Courses Email Notification Preferences and Video Thumbnail Enhancements

We're excited to introduce Email Notification preferences in the membership courses! This update allows course creators to take complete control over their email content, offering a tailored, user-specific communication experience that enhances clarity and relevance for end users.

We’ve introduced a new option that allows you to upload custom thumbnails for your videos. With this feature, you can choose or upload an image that best represents your video content. Custom thumbnails make your videos more visually appealing, helping to attract viewers and improve engagement.

• Course creators now have the ability to manage whether emails are sent for different types of notifications. This allows creators to control communication with their students, ensuring only relevant notifications, such as course updates, reminders, or announcements, are sent.
• Instructors can now upload custom thumbnails for videos or choose a frame from the video to use as the thumbnail.
• Courses Sign-up Emails
• Offer Access Emails
• Drip Emails
• Courses Comments Emails
• New Course Materials Unlocked Emails

Before you begin

“Courses Email Notification Preferences and Video Thumbnail Enhancements” is part of the Marketing → Email Marketing area in Adaptive AI. Build templates, broadcasts, campaigns, and performance reporting. Course and community settings affect what members can access, when content unlocks, and which notifications they receive. Always test from a member account as well as the administrator view. The objective is not merely to save a setting; it is to confirm the result works for the staff member or customer who will depend on it.

• Confirm the course, offer, group, category, lesson, price, and access rule belong to the intended member experience.
• Use a separate test member account that does not already have broad administrator or legacy access.
• Review publish status, visibility, drip timing, time zone, prerequisites, and notification settings.
• Prepare final lesson content, downloads, thumbnails, links, and any payment or enrollment automation used to grant access.
• Define what should happen when access is purchased, granted manually, completed, canceled, or removed.

Verify the result

After completing the instructions in this guide, use a controlled test before treating the setup as finished. A saved screen or success message confirms configuration, but only an end-to-end test confirms the business outcome.

1. 1Grant or purchase access with the test member and confirm the correct course, group, category, and lesson become visible.
2. 2Verify locked, scheduled, or prerequisite content remains unavailable until its intended condition is met.
3. 3Test video, downloads, comments, assignments, quizzes, links, progress tracking, and mobile layout where applicable.
4. 4Confirm welcome, unlock, comment, completion, and payment notifications reach the intended person only once.
5. 5Remove or cancel test access and verify the member experience and related automation update correctly.

Troubleshooting checklist

If the result differs from what you expected, preserve the current state and isolate one variable at a time. Start with the checks below before deleting the configuration or rebuilding it from scratch.

• Check the member's exact offer, product, group, role, and access status when content is missing or unexpectedly visible.
• Compare publish status, drip schedule, account time zone, prerequisites, and completion state for locked content.
• Test with a true member account because administrators can see content that ordinary members cannot.
• Review payment and enrollment workflow history when access should have been granted automatically.
• Confirm notification preferences and event conditions when access works but the expected message does not arrive.

Best practices

• Organize content in a predictable progression and give every lesson or group a clear outcome.
• Keep member-facing names, thumbnails, descriptions, pricing, and support instructions consistent across offers and portals.
• Use drip and notification settings intentionally so members receive guidance without unnecessary message volume.
• Test onboarding and cancellation paths whenever offers, payment settings, or access automations change.
• Review member feedback and completion data to improve unclear lessons, dead links, and common support gaps.