6 Email Marketing Tips for Online Course Creators

If you’ve created an online course and are eager to showcase it to a broader audience, mastering email marketing is essential. But, to be effective, you need to know the right strategies for online course creators. 

That’s exactly what we’ll reveal in this article. Keep reading!

Best Email Marketing Practices for Course Creators

If you are a beginner in the elearning world or even if you already have experience in selling online courses, you can still implement our tips to engage your audience more meaningfully. 

With these strategies, you’ll ensure that your courses reach the right eyes and inspire action and commitment. 

Let’s get started!

1. Try newsletters

Not all emails that land in an inbox are the same. Both offline and online businesses may send a variety of promotional and transactional messages. Then there’s the newsletter. 

Newsletters are recurring messages that offer subscribers a consistent roundup of news, tips, and insights. 

According to Statista, newsletters are the most popular email type used in an email marketing campaign. 

They are also considered powerful tools for building and maintaining relationships with your target audience.

For online course creators, newsletters are especially important because they keep your students informed between courses. 

They can highlight new course offerings, share industry news that affects matters of your subject, and provide valuable tips that complement your courses. 

Including success stories or student testimonials can also boost credibility and encourage new course signups. 

You can also share behind-the-scenes content or previews of upcoming courses. These can add excitement and build anticipation, making your newsletters a must-read resource.

– To-do list to create a newsletter that converts

2. Engage subscribers through personalization, interactive elements

Boring email campaigns often lead to subscribers quickly losing interest and hitting the unsubscribe link. 

To avoid this and ensure your messages stand the test of time, you need to keep your recipients engaged.

Also, engaged subscribers are more likely to become advocates for your courses – they’ll share your content with others, expanding your reach. 

Engagement can be fostered through content that resonates and prompts interaction.

One strategy to keep your current subscribers active is through personalization. Go beyond just using the subscriber’s name. 

Tailor content based on subscribers’ manifested interests, past course enrollments, or interactions with previous emails. 

The data for this kind of email campaign can come from your email marketing platform or customer relationship management (CRM) tool. 

Another way to increase engagement is to directly encourage your subscribers to reply to your emails. 

Asking for their opinions or thoughts on a topic not only makes them feel valued but also gives you insights into your audience’s preferences and needs. 

You can also incorporate elements such as surveys, polls, or quizzes to make your emails more interactive. 

Whatever the types of emails you create for your subscribers, remember that you’re not creating them just so you can say you sent something to your email list. 

The aim of your email content, whether it’s a quiz or a newsletter, is to enrich your subscribers’ lives with information that they find genuinely useful. 

To achieve this, focus on understanding the challenges and needs of your audience when writing emails. What can you offer that will truly benefit them? 

Planning your content strategy is also the best starting point when applying email marketing tips for online course creators. 

A well-structured content calendar helps you ensure you don’t just send the same topics all the time.

The tool can also help you follow a consistent sending schedule that keeps subscribers hooked and waiting for more.

Choosing a reliable email newsletter software is just as crucial. A good platform will help you automate your email campaigns and provide valuable analytics to measure your newsletter effectiveness. 

This ensures that your marketing efforts yield the best results. In addition, they often come with many pre built and fully customizable templates (like example below) you can use to engage your students and promote your courses from day 1.

– 7 tips for writing emails that sell

3. Add CTAs to your emails

A call-to-action (CTA) is a button or link in an email or on a website that encourages people to take a specific action.

For online course creators, the goal could be to increase course enrollments, encourage content downloads, or simply drive more traffic to your website. 

A clear and concise CTA can significantly improve your conversion rates. When crafting it, keep these tips in mind:

• Ensure visibility: Place your CTAs in prominent positions within your emails. They should be easy to find. Your goal is to ensure your subscribers don’t have to scroll too much just to find it.

• Make it clear: Each CTA should be straightforward and tell subscribers exactly what you want them to do. Use action-oriented language like “Start Learning Today,” “Download Your Free Guide,” or “Join Our Community.”

• Highlight urgency or scarcity: Adding an element of urgency or scarcity (like a time-limited offer) can encourage quicker action. Phrases like “Limited time offer” or “Only a few spots left” can increase the effectiveness of your CTAs.

Experiment with different designs, placements, and messages to see what resonates best with your audience. 

Example of non-generic calls to action buttons.

