The Art of Selling Online Courses

How To Send More Emails Without Sounding Too Salesy - with Monica Badiu

• John Ainsworth • Season 1 • Episode 131

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Welcome to "The Art of Selling Online Courses" podcast! Today we talk with our team over at Data Driven Marketing so meet Monica Badiu our Copywriting Chief & Copy Coach.

Monica's passions extend across the realms of paper art, psychology, and entrepreneurship. As our in-house copywriting chief and copy coach, she brings a unique blend of creativity and strategic insight to the table.

Monica has carved a niche for herself in the world of copywriting, specializing in crafting compelling sales copy for online course creators. With her expertise, she empowers entrepreneurs to create copy that not only resonates with their ideal customers but also drives conversions. Her journey is a testament to her commitment to mastering the art of persuasive communication and helping businesses thrive in the online landscape.

Today we'll be focusing specifically on how to send email to your audience that don't sound salesy or spammy.

If you're interested in growing your online course sales and funnel optimisation contact us at https://datadrivenmarketing.co/

Check out our YouTube channel for more tips, techniques, and hacks: https://www.youtube.com/@Theartofsellingonlinecourses/videos

Speaker 1:

Do it in an email marketing setting. With the whole promotion. You have so much more space. Why are you trying to break our friendship in a public data-driven approach?

Speaker 2:

Hello and welcome to the art of selling online courses. We're here to share winning strategies and secret hacks from top performers in the online course industry. My name is John Ainsworth and today's guest is Monica Baddou. Monica is our chief copywriter, and she's a copywriting badass. She's absolutely phenomenal, and today we're going to be talking about how to keep people interested in your emails, even when you're selling. Do you get nervous about selling promotions because you think people are going to hate receiving your emails and they're going to unsubscribe? Well, fear not, monica will be helping you today.

Speaker 2:

Before we get into the meat and potatoes of today's episode, though, I've got an announcement for you. If you enjoy the tips, the techniques and the hacks that you hear on this podcast and you want to get more of them in a straight to the point condensed version, check out our YouTube channel. Every week, we turn the highlights from each episode into YouTube shorts, and the shorts feature the most potent and helpful sound bites from each episode. They're a great way to grab the one thing from each episode that will improve your business and increase your profits. Plus, of course, we've got the full versions of each episode on the channel.

Speaker 2:

Monica and I've been joking about how I've been trying to become a youtube influencer with all my fancy lighting and camera. So if you want to see this in high definition with great lighting and fantastic lenses and all this kind of stuff, then go check out the YouTube channel. We've also got a library of funnel building how-to videos. We do separate videos that don't appear on the podcast, and we share all kinds of tips and useful breakdowns as well. So if you're interested, go to datadrivenmarketingco slash youtube or, on youtube, search for the art of selling online courses and then make sure to like and subscribe to the channel so you get notified every time we release a new video, and that's going to help you to sell more courses.

Speaker 1:

Monica, welcome to the show it's great to be back and I'd add, you have to see john's awesome leather jacket.

Speaker 2:

So I'm not wearing one today well, this is the part there's lots of videos though yeah, yeah, very, very cool a variety, variety of cool leather jackets. All right, cool. So tell us what's the problem. What's, uh, what's the issue we're solving today?

Speaker 1:

so it's very easy. A lot of people. They're like if I'm gonna send sales emails, promo emails, maybe once a month, wouldn't that make my audience hate me? And with that fear in mind, it kind of propagates to the point where people just assume sales emails equal being salesy, spammy, which means your open rates are going to go down and maybe not do it even like why would you even send sales emails if it's going to impact your health? So it's like this variety of misconceptions and fears and they're justified. But we can do it in a way that doesn't impact your health. We can do it in a way that doesn't make you feel anxious about looking at your open rate.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I think that what happens is people only know how to send bad sales emails, so they don't send them very often, and except for like, okay, I'm going to do a new, a launch, a new course, it can be justified. Then on black friday, it can be justified. Then everything else can't be justified because isn't it awful to receive these kinds of emails? Isn Isn't it awful to send them? I'm not going to do it. It would be terrible and it's such a false dichotomy. It's not that you've either got to send bad, nasty, salesy sales emails or not send any. There's another option, which is send good ones, send goods. Don't send shit sales emails, send good ones.

