A Practical Guide to Email Marketing Optimization for Online Educators

Increase your online training revenue with email marketing optimization advice from our founder and top marketing expert, Pol Cousineau.

Being in the business of helping coaches and course creators monetize their expertise, I learned pretty quickly how much email marketing can impact online revenue.

Email marketing is like an electric powerhouse that provides an incredibly high return on investment when done right…

…but when it’s bad? It’s really bad.

Even the clients who come to The Digital Navigator with a good amount of revenue often struggle to level-up their email marketing alongside their business growth.

That’s why today I want to get personal and share the two most crucial email marketing optimization best practices you can take to make sure you’re gaining year-over-year profits with your online education or coaching business. 

Together, we’ll explore when to send emails, and how to re-engage inactive subscribers without scaring them off, or causing email fatigue, plus a few other monetization tips to boost your email marketing efforts and effectiveness!

How to increase your online coaching revenue with email campaign optimization in 2 simple steps

Step One: Assess your current email marketing practices for insights on how to optimize

To start, it’s crucial to evaluate the email marketing you’re already sending. 

It may have been a while since you last checked in on your product confirmation sequences or newsletter automations, so now is the time to measure your subject lines, design, and more using the following helpful tips:

1. Optimize Subject Lines

Subject lines are the first impression your email makes, and they play a pivotal role in determining whether your email gets opened.

Think of them as the catchy headline that grabs attention in a newspaper. If your subject line is too long, you can end up leaving your readers in the dark about your message!

So the first thing you’re going to do is update all the subject lines of your existing emails!

In our experience, the best headlines are short and sweet – 52 characters or less – which prevents them from being truncated on mobile devices.

Additionally, using emojis can draw attention and increase open rates.

Place them at the start to catch the eye, and diversify the types of emojis you use to keep your emails fresh and engaging.

Master the Art of Writing Email Subjects That Actually Get Opened

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Read our free guide to get more email subject writing tips

2. Enhance Email Design

A well-designed email is like a beautifully decorated room – inviting and easy to navigate.

Good email design improves readability and engagement, making it more likely that your audience will interact with your content.

As you review your existing emails, look for indicators of good design such as fast load times, with images optimized to be less than 100KB, and a clear, simple layout that is mobile-friendly.

Update your emails to use single or two-column layouts to keep your emails clean and easy to read, and avoid using overly commercial banners in every email.

Instead, reserve them for special promotions to maintain a balance between promotional and valuable content.

Most importantly, ensure that hyperlinks are clearly visible and easy to identify, which helps guide your audience to take the desired actions.

If your Calls-to-Action need a little upgrade, go ahead and optimize these alongside email content as you go!

3. Explore other email campaign optimization strategies using our free resource kit for email marketing

Now that you’ve gone ahead and analyzed (and hopefully optimized) your current email marketing offerings, it’s time to enhance your email marketing education so you can perfect any future email marketing campaigns you create.

Below, I’ve listed a few helpful articles from our free resources library that should pave the way to total email marketing success:

Now go ahead and bookmark these in a new tab, and come back to them once you’re done with Step Two!

Step Two: Update your email automation strategy to target and re-engage existing subscribers

Sometimes, in our pursuit to gather new leads and subscribers, we forget about those who have been loyal to our content from the start.

So, to make sure you’re not forgetting about your existing subscribers, let’s check-in on a few ways you can optimize your automations so that loyal subscribers stay attentive to your content:

1. Explore other email campaign optimization strategies using our free resource kit for email marketing

Imagine you’ve just invited someone into your home. You wouldn’t ignore them, right?

A welcome email series is your chance to say, “Hey, glad you’re here!” This series introduces your brand, sets expectations, and showcases your best resources once someone has visited your online education or coaching website.

It’s also really great if you are doing email marketing for an online course!

For the email automations you write, we therefore suggest you begin with an initial email that delivers the promised content, followed by 3-5 emails that highlight your top videos, articles, and other valuable resources.