A/B testing can be particularly useful in refining your approach. It involves sending two variations of your email to different segments of your audience to see which one performs better. 

In this method, you can test, not just CTAs, but also subject lines, email layouts, and even the timing of your sends. Then you just fine-tune your approach based on actual results.

And remember, although buttons are preferred, your CTAs can be in text format too, as the example below.

4. Create mobile-friendly emails 

Here’s another tip for online course creators: Create emails that look great on mobile. 

Not only may your course be watched on a smartphone, over half of all emails are opened on mobile devices. 

This figure cannot be ignored. If e-learning course creators don’t make their email campaigns as effective on smartphones as they are on desktops, they risk losing quite a big market.

Here’s how to ensure your emails look great on every device:

• Responsive design: Use email templates that automatically adjust to fit the screen size of the device they are viewed on. This way, your content is always readable and accessible.

• Concise content: Keep your content brief and to the point. Mobile screens have less space, so prioritize your most important messages and make them stand out.

• Large, clear CTAs: Your CTA buttons should be easy to tap on a mobile device. Make them large enough and provide ample space around them to avoid misclicks.

• Optimize images: Ensure that any images used in your emails are optimized for fast loading and are not so large that they disrupt the layout on small screens. The recommended image size in emails is 600 x 650 px. Also, anything bigger than 1MB will increase email loading time.

Before sending your email to everyone, test it on various devices to see how it gets displayed. You’ll catch any issues before they go out to your entire list.

– How to create mobile learning courses

5. Grow your email list organically

Speaking of email lists, to ensure higher engagement and conversion rates, make an effort to grow it organically as well. 

Start by offering something of value in exchange for email sign-ups. 

Your incentives could be a free mini-course, an ebook, or access to exclusive video content that is only available to your subscribers. 

These attract genuine interest and set the stage for a relationship based on value from the beginning.

Course creators can leverage the touch points where potential subscribers engage with them to offer incentive in exchange for their email address. 

Here are those touch points and how you can position your incentive:

• Website: Include a sign-up form prominently on your homepage and on every blog post if you run a blog.

• Social media: Share snippets of your emails as your social media content with links directing to your sign-up page.

• Webinars and live events: Use these events as a chance to invite attendees to join your email list. You can offer them special content or follow-up materials as a thank you.

Also, ensure your sign-up process is as simple as possible. Keep your forms short and only ask for essential information, like their email address and first name. 

– Best practices for building an email list

6. Avoid spamming

One of the quickest ways to lose trust and annoy your audience is by sending them too many emails. 

Responsible email marketing entails respecting the subscriber’s inbox and focusing on quality over quantity.

In many countries, it’s legally required to have explicit opt-in from subscribers for your emails. This compliance with spam laws also helps build a foundation of trust.

When someone signs up for your emails, clearly communicate how often they can expect to hear from you. 

This helps set the right expectations and reduces the likelihood of your emails being marked as spam.

Make sure it’s easy for subscribers to opt out of receiving emails from you, too. A simple and visible unsubscribe link in every message is a must. 

Making it difficult to unsubscribe can frustrate users and lead to your emails being marked as spam.

Keep an eye on feedback loops and email marketing metrics, such as unsubscribe rates. 

High numbers in these areas can indicate that your emails are perceived as spammy. Adjust your email strategy accordingly to maintain a healthy relationship with your audience.

Use Email Marketing to Sell More Online Courses

Emails can be an effective tool for your online business. 

This digital marketing strategy can help you significantly boost engagement and increase the number of signups for your e-learning course. 

But, you need to do it the right way. Use these email marketing tips for online course creators to avoid wasting time on campaigns that don’t work.

Start with brainstorming your content strategy and deciding what kind of emails you want to send. 

To ensure you have a good pool of readers, grow your email list organically. 

When getting your emails together, incorporate clear CTAs, test for mobile devices, and craft content that engages your subscribers and avoids landing in spam.

Experiment with these tips, measure the results and refine your approach based on what works best for your specific audience. 

With patience and persistence, your email marketing can become your best online course business’s growth strategy.

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Serving companies and professionals in more than 60 countries, the platform is a dynamic and customizable Learning Management System.

– Whats is a Learning Management System (LMS)

To know more, visit our site, test the platform and understand why we are the best option for your online course.