The Art of Selling Online Courses

How I 2x Revenue In 90 Days With These Emails

• John Ainsworth

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In this episode, I sit down with Dominik to answer the most common email marketing questions from our Instant Course Sales clients. You'll learn the exact email calendar structure that helps our clients double their revenue in 90 days, why too many value emails create "passive subscribers not buyers," and the soft opt-out strategy that reduces unsubscribes during promotions.

Dominik also shares how often you can promote the same course without burning out your audience, and why promoting one course at a time converts better than site-wide discounts.

If you're earning at least $1,500 monthly from your course business with an email list of 1,000+ subscribers, book a strategy call at datadrivenmarketing.co/call

Want to build an email list that actually converts? Download our free guide: https://datadrivenmarketing.co/double

Speaker 1:

If value emails only educate people and never prime for some sort of action, you can train your list to consume rather than convert. That's why we do have those. So without those you are kind of building the passive subscribers and not the buyers.

Speaker 2:

In today's episode, we're going to be going through some questions that our clients in the Instant Course Sales program ask. This is some of the most common questions that we get asked by people when they're going through this coaching program, and so what I wanted to do is answer them live on the call with one of our funnel coaches from the coaching program for you, so that you can get these answers right here right now. Dominic is a funnel coach at data driven marketing and the go-to expert in our group coaching program. He specializes in sales, funnel reviews, copywriting, feedback for email, promotions and strategic consulting to help clients optimize every stage of their funnel.

Speaker 1:

Usually people double their revenue.

Speaker 2:

The key thing here is Hello and welcome to the art of selling online courses. We're here to share winning strategies and secret hacks from top performers in the online course industry. My name is John Ainsworth and today's guest is Dominic Dragon. Dominic, welcome to the show. Thank you for having me. So let's start off. What's the right mix between promos, tips and storytelling in your email calendar?

Speaker 1:

So there is no one size fits all. But, for example, we always tell our clients to have two promotions per month. One is the main promotion, which usually lasts for one week, and then you also have a flash sale, which is kind of a smaller promotion of the month. The big promotion the main promotion always has the warmup period, which are the value emails that are preparing your customers for the full promotion. In those value emails the warm-up period you are also giving them some sort of tips, tricks or storytelling, which then later on connects to your offer that you're going to promote the next week. So in between the promotions you will also have the newsletters, up to two newsletters per week, I would say. So there is no, as I mentioned, one size fits all, but we always go for giving more of the free stuff, so more of the value, rather than just focusing on pure promotions and promotional periods.

Speaker 2:

And then, how long does the flash sale typically last?

Speaker 1:

So flash sales usually last anywhere in between three to five days. Flash sales don't have a period, so it's usually for some sort of lower ticket products and they last throughout the week. The main promotion starts on Friday usually, where you send out the value emails so the benefit driven emails over the weekend and then you start with the promotional emails over the course of the next week.

Speaker 2:

Gotcha, so talk everyone through that. So you've got the three value emails that are going to go out before the promo, the ones that connect with the promo. So they go out Friday, saturday, sunday, is that right? Okay, cool. And then how long does the promotion last?

Speaker 1:

It lasts from Monday until when normally the promotion then lasts from Monday to Sunday, monday to Sunday. So, yeah, on Sunday we send two emails which are gone emails, one in the morning, one in the afternoon. We usually get most of the sales on the last day, since it's more about the scarcity and people who did not decide to join the course earlier, they get email reminders. Let's say like that that this is the last chance they can buy these products. Warm-up emails, as you mentioned, go over the weekend Friday, saturday and Sunday and those are usually pain-agitate solution emails. So first you focus on the pain points that your audience is having, you elaborate more over the agitate emails and then you provide a solution to that problem that you previously mentioned. Over the course of the past two days you give them a solution to that, which also connects to the offer that you are going to provide on Monday, which is the actual solution to the problems they're having.

