Train the Trainer Part 4: Sell Your Course
Digital marketing has evolved rapidly in the past 2 decades, and the most age-old channel, marketing emails, still holds the #1 spot as being the most effective and most powerful method of digital marketing.
Campaign Monitor research reported that:
- 72% of people would rather receive marketing materials from brands through their email
- While only 17% reported they would prefer that same content through social media
- 39% reported they prefer email content that is rich in information and value rather than promotional
In fact, another survey from OptinMonster studies reports that 58% of users check their email before they check out any social media channel or the news.
So now that we’ve convinced you (if not, keep reading) about the importance of emails and what users are looking for in their emails, let’s delve into what you should be doing for email marketing.
Email marketing with newsletters
The most effective method to employ email marketing is through the use of newsletters.
These are a series of emails that are sent to subscribers of your course or website. A newsletter is short and to the point - it tells your audience why you’re emailing them (this is usually an update/ new launch/ new research/ new events), what they will get when they read the email, and a clear call to action.
One thing to remember when writing a newsletter is the format and the informality of it. An engaging newsletter speaks to a reader directly and without formalities.
For example, you want to write an email in a similar style as you would chat with an old friend. You want to speak to your intended audience on the same level. Avoid writing an email with a business tone as if you were a CEO speaking to a mid-level manager.
In our Embodia Instructor Course Marketing eBook, we’ve put together email newsletter templates that you can copy and send to your clients. All you need to do is replace the content with your own.
Email frequency
Most clients want to hear from brands on a weekly basis.
But don’t send too many, too often! 1 newsletter a week is a good number - but if you don’t have anything important to say, don’t send a newsletter just to send something. Maybe switch up to just 1 newsletter per month to make sure you have enough content to share with your clients.
You want to avoid spamming your clients’ email inboxes. They may view your content negatively in the future.
What you want to do:
- Be consistent
- Use the same font and colour palette in all your emails so viewers can easily recognize and associate them with you
- Ensure it has a call-to-action that invites the reader to jump on the offer in your email
- Proof-read the email before sending it
- Integrate your emails for mobile use (this is important because 47.6% of email opens are on mobile in the healthcare & biotech industry); so you might need to optimize the font sizes, image sizes, and more for mobile use.
What you want to avoid:
- Use many different fonts
- Use text that is multi-coloured (stick to black, because it's the most optimal colour for both light and dark modes)
- Write extremely lengthy emails
- Not using commas, paragraphs, or bullet points
- Send an email without a purpose
- Be very promotional
Don’t forget to download our eBook for free and use the email newsletter templates!
Email signature
Another opportunity is to market your course in your email signature.
The use of email signature marketing is one of the most untapped branding and lead-generation tools at your disposal. It is the perfect avenue to promote your course in each of the few hundred emails sent out per week with promotional banners.
To learn how to edit your signature just follow these steps
For Gmail click here
For Outlook click here
For Yahoo click here
If you want to get a little more creative and add a CTA button, you can use this free email signature generator by Hubspot to create your signature, download it and add it to your email signature.