Speaker 1:

That's the thing People don't know what good is because the standard of what they've seen in their emails is, you know, the opposite. It's like if everybody's doing it, then that's the standard. And using discounts and talking about urgency, that's kind of like the go-to approach to selling with email. But no, an email that sells doesn't have to be salesy, and in my head this is so logical, but to people who are listening it's gonna be like as vague as that idea with sell without selling yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2:

And what's really interesting is I know that there's people who've listened to like every episode of this podcast, who've listened to you talk about this kind of thing before and who still get freaked out about it. So we need this obviously as an important topic and we need to help our listener to really understand that they cannot manage to send these sales emails and write sales emails that are good, that people want to receive, people want to keep reading and will make you sales as well.

Speaker 1:

I mean this. This fear is so ingrained. One of our customers we've been working with him for six months. The results are amazing he still has this fear, this anxiety, and his promo emails they get 50 plus open rates right. So it's it's a deeply ingrained fear and I totally get it if people who are gonna listen or watch this they're gonna be like this sounds amazing, it sounds ideal, but it's like kind of not real. I don't know how I'm gonna be able to pull that out, and I'm gonna share a few tips and tricks in today's episode, because it's not as complicated as it sounds.

Speaker 2:

All right, hit us. How do we do it? What do people need to do?

Speaker 1:

Let's start with, like the boring, unsexy part.

Speaker 2:

first, Do it, let's do it. Come on, all right, buckle up. So you're listening to this. You're thinking man, what cool stuff is monica about to lay on me? There's some fundamentals, there's some stuff that you must do that actually is important, it actually works. It's like eating your greens it's the stuff that's the most effective. So just take it in, just focus on this and really listen data driven approach.

Speaker 1:

It's actually not a sexy secret, but it does imply that you use your data to influence what you write and how you write it. So this means you need to know what your customer wants, to know what they need. What are the problems, what's the context and how it's relevant, how your offer is relevant to them, to their situation right now.

Speaker 2:

Do you think that Yosip finds data sexy?

Speaker 1:

Why are you trying to rip our friendship in public? Well, I'm only going to say this His idea of like a really good puzzle is figuring out what's wrong in a spreadsheet yeah, yeah and I love that about him.

Speaker 1:

But this is actually a good point is, when we talk about data, a lot of people think we're talking about numbers, but sometimes we are. Sometimes we are, but not always yeah, not always, so it's not always percentages and benchmarks and things like that. We're talking about statistics. Maybe like 50 of our audience has this problem and then we use their data like customer language of how they talk about that problem to create like a big idea for a promotion right, and it's a whole promotion that talks about I know how to lose weight when you have, um, a toddler, I know when you have a baby or whatever, and you take that approach that one problem that comes from a data set that you have about your audience okay cool, sohmm, okay cool.

Speaker 2:

So what do people need to do? How can they take this data-driven approach?

Speaker 1:

So, first of all, you need to have a customer avatar and the customer avatar needs to be backed up by a customer language document.

Speaker 1:

Now, copywriters and most people, they only talk about the customer avatar document, which is like a portrait of who your ideal audience is. What are the pain points? You know psychographics, emotional things, all of that. But the customer language document is where you actually have that data and the way we do it. It's organized by pain point, by need, by very specific elements. So you go into that document and you just evaluate okay, what are the main three problems my audience has which is the most likely problem that would be more relevant to my audience in April and you find ways to talk about that problem, make it contextually relevant to being, I don't know, in April or upcoming summer, and then you connect the dots to your solution and that is how you use the data you have from your audience, because they give you that data willingly, either through through surveys, through comments on youtube, through replies to your emails uh, through testimonials, through questions to your customer support. So you already have that data okay, cool.

Speaker 2:

So you start off with the survey, you build out your customer avatar, you make your customer language document, you figure out what problems your audience have, you look at which of them is most relevant to be talking about now, and this is a problem obviously one of your, your products, solves. And then that's your starting point for your, for your email campaign. Is that right?

