"Monica, my sales emails get opened, but people aren't clicking, and I'm not really seeing conversions. What does this mean?" I hear a version of this almost every week, and if 📍 this sounds familiar to you too, decent open rates, barely any clicks, and sales that just aren't happening, then this episode is for you. We're going to walk you through the seven things I check first whenever a course creator comes with this problem. Welcome to Master the Inbox. I'm Monica Badiu, your host, conversion strategist, and copywriter. Over the last seven years, I've written emails that have generated, more than $20 million in revenue for course creators all over the world. And in this podcast, I share what's working and what isn't when it comes to using email marketing to grow your online course sales. If you're like most course creators, you're probably looking at your dashboard and you're seeing some decent KPIs. If your open rates are at least 20% that's a decent number, and it can indicate that, one, people recognize your emails, recognize your brand, and you don't really have deliverability issues. However, clicks are still near zero and sales aren't happening. So here's how I think about this. If people are opening but not clicking, then the bottleneck is probably inside the email. If people are clicking but not buying, then the bottleneck is on the sales page. If, however, people are clicking, going to the sales page, going to the checkout and stopping there, then the problem might be on the checkout page. Now, today we're focusing specifically on that first scenario, where you have sales emails that get opened, but they don't get clicked, because that gap oftentimes comes down to one or more of the seven things I'm sharing in this episode Reason one is probably one of the most common I'm seeing, and that's a disconnect between your subject line and your email body. You're essentially making two different promises. So your subject line earns the open, but if the body of the email doesn't deliver on what the subject line implied, your reader can feel a little misled, and they can leave without clicking. So here's what that looks like in real life. Let's say your subject line is "The mistake that's costing you sales." That's a curiosity-driven subject line. People will open that because they want to know what the mistake is. They're curious. But then if the email opens And there's a lot of information about the new course that's actually launching now, you get some features, you get a discount, and a button that says enroll now, you've never really named the mistake. You have not delivered on the revelation that was hinted at in the subject line. Instead, they received a pitch. There is a mismatch, and it makes the reader feel tricked. So a lot of people will not click that The fix in this case could be simple. Whatever your subject line implies, your email needs to deliver. Ideally, you do that pretty early in your email because you wanna have that consolidation of trust that if I open your email because of a specific promise, then that promise is reinforced, or the expectation of getting that promise delivered in the email is reinforced in the above the fold of that email. The second reason is again, very, very common, and that's lack of segmentation. Basically, you're sending the same email to everyone on your list. When that happens, only a small percentage would actually find that message relevant enough that they will want to engage. And again, we're talking about promo emails. Now, many people will open an email because they recognize your brand, they're probably curious, they probably read a lot of your content, but there's nothing at stake for them, especially when that sales email doesn't close the gap. So they open, but they don't take action because they don't feel like it's for them, and that's because there's no segmentation. So let me give you an example of what that will look like in practice. Let's say you're launching a course on email marketing for course creators, and you have two types of subscribers: people who are just starting out and haven't made a sale yet, and people who are already generating revenue and want to scale it. And then you send one email, and the subject line says, "Ready to grow your email list and make more sales?" It can sound like that email could speak to two audiences at the same time. What if we did something else? If we had segmentation in place, that would allow us to create two different groups. One group would be for complete beginners, and then that group would get an email that says, "If you've never made a sale from your email list, here's where to start." And the second group, intermediate to advanced, would get an email that says something like, "If you're already making money from your email list, but results are inconsistent, here's why." Now, both of these groups, even though they have a similar problem, and they kinda have a similar desire, now both group would feel like you wrote that email for their specific situation. And then that would make them wanna open and click that email, because now you've reframed the problem in a way that sounds specific to their issue. The third reason is a little bit simple, and it's emails that aren't actually saying much. And I'm talking about vague or generic content that technically seems to be speaking to someone, and then it actually speaks to nobody. We are also talking about a repetition of the same email, and I've seen plenty of promo emails that in a sequence of five, four of them are basically saying the same thing. "Sale ends in, don't miss out, click here to enroll, and save this amount." Maybe there's a paragraph that has three bullet points, but that's kind of it. So that's an email that doesn't really give your reader enough reason to care, 'cause you're just communicating an expiring discount. There's no context, no story, no reminder of the problem they're trying to solve, no before and after, no transformation. It's simply you asking them to buy something, but there's not enough things explained in that email that would make your audience wanna care. And I keep saying this, When you are one of few in your market, you can afford to do things like that. But most of us, most course creators, are one of many. So when you're one of many, you really need to up your game and make sure that the emails you are sending do more than just communicate information. You need your emails to create trust, to create a relationship, and you do that by going deeper and showing your audience that you truly understand their problem, and you are there to help them, to guide them, to help them solve that problem, not just buy a course. Everybody can sell a course. You're selling a solution, a transformation. That's completely different. The fourth reason you can connect back to emails getting opened but not getting clicks is having some call to action copy that is not doing enough. And again, most sales emails, they have call to actions that are pretty transactional, like enroll now, get access by today, and those work in very specific contexts, like a last day email or a flash sale announcement. But outside of that, you're asking your reader to take action without telling them what they actually get by taking it. So what I like to do is to shift from action-based to benefit-based ones. So instead of saying enroll now, you could say start writing emails that actually convert. Instead of saying get access, you could go with like, show me how this works. Instead of buy today, you can say, help me fix my click rate. So this again changes the relationship your reader has with your brand and with your emails. You're not telling them what to do. You're showing them what is the problem that you're actually trying to solve, and that's a huge difference. Do that, and you'll definitely stand out from the crowd, because most people only focus on action-based the transactional ones, and