Speaker 2:

So you mentioned that you suggest people to send two newsletters when they're not doing the promotions and not more than that per week. Can sending too many value emails actually kill your sales momentum? Is there an issue with that? Or is like would it be fine for them to send three or four or five in that week and it's just a case of it being more work than they need to do?

Speaker 1:

I would say yes, it does kill the momentum because if value emails only educate people and never prime for some sort of action, you can train your list to consume rather than convert. So the value should lead somewhere to some sort of belief shifts, micro yeses or desire for your offer. That's why we do have those warm-up periods before the promotions where you provide some sort of value but it's only giving them a desire for the offer that you are going to show them in the next week. So without those you are kind of building the passive subscribers and not the buyers.

Speaker 2:

So one of the things I mentioned at the beginning when I was introducing you was about the fact that you're one of the funnel coaches and that's in the Instant Course Sales program. Can you tell people a little bit about the Instant Course Sales Program and how it works?

Speaker 1:

So the ICS program is interesting because you are surrounded with like-minded individuals and also course creators that are in a similar position as you are. So they are all selling courses and digital products overall and are here to scale their revenue by optimizing funnels and implementing email strategies and such. Inside ICS program, they are given access to our ICS course, which covers everything that you need in order to scale your revenue. The course brings everything about order bumps, upsells, email strategies, welcome email sequence, different kind of templates and all sort of stuff that are needed to optimize your business and funnels in order to make more money in the end. They have one one-on-one call per month with me where we can talk specifically about their situation, their problems, the issues or talk about the roadmap for their future, promotions and their business overall. And also every Wednesday we have a group coaching setting one in the morning, one in the afternoon and they can join both of these goals where we talk about everything in group setting.

Speaker 1:

So this is where you are able to meet all the like-minded individuals, other course creators. You can learn about their businesses, but also to learn from their problems they're having. So everyone can ask different questions, talk about their promotions or something new that they have learned before or from the promotions they have had. So it's a really, really cool setting where people are very much relaxed but also learn from each other. It's not that they just learn from us as a data driven marketing, but they also learn from each other. It's not that they just learn from us as a data driven marketing, but they also learn from each other as well. They also get email feedback for all of the promotions they're going to have. They get email feedback for the welcome email sequence, sales page reviews and basically all of the strategic recommendations they need in order to grow their revenue and grow their business overall.

Speaker 2:

And what kind of results do people typically see in that program? How much do they tend to be growing their revenue by?

Speaker 1:

So usually people double their revenue in the next three months or so. Of course, there are individuals who made even more than that, but doubling the revenue is some sort of minimal benchmark that we go for. It all depends on the client as well, because we are here to provide strategic guidance and everything they need in order to grow their revenue from what they currently have, but they also have a task to work on new lead intake and work on their business in order to have everything that we teach to work.

Speaker 2:

So if you're earning at least $1,500 a month from your course business and you've got an email list of at least 1,000 people and you want Dominic's help and the team's help with growing your course business, then you can book a call with Dominic or Nicola or someone else from the team by going to datadrivenmarketingco. Okay, next question for you what's the best practices for soft opt-out links in campaigns?

Speaker 1:

Actually, could you just start? Could you explain to everybody what soft opt-out links are? Of course, soft opt-out links are used in email campaigns to decrease the number of people unsubscribing from your email list. As many of you probably know who are listening to this podcast, once you have the promotions the email promotions you are getting more unsubscribers than what you usually get.

Speaker 1:

Soft opt-out links are a really cool trick in order to decrease the number of people who are unsubscribing from your list, but they tend to stay on the list and you are doing that by putting a link at the end of the promo sequence that you are sending out and mentioning. If you do not want to receive this kind of emails but stay on the email list, you need to click this link. Once they click the link, they get tagged and then you exclude those people with a certain tag from all of the next emails that you are going to be sending out throughout the sequence. You can start with that with the warm-up emails already. So you are announcing that you will be sending out more emails than what you usually do and if they want to skip this email sequence, they can click the button and they will stay on the list for all of the other value emails that you are providing and they won't be receiving any of the other emails that you are sending throughout the promo email sequence.

