Email Courses: Value Ladders, Gamification, Evergreen Courses

Uncategorized 5 Minutes

“The best way to convince someone you can help them is actually to help them.” – Frank Kern

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❓ What You’ll Learn

  • How to build trust at scale?
  • How to boost engagement?
  • How to upsell premium offers?
  • How to build value ladders?
  • How to build a curriculum for your email course?
  • How to find your ideal customers?
  • How to build an evergreen email course?
  • How to use an email course as a lead magnet?


💎 Why It Matters

You can build trust by delivering promised transformations in a scalable way.


🔍 Problem

Students need a structured way to learn new skills.


💡 Solution

Email courses are courses delivered via email.

They boost student success by giving a clear path and time scope for desired results.

  • 100DaysOfNoCode Challenge • How to build a no-code product in 100 days
  • 30 Days to Better Habits • How to build better habits in 30 days
  • OKR Email Course • Level up your goal setting in 10 days


🏁 Players

Email Courses


🔮 Predictions


☁️ Opportunities


🏔️ Risks

  • Spam • Your emails may land in spam due to spam trigger words, poor sender reputation and more.
  • Data Privacy • You can get fined if you don’t follow privacy and anti-spam laws.
  • Reputation Risk • Poor courses lead to false expectations, underdelivery and loss of trust.


🔑 Key Lessons

  • Build a value ladder by upselling higher-end offers at the end of the course.
  • Stick to one topic per lesson to keep students focused.
  • Free and valuable email courses are great lead magnets.
  • Email courses help you sell other products. There’s a 70% chance you’ll sell to an existing customer than to a new one. You got the email. You’re one foot in the door.


🔥 Hot Takes

  • You need a long-form sales copy to sell paid email courses.
  • We’ll see premium email courses. Ning Li sells Zero to $5K for $997.
  • The first lesson sets the tone for the whole course. Pack it with value to lower the opt-out rate and boost the completion rate.
  • Clear lesson titles will increase your course completion rate. This study says that 47% of recipients open emails based on the subject line.
  • Email courses can teach complex topics. Artificial Intelligence using Python is a 30-day course on machine learning with Python.


😠 Haters

“Email courses are impersonal.”
While they don’t provide the same level of feedback as in-person courses. You can let students reach out to you via email, social media or community.

“My lessons will get lost among other emails.”
Like any email, your lesson may get lost in the noise. Add reminders, rewards or other incentives to boost engagement.

“Email courses seem like a bad fit for what I have to teach.”
You have options. Email courses have a clear path and time scope. Self-paced courses are flexible and give instant access to the whole course. Cohort-based courses offer peer support and easy access to the teacher.

“If I build within an existing ecosystem such as Notion, Figma or Webflow. I’ll need to keep my email course in sync with its changes.”
You’ll have to or your course may get stale. This is platform risk. You get a pre-defined audience. But you’re subject to events you can’t control.


🔗 Links

  1. Looking for Examples of Email Courses • The tweet behind this report.
  2. How to Create an Email Course as a Lead Magnet • How to build compelling email course lead magnets.
  3. How to Create a Curriculum for Your Course in 7 Steps • How to build a compelling course curriculum.


📁 Related Reports

  • ​​​​​Lead Magnets • Build compelling lead magnets that attract your ideal customers
  • Online Courses • Boost student success with engaging self-paced courses
  • Internet Challenges • Build an audience around positive transformations
  • Side Project Marketing • Build brand awareness and generate leads with games, guides, quizzes and more
  • Digital Products • Share your knowledge and experience at scale


🙏 Thanks

Thanks to Stewart Townsend, Sam Schrup, Atul Yadav, Nik McFly, Maisha Cannon and Nicolo’ Borghi. We had a great time jamming on this report.

✏️ Emin researched and wrote this report. Dru researched and edited this report.


📈 What else?

Trends PRO #0115 — Email Courses has more insights.

What you’ll get:

  • 32 Email Course Examples (357% More)
  • 14 Predictions (250% More)
  • 14 Opportunities (250% More)
  • 6 Risks (100% More)
  • 11 Key Lessons (175% More)
  • 12 Hot Takes (140% More)
  • 15 Links (400% More)

With Trends Pro you’ll learn:

  • (📈 Pro) How are SaaS platforms using email courses?
  • (📈 Pro) How can agencies use email courses?
  • (📈 Pro) How to get leads with email courses?
  • (📈 Pro) How to reduce market risk?
  • (📈 Pro) How to avoid landing in spam?
  • (📈 Pro) Who made $50,000 from an email course?
  • (📈 Pro) How to build an engaging email course?
  • (📈 Pro) What are 394 spam trigger words?
  • (📈 Pro) How can you build a six-figure email course?
  • (📈 Pro) How to upsell and cross-sell products?
  • (📈 Pro) How to boost open rate and lower student churn?
  • (📈 Pro) What are examples of interactive email courses?
  • And much more…

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