For a direct example of how this works, visit our free resources library and download one of our popular coaching or course creation checklists.

Check your inbox and read the emails we send for more hints about what to write—or just click to use our free welcome email writing template below!

Master the Art of Writing Email Subjects That Actually Get Opened

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Use our free welcome email writing template

2. Create a re-engagement and unsubscribe sequence for better email hygiene

When you want to make sure you’re reaching your target audience with your email marketing, you might be surprised at how effective it is to practice a little email housekeeping.

That’s because, over time, some subscribers might lose interest. Sending emails to people who never open them is like talking to a wall – not very effective and kind of a bummer.

It also means a ‘messy house’ when it comes to your network for good email marketing.

My suggestion? Set up a re-engagement and unsubscribe sequence to identify these ‘silent types’ and either re-engage them, or clean them from your list.

Start by detecting contacts who haven’t opened or clicked on your emails in six months. Send these contacts a series of 3-5 emails over 14 days, offering valuable resources and acknowledging that they might no longer be interested in your emails.

Then if there’s no engagement after this period, tag and unsubscribe them!

How to avoid scaring away leads and prospects with your email marketing campaigns

Yeah, it’s great to have a ton of marketing emails ready to send to your prospects…

…but you don’t want to overwhelm your leads with too much information. They won’t be able to hold it all in, and will likely end up ignoring any emails they didn’t ask for.

That’s why I’ll leave you with a few more pieces of email marketing advice I’ve learned as a coach and course creator here at The Digital Navigator:

Always test emails before you send them to subscribers

Always test your emails by sending them to a Gmail account – 83% of people likely use Gmail, so you want to see what they see.

Also make sure you’re checking email layouts on both desktop and mobile views. This helps you catch any formatting issues and ensures your emails look professional across any device.

Send your emails at the right time, on the right day

What I’ve found for coaches and course creators specifically is that the best days to send emails are Wednesdays, with Monday to Thursday also performing well.

Avoid sending emails on Saturdays and Sundays unless it’s part of a critical sales campaign. 

As well, for optimal timing, aim for 7 AM to 8 PM in your audience’s time zone, since the highest open rates are typically around 8 AM.

Oh, and always avoid sending emails after 5 PM as I’ve found open rates tend to decrease significantly by dinner time.

By this time people are done with work, and looking for more entertaining content (as opposed to educational).

Always ask for consent before sending emails

When you send emails, we suggest segmenting contact lists so you only send promo emails to those who have shown interest.

You can do this by adding contacts to certain lists based on their engagement, responses, and interests. That way, you can keep your emails feeling fresh, and avoid burning out your audience with too many promotions.

So how do you make sure your audience is consenting to receive certain types of emails?

I recommend you add a small note at the top of your emails allowing readers to opt-out of specific campaigns.

This way, they stay subscribed without getting annoyed.

Then, use a call-to-action to invite subscribers to opt-in for specific content, reducing the risk of spam complaints. For example, the bottom of our emails include an email preference form that allows subscribers to opt into different types of email marketing content or advice.

Next steps for successful email marketing campaigns and optimization

As you rinse and repeat these steps, feel free to use the following checklist to help improve your email campaigns in the future:

Then, since you’ve reviewed your email marketing and segmented your audience lists, you can begin scheduling regular website health checks related to your email marketing. 

For example, you can review the page performance of landing pages linked from email campaigns, and determine which emails are successfully drawing in the most leads from your email analytics.

If you’re finding that leads drop off once landing on that page, you can optimize it with updated text, headers, and CTAs to boost conversions outside of your email marketing platform.

Altogether, these email marketing optimizations will not only save you time and money but also turn your email campaigns into powerful engagement and conversion tools.

And remember, if you need a helping hand, I’m always here to guide you through the maze. Go ahead and book a free call and I’ll be around to help soon—no obligation necessary.

Happy emailing!