How to create your 1st free or paid email course in a single weekend [template included]

Updated: August 06, 2024

16 min read

What is an email course?

An email course is a series of emails sent out over a period of time that teach readers about a specific topic. Each email typically contains one lesson, and all those emails/lessons together form your course.

Email courses can either be free or paid. Free email courses are often used as a lead magnet to grow your email list or as easy entry points to later pitch big products. Paid email courses are digital products that customers must purchase to access.

Why you should opt for an email course (paid or free)

It’s difficult to sell products to someone who doesn’t know you.

A free email course provides a good opportunity to showcase your industry knowledge, provide value, and build trust from the first encounter.

As your audience becomes more engaged, a paid email course is a relatively low-effort way to earn your living online.

Email courses, whether paid or free, also allow you to appeal to new and pre-existing subscribers without breaking the bank. Instead of investing a lot of time and budget in a full-blown online course, an email course is a small step towards a profitable course business.

Here are a few other reasons why email courses are sometimes better than full-blown online courses:

The high conversion power of email courses: Email has always been a high-converting channel. According to Kit’s State of the Creator Economy Report, 1 in 4 full-time creators report the highest engagement through email. Email courses are no different—they feel personal, connect with your audience, convert well, and help you meet your email marketing KPIs.
Showcase your knowledge and personality: Because email has that personal feel, you can show off your teaching style, personality, and subject authority. When it’s over, readers will feel like they can trust you as a teacher and a person—and they’ll want to keep coming back.
Leverage email courses for list building: With email courses, all your course sign-ups are also additions to your overall email list. The bigger your list gets, the more people you have to pitch new products and courses to in the future.
The low-risk nature of email courses: When you’re not spending huge chunks of your time or your budget on high-quality assets and course platform features, it’s easier to recoup if your email course doesn’t do as well as you had hoped it would.
Scheduled lessons for a customized experience: Rather than putting all your lessons out at the same time, email courses allow you to send each lesson out over a period of time. This prevents overwhelm and gives your students more time to digest the lessons at their own pace.
Balance course enrollment and content generation: If you can’t fathom writing all your content in a time crunch, no problem. Since your email course is released gradually, you don’t need to have all your emails written and ready to go before offering them to your audience. Just make sure you’re done writing in time to share that installment!

Our 7-step guide on how to build the perfect email course anatomy

Step #1: Select the right teaching topic

Your chosen topic should target your audience’s pain points and benefit your business at the same time. It should also be a subject matter that lends itself well to an email course structure—something you can teach largely over text for a defined time period.

For example, if you run a knitting blog, you could create an email course teaching readers to create three beginner knitting patterns. A personal finance blogger could build an email course walking readers through creating their first budget in six emails.

Step #2: Map out your free or paid email course structure

Next, set up your course “curriculum.” Decide how often you’ll send out the emails, how long they’ll be, and how much you’ll tackle with each email. The key is to choose a system that makes your course easier to consume.

It’s best to space out your emails but not so far apart that the reader forgets all about the course before the next email.

There’s no hard and fast rule about how many emails should be included in an email course or even how long each email can be. It depends on what it will take to get your point across to your reader.

Example of email course lead magnet structure

If you’re planning to create a free email course, here’s a sample course structure that includes the opportunity to highlight your other digital products or services. You can adjust the schedule to fit the length of your course.

Course enrollment confirmation email: Send an email immediately after readers sign up to confirm their enrollment.

Welcome email: Your welcome email should introduce you, highlight your expertise, and tell readers what to expect from the course. Share what they will learn with each email, confirm how long the course will last, and how you expect they will benefit by the end of the course.

Course email 1

Course email 2

Check-in email: Leave a quick message to see how students feel about the course. This is a great opportunity to connect with especially engaged readers and get feedback about the course.

Course email 3

Course email 4: You’re nearing the end of the course. This is a great time to share related products and services that readers might be interested in.

Course email 5: Last day of the course. Add a call to action to promote your main related product or service. Also, share how often readers can expect to receive your newsletters going forward.

Last pitch: About 2-3 days after your free course, check in to see if any hesitant subscribers might be ready to try your other products or paid course. Using urgency tactics like a countdown timer or a limited-time discount might entice some in your audience.

Example of paid email course structure

A paid course is similar to a free email course but with a few key differences.

This time, you’re rendering a paid service, not simply providing a peek into your expertise. Lean into that, and don’t be afraid to include additional assets like downloadable worksheets and short videos.

Here’s a sample structure:

Course enrollment confirmation email: Send an email immediately after readers sign up to confirm their enrollment.

Course email 1

Course email 2

Check-in email: Leave a quick message to see how students feel about the course.

Course email 3

Course email 4

Course email 5

Course email 6: You’re nearing the end of the course. This is a great time to gather more feedback and see what can be improved in future versions of the course.

Course email 7: Last day of the course. Add a call to action for readers to share testimonials about how they’ve benefited from the course.

Step #3: Write the content + download our email course templates

Email course content is much shorter than online course content.

Each lesson should be easily digestible, take only a few minutes to read, and end with a solid, actionable step your students can take (a writing prompt, a personal challenge, a worksheet to fill out, etc.).

There are two ways to find content for your course:

Use and transform existing content

If you already have a blog, you can reuse your old blog posts to create your email course. Just find specific blog posts that have done well and pull them together to create a course—like you’re creating an eBook.

Don’t have pre-existing content?

If you don’t have a blog or content ready to pull from, we’ve created a series of email templates for you to model your email course off of. These are very generic but should give you a good idea of what type of emails and content you should include in your for-purchase email course.

Download email templates to help you create your course

Tips on how to write email course content

Here are a couple of quick tips for writing your email course:

Email course subject lines

Work hard to write engaging subject lines. A catchy subject line can differentiate between your students participating and having super low open rates.

