Justin Welsh increased course launch revenue by $650k with RightMessage

The problem: Understanding a 215,000-person email list without data

Justin Welsh is one of the most prolific and successful online creators. With over 1,000,000 social media followers, he's championed the "solopreneur" movement and is laser focused on helping people start or scale businesses that make great money while also focusing on the things that matter most (family, friends, and personal well-being.)

Since 2020, he's made over $6 million by selling courses to his online audience – primarily through his email list, which currently clocks in at over 215,000 subscribers.

He came to RightMessage because he wanted to learn more about his audience and their needs. While he had a gut-level understanding of who was following him, he didn't have anything concrete to work with.

Additionally, he was planning to release his new, flagship course (The Creator MBA) and was keen to better personalize his launch emails and increase his conversions, and he'd been told that RightMessage was the tool he needed to make that happen.

How Justin Welsh used RightMessage to personalize his course launch

Step 1: Segment 35,000 email subscribers with survey questions

The first thing Justin did was segment his email list:

• What stage is their business?

• How does their business make money?

• What's the business challenge that led them to follow him?

He used RightMessage to create a simple survey that he'd send all new subscribers, along with his existing list, to. It asks a few questions that will help Justin deliver more relevant content and offers to his subscribers.

What Justin really liked about our platform was that even if someone doesn't complete the full survey, what they do answer will be synced up to their record in his Kit account in real-time.

Additionally, it's really easy to create visual flows that ask different questions of different people. He didn't want someone who was more interested in thought leadership getting asked about their business model or team size. Most survey tools assume you're asking a list of sequential questions, which is exactly what Justin didn't want to do.

86% percent of people filled out the entire subscriber survey, which to me is absolutely mind blowing. And the big eye-opener for me was that this wasn't just 'birds eye view' data that we're talking about... all this data was pushed up to my Kit account."

Step 2: Use segmentation data to build The Creator MBA course

Shortly after beginning to segment his audience, Justin decided to create his next online course (The Creator MBA.)

He created an interest list where people could opt-in to hear more about his upcoming course, and used the RightMessage survey he created to also survey anyone who registered their interest.

RightMessage is smart. If someone had already completed my survey when they first joined my list, they wouldn't be asked those questions again when they joined The Creator MBA interest list.

About 18,000 people joined the interest list, and Justin sent out weekly "behind-the-scenes" emails that were designed to keep his upcoming course top-of-mind and build up excitement around his launch.

He also began tapping into the segmentation data that RightMessage provided. Most of these emails were personalized to include some sort of custom "ask" that related some idea or concept of the course to the recipient's unique situation.

This led to a deluge of replies that allowed Justin to really reshape what he thought The Creator MBA had to include.

I ended up adding a course community simply because the personalized asks I included in my emails led people to share that this was something important to them. I included this as a higher tier offering, which alone added over $280,000 in new revenue.

By combining the hard data that RightMessage collected and pairing it with the qualitative Voice Of Customer feedback that these personalized behind-the-scenes emails prompted, Justin went into his course launch confident that he had created the right product to bring to market.

Step 3: Personalize launch emails and sales pages by business type and stage

Now it was time for Justin to cash out on the data he’d been collecting by making a clear case about why the individuals on his email list should buy his new course, The Creator MBA.

Launching an online course is something Justin's pretty familiar with. But personalizing a launch was something he'd never done before, and he turned to the RightMessage team for advice on how to personalize the launch without 10x'ing the effort by needing to write dozens of email variations.

We worked with him to come up with two underlying segmentation dimensions that would pivot key emails in the launch sequence, and also change the most important content on his sales page.

Dimension 1: What stage someone's business is?

Have they started yet? Is it just a side hustle? Or are they full-time?

Dimension 2: What stage someone's business is?

How does someone primarily make money? Coaching? Agency? Courses? Software? Something else?

Within the launch emails, dedicated emails directly responded to the above two segment dimensions. For example, if your business is currently a side hustle you'd receive an email about exactly how the course would help you go full-time on your business and allow you to quit your job.

And on the sales page that the emails led to, core elements – like the primary headline, along with a few subheadlines – were then personalized. A course creator wouldn't see ambiguous mentions of "your online business". They'd instead see a lot of language about course creators.

What we didn't want was for you to get a personalized email about how this will help your agency scale or something, and then you get to the actual web page for The Creator MBA and it's just the default, one-size-fits-all kinda thing.

Results: $650,000 additional revenue from personalized email marketing

All in, an additional 20 or so hours were spent segmenting the email list and personalizing email and sales page content. This time was spent mostly writing copy variants, like a variation of a "default" sales email that would speak more directly to someone who offered coaching. Setting up RightMessage and getting the data it captured into Justin's Kit account took only about an hour.

Over 150,000 segmentation data points were captured through the segmentation surveys that were created. Each of these individual data points were used to permanently enrich email list subscribers.

