Customising Email Wording
- Your website sends a number of automatic emails on your group's behalf: a welcome email for new members, login details, password reminders, membership renewal reminders, and booking confirmations for social events and breaks.
- The standard wording for these emails is built into the website and kept up to date for you. You can also change the wording yourself, directly on the website, with no knowledge of HTML needed. This guide shows you how.
- The screenshots below are taken from the East Kent Walking Group site, so you will see EKWG in the examples, but every group site works the same way.
Where to find the settings
Log in with an administrator account and choose Admin then Mail Settings. The Email Configurations tab opens first. Each automatic email has its own configuration, and the dropdown at the top lets you choose which one to work on. The buttons below it step through the configurations one at a time, duplicate one as a starting point for a new one, add a brand new one, or delete one.
The Email Configurations tab with the Welcome to The Group configuration selected
What each configuration contains
The Notification Settings section holds the basic details of the email: the subject line (with an optional prefix and suffix that are filled in automatically), and the banner image shown across the top of the email. Further down you choose which committee roles the email is sent from, replied to and signed off by.
Subject and banner image for the welcome email
Editing the wording
Below the notification settings is the Email content section, and this is where the wording is kept. The toggle at the top offers two choices:
- Written here - the wording is stored in this configuration and you can edit it on this page
- Composed in Email Composer - the email has no fixed wording, and whoever sends it writes the content at the time in the Email Composer
With Written here selected, the whole email appears in an editor and you can change anything you like: reword a paragraph, delete a section you don't need, or add links and pictures.
The welcome email open in the editor, showing the standard wording
The toolbar
The toolbar above the editor gives you bold and italic text, three sizes of heading, bulleted and numbered lists, quotes, links and images.
The editing toolbar
Merge fields
The coloured chips in the wording are merge fields: placeholders that are filled in for each member when the email is sent, such as the member's first name, your group's name, or the membership renewal date. To add one, place the cursor where you want it and pick from the Insert merge field… dropdown on the toolbar.
The button next to that dropdown switches the chips between Field names and Example values. With example values switched on, each chip shows realistic sample details so you can read the email just as a member would receive it.
The welcome email with example values switched on
Making an edit
Click anywhere in the wording and type, just as you would in a word processor. In the example below a new sentence has been added to the end of the first paragraph of the welcome email, then highlighted and made bold using the toolbar. The merge field chips can be deleted or moved around like ordinary text, and you can add more from the toolbar dropdown.
A new sentence typed into the welcome email and made bold
Going back to the standard wording
If you have customised an email and want to start again, press Reset to default at the top right of the Email content section. The standard wording comes back, including any improvements made to it since you customised the email.
Reset to default sits at the top right of the Email content section
Emails with no fixed wording
Some emails, such as a newsletter, are written fresh each time they are sent. For these the toggle shows Composed in Email Composer and there is nothing to edit on this page.
The Newsletter configuration takes its content from the Email Composer at sending time
Booking emails
The Booking Notification configuration sets your group's standard wording for the emails sent when someone books a place on an event: confirmation, cancellation, waiting list, place restored and reminder. This wording is used for every event, and individual events can override it (see below). Each email is a section in the Content Blocks panel, and each section is controlled on its own.
The five booking email sections
Open a section and you get two choices:
- Standard wording - the built-in wording, which is maintained for you and picks up improvements automatically
- Customise - starts from the standard wording and lets you edit it, with booking merge fields such as the attendee's name, the event title, the date and the number of places booked
A section using the standard wording
The same section being customised, with booking merge fields in the wording
Customising one event's booking emails
The Booking Notification settings above are your group's standard booking wording, used for every event. You can also tailor the wording for a single event without affecting any other. Choose Admin then Bookings, open the Per-Event Detail tab, pick the event, and scroll to Per-event email overrides.
The editor works just like the one above, offering Standard wording or Customise. The one thing to know is that Standard wording here means your group's global booking wording: so if you reword the global Booking Notification, every event you have not customised picks up the change automatically.
Pick the booking email you want from the row of tabs (Confirmation, Cancellation, Waitlisted, Restored or Reminder), then choose Customise to write wording just for this event. Preview shows the finished email, and your changes are saved with the event.
A booking section on the Per-Event Detail tab, showing the standard global wording
The same section set to Customise, with its own wording and the booking merge fields
Creating a new email
You are not limited to the emails that come with the website. The Duplicate and Add New buttons at the top of the page both create a new configuration:
- Duplicate makes a copy of the email you are currently looking at, wording and all. This is the best starting point when you want a variation of an email that already exists.
- Add New creates a completely blank email for you to write from scratch.
Duplicate and Add New at the top of the Email Configurations tab
Every email offers a choice of where its wording comes from
Give the new email a subject, then work down the page choosing a banner image, the sender and sign-off roles, and who it should go to under Member Selection And Actions.
A new configuration with its subject filled in. The red outline shows the banner image still needs choosing
Then decide where the wording comes from, using the toggle at the top of the Email content section:
- Written here means you type the wording into the editor on this page. A brand new email is free format: there is no standard wording behind it, so the editor starts blank and there is no Reset to default button.
- Composed in Email Composer means the email has no fixed wording, and whoever sends it writes the content at the time.
A new email starts with a blank editor, ready for your own wording
The new email is only created when you press Save at the bottom of the page, so you can experiment freely and leave without saving if you change your mind.
Saving your changes
Nothing changes until you save. Use the Save button at the bottom of the Mail Settings page to apply your changes and stay on the page, or Save settings and exit to apply them and leave. If you change your mind, leave the page without saving and your emails carry on exactly as before.
What changed in June 2026
Before June 2026, the layout and wording of some of these emails was stored in Brevo, the email service the website uses behind the scenes. Editing them meant using Brevo's own editor, which could quietly break the personalised links inside the emails. The wording is now held entirely within the website: it is updated automatically when improvements are released, your own customisations are kept, and Brevo no longer plays any part in how these emails look. If you are interested in the technical detail, see the release notes.