How to Use Email Marketing to Promote Courses | Email Templates

Did you know that for every $1 spent on email marketing, the average return is $42? While social media algorithms keep changing and ads get more expensive, email remains one of the most reliable, cost-effective ways to promote your online course. But if you want to turn subscribers into paying students, you need a strategy.

In this article, you will learn how you can use emails to promote your online courses and offerings and sell effectively. We will discuss how you can 

• Grow your email subscriber list with the right audience
• Automate email sequences to save time and boost conversions
• Organize and manage your contacts like a pro

And because I know writing promotional emails is overwhelming, I also included two helpful guides to help you with that. Download them for free before reading on to put all our tips into good use. 

• Email Templates to Successfully Launch Your Course. Here, you can find the exact emails you can customize and use in your pre-launch, post-launch, and re-engagement campaigns. 
• Special Tips To Build Email List. Here, you can discover how to drive subscriptions and grow your email list from zero. 

Let’s do it. 

Does email marketing still work?

According to statistics, the return-on-investment rate of email marketing is currently 4400%. Roughly calculated, it gives a $44 return on every $1 spent. Therefore, YES, email marketing absolutely does work. However, the overall performance depends on the industry and the quality of the campaign.      
 

For course creators, email marketing is one of the most powerful ways of online marketing, and it gives an incredible opportunity to stay in touch with past clients as well as turn prospects into real-time clients. 

Why use email marketing?

• Helps you to stay in touch and increase the number of returning customers 
• Positively affects the conversion rates, increasing the chances of turning a prospect into a real-time client 
• Makes the user’s experience with the brand (you) more personalized 
• Cost-effective & High ROI rates
• High-quality customer base     

So, with email marketing, you will increase sales of the products/services, communicate with the audience, and, most importantly, reach the right people at the right time. It will be great if you also give value to your emails and protect them with dmarc report. 

How to sell online courses via email marketing

To promote your courses via email marketing, you obviously need a list of subscribers who are interested in your content. Then you can nurture that audience, let them know you understand their pain points, and present your course as a solution to their problem. 

Easier said than done, right? Here is how you can achieve that step by step. 

Step 1 - Learn more about your audience

If you want your email marketing strategy and campaign to work out, then you need to know who you are working with. Knowing your audience is the first step toward building a successful promotional strategy. Marketing is all about offering the right product at the right time. Therefore, study your niche for market research and segment your target audience. 

At this point, I am not speaking about your students' demographics. I am referring to how your students prefer to engage with your content, what content they like, and what truly solves their pain points. 

If you have past students subscribed to your social media or watching your videos on YouTube, for example, or reading your blog, we will start there. You can pick any channel where you previously posted useful content. 

• Check which posts received the most engagement
• What your students commented, asked, or wanted to learn about more
• How actively are they engaging with your current content? 

This is going to help you understand two major things: how you can get them onto your email list and what will eventually make them become a paying customer. 

Step 2 - Build an email list

When shall I start building my email list, you may wonder? The real answer is as soon as you decide to create your course and before the contents are ready. 

In an interview with the Uteach team, Jessica Terzakis, who now coaches course creators on building a successful course business, suggests building your list and working on your course at the same time. 

“I can work on my content and my modules, and I can also work on other pieces like marketing and building that community so that when I have the course ready to go, there are people who are excited and willing to say yes to working with me in this course”. 

 

Jessica Terzakis

Business consultant, Curriculum designer

Here are a few strategies you can try to capture leads. 

• Use your social media accounts

If you want to motivate people to take action, then offer them a freebie in return. For example, you can have an e-book guide on “How to gain more followers on Twitter” and provide the guide to those who fill out their email. This way, you get a new lead, and they get the desired guide. 

The guide can be the answer to one of the most frequently asked questions. If you do not have much following on social media either, you can use ads and paid promotions. 

• Use pop-ups & chats 

Whether you use a chatbot that will assist your clients in taking specific actions on your website or pop-ups offering a free product bot will generate new leads. Just make sure to put the required fields of the email.   

