How can you leverage email marketing to sell online courses
In this piece we'll discuss the three easy steps you can follow to create an email marketing strategy to ensure that you can promote your online courses via the use of email. Let's get started!
Skip ahead:
- Build And Segment your Email Database
- Perfect Your Email Content and Sequence
- Improve Your Online Course's Landing Page
Create and Segment Your Email Database
Making your List
Opt-In Forms and pages for landing
Opt-in forms permit your users to sign up to your mailing list. They can be strategically placed virtually anywhere on your website, from sidebars and footers to pop-ups or hyperlinks.
Though many opt-in form are confined to one space on your page however pop-ups are more versatile. Pop-ups are able to vary the time, place they show up and the way they display. As an example, you could create a pop-up that takes across the whole screen or just the lower left-hand corner.
Utilize your analytics to figure out the best time to launch a pop-up to increase your chance of getting that email. The triggers for pop-ups could be:
- Time on the page (pop-ups occur after a set amount of time)
- Scrolling on the page (determine the amount of scrolling that fires the pop-up)
- The intent to leave (the user moving the cursor to the tab closing)
- Different audience types (first-time visitors, existing customers)
Marketing tools for email such as MailChimp and MailerLite usually come with a native pop-up feature so you can build customized pop-ups to your website without the need for plug-ins, add-ons, or an entirely new program.
Create content that is valuable
Your content, particularly your blog, is an effective lead-generation tool. In addition in driving traffic organically to your site, blog articles can also include embedding sign-up forms to serve for a call-to-action.
You can also use your blog to offer lead magnets, which may comprise how-to-guides, templates, ebooks, webinars, and even gratis courses. These are sometimes called ethical bribes as they provide your audience something valuable in exchange for their email addresses.
Social media
Your profiles are also an opportunity to own real estate for free. take advantage of them by putting hyperlinks that take you to your sign-up form within your bio or description.
Your existing email marketing
If you already have an email list, do not forget that you could use existing customers as a source of reaching out to them too. Include high-value content within your emails , and ask recipients to forward your email by using the "Forward to Friend" or social sharing buttons.
Segment your email list
The idea of segmenting your list of email subscribers sounds fancy, but all it does is keep track of and split the subscribers of your list based on the interests they have. Depending on your software for marketing your email the ability to segment subscribers can be achieved according to a variety of methods.
A subscriber who downloads your eBook entitled "Social Media Marketing" may be automatically added to your social media marketing segment.
You can segment based on interests, geographic area or job title, purchase experience, or anything else. The goal of segmentation is to create the user with an experience that is as tailored as it can be. Emails that are highly tailored are marketed to the market.
If you don't segment your customers You'll be sending out emails to everyone without regard of their specific interests as well as risking losing important customers and clicks.
Perfect Your Email Content and Sequence
No matter how big the list you have, sending emails to thousands, hundreds or even dozens could be daunting. But now that you have an entire list of subscribers to your email and you need to interact with the people. To make things easy for us, we recommend starting with the 5 Ts of marketing via email.
The 5 Ts of Email Marketing to Online Classes
- Tease - Highlight your email's value in the subject title. You only have a few words to entice your reader to open the email to dive in the contents, so play around with what works best and look at other email campaigns in your niche for inspiration.
- Target - Studies conducted of MailChimp discovered that in general segmenting your email lists according to interest could increase open rates by 9.9% and clicks increase by 74%. As we said earlier, create a custom (target) each of your email messages to meet your specific needs, interests as well as desires of your customers.
- Inform - Yes, email marketing can drive the sales of your company However, if you're not offering your users something of value, they're more likely to unsubscribe. Educational and informative content isn't exclusive to your blog. So don't be afraid to share things like recent information you've gathered or valuable resources and tools and the latest advancements on your subject in an email.
- Check your emails - Getting your perfect email's content and the sequence of your messages takes time. The majority of email marketing software will permit you to test your emails in a split-testing manner. emails. It means that half of your customers receive version A, while those who don't receive it will be sent version B. Keep it simple and only make changes to one aspect each time, for example, the color of your buttons, their image positioning, or the font.
- Track - Track your testing results and optimize your emails as time passes. If you're testing a blue "read here" button against an orange button and the blue one gets more clicks, then keep the blue button. Next time, test blue in comparison to. purple, or switch to a different feature to optimize for.
