Course description

Many small businesses send a newsletter now and then, but the emails that matter most are the ones that arrive at the right moment: a warm welcome when someone signs up, a helpful nudge when a basket is left behind, a reminder before a workshop, a thank-you after a first order. Email automation sends those for you, every time, while you get on with running the business. This course shows you how to plan, write and build them properly, and how to stay within the UK rules while you do it.

It's a full course, not a quick tour. There are 10 sections and 53 written lessons, with every method in numbered steps and example email wording. You follow a potter who runs a small studio and online shop in Cornwall (a fictional business) through six months of building automations, from her first audit to her six-month review, including the mistakes she made along the way and the real results in her data. Every section has a worksheet, model answers, a cheat sheet and practical tools, and the course works with any email platform.

What you'll learn

• Foundations: triggers, conditions, actions, delays and goals, mapping your customer journey and auditing what you send now.
• Data and the rules: fields, tags and segments, consent and the soft opt-in, marketing versus service emails, and privacy information.
• Welcome sequences: planning, writing and building a sequence, and first-order offers with clear conditions.
• Segmentation: behaviour, interests, a simple recency, frequency and value score, and dynamic content.
• Shop and booking automations: basket reminders, post-purchase emails, fair review requests, booking confirmations, reminders and waiting lists.
• List health: spotting inactive subscribers without relying on opens, win-back sequences, sunsetting, preference centres and deliverability.
• Logic and results: branches, exit rules, a weekly email limit, honest attribution, comparing two versions and a monthly review.

The final project

You'll build your own automation plan: a six-month roadmap, a complete welcome sequence with the emails written, a second automation planned step by step, and a review routine to keep improving.

Who this course is for

• Small business owners, sole traders and makers who already send a newsletter.
• Online shops that want welcome, basket and post-purchase emails that work.
• Workshop, class and event organisers who want booking emails to run themselves.

How the course works

Read each lesson, then try the method in your own email platform or with the practice files, which use sample data with no real people. The course is tool-neutral, so it explains what to look for rather than where to click. You keep lifetime access, so you can come back to any lesson when you build your next automation.

What will I learn?

• Explain triggers, conditions, actions, delays and goals, and map the moments in your customer journey that deserve an email
• Organise your list with fields, tags and segments, and collect only the data you need
• Check which automations need consent or the soft opt-in, and keep service emails free of selling
• Plan, write and build a welcome sequence with honest offers and clear conditions
• Segment by behaviour, interests and a simple recency, frequency and value score, and use dynamic content
• Set up basket reminders, post-purchase emails, fair review requests and booking reminders
• Find inactive subscribers without relying on opens, run a win-back sequence and protect your deliverability
• Use branches, exit rules and a weekly email limit, then measure results honestly and improve with data

Frequently asked questions