even, even ChatGPT does that. So always think about what is the actual benefit, the outcome, what is the problem my course helps them solve, and then use that. The other thing with a call to action is asking them in all of your emails to just buy that, that's a big ask. It's a big commitment. Some of the people that will see and read your promo emails, they're not ready to buy, which means they are in the process of consideration, which means that they need, again, to be reminded of the problem/outcome they are out to get. Send them to the sales page, and if your sales page does a good job, that's where the conversion will happen. Now, this takes me to reason number five, when your emails are trying to do too much. In my opinion, the email's job is to bridge a gap, to move someone from whatever is happening in their lives right then to being interested enough, warmed up , pre-qualified to click so they can go to the sales page where they can make an informed decision. I think this is very important for the first two, three stages, of your promotion. So the announcement email, the last two, three emails of that sequence, yes, they can be written with a goal to close a sale. But what happens in the middle is not necessarily that. And again, we have sales pages for a reason. A sales page is supposed to do the selling, and then the checkout job is supposed to seal the deal. And when an email tries to do all three, introduce, pre-qualify, sell, and close, it can be very difficult to do those jobs in one email. Same thing happens when you give your email a lot more jobs, like you're sending people to the sales page, but you're also sending them to some testimonial page, but you're also sending them to YouTube, but you're also sending them to LinkedIn, but you're also sending them to a webinar, and you basically give them six or seven different things that they're supposed to be checking out in the hopes that at least one click is earned and moves someone to the next step. That can work for emails, but not during a promotion. When you're doing all of that in an email, you are essentially diluting attention and you're giving people too many choices. So in my opinion, and I've used this concept for many, many times over the years, a good sales email is supposed to do just one thing, making clicking to the sales page/checkout page like the next obvious step. That's it. Another very common reason why emails do get opened, but they don't get clicked, and again, I'm talking about the promo emails, is that your email isn't really relevant to where your reader actually is right now. And this goes deeper than segmentation. This goes deeper than using curiosity-based subject lines. It's about timing, and it's about knowing where your reader is and how you can actually tap into that moment. Let's continue with the example with the email marketing course. Now, let's say you have a lead magnet that is specifically positioned to someone who's just beginning to grow their email list. And they get that, and then three days later, you send them an email that introduces them to advanced launch strategies. While it sounds like you're talking to the same person, you're not. Someone who downloads a guide that is specifically designed for beginners who want to grow an email list, they're not gonna be ready to implement advanced launch strategies. So it's not relevant to where they are. However, if you were to send an email about the course that helps them set up a basic email marketing automation, their first email funnel, then that's a whole different story. Now, that's an example for an automation, but how about promotions? I've done this for many years, and for many months in a row, I was promoting the same course. And as you can imagine, you kind of run out of ideas. One of the best tactics I have found was to actually look at what was happening for the target audience in general. Was there any specific topic that went viral in the weeks preceding my launch, my promotion? Was there anything coming up that would help to increase the problem awareness around the same time of my promotion? And it's really helpful to look at news, to see what's trending on social media, to see what other people who are serving the same audience are talking about. And then your promotion can simply tap into that topic awareness, so then you can lead to the problem you're solving and to the way you are implementing that solution And finally, reason number seven, so If there isn't a really good reason for me to click that email, to go to the sales page, then it means there's no real reason to act now. Now, expiring discounts create urgency, limited spots create scarcity, but most promo emails don't really answer, why am I supposed to take action now? Just because there's a discount, some people do react to that. If you're going to use a discount, an expiring discount for that matter, then what you're going to see is that a lot of people take action in the last two days of the promotion. So last two days are when the revenue goes high, which means that the reason people were taking action was the discount. But as I've said before in other episodes, that's not enough anymore. So what is the real reason for people to act now? And when I say people, I'm not saying all of your audience. I'm saying groups or subgroups within your audience that are currently problem aware. So what does that mean? Well, for instance, if we're still talking about email marketing, here's what I know for my audience. I know that September is coming. I know that people are going to start to think about Black Friday. People who have at least 15 to 20K people on their email list, they have product market fit, they should start to think about Black Friday. Those people are the people that I could talk to if I would launch my Black Friday playbook for course creators again. People who are beginners, who don't have a big email list, who sell products that are very low cost, I don't think they're going to be profitable with Black Friday, so I'm not gonna take that into account. So the real reason people should act now if they see emails promoting my Black Friday playbook for course creators should be the fact that time flies by so fast. And if Black Friday is one of the moments in the year when you see cash coming in, You can't afford to wing it. There's a specific roadmap that helps course creators who have at least 15 to 20K people on their email list and they have product market fit, things they should be doing before October. If they wait until October, they are risking their profits during Black Friday So in the body of the email, when it comes to giving people a reason to act now, instead of saying, "Hey, the sale for the Black Friday bootcamp ends tonight at midnight," we can say, "Every day you spend not taking control of your Black Friday campaign is another dollar you are wasting. That's a very strong reason to act now So if you have this problem with promo emails getting opened but not getting clicked, look at some of the reasons in this episode. If you're looking for the show notes, you can find the link below wherever you're listening to And if you don't know where the bottleneck is, download the last promotion you have had, and then upload into your favorite AI tool the list of these seven reasons, and then the copy and the description of your target audience, and then ask it to analyze which of these seven show up if this episode hit close to home and you're looking for more resources to help you monetize your email list, There are actually two you need to know. First is the Email Bottleneck Assessment, and that's a free tool that helps you figure out What could be your main bottleneck 📍 that is preventing you from monetizing your email list? The second resource is the Master the Inbox school community. There are three different plans based on how much you wanna have access. Link is in the show notes, so go check it out
