Humans of Martech 06: The best email program you'll ever build
Gating vs ungating isn't something we're going to get into today. There's arguments to both, I prefer not gating as much as possible. But it's a necessary evil.
Always trying to be buyer centric instead of seller centric, don't push sales too much at the top of the funnel, let leads show you when they are ready.
What are some of your favorite lead magnets?
Tools, quizzes, website grader.
Email courses as the best content upgrade. Newsletter when possible but consider testing an email course offer.
The email courses are way more popular now but I remember you building the first ones at Klipfolio. What's the playbook for putting one of these together?
Step 1 - what are you teaching Go in GA, find the most popular content topic from your blog, maybe it's 4-5 blog posts.
(example transistor) How to come up with a concept, how to record, tools, how to publish, etc. Top blog posts are likely all related to how to start a podcast.
Step 2 - pillar page: Take your best content related to your topic/what you’re teaching, so for transistor, how to start a podcast - combine those posts into one big ‘pillar page’.
Step 3 - 5 lessons trim Break up the pillar page into 5 lessons and cut the fat. Really go in and highlight the key takeaways and cut the fluff.
Aim for 2-3 minute read. Make it super skimmable. Paragraph headers.
That’s pretty much it.
Last step is adding your CTA to those top blogs.So on your top pages, the ‘How to come up with a concept, how to record, tools, how to publish’ you add a CTA on those with your email course offer.
Hey instead of aimlessly reading these long blog posts on our site:
Learn how to start a podcast in 5 minutes, delivered to your inbox every morning for 5 days.
So these programs have really good engagement metrics. But blabla vanity metrics. How do email courses help companies make money?
The beauty is you can create courses for different stages of your funnel.
(example transistor) TOFU: how to start a podcast (all the steps)
Next up: MOFU: how to record edit, tools (all the tools)
Next up: BOFU: how to host/publish your podcast (tutorials using transistor). Tutorials on uploading, RSS feed, pushing to podcast apps, integrations
Next up: Free trial?
At this point, you’ve built a ton of trust and credibility with the reader. You gave them a bunch of value in a short amount of time
Okay so main points here is finding content that's already getting eye balls, connect it to other peices, then you have one big peice and your goal is cutting it up into bite sized lessons.
yeah the brevity of the lessons is what works. People are highly engaged with these emails. They are expecting them and they know it's only take 5 mins to read and they know there's insights in there.
So having done a bunch of these now. For the folks in the audience that are saying, okay cool you didn’t invent email courses, I’ve had some for years. What do you say to those people to level up their courses?
Ways to improve your courses are to ask for feedback at the end of a course.
Experiment: takeaway for each lesson, images, GIFs, get next lesson right now, homework and activities, templates, tutorials… time zone, receive at specific time.
So why do they work so well?
Quality, brevity, opt-in expectation.