A controlled A/B test was set up so that we could measure exactly what effect personalization would have on the launch. Justin knew that personalized content would perform better – but, as a bit of a data geek, he wanted to know exactly how much better.

15% of his interest list was "held back" and delivered the default sales emails and shown the default sales page. The other 85% went through a personalized launch campaign.

The group that was personalized was 38% more likely to buy, and 118% more likely to complete a purchase when viewing the sales page that was personalized to them. This directly resulted in about $650,000 in new revenue.

The group that didn't see any personalizations had an 8.69% purchase rate. The personalized group had a 12.01% purchase rate.

Frequently asked questions

How did Justin Welsh segment his email list?

Justin Welsh segmented his 215,000-person email list using RightMessage's survey functionality. He asked subscribers three key questions: what stage their business was in (not started, side hustle, or full-time), how their business makes money (coaching, agency, courses, software, etc.), and what business challenge led them to follow him. The surveys used conditional logic to ask different questions based on previous answers, ensuring people interested in thought leadership weren't asked irrelevant questions about business models or team size.

What survey completion rate did Justin Welsh achieve?

Justin Welsh achieved an 86% completion rate on his subscriber survey, which he described as "absolutely mind blowing." This high completion rate was attributed to the conditional logic in RightMessage that only asked relevant questions based on each subscriber's interests and situation, rather than forcing everyone through the same sequential questionnaire.

How much revenue did personalization add to The Creator MBA launch?

Personalization directly generated approximately $650,000 in additional revenue for Justin Welsh's Creator MBA course launch. This was measured through a controlled A/B test where 15% of subscribers received generic content (8.69% conversion rate) while 85% received personalized content (12.01% conversion rate). The personalized group was 38% more likely to purchase and 118% more likely to complete a purchase when viewing personalized sales pages.

How does RightMessage integrate with ConvertKit (Kit)?

RightMessage integrates with Kit (formerly ConvertKit) by syncing segmentation data in real-time to custom fields in each subscriber's Kit record. Even if someone doesn't complete the full survey, any answers they do provide are immediately synced to their Kit account. This allows Justin to use the segmentation data in his Kit email campaigns and automations. The integration also prevents duplicate surveying - if someone already answered questions when joining the main list, they won't be asked again when joining a secondary list like The Creator MBA waitlist.

How long did it take Justin Welsh to set up email personalization?

Setting up RightMessage and configuring the integration with Justin's Kit account took only about one hour. However, the complete personalization project required approximately 20 additional hours for segmenting the email list and writing personalized copy variants. Most of this time was spent creating variations of sales emails and sales page content tailored to different business types (coaching, agency, courses, etc.) and business stages (side hustle, full-time, etc.).

What A/B test did Justin Welsh run during The Creator MBA launch?

Justin Welsh conducted a controlled A/B test to measure personalization's impact on his course launch. He held back 15% of his 18,000-person interest list as a control group that received generic, one-size-fits-all sales emails and sales pages. The remaining 85% received personalized content based on their business type and stage. This scientific approach allowed him to definitively measure that personalization increased purchase rates from 8.69% to 12.01%.

How many segmentation data points did Justin Welsh collect?

Justin Welsh collected over 150,000 individual segmentation data points about his audience through RightMessage surveys. These data points permanently enriched subscriber records in his Kit account, giving him concrete insights into who was following him, what they needed, and how he could best serve them. He described this as having "100k+ data points on my audience" that help him understand exactly what they're looking for.

What conversion rate improvement did personalized sales pages achieve?

Justin Welsh's personalized sales pages achieved an 88% improvement in conversion rates compared to generic sales pages. Visitors who saw sales pages personalized to their business type and stage were 118% more likely to complete a purchase than those who saw the default, one-size-fits-all version. This dramatic improvement came from personalizing core elements like the primary headline and subheadlines to speak directly to each visitor's specific situation (e.g., course creators saw language about course creation rather than generic "online business" terminology).

How did segmentation help Justin Welsh build a better course?

Segmentation data directly shaped The Creator MBA's feature set and pricing tiers. Justin sent personalized "behind-the-scenes" emails to his 18,000-person waitlist that included custom questions related to each recipient's unique situation. The replies revealed that his audience wanted a course community, which he hadn't originally planned to include. He added this as a higher-tier offering, which alone generated over $280,000 in additional revenue. By combining quantitative segmentation data with qualitative Voice of Customer feedback, Justin confidently built the right product for his market.

What personalization dimensions did Justin Welsh use for his launch?

Justin Welsh personalized his Creator MBA launch using two key dimensions. The first dimension was business stage: whether someone hadn't started yet, was running a side hustle, or was full-time. The second dimension was business model: how they primarily made money (coaching, agency, courses, software, or something else). These two dimensions allowed him to create targeted email sequences and sales page variations without needing to write dozens of versions. For example, someone with a side hustle received emails about going full-time and quitting their job, while course creators saw sales page copy specifically about building course businesses rather than generic "online business" language.