If you use email marketing tools such as MailChimp and ConvertKit, they offer a built-in pop-up builder to start easily. 

• Have a resources page 

Another way is just to place your digital download on your website. For example, Lily Sabri collected all her challenges and guides to workouts on a landing page. Visitors can browse the workout plans for their specific goals and download them by providing their email addresses. 

• Use CTA’s

Assume you are building an email list from scratch. You can use CTA’s on various pages of your website, such as your blog page. Regarding conversion potential, one of the most powerful pages of your website is the About Us page. Therefore, make sure to include a CTA over there as well. 

For example, Justin Welsh, who is a course creator and entrepreneur, included the form in his newsletter right on his blog pages. He uses very specific language to give the reader the true reason to subscribe. 

Step 3 - Create segments and lists 

Have you ever subscribed to a newsletter and kept receiving emails you do not want to open? Sometimes, we do not receive what we expect, and the volume of emails becomes annoying. But our goal is to deliver value to your students and not annoy them. 

That is why you need to have specific segments in your subscriber list. According to statistics, sending targeted emails to segmented lists brings 30% of revenue. And you can segment your lists based on different criteria, for example

• Based on the stage they are in your sales funnel (new signups, potential students, existing students)
• Based on their interest in the topics that you send newsletters. For example, 
• Based on the source they sign up (your social media, your blog, a pop-up), especially if you have a huge list already. 

I suggest you create several send lists for each segment with the email marketing tools you use. So, if you want to send a regular email instead of an automated one, you can manage them better. 

Step 4 - Have a clear goal for each segment

If you do not have a goal in mind, forget about a successful campaign. The way you will promote a course to someone who just subscribed, someone who is an existing student, and someone who bought a course once is different. 

And if you do not have a huge list of students, it is difficult to segment them based on their topic interests. That is why I recommend setting goals based on where they are in your sales funnel and how they engage with your emails. 

For example, you can have

• Potential students. These are people who showed interest but have not enrolled yet. It takes more time for you to nurture them and start sending promotional emails. So, decide on what their conversion point looks like so that you can lead them there. Maybe you want them to sign up for a free mini-course, book a call with you, or grab a discount before a deadline. 
• Existing students. They already trust you enough to enroll. Now, you want them to stay engaged. Maybe you can encourage them to complete the course, join a live Q&A, or take the next course in your program. You can also ask for feedback or testimonials.
• Cold subscribers. Some people signed up and then disappeared. What do you do? You re-engage them. For example, you send them an email with a freebie, a surprise bonus, or a simple reminder about why they joined in the first place. If they still do not respond, it might be time to remove them from your list. But more about that later.
• Fans. These are your most engaged students. They open your emails, join discussions, and maybe even recommend your course to others. Your goal here? Turn them into ambassadors. For example, the email sequence can lead to referral bonuses or exclusive content.

Step 5 - Build automated sequences for each segment and track

At this point, you know where you want to lead each segment of your subscriber’s list. Now, the question is, how you will lead them there? 

The answer is to use automated sequences. Let’s break down an example of promoting your online course to potential students. For them, you can set up pre-launch and launch sequences. 

During the pre-launch, you can send emails such as:

• relatable stories or a problem they are struggling with (the one your course solves)
• valuable tips or insight related to your course topic
• teasers about your upcoming course (without selling yet)
• behind-the-scenes look or a student success story
• Announcement that your course is opening soon and why they should care

During the launch, you can send emails such as

• Announcing when your course starts
• A deep dive into what they will get inside the course
• Testimonials or proof that your course works
• A reminder about your bonus or early-bird pricing
• Reminder and engaging emails

Here is an example email I got from Dr. Kim Foster for a black Friday course promotion. This a a great way to re-engage your email subscribers and make them take action. 

Step 6 - Track and manage your lists

When your course launch is over, the way we organized the lists also changes. Some potential students are now customers, and maybe some have become cold subscribers. 

