If I had to guess, I’d say that you’re probably underutilizing email marketing in your online business.
And it is costing you money.
Before I started learning digital marketing, I thought of email mainly as a communication tool.
I would get the occasional email campaign from a brand or company, but I never thought of it as a way to generate revenue.
I thought of email as a way of sending a message that would just become obsolete in a couple of years.
I was so wrong.
Experienced digital marketers and entrepreneurs agree that email is one of the most effective marketing channel out there.
I have seen this myself. Social media and paid advertising get all the buzz…but, at the end of the day, email brings in the money.
According to Hubspot’s 2019 Marketing Statistics report:
- 91% of shoppers want to hear from companies they do business with via email. (Sleeknote, 2019)
- Email use worldwide will top 3 billion users by 2020. (The Radicati Group, 2016)
- Gmail has 1 billion active users worldwide. (Statista, 2016)
- 86% of consumers would like to receive promotional emails from companies they do business with at least monthly, and 15% would like to get them daily. (Statista, 2015)
If we compare email marketing to other marketing channels, the benefits are clear:
- Your email list is 100% yours, unlike other channels (like social media) that change their algorithms and platforms go out of style, your list is comprised of people who specifically opted in for you and will be more likely to stick around and care about what you have to say.
- You have control of your list and you’re in charge of who sees what and when. If you are promoting your new course you’ll know that your entire list will have an email from you at the top of their emails every morning.
- Even if you compare email versus paid advertising, email comes out on top. Instead of paying heavens knows how much hoping the right person will see your ad and buy, you can send an email to people who have already qualified themselves as the right target audience and know they will be more likely to buy.
The bottom line is: if you haven’t developed a comprehensive email marketing strategy, you have an opportunity to massively grow your business.
We’re here to help.
This post will show you exactly how to use email marketing to turn your subscribers into customers:
- Learn about the 6 email campaigns you should be using in your business
- View specific examples of each campaign from some of the world’s most successful entrepreneurs and businesses
- Get templates, cheatsheets, and tactics you can use to get started right away.
Types of emails campaigns
Before we jump into the the meat of the post, it’s important that we briefly go over the two types of email campaigns:
Batch campaigns
These are the type of campaigns that most people are used to because they essentially work in the same way as a typical email:
- You write an email
- You send that email to one or more recipients
Sometimes you might even decide to schedule this email to send it at a specific time and date in the future.
What differentiates a batch campaign from an automated campaign, is that batch emails are sent only once at a specific date and time. That means a set, specific group of people received your email, and to send it to more people, you’d need to create another batch email. For example: let’s say you sent an email to your friend Johnny, but forgot to send it to your other friend, Lisa; if you wanted to send the message to Lisa, you would need to create a brand new email.
In email marketing, these are some examples of batch email campaigns:
- Launch emails (in their majority)
- Newsletters
- Campaigns related to a time-specific promotion (like Black Friday).
Welcome email campaigns
Why are welcome emails important?
Hola. Hi. Namaste. Hello, you’re awesome! Welcome to the Cult.
These are all ways I’ve been greeted online after giving a company my email address. While the introductions vary in tone, length and humor (I promise I’m not in a cult, just a workout bootcamp), one thing remains the same: you should send a great welcome email.
A welcome email has an 4x higher open rate and a 5x higher click rate than other promotional emails, according to Experian.
You’re not going to get this level of attention with this much ease ever again.
Time invested in creating a great welcome email will impact each of your relationships with new sign ups and grow your email list.
(If you want to dive deeper into how to write effective these emails, I recommend you check out our Welcome Email Guide)
Welcome email examples
Marie Forleo’s welcome email
Noah Kagan’s welcome email
Moz’s welcome email
Newsletter emails
Why are newsletter emails important?
As you build your email list, it’s crucial that you stay connected to your audience by periodically emailing them with new content and updates, so when you want to sell something you’ve already given week’s and week’s worth of valuable content.
Newsletter email examples
We collected these emails by looking deep into our inboxes for those we remembered off the top of our heads after reading thousand of newsletters over the past 9 months. They stood out. The were remembered. They were a cut above the rest.
Joanna Wiebe’s newsletter email
Neil Patel’s newsletter email
Noah Kagan’s newsletter email
Seth Godin’s newsletter email
Cart-abandonment emails
Why are cart-abandonment emails important?
In your online business, abandoned carts happen when website visitors start the checkout process for a product but leave your site before completing the purchase.
According to the market research website Statista, the average United States e-commerce shopping cart abandonment rate during the last quarter of 2015 was 75.6%. Moreover, this number has never been lower than 67.5% since Statista started tracking abandonment percentages five years ago.
