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Email is a necessary tool that helps online businesses attract and nurture new leads that can result in more sales.
Email sequences couldn’t be too far away from the basket and have proven to be an essential tool for building an effective relationship with your email list members in the process of turning them from leads into paying customers.
P.S.: Before you go on, LearnWorlds is the top platform to create, host, and sell your online courses. You can try it out with a 30-day free trial:
What is an Email Sequence?
An email sequence is a number of emails scheduled to be sent in a specific timeframe where each one serves a different purpose. It is essentially a series of automated marketing emails.
Otherwise known as an ‘autoresponder’, an email automation sequence plays a huge role in your email marketing strategy and describes a series of emails that are sent out to your audience in a timely and methodical manner.
Email sequences have some obvious and hidden benefits attached to them.
In order to fully exploit the power of email marketing and set up an automated email sequence for your followers, first you need to build an email list with contacts that belong to your target audience – those people for whom your course is most relevant and a must-have product.
As soon as you have your email list, you are ready to learn more about what email sequence is and how it can increase sales and brand awareness for your online school.
Different Types of Emails and Sequences
The goal of each of your email campaigns determines the type of email sequence you use.
Each sequence might have a different purpose like:
It is important that you formulate a specific strategy and goal for every email you send out, thus bringing your leads one step closer to ‘closing the deal’, or in marketing terms, ‘making the sale’.
TIP 1
What’s awesome about sequence emails is that you get to write them one time and then you choose an email marketing tool that will send them out to subscribers directly, and…your job is done!
TIP 2
Don’t forget to set up your email notifications in LearnWorlds. They are also part of your automated email sequence welcoming new users (onboarding email), students, and customers and customizing the whole learning experience.
TIP 3
With the right email marketing software, you can create your own email sequences and workflows easily. It can also help you monitor different metrics like click-through, open rates, and conversion rates.
TIP 4
Consider email list segmentation to create emails that target specific audiences and are more likely to drive high conversion rates. Check this article from HubSpot to learn more about email segmentation practices.
Each email sequence can include multiple different kinds of emails to engage your audience in different ways, leading them to the final desired result.
To guide your way through different types of email sequences, in this article we present the most prevailing ones that you will need as a course instructor.
These are just a few types of emails you can send out to your subscribers once you set your email marketing strategy up and running. Each one is used with a certain purpose in mind and helps to serve your business needs.
For example, a cold email or a sales email can be used to generate leads or encourage them to buy, whereas a follow-up email can be used as a way to nurture your leads with content.
On that note, you shouldn’t worry about creating the ‘best email’ there is. As you go along you will get to make tweaks to your messaging and find what works for you and your audience. What you should do, however, is create emails that use the best and most appropriate visuals that go with it and match your brand. Apart from designing good-quality photos, you need to come up with a catchy email copy and choose your call-to-action (CTAs) buttons, colors and graphics carefully.
SUMO has a great deal of email marketing examples to show, coming from businesses who have nailed it!
How to Set up Your Email Sequence
Your email sequence could be about any topic, but it should always relate to your school’s subject and online courses, ideally addressing and providing a solution to your customer’s pain points. After all, it needs to create awareness and get people interested in what you are offering.
To help you create a winning email sequence, there are a few steps you need to take into account…
1. Name the sequence
Naming the sequence can give you the pointers you need to create your sequence. In a way, it sets up the context and prepares the ground for it, it keeps you focused and driven to your goal.
The name of your sequence describes what is going to come up in the next emails, and can easily become the headline/subject line of your email.
Here are a few examples:
2. Set up the sequence
Each autoresponder tool has different guidelines as to how you can set up your sequence, however, they all follow a standard route to it.
First, create the sequence and give it the name you have decided on it. Then finish your email draft and complete your email series. Decide when you want each email to go out to your list of subscribers – these could only be a group of subscribers or everyone. Finally, click save and you are ready to go.
For example; a follow-up email sequence or onboarding sequence will be sent to people after purchasing a course.
3. Set time for the content
Your email sequence starts as soon as each subscriber enters your email list. It’s up to you to decide how many days after the subscription you want these emails to be sent out. What’s great is that no email content is lost and each subscriber receives it on the days scheduled (also called a drip email campaign) e.g. Day 1, Day 3, Day 5, and so on.