Five Ts of marketing via email make starting a bit more simple. However, achieving the perfect email marketing strategy doesn't stop in the beginning.
Our team has divided your list of email audience into three groups you'll probably encounter during the course of your email marketing.
- Prospective customers are email subscribers in your list who haven't purchased your online course yet.
- Current customers - They have bought your program and are in a group active in your community, or paying for an ongoing service/product.
- Bring back customers to your business - Former customers aren't engaged in any of your other offerings but they're still on your email list.
Let's take a look at ways to market the online course(s) with the following groups.
Potential Customers
Your potential customers are your most difficult customers to convince. They're yet to complete an purchase, therefore they're at the consideration or awareness phase of your marketing funnel, but they're not enough to be ready to press "checkout."
The five Ts of email marketing can be useful when you market to this audience because they're most likely to be interested in what value you have to offer. Content that is informative and educative will increase confidence and will keep them engaged with what you've got to offer, eventually getting them to be more open to your conversion-oriented content that you can offer them.
Customers who are already customers
Your current customers are relatively simple to keep in contact with. Do not bombard them with email messages. This will reduce your open rates as well as increase the rate of unsubscribes. Instead, keep sending high-value information, while keeping the subscribers updated on changes to courses or courses.
Win backs
Did you open your email only to see an email with "We miss your presence!" in the subject line? That was a win back email.
Win back emails are when companies attempt to "win back" previous customers. They're important because they are essential to your marketing campaign. The expense of finding an additional customer is five times greater than that keeping an existing one So doing all you can to get regular customers can reduce your marketing costs and increase revenue.
Get back-to-you email suggestions for marketing the online courses you offer
- Use personalized subject lines
- Offer them something appealing that demonstrates their value to you and encourages them to return
- Provide a bonus for signing up for your online course
- Utilize the available information to determine when are the most appropriate times to send your emails
Automating Workflows
Think in terms of an email sequence that is five stages long to be used in a forthcoming course:
- Engage and introduce by laying out the issue the course can help you solve
- Share key insights and give them information for free on your field to help build trust
- Provide your solution how your course will solve their problem
- Provide answers to any questions they may have
- Make your pitch for the final time.
Improve Your Online Course's landing page
Enticing Headline
Your headline is key to drawing attention to your content, however there's a line of difference between getting someone's attention and creating clickbait.
2-3 Clear Benefits
The new Marketing Mastery , a course on the website, is able to do very well.
In only a few brief bullet points, David Meerman shows potential buyers exactly what will be taught during his class.
It is not necessary to dive into the in-depth specifics of the program Bullet points are well.
Social Proof
In many cases the social proof can be found in star ratings and reviews, however, it could also comprise things like customer testimonials and Facebook reviews raving about the course or even success stories from clients.
It is also a great opportunity to address customer concerns. In the case of example, if your course is a big expense for individuals, you can provide reviews from customers that show an increase in ROI.
Take the time to read these testimonies from JobPrepped the $1,000 online marketing program.
Statements like, "...helped me receive 3 job offers ...," "This course is a great investment!," "Worth every cent and more!" and "I'm very happy I made the decision to invest ...," shows potential students that the the course is worth the cost.
Pricing
The right cost to run your course may take some time, however whatever cost you decide to settle on ensure that it's clear and simple for students to understand. This is especially important if you're providing discounts, vouchers, or discounts.
Clear CTA
For the best outcomes, put your call to action (CTA) in the middle of your page at the top of the page. Your viewers should not need to look for an area to sign-up and shouldn't need to scroll to find it.
for an online course for an online course, your CTA could include a message such as "Buy Now," "Start Learning Today," or something to this effect.
Take this page for an example. Corporate Finance Fundamentals landing page for example.
There are three CTAs on the landing page: the attention-grabbing orange "Get Started" button, the "Enroll for FREE" button that is behind it, and the outlined "Get Started" button in the upper right-hand corner of the page.
There is no way to be more than you need however, this landing page strikes a nice equilibrium and offers visitors couple of opportunities to make the purchase decision as well as sign up for the course.
Final Ideas
This post was originally released in August of 2018, it was updated in March 2023 with the most recent information.