🧑🎓 Email Courses: Value Ladders, Gamification, Evergreen Courses
In this Trends.vc Report, we talk about how to build trust at scale, boost engagement, upsell premium offers and more.
💎 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
- Landing Page Hot Tips • How to build a landing page that converts
- 1KS Roadmap • How to get 1,000 newsletter subscribers
- 30 Days to Better Habits • How to build better habits
- Charge What You're Worth • How to charge more as a freelancer
- 100DaysOfNoCode Challenge • How to build a no-code product in 100 days
- Maintainable Rails • How to maintain stable, secure and scalable Ruby on Rails apps
- 80/20 Design Challenge • How to make great design decisions
🔮 Predictions
- We’ll see paid email courses.
- 30 Days to a Simpler Life teaches how to live a minimalist life for $20.
- David de Céspedes teaches goal setting with Set Goals in Notion for $30.
- Nate Kadac teaches better design decisions with 80/20 Design Challenge for $99.
- Eloise Gagnon teaches how to build and grow your business with 30-Day Business Growth Course for $47.
- Students will pay for instant access to all course content to get to value faster.
- Nathalie Lussier has a 4% conversion rate for paid access to 30-Day List Building Challenge.
- Rob Hope lets you buy the Landing Page Hot Tips Ebook to get 100 landing page tips from his email course.
- More consultants will launch email courses to build trust at scale.
- Bob Phibbs teaches sales with Retail Sales Training.
- Adrienne Smith teaches content strategy with Content Strategy Crash Course.
- Jonathan Stark teaches pricing strategies for consultants with Value Pricing Bootcamp.
- Laurie Wang teaches social media marketing with her 7-day social media email course.
- Alastair McDermott teaches how to become an authority with The Recognized Authority.
- We’ll see gamified email courses. They will boost engagement with points, achievements and leaderboards.
- Better Life Challenge by Dean Graziosi has leaderboards.
- What the CSS had interactive exercises and challenges.
☁️ Opportunities
- Use free email courses to upsell premium offers.
- Pete McPherson upsells his video course in The New Blogger Bootcamp.
- Brennan Dunn upsells Double Your Freelancing Rate course in his free 9-lesson course.
- Nate Liason upsells Effortless Output in Roam course in his free The Power of Roam course.
- Alena and Lars upsell meal plans, guides and recipes in Vegan Course and Vegan Weight Loss Series.
- Build a niche email course. Target your ideal customers with a clear value proposition.
- Re-Think Your Reception Area helps to improve the reception area.
- Monica Lent teaches blogging for developers with Blogging for Devs.
- Laura helps therapists build profiles on Psychology Today with From Bad to BADASS.
- Jason Fitzgerald teaches how to run without injuries with Injury Prevention for Runners.
- JDHD helps lawyers learn about ADHD with Beginner’s Guide for Lawyers with Adult ADHD.
- Jeremy Burrows teaches how to become a better assistant with 30-Day Assistant Challenge.
- Build an evergreen email course. Cover topics that will be relevant years from now.
- Mário Nzualo teaches investing with Introduction to Investing.
- Marie Forleo teaches copywriting with Become a Better Writer.
- Jason Cabler teaches personal finance with Master Your Money.
- My Body Tutor teaches how to lose weight with Weight Loss Tips.
- Use email courses as lead magnets to attract your ideal customers.
- Tiago Forte uses Second Brain Quickstart Guide as a pop-up on his website.
- Amber Chow uses “Career Audit Course” as the main lead magnet at the bottom of her website.
- Alec Beglarian shows his email marketing course as a lead magnet on the main page and as a pop-up.
🏔️ 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
- Looking for Examples of Email Courses • The tweet behind this report.
- How to Create an Email Course as a Lead Magnet • How to build compelling email course lead magnets.
- 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
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