This means that you can create a 10 email sequence that is sent out within the duration of 30 days. Alternatively, it could be just one or two per week or even a total of 30 emails sent out on an annual basis!
Looking at it from this scope, we see that email sequences are a perfect fit for drip marketing campaigns that allow you to have control over what kind of content your subscribers get to have access to and when with specific times and dates.
A good rule of thumb is to have more emails that are crammed together at the beginning of your sequence and spread the rest out later. Sending an email each day for two or three days in a row to a fresh lead joining your email list is great to get them hooked!
This concept is probably easier to understand once you get down to the real thing and check out some email sequence examples of your own.
Email Sequence Templates for Selling Online Courses
Whether you have created an email sequence or not yet, we offer a couple of templates to help you out. The logic behind these follows the two key phases of the course launch which are:
- educating your audience, and
- presenting your course.
In phase 1, you can send out informative material to your email list to help create an understanding of the topic and build awareness of your subject. These could be 5 to 6 nurturing emails or an engagement sequence, that are sent out before the launch of your course.
Such emails go out to people who aren’t yet fully aware of what you do and need more convincing information to decide whether to buy from you or not.
During the seven, fourteen, and thirty-day run-up to your course launch, you can send them informative content such as blog posts and ebooks. You can also invite them to webinars, provide them with videos, and offer group coaching, short guides, and checklists.
In phase 2, you are ready to take real action! To send that owl outside the Hogwarts grounds.
Below we have put together a set of three different email sequences to give you some proper guidance on how to structure your email sequence for your online school.
7-DAY COURSE LAUNCH EMAIL SEQUENCE
Set up a 7-day sequence to send the following emails:
Download Our Free Ebook “Email Templates & Sequences to Boost Your Sales“ and get full access to the 7-day course launch email sequence.
We have put together ready-to-use email sequences and plug-and-play templates for launching your next online course. Download the email examples and start your email campaign today!
15-DAY COURSE LAUNCH EMAIL SEQUENCE
Set up a 15-day sequence to send the following emails:
Download Our Free Ebook “Email Templates & Sequences to Boost Your Sales“ and get full access to the 15-day course launch email sequence.
In the ebook, you’ll find a collection of pre-made email sequences and plug-and-play templates to help launch your next online course.
30-DAY COURSE LAUNCH EMAIL SEQUENCE
Set up a 15-day sequence to send the following emails:
Download Our Free Ebook “Email Templates & Sequences to Boost Your Sales“ and get full access to the 30-day course launch email sequence.
You can find here a variety of pre-made email sequences and plug-and-play templates to jumpstart your next online course. On top of that, we provide some great tips for writing great email sequences and some creative subject line ideas to get you started.
ONBOARDING / WELCOMING EMAIL SEQUENCE
Give your customers an overview of the course/school and the structure, and explain how they can benefit from it:
CONVERSION EMAIL SEQUENCE
Motivate your leads to buy a course (attract new enrollments using lead magnets, email grabbers, auto-tagging):
ENGAGEMENT EMAIL SEQUENCE
Get customers to execute meaningful actions (start a course, take a test, get a certificate, etc.):
UPSELL EMAIL SEQUENCE
Sell additional courses (or other offerings) to existing users:
Your online course is about to launch. What’s next?
Marketing automation can help make the process of launching your course easy. Building an email sequence is literally a shortcut to selling more courses and building a loyal community.
The best part is that you don’t need to be a marketer or a salesperson to do it!
To help you out, in this article we have included our email template sequences with many examples of emails you can start using immediately, but …
An email sequence is just the start of the journey. Once you build your email list, create the email copy, and personalize your content to match your customer’s needs, your email sales funnel is ready to go.
Don’t forget to enjoy the whole process of building your own email series. In the meantime, we are always here to help!
Kyriaki is a Content Creator for the LearnWorlds team writing about marketing and e-learning, helping course creators on their journey to create, market, and sell their online courses. Equipped with a degree in Career Guidance, she has a strong background in education management and career success. In her free time, she gets crafty and musical.
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