Email course lead magnets are outdated. Were you thinking of generating leads with email course lead magnets? Just think otherwise.
While the whole world thinks that it’s one of the best types of lead magnets around, it really isn’t (at least not entirely). There’s a twist to creating email course lead magnets for it to work well. There’s a way to future-proof your email course lead magnet strategy (Read on to the end to find out).
From a strategic point of view, email course lead magnets do make sense. They are easier to create, quick to launch, and you can go to market faster than anything else. Perhaps they make more sense than creating short (one-page) PDFs, checklists, or other types of lead magnets.
Using email courses as lead magnets is a fantastic email marketing strategy and you should do it. Just not the way you thought you’d do it.
Read:
15 Ways to Create a High-value Lead Magnet in 30 Minutes or less (No Tech Skills Required)
Email courses — which you’d focus on a single topic with the aim of enabling learning through emails dripped in sequence, spread out over a period of few days (such as 7 days email course, 14 days email course, or a 28 days email course) — will include only text, text + visuals, or text + videos.
From a digital marketing perspective, email courses as lead magnets not only make sense from a lead magnet point of view but also from the point of view of lead nurturing. Just the fact that you’d continuously send emails to your subscribers allows an open communication window with built-in nurturing over the next few days as soon as your subscribers sign up for the course.
Thinking into the future though, email course lead magnets will lose their sheen.
If all that you’d send is a bunch of emails with just text and/or images, there are problems that you’d need to think through:
The Email — As a Medium — Is not for Teaching or Training
There’s only so much value you can provide with 7 different emails (with text and images) sent out over a period of time. The nature of email is such that there’s no space for you to train or teach in an email. Sending out an email with 250+ words is already too much.
Visuals barely make it through the Gmail (or other email clients) filter.
Teaching and training — especially for online course creators, bloggers, and even businesses — need more words, more space, and a lot more wiggle room. Whereas some of the best emails in the world are short, crisp, succinct, and straight, your emails will be unwieldy if you send in 1600 words (along with visuals) in an email body.
There are better ways to teach online courses, memberships, and to create digital downloads. Email courses are really boring compared to these new ways, eh?
Read:
Choosing the right Online Platform: WordPress Vs Podia Vs Webflow Vs Shopify
Email Course Lead Magnets Are Risky
Purely from a “method of teaching” perspective, emails sent as lessons are risky.There are considerable risks that regular emails already carry on their shoulders as Kayla Carmichael of HubSpot points out.
For instance, chances are that you’d not be using personalization within your emails and that already puts up your email marketing to fail. On top of that, there are other risks such as not complying with GDPR standards, sending out emails without proper thought to UX/UI, poor email design, and more.
When it’s so easy to actually create a full-blown course and host it with a tool like Podia, why do you have to take the risk with an email course?
Email Courses Aren’t a Complete Learning experience
You have a personality and that’s what really makes your courses unique. If there were 10 different courses on Quora Ads, the only reason why my Quora Ads course can sell is only attributed to how I teach the course, the examples I use (which come from my own experiences in life and in business), and my unique style of teaching.
There are lots of courses on freelancing, right? But there’s a reason why this Freelancer course from Webflow is such a joy to watch and learn from — as I said, personality, content, and some fun.
There’s no way on earth you can throw in all this personality, pack in a punch, provide value, or make heads spin with just a few words and text within your email course lead magnets.
Conclusion: What’s the Twist then? How do you make email course lead magnets work?
Use video.
That’s what.
Worried about using video? I started using video. If I can, anyone can.
Stop sending out email courses with just a few lessons with text or with text and visuals in them. You can follow every sweet thing that Taylor Barbieri advocates in her post on Why You Should Offer Email Courses, along with Tips and Tools.
Just do it with video. Send out email courses with videos in each of the emails. Video goes a long way to help you add value. Video is the way you’d want to grow your business.
In fact, you can take a look at some really popular & successful email courses, get inspired, and prepare your own email course lead magnets with video inside.
It’s another thing that you can use video in several other ways (such as video prospecting)
Read:
Fantastic Tools for Video (Prospecting & More)
All of these videos you create, you can use them to build your own YouTube Channel (and then get traffic from your Channel to have people sign up for your course. Or you could actually monetize your videos without relying on YouTube
You can slice and dice it your way. Mix and match. Play.
Whatever you do, don’t forget to build your email course lead magnets with video in them.