The Ultimate Guide to Creating Profitable Email Courses

“That was Brennan Dunn’s Mastering ConvertKit, which single handedly generated probably $2 to $3 million dollars for us.”

There’s nothing quite like a success story from a customer…

But then there are SUCCESS STORIES.

These are the jaw-dropping success stories where someone invests in a product and sees exponential returns. The kind that silence your inner critic and prove beyond doubt that what you’re offering is truly valuable.

Recently, I noticed a flurry of new Mastering ConvertKit sales. The course does well, but not usually that well. So I figured something was up.

A new customer let me know that the hosts of the Espresso Hour podcast, Dickie Bush and Nicolas Cole, had mentioned my course and the massive dent it’s made in their business on their podcast episode.

Email courses are genuinely amazing (when done right.)

Dickie and Nicolas were talking specifically about their email course, Start Writing Online, which they built using the exact framework I lay out in my flagship course. This email course has generated millions (and counting) in additional new revenue for them.

It’s what they point most of their viral Twitter threads to, and it’s the asset that they prioritise as THE way to enter into their ecosystem.

What’s the job of an email course?

To start, I want to talk fundamentals:

• What is an email course?
• What should go into an email course?
• Why an email course isn’t just a “drip sequence”
• How I plan a new course
• How I think about how free courses turn readers into paying customers

What is an email course?

Technically, an email course is an automated drip sequence that’s positioned as a lead magnet.

So instead of offering a PDF or whatever in exchange for an email course, you’re instead giving someone a multiple day sequence of educational emails.

It’s important to always remember that your subscribers really have no idea about what’s happening behind the curtain, and the automations that you have going on. They just see that emails show up in their inbox.

They don’t know (or really care) when those emails were written.

They just know that YOU emailed THEM. And they want to make sure that when you do that they’re getting super high quality content that makes them eagerly await your next email.

(Amazingly, a lot of us – myself included, all the time – forget that subscribers have no idea what’s a broadcast email, what’s a segmented campaign, what’s automated, yada yada yada.)

What should go into an email course?

The email courses I’m going to describe are designed to sell someone on a paid offering (i.e. a course, coaching, software.)

These courses should be mini embodiments of Campbell’s The Hero’s Journey:

• You meet someone where they are right now
• You introduce a problem, and vividly describe the severity of that problem
• You show them a better path forward
• You, the master, teach them how to get from the Land of Today to the Promise of Tomorrow (think: the montage, “look at the hero learn a new skill” scenes in Karate Kid, The Matrix, The Count of Monte Cristo, etc.)
• You present two paths: either submit to the problem, or conquer it

This sounds like a lot of hyperbole, I know, but psychology is psychology is psychology.

A great email course, within the context of your business, is going to need to transform someone into being ready to be your Ideal Customer.

Think about it this way:

You are reading RightMessage’s blog.

We help people segment their audience, and then use what we learn to show people more relevant messages on your website. The end result is more engagement, which leads to more sales.

Segmentation and personalisation is a big, hairy dragon. It takes confidence to slay the beast.

Even though we like to think that we can help any business that wants to increase online conversions (so: literally every business with a website…)

…We really only can help those who truly understand what segmentation and personalisation is, and have a plan for using it to grow their business, can benefit from RightMessage.

When I put together the email course, I thought:

What needs to be said so that I can put someone in front of our website and the ONLY decision they need to make is whether they can afford us.

I didn’t want to need to convince someone that they should segment and personalize, and simultaneously convince them that they should buy our software.

(Educating AND selling at the same time rarely works.)

So the job of the email course was to prepare someone to really be ready to analyze our packages, our pricing, and our features.

This meant delivering a crash course on the why’s and how’s of segmentation and personalisation.

And that needs to be the job of YOUR email course.

What do you need to say and teach in order to get someone who fits the profile of an Ideal Customer and really prepares them to actually become your Ideal Customer?

Everything else – the amount of emails you send, the look of your emails, whatever – is immaterial.

All that matters is: are you guiding them?

Think of yourself as a guide, like Socrates’ “philosophical midwife.” Your job is twofold:

1. Help readers understand the real problem: “Your website confuses visitors because it’s trying to speak to everyone at once, causing people to leave.”

2. Equip them with a solution: “Show the right messages to the right people. This makes your website easier to understand, leading more visitors to click ‘Buy Now’.”

This approach helps readers have their “aha!” moment and see the path forward.

Remember Neo from The Matrix?

That’s what you want your readers to end your course with.

A new skill, a new mental framework, a clear vision and roadmap to getting to the Promise of Tomorrow.

Why a great email course can make you lots of money:

Here’s what you want your email course to achieve:

• You meet someone where they are today
• You highlight a problem that’s affecting them
• You teach them how to solve their problem
• You then present them with two options: solve it on their own, or let you solve it with / for them

This last bullet point is so, so important.

When someone really gets what’s at stake, and is confident that their problems can be fixed, the next question is: how do I actually fix it?

I’ve created two really successful email courses for two of my businesses:

1. Charge What You’re Worth at Double Your Freelancing
2. RightMessage email course.

Charge What You’re Worth teaches freelancers to rethink the value exchange between them and their clients, and to begin thinking about why their clients actually hire them – and what clients really need.

By the end of the course, freelancers have a better understanding of how to sell and price their services.

The pitch at the end is then pretty straightforward:

• Have at it, and now go tweak how you write proposals, what you respond with when a lead reaches out, etc. and ultimately develop your own framework for selling. You’ll probably screw up a bunch of times as you work to get it right, but – don’t worry – you’ll get there… eventually.
• …OR…
• Buy Double Your Freelancing Rate, which has all the templates, frameworks, and more that you need to implement what was in the email course ASAP.

At RightMessage, it was pretty much the same “do it yourself, or let us be your shortcut” message:

By the end of the email course, someone has a pretty solid understanding of segmentation and personalisation, why they matter, and what impact it could have on their business.

Then I give them two choices:

• Hire a developer to code a bunch of brittle Javascript, get that code to then link to your email platform, and hope & pray it all works.
• …OR…
• Buy RightMessage, we do all that for you for the fraction of the cost and headache of hiring someone to custom build you something (but if you DO want us to build out your initial segmentation strategy, we can do that too)

No longer do we need to think about teaching someone and pitching them simultaneously.

The email course teaches. The pitch comes when they’re ready to be pitched.

Ship 30, who I mentioned above, does the exact same thing for their Start Writing Online email course.

They introduce someone to their way of thinking about writing online, and demonstrate their expertise and authority through the email course.

Someone who comes out the other end of the email course having read the 13k words of the email course has a realllyyyyy clear understanding of Ship 30’s “way” of writing, and why it’s so important to make writing daily a habit.

Their two choices are:

• Go at it alone.
• …OR…
• Join an upcoming cohort-based course with the guys who literally wrote the free thing you loved, where you’ll get ridiculous levels of access to them, comraderie from a group of people a lot like you, and a clear & cadenced framework for actualy building a writing habit.

Short cut, vs. the long road?

That’s it.

All your email course needs to do is to prepare someone for this fork in the road.

Those who value getting things done the right way will take the short cut, and buy from you.