That is why you want to have the next sequence of emails ready once the first cycle is over. It might be that you even send some manually to specific groups and make them more personal. For example, you can reach out to the users who have not responded or never took action. 

Here is an actual email from Dr. Kim Foster for those who did not enroll in the course offer. To re-engage the list, she asks for feedback in a short survey. This helps her understand what the actual reasons were. It might be the pricing or that the program did not offer what they needed. 

But the question is, for how long should you keep sending them emails? Of course, at some point, you have to update your marketing contacts. 

A survey like the one we discussed above would help. For example, if the reason is that they are not interested in any of your programs, it is better not to send them promotional emails for at least 3 months. 

Pro Tip: To make sure your email marketing efforts work, I suggest creating a policy to manage your contacts. It is your unique strategy that helps you identify inactive subscribers and remove them from your list. For example, it can be

• All the subscribers that had hard bounces when sending emails
• Subscribers that did not open your last 15 emails, etc.  

The policy is up to you. But it is important to have a definite way to filter your subscribers. It is the best way to make sure you do not hurt your email health and deliverability. 

Tips to design an email that works

While writing your emails, ensure it fit your brand’s overall style and do not sound spammy. Here are a few do’s and don’ts. 

DO

• Keep your subject line to no more than 10 words, and make sure it evokes curiosity
• Make it Branded so that when your subscribers see it, they associate it with your brand (e.g., add labels, logos, etc.)
• Have enough white space between the graphics and texts so that it is readable 
• Have the right color palette that communicates the message of your brand   
• Keep your content structured
• Use personalization in your emails (for example, the student’s name)
• Include the unsubscribe link

Do NOT

• Do not use spam words, such as Act fast, Exclusive deal, Double your income, Earn extra money, Urgent, Hurry, etc. 
• Avoid using too many emojis 
• Avoid writing words in capital letters and using exclamation marks
• Do not forget to test the email for different devices before you send
• Avoid sending emails to people who did not opt in

How to measure email marketing effectiveness?

The E-learning industry continues to expand, and the competition grows. Even if these steps and strategies work today, you will have to come up with entirely new ones in approximately a year. The best way to develop an effective email marketing strategy is to measure the campaign’s effectiveness. How do we do that? 

• Check out the bounce rates

The bounce rate is the rate that showcases the percentage of the users who visited your landing page but left immediately without taking any further action. Bounce rates will show you how effective your strategy is and whether or not your email campaign and landing page together are able to convert prospects to clients.  Each follow-up email can have a different bounce rate, so consider all your emails' bounce rates. 

• Check the website traffic rates

If you take a look at the website’s analytics, it will show what percentage of the traffic comes from what, including how much comes from email marketing. If the results are higher than the previous round, then you are doing well. Meanwhile, if they are lower, then you need further analysis of the weak points of the email campaign. 

• Evaluate conversion rates

The main goal of an email campaign is to convert leads to customers, so one of the most vital measurements to check out is the campaign’s conversion rate. Many email marketing software platforms have Analytics & reports where they display those rates. So, make sure to check out the conversion rate in order to comprehend what aspects of the next campaign must be improved. 

Shall we create your first email campaign?

Email marketing remains one of the most efficient ways to market products/services and online courses. Once you find ways to grow your email list, establish automated sequences that serve your goals. 

If you want to manage everything from one place, then you also need to choose the right platform. You can consider Uteach - as it is a full-featured website builder that also offers enough features for course marketing. With Uteach, you can create a website in less than two minutes, customize everything, create new pages, publish courses and other materials, and even open a blog.   

Uteach also offers you a user-friendly dashboard through which you have control over every aspect of your website, including live sessions, payments, marketing, and appearance. Uteach offers Marketing features and integrations such as SEO, Google Analytics, MailChimp, etc.

 So, if you want to save your time and have complete control over every aspect of your website and marketing from one place, then Uteach is the best option for you!