Speaker 2:

And where in the emails does this go? This is in the PS.

Speaker 1:

That's in the PS line. Yeah, so you want to place them at the bottom of the multi-day sales promotions, and that usually goes with a PS line. If you already have some sort of PS line, you can just write a PPS line. So you don't want to hide the link, but you don't want to spotlight it either, because you are going to motivate people to click on the link this way. So it's only for the people who actually read the email and get to the end of the page, to the end of the email, they can click on the certain link in order to opt out from the sequence and stay on the list and receive all of the future emails that you're going to have.

Speaker 2:

So technically, when they click the link they get a tag added and the emails are set to only go out to people who don't have that tag and therefore all the future emails in that campaign won't get sent to them. But then the next promotional campaign they'll be back on the list and they'll be getting the emails the promotional email same as normal, unless they click that. Yeah.

Speaker 1:

Then you would create a new soft opt-out link for another promotion. You always need to use a different naming convention for those opt-out links and tags so you can make a difference between the previous promotion and the new promotion or whatsoever. It's just important to exclude them once you segment the audience.

Speaker 1:

So you also want to exclude previous buyers of course, but you also want to exclude the people with a certain tag from the soft opt-out, and you're doing that straight after the first email that's been sent out over the weekend, with the warm-up emails, for example.

Speaker 2:

Nice. So next question then when you're running these promotions, should you be promoting all of your courses being on discount or just one course at a?

Speaker 1:

time. One course at a time. These usually tend to convert better. So site-wide discounts are great for some sort of bigger events similar to Black Friday or, even better, cyber Monday.

Speaker 1:

One of courses usually tend to convert better.

Speaker 1:

You are able to talk about a certain topic in those emails that that course is solving. So once you start with the warm-up emails and the pain points and struggles they are facing, you are able to offer them a solution which is going to be that certain course that solves all of the problems previously mentioned. So one of courses usually tend to work better because they fit the audience that exactly needs that kind of product. If you give them a site-wide discount, you can't even talk about it in the emails in a way that you would talk about one certain course because you would have different kind of angles inside the email, because you have different products which are all solving different kind of problems. So site-wide discounts work great for bigger events. For example, cyber Monday, after you had a big promotion of a certain product or a bundle over the course of the few days for the Black Friday, then you have the Cyber Monday site by discount for the people who were expecting something else and they can have the opportunity to buy that at a different price.

Speaker 2:

So if you're promoting just one course at a time, how long after you've promoted that course do you have to wait till you can promote the same course again? Maybe you've only got two or three courses total. Can you promote it again in three months, or do you have to wait six months before you can run another promo for it?

Speaker 1:

Quarterly. Here is the safe rule, so at least every three months should be all right for the same course to be promoted again. If your list is growing consistently, you can promote it more often because you are going to get new people who didn't learn about the course before. But every three months, I would say it's a safe rule. So you don't want to promote it as often because you are going to the audience is going to feel overwhelmed with the course because they already heard from it before. But every three months should be fine, especially if you have different courses that you can promote at different periods of time. Nice.

Speaker 2:

And where do you see people get stuck with this stuff, right? So all of these are being questions that you get asked a lot in the Instant Course Sales program. If you give people that answer like you can promote it again after three months. Do you find people are just like, okay, cool, great. Or are you getting people going? Oh no, but I'm worried about X, or I've got a concern about doing that, because if they do, then I'm guessing whoever's listening to this is probably having the same thoughts and feelings and we want to like help them out with this. Yeah.

Speaker 1:

So the big problem people have when it comes to promoting the course once again after three months is usually the emails. So, using the same emails and, yeah, just that feeling that I promoted like three months ago, people are going to know about that and they didn't buy it last time, why they should buy it this time? The key thing here is that people tend to forget. So if I ask you, do you remember the last promo email that you received in your inbox? Do you remember something from a week ago, for example?

Speaker 2:

Yes, do I remember? No, I have no idea.

