Email Marketing and the Inbox are two surfaces of the same email system. Email Marketing lets you send templated, automated emails to your contacts at scale — nurture sequences, enrollment nudges, event invites. The Inbox is where you handle the replies and one-on-one conversations that those emails start. You can't fully use one without the other — when a contact replies to an automated email, that reply lands directly in your Inbox.

This article covers both.

Lumion has one email engine powering everything. The sending domain you configure in School Settings, the templates you build, the consent records for each contact — all of it is shared between Email Marketing and the Inbox. There's no separate system for each.

Email Marketing (Automations) = outbound at scale, rule-driven, templated.
​ Inbox Email = real-time, two-way, one-on-one conversations.

An automated email starts the conversation. A reply from the contact brings it into the Inbox. Your team picks it up from there.

Before your school can send emails through Lumion, you need to verify your sending domain. This ensures emails come from your school's address (e.g., admissions@yourschool.edu) instead of a generic Lumion address — which is critical for deliverability and building trust with recipients.

Go to School Settings → Email → DNS Configuration. The setup walks you through three steps:

Important: Until your domain is verified, all email — both automated and Inbox replies — sends from a generic {yourschool}@lumion.email address. This affects both products, so setting up your domain early matters.

Lumion ships with professionally designed starter templates for student outreach, event promotion, enrollment nudges, alumni engagement, and more. You can also build your own from scratch.

Go to School Dashboard → Automations → Email Templates.

The same templates you build here are available in the Inbox composer — your team can use them for one-on-one replies too.

Automations are the rules that decide who gets what email and when. Go to School Dashboard → Automations.

There are three types:

Event-driven — fires when something happens in Lumion (a lead form is submitted, an application starts, a contact enters a journey stage). The email goes to the contact tied to that event immediately or after a set delay.

Dynamic audience — runs on a schedule and emails every contact who matches your filter criteria at that time. Example: every morning, email contacts who expressed interest in nursing but haven't started an application.

Journey-based — triggered by Customer Journey AI stage actions. The AI can plan and execute nurture steps as part of a journey.

To build an automation:

Timing note: Automations are not instant. There's a schedule cadence plus a processing queue. If a school asks why an email hasn't arrived yet, this is usually why — it's working, just not immediate.

Use these tokens in your subject lines and email body to personalize each message at send time:

{{first_name}} {{last_name}} {{full_name}} {{institution_name}} {{institution_website_link}} {{enrollment_application_link}} {{funding_application_link}} {{latest_program_name}} {{custom_link}} {{unsubscribe_link}}

These are resolved automatically when the email sends. An unresolved tag means the email won't send — so always preview before activating.

Every marketing email automatically includes an unsubscribe link — Lumion handles this for you. When a contact unsubscribes, all future marketing email stops for that contact. Transactional email keeps sending.

If a contact says they're still getting emails after unsubscribing, check whether the emails are transactional. This is the most common source of confusion.

When a contact replies to an automated email, their reply lands in your Inbox as a conversation. This is the hand-off point: automation starts the conversation at scale; your team continues it one-on-one in the Inbox.

Go to School Dashboard → Inbox.

What you can do in the Inbox:

Multi-thread conversations — if you've sent a contact multiple emails (an enrollment reminder, a financial aid update, a welcome email), all of those threads are visible together in one conversation view. Use the thread selector above the composer to reply to the right one.

Someone needs to watch the Inbox. If you're running email automations, assign at least one team member to monitor Inbox conversations daily. Replies from contacts will show up there.

Every message shows its delivery status in the Inbox:

Sent and Delivered are not the same. Sent means the server accepted it. Delivered means it arrived. A message stuck on Sent may still be in transit.

My automation email never sent or sent late.
Check that the contact is opted in to marketing, has a valid email address, and that the automation is active. Automations have a schedule cadence plus a processing queue — some delay is expected behavior, not a bug.

Emails come from lumion.email instead of our domain.
Your sending domain isn't verified yet. Go to School Settings → Email → DNS Configuration and complete the setup. Until verified, all email (automations and Inbox) sends from the lumion.email fallback.

A contact stopped getting our nurture emails.
They unsubscribed from marketing email. Their transactional email still sends. You can see their opt preference on their contact profile.

Where do replies to our automated emails go?
Into the Inbox as conversations. Make sure someone on your team is monitoring it.

Can I see open and click rates per campaign?
Not in the Lumion UI today. This is a known gap — set that expectation with schools.

I can't find any templates when composing.
Browse and select templates from the gallery first at School Dashboard → Automations → Email Templates. They need to be added to your library before they appear in the composer.

How do I reply to a specific email thread?
Use the thread selector in the subject-line dropdown above the Inbox composer.

AI isn't drafting reply suggestions.
Inbox AI suggestions are off by default. Enable them in School Settings → Email → AI Settings.

A contact unsubscribed but says they're still getting emails.
The emails are likely transactional (payment confirmations, login links, status updates). Those always send regardless of marketing opt-out.