Migration Email Sequence

The Migration Wizard can email everyone you bring across, from you, to explain the move and get them listening on their new feed. This is the migration email sequence: five emails, each sent only when it applies to that person.

Turning It On or Off

Send the migration email sequence is a switch in the wizard, on by default. It covers all five emails, including the two confirmations.

• On: the emails below go out. Benecaster’s standard “your private podcast feed is ready” email is held back, so your welcome is the first thing people receive. The welcome is signed with your first name, which the wizard asks for.
• Off: none of the five is sent. Each person gets Benecaster’s standard feed email instead (and a free member whose account was just created gets the standard set-password email), which gives them their feed link but says nothing about you, the move or a deadline. Choose this only if you will tell people about the move yourself.

The one exception is Resend on the migration dashboard, which sends one person their welcome even with the sequence off — clicking it is you choosing to write to them.

Nobody is left without their feed link. Benecaster’s standard emails are held back only when your migration welcome can actually be sent. If it cannot — for example, your theme overrides migration-welcome.php and that copy is broken — people get the standard feed email instead, as if the switch were off.

The Five Emails

Free members get the welcome and nothing that chases them — they have no deadline.

Welcome

Explains that the show has moved and that their subscription and access have come with it. It gives them their new private feed link and one-tap buttons to add it in Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Pocket Casts, Castro and Podcast Addict.

What comes next depends on the person:

• Paying members are asked to set up payment, with their deadline, and told that after it their private episodes stop while public episodes carry on.
• Free members see no payment ask and no deadline. Instead they are told there is an account for them and offered a link to set a password whenever they like — they do not need one to listen.

Reminder and Final Warning

Short nudges with one button to finish setting up payment. The final warning says their access ends on their deadline and that their feed link will not change when they pay.

Complete Confirmation

Confirms they are in, at the level they chose, and repeats their feed link and app buttons. If they already added the feed, it tells them there is nothing to update. It carries no password link: the link they finished with already signed them in, and their account page lets them choose a password from there.

Access Ended

Tells them plainly that their private feed has ended because payment setup was not finished, that nothing is lost and their account is still there, and that if they restart they get the same feed back, so their podcast app keeps working. It links to restart their subscription and to your public episodes.

How Sending Works

The welcome emails are the one large send, and they go out gradually rather than all at once: a migration is often the first bulk email a site has ever sent, and a new sending domain that sends thousands at once looks like spam. The wizard tells you roughly how long sending will take before you start; see Grace Period and Migration Emails for the paces you can choose. Once it starts, you can watch the welcome emails go out on the migration dashboard.

The reminders, final warnings and confirmations are not queued up in advance. Each is written on the day it becomes due, for the people it still applies to — so nobody who has already paid is chased, and every email reflects where that person stands that morning. A migration never sends one person more than one email a day.

These are service emails about someone’s access, so they still arrive for subscribers who have opted out of your broadcasts and announcements.

When an Email Does Not Send

Any migration email that fails is listed on the migration dashboard under Emails That Did Not Send, with who it was for and what the mail server said.

Of the five emails, only a failed welcome can be sent again, and only to someone still mid-move. Each email is saved exactly as it was written on the day it was queued. A welcome stays accurate for as long as the person is still moving across. A reminder sent a fortnight late would show a deadline that has passed, and could chase someone who has already paid. So the other four are never resent. The next one due is written fresh for that day.

Sending a failed welcome again does not count as a new email to that person, so their reminder still arrives on schedule. Resend is different: it writes a new welcome, and can take the place of that day’s reminder.

Changing the Wording

Each email is a template a theme can override, the same way as Benecaster’s own emails. Copy the file from the Migration Wizard’s templates/emails/ folder (migration-welcome.php, migration-reminder.php, migration-final.php, migration-complete.php, migration-expired.php) to [your theme]/benecaster/emails/ and edit it there.