Email courses work like gangbusters to grow your list.
They also allow me to sell my online courses on autopilot without having to lift a finger.
They’re accessible anytime, anywhere — no fuss about student portals or bandwidth. Just you, sitting in your audience’s inbox with the wisdom waiting to be unleashed.
But it’s not all unicorns and rainbows: creating an email course can feel like assembling a ship in a bottle while blindfolded.
Especially if you’ve never done it before.
Yet, what if there were a roadmap, a foolproof method to launch an email course this weekend and start pulling in leads by Monday?
Let’s see how.
Step 1: Don’t even think about writing an email without this
Want a one-way ticket to Mediocreville?
Be everything to everyone. Laser focus is where it’s at. Imagine you’re an archer. Would you aimlessly shoot arrows, hoping one might hit the target? Heck, no! You’d zero in on the bullseye.
Why? Because knowing your ideal customer like the back of your hand makes all the difference.
Let’s talk specifics.
Picture Karen. She’s 45, an HR manager who’s burned out from her 9-to-5. She dreams of launching a consulting business. She’s your ideal customer, not just because she’s got the money to invest, but because she’s hungry for what you’ve got to offer: freedom via online business.
Get the point? The more specific you are, the better you can tailor your course content. Instead of firing scattershots and hoping something sticks, you’re a sniper taking one shot, one kill.
So, who’s your Karen?
Step 2: Spy on your audience’s diary
Still hanging on to Karen? Good.
Now, what keeps her up at 2 a.m., staring at the ceiling? It’s usually something so obvious that you’d trip over it. In Karen’s case, it’s not knowing where to start. She’s drowning in a sea of information and looking for a life raft.
What’s the life raft? A step-by-step blueprint for launching her consulting business without feeling overwhelmed.
A piece of content that can show her exactly what to do, in what order. You start with frustration and finish with a desired outcome.
That’s your email course roadmap.
Step 3: Find 5 things to illustrate your email course
Now, it’s not just about throwing out a lifebuoy: It’s about sending a rescue boat equipped with exactly what’s needed for survival.
Think about 5 things. These can be:
- Tips
- Tools to use
- Mistakes to avoid
- etc.
Why five?
Anything more will only dilute focus, and anything less will fall short of being a complete guide.
It’s a five-course meal: appetizing but not overwhelming.
Back to Karen, yearning to break free from the corporate chains with her own consultancy business. What’s the five-step roadmap that can ferry her from Point A to Point B without going off course?
Try this on for size:
- Market Research for understanding the terrain,
- Personal Branding to be the lighthouse in a foggy market,
- Service Packaging to present offerings like an irresistible delicacy,
- Client Outreach as the fuel to get the engine revving, and
- Closing the Sale, the final act that validates the journey.
Each of these five stages is a stepping stone. Which means that each step is an email.
Each email is a lesson that fills in the blanks and clears the fog. By the end of the course, there’s not just a list of tips. No, it’s a complete blueprint, a guide to the promised land.
Done right, each of these five emails serves a dual purpose. They don’t just deliver value; they warm up the audience for the ultimate pitch. It’s not about giving away the farm; it’s about giving a taste that makes the full course irresistible.
What’s the five-step concoction to serve up?
Step 4: The template to create each email in your course
Now that you have your desired outcome and your 5 email topics, it’s time to start writing.
Who says writing emails has to be a time-consuming grind?
I remember those days when it took me hours to write a single email. After writing thousands of emails over the past decade, let’s shave off that learning curve for you.
Here’s how I like to start writing my emails.
Step 1: Start with the meat — what you want to share. Put it in the middle of your document you’re writing your emails in.
Step 2: Now, scroll back to the top and start talking about the problem.
Step 3: Continue talking about the wrong solutions to solve the problem.
Step 4: Now, bring up your solution (the one you left at the middle of your doc).
Step 5: Then, show how great life looks after solving the problem with your solution.
Let me share an example.
The first email to help Karen start her consulting business was about market research.
Step 1: Identify the meat. The meat I want to share is a new tool to make research using that analyzes social media trends in any given category. The kind of tool that saves thousands of dollars and months of tedious research. Cool.
Let me put that in the middle of my Google Doc like this:
Step 2: Now, let’s scroll up and start the email with the problem:
No business can thrive if you don’t understand the market.
Step 3: Let’s move on to the wrong solutions for market research: you can conduct interviews or scroll through social media. Time-consuming, right?
Step 4: Introduce your solution: the revolutionary tool.
Step 5: Show how it makes the process of gathering market research easy as pie.
By the end of the email, Karen knows exactly what to do and what tool to use. She’s teased for your next email.
Now, rinse and repeat for the next 4 emails.
How many email courses can you create with this easy-peasy framework?
So, you see, writing that email wasn’t a Herculean task after all, was it?
Each of these steps is a stepping stone toward your final goal: a polished, effective email course.
Want to make more money by writing easy & fast emails (without annoying your audience)? Click here for my free email course (safe link to my website)