Settings: Email
The Emails tab in Settings allows you to control email settings for your Merit account and send student welcome emails.
IN THIS ARTICLE:
- Changing From/Reply To Address
- Include Institutional FERPA Policy Link
- Edit the Student Welcome Email
- Sending Welcome Emails in Bulk
From Address and Reply To Addresses
By default, your Merit account comes configured to use info@meritpages.com as your default FROM email address, but this address can be customized to use an address used by your institution. Many institutions create an email account specifically for achievement notifications, for example, "studentnews@institution.edu."
Note: To customize your From address, you must first add an email whitelabel for your account. Note that the Reply-to address can be changed without adding a whitelabel.
If you'd like the sending email to include your name in the address field, use the format "First Last" <emailaddress@institution.edu>. For example "John Smith" <johnsmith@institution.edu
*Note: Multiple from addresses and reply to addresses can be added be simply separating the addresses with a comma. i.e. studentnews@institution.edu, sports@institution.edu
For example:
If more than one email address has been added to this setting, then you will be able to choose the specific from and reply to addresses to use when publishing an achievement.
For example:
Parent Replies
By default, the any replies from parents will go to the Reply-to address you have specified, but you can override this and have parent replies go directly to students by checking the box that says "Send parent email replies to students."
Including Your Institution's FERPA Policy URL
By including a link to your institution's FERPA Policy, students will have quick access to this information, located in the footer of all emails sent to them about their Merit Page. If your institution does not have a URL listed in this setting, the phrase "FERPA Policy" will not be hyperlinked.
Learn more about FERPA and Merit
Student Welcome Email
Whenever a new Merit page is created for a student, a Welcome to Merit Email is sent to the student. This generally happens when you are importing students into Merit, but can also happen if you are simply recognizing a student for an achievement, and that student does not have a Merit page yet (it will be created automatically) or for some other reason the student has never received a welcome email from Merit.
The email contains a configurable welcome message, as well as a link that will log them into their Merit account.
*Note that the sending of welcome emails can be suppressed in the student import process if you wish to import students but decide to send their welcome emails later.
The {{name}} field will be replaced with the student's name, and a link to the student's Merit page will be automatically listed at the end of the email.
Adding links:
To add a link inside of the welcome email, highlight the text you wish to hyperlink, and select the "hyperlink" button; the small chain icon in the text editor.
Sending Welcome Emails in Bulk
You can send welcome emails to students in bulk by using the send welcome emails button. This button will only appear if you have students at your school who have not received their welcome email. A common use case for this will be if your institution chooses to import your student body all at once, (suppressing the sending of welcome emails at that time) but you have decided to send students their introduction to Merit at a later date. The send welcome emails button is ideal for this.
When sending welcome emails in bulk, Merit will never send emails to:
- Students who have opted out
- Students who have already logged into (and updated) their page
- Students whose class year value is in the past, meaning they have already graduated.