This is a tough reality check for most people who are new to online business. These numbers surprised me–and I’ve been doing this for a while now!
But don’t let this data discourage you. This is not the end of the story.
Once you’ve made peace with the fact that most people who start your checkout process will not finish it, you will be able to see abandoned carts as they really are: an opportunity.
- People who did not finish your checkout process did something very important: they started it. These website visitors have given you a clear signal that they have a need and they believe your product is the solution to that need. Probably no other visitor segment is closer to buying from you than this one.
- Let’s say that you currently make $1,000 per month with your online product. If you recover just 5% of the sales you lose from abandoned carts (using a 75% cart abandonment rate), that means you could be making an extra $2,400 per year, or about 2.5 extra months of revenue (!!!).
Cart-abandonment email examples
CartHook’s cart-abandonment email
Kettle and Fire’s cart-abandonment email
Threadless’ cart-abandonment email
Webinar emails
Why are webinar emails important?
A webinar is a powerful tool for making money online…but why is that? Here are a few reasons webinars can make such a difference to your bottom line:
Webinars are a great way to build your email list
Whenever you host a webinar, anyone signing up for the event is also adding their email to your subscriber list.
This is HUGE, because there’s nothing more important to growing your online business than your email list. Your email list gives you direct access to your audience and to your customers, and it’s a group of people who opted in and asked you to engage with them. The larger your list, the more people you can get interested in your online product.
Webinars convert like crazy
The standard conversion rate on an email, from opening the email to purchasing, is around 2–3%. And according to ConversionXL, conversion rates on social media posts are lower than 1%.
We’ve seen course creators host webinars that consistently convert at a rate of 30%–40%!
A number like this is incredibly powerful. It means that even if you have a small audience—and most of us just starting out do—you can still make money with webinars.
Protip: Check out this massive guide on how to create a webinar.
Webinar email examples
Teachable’s webinar emails – Invitation
Teachable’s webinar emails – Confirmation
Teachable’s webinar emails – Reminder #1
Teachable’s webinar emails – Reminder #2
Teachable’s webinar emails – Reminder #3
Teachable’s webinar emails – Reminder #4
Teachable’s webinar emails – Follow-up #1
Teachable’s webinar emails – Follow-up #2
Teachable’s webinar emails – Follow-up #3
Teachable’s webinar emails – Follow-up #4
Launch emails
Why are launch emails important?
Everyone who creates a course hopes to launch it – hit publish and watch the sales roll in. But the pressure to get it right and make it work can feel almost insurmountable.
Pulling inspiration from our 12K course launches, hours of research, data mining and launches of our own, I’m going to give you everything you need to launch your online product.
Think strategy, timing and advice for your copy.
Protip: for a complete, step-by-step walkthrough on launching, check out this post: How to Launch an Online Course [Ultimate Step-By-Step Guide].
Launch email examples
One of our favorite example launch campaigns comes from Nat Eliason and Justin Mares, creators of the Become a Technical Marketer course. Nat and Justin did a pre-sale and a launch and grossed $58,150 in sales.
(You can read the entire case study of Nat and Justin’s launch here.)
Nat Eliason’s launch emails – Warm-up #1
Nat Eliason’s launch emails – Warm-up #2
Nat Eliason’s launch emails – Warm-up #3
Nat Eliason’s launch emails – Warm-up #4
Nat Eliason’s launch emails – Launch #1
Nat Eliason’s launch emails – Launch #2
Nat Eliason’s launch emails – Launch #3
Nat Eliason’s launch emails – Launch #4
Nat Eliason’s launch emails – Launch #5
Nat Eliason’s launch emails – Post-Launch
Black Friday / Cyber Monday emails
Why are Black Friday / Cyber Monday emails important?
I know what you’re thinking. SO many businesses send Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals and your small online course business stands no chance against Amazon or Walmart.
If you don’t participate, you’ll be missing out on a pie so massive, not even the biggest companies can eat it on their own (especially because you own an online business.)
Here’s a couple of facts you might want to consider:
- Thanksgiving/Black Friday/Cyber Monday online sales reached $7.4 billion in 2015.
- Sales from limited online deals accounted for 40% of that total.
That’s enough to get Black Friday and Cyber Monday their own section in this guide.
Black Friday email example
Bryan Harris’ Black Friday email – Warm-up
Bryan Harris’ Black Friday email – Launch
Start emailing!
Are you ready? We’ve made it super easy for you to get started.
**Some sections of this blog post were adapted from some awesome posts written by Ashley Hockney
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