteria, such as those aged over 60, to promote specialised courses, such as Senior’s programs.

Student self subscriptions

When students are logged into your website, they can manage their mailing list subscriptions. They can both add and remove themselves from the mailing list options you display.

Manually adding or removing students from a mailing list

Because mailing lists work just like tags, you can run a query, then select all or some of the students returned, and right click on the mailing list name to add the students to the list.

By selecting the mailing list name in the left column, you will search for all the students currently subscribed to the mailing list.You can select a group of people and right click on the mailing list name to remove the tag, or for individual students, open their contact record and delete the tag by clicking on the minus sign.

Unsubscribing a contact from a mailing list

Contacting students on a mailing list

In the left column of the students window, select the mailing list you wish to contact. Highlight the list (You can use Ctrl+A or highlight by selecting the first record, holding down shift, and selecting the last record).

Use the cogwheel icon on the top right of the screen to select “send message to x contacts” and proceed to create and send your message as usual. Instructions for creating HTML newsletters is available here