Your subject line should include the lesson number and highlight the lesson content. This will help your reader organize their inbox if they miss a few days.

For example, Janssen Bradshaw of Everyday Reading has a free Raising Readers email course with five lessons. She adds the lesson number and title to each subject line.

Janssen Bradshaw’s free email course is easy to find and organize in inboxes

Format of email course lessons

Don’t be salesy.

Your email course should not be self-promotional until the very end. By then, you know that the reader has made it all the way through your course and has a certain level of interest in your topic.

At that point, you can direct them to another of your products you think they would be interested in. But before that, your main action is to provide value on top of value.

Stick with simple sentences and short paragraphs, and use headings to break up text. This will help your student skim through your lesson to see how much is expected of them that day. It will also help them stay focused as they read and work through it.

Janssen sticks with short paragraphs and bolds main sections for emphasis

Step #4: Set your email course delivery on autopilot

Since an email course is essentially a series of emails, you’ll start building your course by creating a new Sequence in Kit.

How to create an email course sequence with Kit

Select Sequences from the top navigation menu

Click the Create Sequence button. Next, you’ll need to choose a template for your Sequence.

Paste your course content into the Sequence builder. Name your sequence by clicking the pencil icon in the top left corner of the builder. Then click +Add Email to create more emails for each lesson as you go

You can easily rearrange the emails by dragging them to the right order if you change your mind later.

Remember to Save Order after re-ordering. Then time out the content for your email course. You can choose when the Sequence will start to go out and how many days should elapse before the next email is delivered.

Toggle the Published button to make your Sequence live.

Next, it’s time to choose your settings. The Settings tab in the top right corner is where you can:

Change the name of your email course
Set which days you want/don’t want your emails to send
Set your timezone
Exclude subscribers from your email course

Finally, click Update Sequence to save all your changes.

Best practices for automated email course sequences

Here are some best practices to keep in mind:

Send the first email immediately after sign-up: Getting them the first lesson or at least a welcoming email helps the subscriber know that know their confirmation has gone through and is a great way to start delivering value from the very beginning.
Choose a suitable interval duration: Consider how long it will take your students to read, digest, and take action on the material. Most email courses are sent over a period of one to two weeks, but there’s no reason why yours can’t be longer or shorter than that. You could do a lesson a week, a lesson every three days, or if you’re simply giving information, one lesson a day will work.

Step #5: Make your paid email course a digital product

If your email course is a free lead magnet, you can skip this step!

Now that you have everything set up in Kit for your email course, it’s time to set it up as a digital product with Kit Commerce.

In your Kit account, click the Products tab and select “New Product.”

Give your product a name and price and click “Next.” Next, you can add your custom domain.

Click “Create Product.”

From there, you can customize your product page with images, headlines, body text, color, etc. You can also continue to customize the Check Out page, the Confirmation page, and the Receipt they receive from you after they purchase your course.

Once done customizing, click “Save.”

When you’re ready to share your product, link “Publish,” and you’ll see the link you can share with your audience to opt into your email course.

Finally, let’s connect your product page to your email course.

Go to Automate > Visual Automations. Click “Visual Automations” and click “New Automation.”

Choose “Purchase,” and under the All integrations drop-down, choose Commerce.

Then choose your new product page from the drop-down menu and click “Add Event.”

Click (+) under your first automation event, click “Action,” and click Email Sequence.
Choose the email course you’ve already created, and your automation will be set. Just set it from “Paused” to “On,” and you are live.

Step #6: Design a stunning email course landing page + bring everything together

Now that your email course is set up, it’s time to create a landing page where your subscribers can opt-in to it. See the steps for creating a simple landing page with Kit.

Keep in mind that your landing page will be different depending on whether your email course is free or paid.

Landing page for an email course lead magnet

Your lead magnet is designed to build your mailing list, not to make sales. It is hosted on a lead generation landing page which has the main goal of attracting potential customers to give you their contact information in exchange for free resources like your email course.

After setting up your landing page, you’ll need to connect it to your Sequence so that when users opt in, they can start receiving emails immediately. Here’s what to do:

Go to Automate > Visual Automations and select “New Automation”
You can use one of the templates or start from scratch
Click Start from scratch > click Start Building
Select “When Subscriber Joins a Form” and select your new landing page from the drop-down options
Click the + button directly below and select the action to add the subscriber to an “Email Sequence”
Select your free course Sequence, and you’re set!

Be sure to test that your Sequence and automation are working by signing up on the landing page yourself to confirm.

Landing page for a paid email course

Unlike the free course landing page, this landing page has one main objective: to make a sale. This means it’s designed to be a sales page. Sales pages often have longer copy, testimonials, and a purchase link to complete the transaction.

You’ll need to link your paid email course’s landing page to the Kit Commerce product you created in Step #5. Here’s how to do it:

Go to Automate > Visual Automations and select “New Automation”
You can use one of the templates or start from scratch
Click Start from scratch > click Start Building
Select “when a subscriber purchases a product” and select your new landing page from the drop-down options
Select the paid email course product in the drop-down
Click the + button directly below and select the action to add the subscriber to an “Email Sequence”
Select your free course Sequence, and you’re set!

Again, be sure to test your brand-new paid course before sharing it with your audience.

Step #7: Don’t forget to promote your email course

Besides sharing it on your website, spread the word on social media and, of course, to your mailing list. Whether free or paid, your email course is a sure way to grow your email list.

Create your email course this weekend

It may seem like a lot of work, but once you get started, you’ll be surprised how quickly your email course can come together. Just remember, you don’t have to be an expert on your topic as long as you can create a course that someone else can find value in.

So take the pressure off yourself and have fun with it. It’s exciting to start building a new income stream for your online business. Get started today and sign up to Kit for free.

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