Speaker 1:

yeah, and it's a marketing process. We are not inventing this. This is actually how copywriters in advertising agencies. That's how they come up with big insights, big ideas for the tv commercials, you see. But when we do it in an email marketing setting with the whole promotion, you have so much more space and time to talk about the problem in depth. And the thing with this is that when somebody sees you talk about the problem they're struggling with, that makes you relatable and it positions you as an authority. Because you're talking about the problems they have, you're giving them more information about it and obviously everybody wants to know more about themselves.

Speaker 2:

That's like step one knowing the problems right, knowing and using data to make sure that the problem you're talking about actually exists before you go on to step two, I just want to have you ever read scientific advertising I started, but I haven't so scientific advertising I know you know this but, like for everybody listening is a book from 1921 I think, and it was written by a guy who worked in direct response marketing, um, and ran an ad agency or worked in an ad agency, and it lays out how like, precise and scientific the whole process of marketing can be. And it's like this is over a hundred years ago. This whole process was figured out now. They didn't have email back then. They would have been using probably direct mail for following up with their, with their audience, instead of email. So obviously it was a lot more expensive. You couldn't send things out the same way, you couldn't have a series of emails go out, a series of letters go out the same way as you send out a series of emails. But the process was basically figured out.

Speaker 2:

And as you read through that or there's another one, um, I should remember if it's breakthrough advertising or which one it is there's like three like seminal marketing books, but something from like the 50s or something like that, and it lays out like in detail how you figure out like what the problem is and how important it is to understand the problem that exists in the market.

Speaker 2:

Not try and create demand yourself, but understand what untapped demand your product is going to solve, and like how to be absolutely sure that you've got the correct levels in terms of demand and everything like this stuff was figured out a long time ago, but but most people like listening now, right, you don't know about this. So if you haven't read dozens of old marketing books, you haven't taken a marketing qualification. That's why we're here today, right, to try and help you understand what this process is and understand this is the way that this works. Okay, so we've got this first step. We've got data-driven approach. We want to know what the customer wants, to know what they need, and then we, we find, figure that out through the customer avatar survey, the customer language document. We pick a problem. We choose that as your angle for the whole, for the whole email sequence. Okay, so what's next?

Speaker 1:

So the next step is showing them a problem they didn't know they have because of the problem they know they have.

Speaker 2:

Oh, okay, okay, wait a minute. So they're aware of a problem in their life and then that's then creating another level down in terms of a problem. So why do you need those two levels?

Speaker 1:

Because I already know my back hurts but I'm not doing much to solve the problem right. But if I knew that because of my back pain there are other problems, maybe I'm at a higher risk for some kind of a disease, or my position is actually I don't know damaging my social status, I don't know. Something along those lines.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1:

Then you're basically creating an urgency type of situation. They have to pay attention because you're telling them something that is important, and they had no idea that this problem that they have been ignoring for so long is actually impacting other areas of their life. Right, because they already know the problem, they've spent so much time Googling for a solution. That's how they ended up on your email list. But, you didn't buy your product.

Speaker 2:

Got it. So this is the agitation phase, right? This is like if anybody's heard me talk about email marketing or heard me and monica riff on this before the the sequence that we recommend is problem agitation, solution, gain, logic, fear, frequently asked questions, future casting, going, going, gone. That's the whole 11 email sequence over two weeks. They each serve a really distinct purpose. The first step that monica was talking about in terms of find a problem that your product solves and bring that to life and focus on that as the angle. That's the problem email.

Speaker 2:

And now we're talking about the agitation email, which is trying to help people understand how is this affecting their life in ways that they don't even realize, like you know it, but they don't know it, so you're able to add insight to them and they might go. Oh, maybe that's why these people are responding to me in this way, because I've got poor posture and I look like I am not so competent. You know I'm pulling this out of my ass at the moment, right, I don't know if this is having a bad back affects you in this way, but let's just say, for sake of argument, if you've got bad back and it gives you poor posture, then it makes other people think that you are, you know, less competent as a person, and they don't know that that's an issue, but they, they. If you bring that to life and let them know about that, they go. Oh well, I really need to solve this then, and you're not like creating this problem. That problem exists in their life, they just don't know it. They haven't seen that themselves.