Speaker 1:

Well, yeah, that's the thing, Because people forget. They can't remember the emails that they have read before, so they don't know what you have wrote three months ago. They don't know what course have you promoted three months ago, because everyone has its own problems and struggles they're facing in their everyday lives. So you don't have to worry about promoting the same course after three months, especially. Maybe someone didn't have the money to buy then, so they are waiting for another opportunity to buy it later on and they're kind of saving money for the course. So if you're not going to offer it to them, they're not going to buy it. So, yeah, three-month period is the perfect time.

Speaker 2:

What I always say to people is you know what? There's a whole bunch of people who weren't on your email list before, who they signed up, so they never heard about it. And then you know that, when you look at your open rates, only about whatever 30 percent of people are even opening your emails. So that means 70 percent of people didn't open the emails that you sent the last time. And then, of the ones who opened them, most of them didn't read most of it, and of the ones who read it, most of them don't remember it. And even the ones who opened it and they read it and they remember it.

Speaker 2:

If they didn't buy, they need to hear about it again, exactly remind them they should be getting this thing do you recommend people to just send the same emails in that next promotion three months later, or to do a different angle, like a different hook, a different problem that you're particularly focused on, to kind of get different segment of people buying that, because that's more work doing that, to write new emails, but maybe it's gonna succeed better. Like what? What have you been recommending?

Speaker 1:

to people exactly. So you want to repeat the core structure of the email, even though they're they do not remember the emails from before, but you want to change the hook. You want to change the story of that email. You want to change the hook, you want to change the story of that email. You want to change the testimonials, for example. So you want to match the angle to the season. For example, if you are selling a course in January, then you're going to have the angle of New Year, new Me, for example. Then you can also have some sort of catch-up angle in September or Black Friday angle in the November. So it's all about changing the angle. You can use the same structure, all the emails, but just changing the hook, the angle, the testimonials or just some simple stuff inside the emails.

Speaker 2:

If somebody's listening to this and they're like I get the kind of idea of like a hook or an angle and having a different one in this, but like, how does somebody practically go about doing that when they're writing their second set of emails? What are they doing, what are they thinking through, what are they planning, and then how are they starting to write those emails differently, with that different hook?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, so people can have different sets of problems. So when you list out all of the problems that your audience is having, you get a list of, for example, five problems which you are then solving with the Pay and Agitate solution emails and then the promotion. So for each email promotion you take one of the problems, so we talk about that problem over the course of a few days, where you come up with a solution. For the next promotion, you can take the second problem from the list. So there are always different kinds of problems that you can use as an angle or as a hook in your emails. So it's all about knowing your audience, knowing their customer avatar and knowing what problems they're facing in their everyday lives in order for you to solve it with the courses and the value that you're providing in the emails. Nice.

Speaker 2:

If you are feeling still a little bit unsure about, like, how to actually go about writing your emails, then go and check out some of our episodes where we've gone into a lot of detail about actually writing the email promotions. I'm going to find some episode numbers for you now let's have a look. So episode 131, how to send more emails without sounding too salesy. And 118 make three million dollars using good email copy and urgency. And then episode 116, our 25 million dollar funnel and email marketing strategy. So if you listen to those, you'll get much more detail about exactly how these emails work and what's in those ones. Um, okay, cool, well, that's fantastic.

Speaker 2:

So we've gone through and we've explained about how many emails is too many to send, the right mix between promos, tips and storytelling, soft opt out links and how many times you can promote the same course without fatigue. And all of these are questions that people ask you regularly within the instant course sales program on the group, coaching calls, on the one to one calls, and if anybody's interested, they want to like take part in those. Be a part of that program. As a reminder, if you're earning at least $1,500 a month, have an email list for at least 1,000 people and you want Dominic's help, or the rest of the team's help, with growing your course business, then book a call with Dominic or someone else from the team by going to datadrivenmarketingco. Dominic. Thanks so much for coming on the podcast. Really really appreciate your time. Thank you for having me once again.

Speaker 2:

If you found the interview useful. You want to get future episodes subscribe wherever you listened and, as always, thank you so much for listening. We really appreciate your time, Thank you.