Feature Spotlight
The 2019 CourseStorm Feature Roundup
As members of CourseStorm’s Product Team, we’re always looking forward to what we can build next to make managing registrations even simpler and make our user experience even better for programs around the country. But it’s also important to take a minute and look back at what we’ve been able to accomplish thanks to feedback and input from CourseStorm users!
Here’s a recap of some of the top updates we released in 2019.
- Unlisted Classes
- WordPress Plugin
- Reminder Emails
- Printable Class Rosters
- Custom Payment Plans
- Auto Marketing
- and even more features to help our programs manage and market their programs.
Unlisted Classes
Advertising a class to everyone is great, but there are times when you want to limit who can see a particular listing. Maybe you’d like to send an email to the roster of a class from a prior season and give them early access to register before the class goes public. Or maybe you’d like to provide access only to your program’s employees. Either way, unlisted classes are a helpful option.
Unlisting a class takes just a few clicks from the class overview screen. We’ll provide a link you can share with anyone you’d like to have access to your class!
WordPress Plugin
Over the course of the summer, we made it incredibly easy for anyone with a WordPress site to integrate their classes onto their main site. Our free plugin automatically syncs with your CourseStorm catalog to provide your latest offerings right from your organization’s main website!
Reminder Emails
Sending out a reminder to your students is a great way to ensure that they don’t miss class, but it can take time to coordinate and create those mailings. With that in mind, we added the option to send automatic reminder emails. With the feature turned on we’ll send out a reminder a couple of days before class begins. You don’t need to do a thing!
Printable Class Rosters
You’ve let your students find classes easily and reminded them to attend. What if you want to track who’s arrived? That’s where printable rosters come in.
CourseStorm’s auto-generated printable rosters are available for every class. Simply tap “Print Roster” and we’ll create a PDF file that you can easily download or print to manage your students.
Custom Payment Plans
CourseStorm’s auto-scheduled payment plans have always been a hit for programs with high-value classes. But we’d heard requests that some programs wanted more fine-grained control of when payments were scheduled. As a result, we released custom payment plans over the summer.
Custom payment plans allow you to choose a start date, frequency, and payment amount for a payment plan. As with all of our payment plans, we’ll take care of everything behind the scenes. That means you have more time to plan your classes, camps, and workshops!
Auto Marketing
Your relationship with your students doesn’t end when they walk out the door of their first class. We’re huge fans of helping your existing students find more of what you offer. In fact, that’s one of the points we highlight in our free class marketing webinar!
CourseStorm’s auto marketing feature lets you advertise classes that might interest your existing students without any additional work. It takes just a couple of clicks to set up, and we’ll send personalized recommendations to your students based on their past registration history with your program. Give it a try!
Lightning Round: More 2019 Enhancements!
There’s likely a feature developed in 2019 that will benefit every program using CourseStorm.
- Admin dashboard: We added a dashboard to let program administrators see more about how many registrations they’d taken and how much revenue they’d generated.
- Overdue payments area: We created a centralized place for administrators to easily manage payment plans that had lapsed due to expired or declined credit cards.
- Early registration closing: We allowed programs to automatically close registrations prior to their classes’ start dates.
- Add to calendar: We gave the option to add a student’s registrations to their calendar right from an order receipt.
- Location-specific information: We added in customized, location-specific information like directions or arrival instructions to their order receipts and reminder emails.
As always, we want to thank all of the programs that have suggested features to us over the years. We truly value their input and want to do everything we can to help them succeed! Here’s to a great 2020.
Want more information about any of the features listed here? Check out our help site for detailed instructions!
Matt James
Matt has over 20 years of experience in the software industry. As the founder or co-founder of four software companies, he comprehensively understands technology, design, operations, finance, sales, marketing, and customer service. Matt co-founded CourseStorm to connect learners to classes where they can gain education a la carte to enrich their lives through art classes, prepare for a new job, or level up their existing skills.