I Created a Free 28 Day Email Course and This Happened

Two months ago, I cre­ated a free 28-day email course. 

I just wanted to test if there’s any interest in the type of insights I might have to share if I com­piled them into an email course. 

After all — email com­mu­nic­a­tions are still very much underrated.

I had a one-week email course five years ago, but that was before I had an actu­al email list. Now that the email course has been live for a while, I want to share what I’ve learned.

Here we go:

Why I Wanted To Convey Ideas Instead of To-Do’s

I wanted my email les­sons to serve as short but inspir­ing aha moments.

I know that send­ing 28 emails for 28 days straight is quite a big ask. 

I, there­fore, didn’t want to send out stuff that would feel like work but rather ideas or con­cepts. I wanted to share insights that would give the read­er a boost of energy and inspir­a­tion and a notion of “yeah, I could do that”.

How I Managed To Get Enough Content for the Course

It took me the bet­ter part of a work­ing day to write 20 drafts. 

It also took me an hour to cre­ate a land­ing page and tweak some menu items and links on the blog. 

Then, I pub­lished an early draft of the course to get a few sign-ups, which forced me (in a good way!) to final­ize all those 28 emails in time.

Please note: If you’re char­ging for the course, invest in a pro­fes­sion­al to proofread and copy-edit your email course. My email course was free, but I still regret not doing this.

Setting Up an Email Automation Drip Was Easy 

The tool setup couldn’t be any easi­er. I cre­ated an auto­mated respon­der in Mailchimp. Very easy to use and very easy to set up. 

I used an ele­ment­ary tem­plate because most email send-outs do bet­ter when they look like emails often do.

Affiliate: I use Mailchimp as my default email list manager.

How I Managed To Promote the Email Course 

I pro­moted the email course with 20 USD on Facebook and sent it to my email list, but you could do so much more.

Results: In less than 60 days, 1,452 par­ti­cipants have signed up for the email course (744 of those are not already on my blog email list). 

I’ve only had 12 unsub­scribers and manu­ally unsub­scribed about 20+ people. And only sev­en people have emailed me about vari­ous tech­nic­al difficulties.

I Unsubscribed Competitors Behaving Like Douchebags

Unsubscribe people who mis­be­have — it’s your list and your giveaways.

A few people emailed me back to give me “advice”:

For some reas­on, they’ve all been male Swedish digit­al mar­keters aged 35 – 45 who seemed angry with me for shar­ing know­ledge. Why they bothered to sign up will remain an irony, I guess.

I unsub­scribed them with a polite notice explain­ing why I did so.

Affiliate: I use Email List Validation to pro­tect my sender’s repu­ta­tion by keep­ing my PR email lists free from boun­cing emails.

Yes, I Would Consider Doing Another Course

All in all, I think cre­at­ing an email course like this was worth the effort. 

If you’re a B2B com­pany, con­sider let­ting your experts share their best advice in a giveaway course for sign-ups. (And no, it doesn’t have to be 28 days long!) 

As long as people tak­ing your course are will­ing to recom­mend it after it, you’ve got your­self a great mar­ket­ing asset!

Update 2020-12-18: The email course is now unpub­lished since it’s due for an update. I’m also look­ing into the pos­sib­il­ity of pub­lish­ing an online PR course.

PR Resource: Pavlov’s Inbox

Spin Academy | Online PR Courses

Pavlov’s Inbox

Most email pro­ductiv­ity sys­tems (e.g. Inbox Zero and sim­il­ar sys­tems) focus on struc­ture and effi­ciency. Such sys­tems run the risk of reward­ing unfa­vour­able sender behaviours.

• If you allow, your inbox can eas­ily become oth­er people’s agenda for your time.

Pavlov’s Inbox is a sys­tem built around the psy­cho­lo­gic­al idea that your inbox prob­lems aren’t email prob­lems — they’re sender problems. 

Pavlov’s Inbox assumes that you can influ­ence the beha­viours of those send­ing you emails — via conditioning.

• Reward favour­able email senders. Reward senders by reply­ing swiftly and doing as much work as possible.
• Punish unfa­vour­able email senders. Punish senders by politely push­ing work back to where it came from.

The typ­ic­al res­ult of Pavel’s Inbox is that you quickly get more and more good emails from favour­able senders and few­er and few­er bad emails from unfa­vour­able senders.

• The basic rule of beha­vi­our­al psy­cho­logy is that you get more of what you reinforce.

How To Reward Favourable Senders

• Reply swiftly and thoughtfully.
• Eliminate their work by put­ting in work yourself.
• Include praise or oth­er pos­it­ive reinforcement.
• Express an interest in their work.

How To Punish Unfavourable Senders

• De-pri­or­it­ise their emails (let them wait).
• Instead of doing work, push work back.
• Ask them to qual­i­fy their requests.
• Question the valid­ity of their reasoning.

Please note that the pun­ish­ing aspect should be executed in a socially viable man­ner (since being con­front­a­tion­al or aggress­ive as “pun­ish­ment” is likely det­ri­ment­al to your pro­fes­sion­al repu­ta­tion).

Learn more: Pavlov’s Inbox

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