Speaker 1:

Consciously, they're not aware of it, and you're helping them to understand that exactly and that makes them curious, like it makes them pay attention, because you're kind of bringing something new to the whole issue, right, and it's not the same old thing that everybody else is telling them. This potentially could be like the first time they've ever heard about it and it's the first time that they can connect the dots between this problem and then this other problem. Yeah, and that opens them to the solution email, which is often, for me it's a more like a mindset thing rather than okay, pragmatic, because again, we're talking about you have this problem, this first layer problem that you know about, and then I introduced you to a second layer problem that you didn't know about. And then here's how to find some relief and final shift, perspective.

Speaker 1:

And then I start the promotion series and the promo emails. They follow the same idea where I, like I talk about the discount very, very little. It's 20% of the time I spend in an email or in an email promotion. It's focusing on the discount. The 80% of it is in explaining like, in delivering this data-driven approach, in sharing the insights that I found, sharing this new perspective shift that they might not know about because everybody is kind of regurgitating the very same things right and from from the moment we got ChatGPT, everybody started to delivering the same kind of fluff. So it's actually necessary for you to take your emails beyond this like generic stuff, if you want to stand out and if you want to deliver value, if you want to deliver something useful to your audience.

Speaker 2:

Got it All right, cool. So we've talked about the pain and agitation solution emails. Are the other emails part of this process as well, in terms of making the sales emails something that people want to receive? Okay, cool, great.

Speaker 1:

Almost every email is backed by data, and one of those either it's the problem highlighted in the first problem, or agitation email. So here are three mistakes you're making right now with your I know workout routine, and then I link it to the course or the solution we teach. Here's how to solve it. It could be about misconceptions they have about how they're trying to solve the problem or how other people have taught them to solve the problem. Like that could be like the fear email, and then again I shift perspective and introduce them to and there's this whole new way people are solving this very same problem. Go check it out yeah.

Speaker 1:

And then in the last emails of the promo. That's where I maybe talk more about the product itself. That's where I bring out the discount, the countdowns. But even there you don't necessarily have to just make it about the urgency and about the discount. You can go back into what you know about the problem. They have, what they've tried to do to solve the problem and just tackle those fears, tackle those misconceptions again. And that's a very powerful approach to selling something with email, versus having eight emails that talk about an expiring discount yeah, it's so boring, isn't it?

Speaker 1:

I see a lot of them and, yeah, like that's your let's say, that's your starting point. So when you have to write a promotion for your product, I mean that's the easiest thing you know to do and that's what you're gonna do and it's gonna work once, or for black friday or one year when you do a launch. But if you want to monetize your email list regularly, you have to take it like beyond that all right, cool.

Speaker 2:

so what? Some of the places that people are going to get stuck with this? Let's see what we can do to help them. So so okay, someone's heard this right. They're like're like yes, I'm on board, monica, I want to write great emails. I get the overall framework, I've got my 11 email framework, but like what? Do you see, what's the issues people get stuck with?

Speaker 1:

Well, one of the easiest things to have in mind when writing these emails is answering this question. It's a very simple one what's in it for the reader? Why should they pay attention to what you have to say? I mean, the discount is nice, like you are going to get some people to open that email, but are they actually going to click and buy? Chances are they won't. And because if you start with, like a subject line that talks about the discount, that's what the majority of people are doing, so it's possible that they're gonna look at your email and say, okay, so this is a sale. They label it in their brain. I'll maybe get back to it when I have time or, I know, when I feel like it, but that's all there is to that email a discount. It doesn't lead with anything of value to your audience. You're not solving any problems for them. You're not helping them see life from a different perspective.

Speaker 1:

You're just telling them I have something for sale, buy it yeah, yeah so keep that in mind, what's in it for the customer and remember that the like having a discount that is the smallest nudge possible. And we live in a world where smallest nudge possible. And we live in a world where everybody who has internet and a phone, they can get almost anything they want online. So if your market talks about discounts, like the majority of time, and you do the same thing, you're not going to stand out.

