Codecademy’s Email Marketing [New Teardown]

Zach Sims and Ryan Bubinski founded Codecademy in August of 2011 with the goal of giving “anyone in the world the ability to learn the skills they’d need to succeed in the 21st century.” More specifically, Codecademy teaches its users how to code in HTML, Javascript, Python, CMD Line, and SQL.

Within a year of its inception, Codecademy had raised $2.5 million in Series A funding and $10 million in Series B funding.

Now, a decade since its launch, Codecademy hosts a whopping 45 million users and has a net worth upwards of $80 million.

The question we asked is, how does Codecademy use email marketing to generate leads, upgrade users to its paid plan, and reduce churn?

Here’s a sneak peak of what we discovered…

In particular, here were a few things that stood out…

• Single opt-in for new subscribers (not double opt-in).
• They use a quiz for lead-gen even though they also have a freemium plan.
• A monthly newsletter builds brand awareness and encourages engagement.
• They constantly innovate and announce new courses to their subscribers.
• Discount in abandoned cart email.

Go check out the full Teardown here!