Speaker 2:

If you want to stand out and you really have a mission, to deliver impact with your course and actually help people then go the other way. Gotcha, all right, cool, so let's take. Let's take an example. So somebody is selling a course about what should we? Let's, let's do something nice and simple we've done lots of times. Before they're taking a course about IELTS, let's say, right, so the IELTS course to prove that they can speak English to a certain level. What might the pain point be?

Speaker 1:

they are either afraid that they're gonna fail at that exam, they know that they have to study, but they don't really feel like it because they think it's going to be boring. They think that they have enough resources to actually pass the exam. So that's like the surface level problems, right, that are some of the pain points. Now, the underlying problems could be the more time you wait, the more you're going to miss out on things. Maybe a better job moving to another country, interacting with locals, tree interacting with locals. Another pain point could be the more time you spend using free resources to prepare for the exam, the less progress you're going to make, because free resources aren't necessarily following an organized structure Like you do this and you do this and you do this. Three hours have passed, you've spent them on YouTube and do you know more stuff? No, so another underlying problem could be you're not learning from someone who actually has experience with IELTS exams, right, so you're just randomly learning stuff, but that's not necessarily going to help you pass that exam, because you're not learning the exact things. A lot of people who are doing it for the first time. Until they actually have the experience of the exam, they don't really know what it is they're supposed to prepare, how it's going to happen. So they're very relaxed about it, thinking well, everybody's learning English right now. Why wouldn't I be able to pass that exam with flying colors? I mean, I watch movies and TV shows in English, even though I might use like a caption or whatever, and then, because they don't understand the difference, they're going to fail that exam. And the problem with it is that you have to pay to take it the second time. So are you willing to invest that potential cost in that, when you could be preparing for your exam right now without spending time on random resources online, without risking showing up unprepared because you don't understand the formality of the exam? Or would you even risk just learning from some random guy who's like in their 20s and they have a British accent? Random guy who's like in their 20s and they have a British accent, or you know?

Speaker 1:

So you have to tackle these objections and problems and misconceptions that people have, and I'm sure there are deeper, underlying problems to the surface problem. You could even talk about what they're missing out in terms of jobs and financial opportunities. So if you live in the UK and you want to get a job, you are going to need that certification to probably get access to better paying jobs. You can position things that say studies have found that non-natives who have this certification are earning, on average, 30% more than people who don't have this certification right. So the problem to the initial problem is that you're actually missing out on better wages. Is that you're actually missing out on better wages or, I know feeling awkward, we're talking to natives. Maybe there's some saying or some study that says I know British people, they love foreigners and they welcome them, but if you want to feel like you're part of the community, you actually have to know what it is that they're saying.

Speaker 2:

When they're saying some I know old saying monica's referring to the fact that I have a tendency to use expressions from the 1800s yeah, bob's your uncle, many a mickle makes a muckle. Let's, we're all off to the races. All kinds of stuff that I say.

Speaker 1:

Yeah that's the thing, and you can actually go a few layers deeper. So let's say you have a segment on your email list and you know that the majority of people there are not actually in london. There may be in brutal areas of england or in areas where the accent is so thick and the sayings are so like regional that you actually need help with that right.

Speaker 2:

Yeah.

Speaker 1:

So how do you apply the speaking skills you have to a regional area of England and how not being able to do that is going to impact you on a personal level, on an educational level, on a financial level. So you're going all these layers deeper and you're basically agitating the problem that you have. It's not as comfortable as it initially appears.

Speaker 2:

Okay, cool, so that's our problem. And agitation emails. So what, then, might be the solution?

Speaker 1:

Well, the solution could be let's see. So maybe you want a job, right, and you need that YELTS exam and you've tried stuff before and you need that YELTS exam and you've tried stuff before, like spending 10 hours on YouTube each week trying to learn whatever the solution could be. How about we just don't do that? Because here's why this randomized learning is actually killing your progress, and what you need is actually structure. And what you need is actually structure, and studies have shown that people who follow a structured roadmap to preparing for this exam have 80% higher chances of actually getting past it roadmap. And you're actually committed to passing your exam this year, then make sure you watch out for my next email, which is coming tomorrow morning, and it's going to reveal how 10 000 people, just like you, were able to pass their exam on their first try or whatever.

Speaker 2:

Something like that yeah, beautiful, all right, cool. So hopefully, as you're listening to this, you're thinking okay, I get this, I get the concept of how each of these different emails fits together. If you think you know what, I kind of get it, but I'm missing a certain point. Whatever, email us and we will record a podcast episode to try and explain that step in more detail. Explain that step in more detail. John at data driven marketingco, just drop me an email and we will happily record a future episode to go into more detail on whatever areas you guys want to hear about. A listener messaged me the other day about tripwire funnels and was telling me how she has listened to our episode about tripwire funnels. She's built a tripwire funnel. She wants to optimize it. Can we record an episode about that? So my plan is, with joseph, we're going to go through and have a discussion about tripwire funnels and how to optimize them.

Speaker 2:

So we're here to serve you guys and to help you to learn how to improve your funnels and make more money, sell more courses. So just let us know what you want to hear about. All right, monica, so we've gone through overall the overall concept. We want a data-driven approach. So let's go back to the very beginning.

Speaker 2:

People are nervous about sending out sales emails because they're kind of worried they're going to be rubbish and they're going to be salesy and spammy and people are going to unsubscribe and they'll hate them and their life will be terrible and the universe is awful. So they don't send them and instead we're suggesting well, why not send good emails that people actually want to receive, that help them and are useful even if they don't buy, and they move people towards buying? So it does both things at once and in fact, we've got a client who you write emails for, who's got his sales emails. His sales emails receive over a 50% open rate, never mind the promote, the, the content emails, the sales emails receiving over a 50% open rate. And so the overall approach we're trying to take is have a data-driven approach. So we need to do a customer avatar survey with customer language document.

Speaker 2:

Pick the problem. That's the angle, that's our starting point, that's our problem. Agitation solution is based around that problem. We're always within every email wanting to look at what's in it for the customer. The discount's nice, but we want to have that as the smallest nudge possible. We want to focus on what is it that we can do to help this person improve their life? And then we're running through the whole framework problem, agitation solution, gain, logic, fear, frequently asked questions, future casting, going, going, going emails, all of those and we've covered today in particular the pain, agitation solution ones. And then we're given an example about the IELTS course to try and bring that to life and show what might you include in each of those emails. And you even kind of were almost writing copy out loud for a little bit there in terms of that solution email and what you might go through. Is there anything else that we need to cover today to help people to understand what they need to do here?

Speaker 1:

I only want to add that sales emails don't have to be salesy to sell. It's so easy Before you actually get to the sell. You need to drive curiosity, you need to have your reader's attention. You need that reader to say okay, that sounds like it's for me. And when they go to the sales page they are already primed for looking at your offer from a whole different perspective. They're already going on that sales page with the idea that I might buy this. Let me see what else is there, versus oh, I get a discount, let's see what this is for. And they go to the sales page oh, I get a discount, let's see what this is for. And they go to the sales page. They just like scroll, scan a little bit and then they just disappear because you haven't really ignited their curiosity. It's like what's in it for me? Just a discount. Everybody's throwing discounts at me.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, brilliant, fantastic. Monica, thanks so much for coming on today and sharing your wisdom and helping everybody to write better sales emails, which is incredibly important. Oh my God, please listen to this. Send good sales emails and send them every month and make lots of sales and then tell us about how great it was. If you found the interview useful and you want to get future episodes, subscribe wherever you listened. And if you are listening to this as a podcast and you haven't checked out our YouTube channel, then go and check it out. It's really, really good.

Speaker 2:

We're putting a lot of work into it to make it really fantastic for you guys. We've got the video episodes of the podcast. We've got shorts where we've pulled out specific clips from it. We've got shorts that are just recorded specifically about different topics. We've got long form stuff where we're going to more detail, doing funnel teardowns. We did one about um jordan peterson's 12 million dollar funnel the other day and showing what's good and what's not good about it. So go and check out the youtube channel. Um, either go to youtube and search for the art of selling online courses, or you can just put into your browser datadrivenmarketingco slash youtube. Either way, it will take you there. Thanks so much, monica, and thanks so much for listening today.