How to create an EMAIL COURSE with ACTIVECAMPAIGN

hey this mix here and in this tutorial I want to show you how you can create an email course inside active campaign so we're going to set up lessons and then also a three-day limited time offer and those who will be all sent automatically to the participants of your email course so it's going to be really cool it's also going to be a bit tacky but I'll make sure to go slow I will explain everything step by step and in the description below I will also put some handy resources so let's dive in so first I want to talk about why you should create an email course and all maybe you're still a bit doubting about it you're not sure he should go this path so I want to give you a few quick reasons so the first maybe obvious reason is that by drawing an email course you will grow your email list and an email list obviously is really important for any kind of online business so even if they do not convert during your free email course you can still email them later on maybe they will work along for a while and then still purchase something so email list is like a really good asset for your online business now the second reason is that you establish trust because people buy from people they trust and because you share a lot of value in your email course they see like hey he knows what he's talking about I trust this person like he's giving so much away for free now then the third reason is that he also creates demands for your product so they learn in your email course basically what they do not know yet so instead of coming across your product or service and there will be asking themselves like why would I need this they're like whoa like there's so much I do not know yet I really need this now I think that's really huge also so if then in the end of your course you pitch like a nice offer you will see great conversions better than okay let's dive in so first I want to talk about why you should create an emo course at all maybe you're still a bit doubting about this so I want to give you a few quick reasons not the first reason maybe with obvious is that you will grow your email list and an email list is really important for any kind of online business so even if they do not convert during your email course you can still email them later on maybe they were like lurk along for a while and then it will maybe still purchase something so an email list is like a really important asset now the second reason is that you establish trust and people buy from people they trust now why do you establish the trust is because you share value to these people and you show that you're an expert on the subject so instead they come across your product on the Internet and they'll be like I don't really know anything about this person or does he really is really an expert in this you can show that during your email course now the third reason is that secure yet demands for your product so people they'll basically learn what they do not know yet so instead of asking themselves why would I need this they'll be like there's so much I do not know yet I really need this so you can basically show them why people would need your product or service and then the fourth reason which i think is really cool is that you can completely how you made it so instead of sending a bunch of random emails you can completely automate it you cannot create a whole sequence of emails that you're going to send out in a specific order that are tailored to get someone to grab their wallet basically right and because it's automated I also wrote it down here is that it's consistent and that's really important with marketing so it's important to be consistent in the eyes of prospect that they are like getting consistent emails from you but it's also great because if every email is the same and delivered on the same moment it's really easy to track how it's performing so as you can see like this step maybe after the third lesson for example a lot of people are dropping off I should improve something so that's really really cool now what are we going to build in this tutorial so we're going to create a free five lesson email course that is fully automated so we're going to make it evergreen so that people can follow it whenever they want so there's no set start date or whatever they just submit the forum and it will start the course right away it's going to be automated I already mentioned this a few times so every email will be sent automatically and people this is really cool I think can choose when they want to receive the next lesson so we're going to ask in the end of each email lesson do you want to receive the next lesson right now or tomorrow and I think this is really cool a little bit more about that later but this is gonna really give like an engagement boost because if people are like engaged now why would you not let them continue to the next lesson right and what I also really wanted to include in this emo course is or in this tutorial is an authentic limited time offer so we're going to add a special offer at the end of the course that is really authentic so we're not going to say okay this is fellas for the next three days and then after day four or five or six whenever they can still access the offer because I think that's really sneaky so we're going to use a tool called deadline funnel to make sure our limited time offers are authentic that we're not shrieking people after day three we are going to automatically redirect these people to a page that tells them like hey sorry you're too late so the course outline that I like to use looks like this so first they get like a welcome email just like a short introduction about yourself what they're about to learn and then we also ask them hey would you like to receive the first lesson right now or tomorrow now then we have the first lesson in the end of the first lesson again we ask would you like to receive the next lesson right now or tomorrow now and so on and so on and so on and then in lesson five we tell them about our offer so they fill out the whole course they opened all the emails are still engaging so we're going to tell them like hey if you want to learn more about this if you want to dive deeper then I have this cool three day limited time offer now and then we look just going to stop there because we want to keep reminding them about that deadline so the first day after lesson five we're going to send a bonus lesson with something cool something that says like blah blah blah you here is something really cool that I learned something that like yeah we really complementary to the course and then in the end you say oh and just so you know you know you still have two days to get my offer now then one day later so one day before the deadline we send like a cool story you can basically send anything there just something that's relevant something that's valuable and then in the end again of that email you like hey just so you know you still have one day you have until tomorrow until my offer automatically expires get it now here click click click now and then on the last day we're going to send a bunch of emails so in the morning we're going to set an email that just tells I'm like hey today is the last day be sure to get it before midnight then we send another email in the afternoon that says your questions answered which is basically an email about frequently asked questions and then in the evening we send a last chance email and this last chance email is really important because most of the sales that you're going to get you will see are going to be with this last chance email because when you're going to tell people like hey you still have four or like three hours left then people can not like postpone this any longer they have to make a decision right now and then last but not least for the people who did not purchase the offer we're going to send a do you hate me email so I did not come up with this myself a family somewhere else in the Internet and I thought it was really cool so it's basically everyone would listen by we're going to send an email to sip yaks do you hate me and then inside the email just like something like huh you do not really hate me right but I noticed you did not purchase my offer I just wanted to know why so that I can learn from that and that's also exactly why you send it not to convert them but to get to know like hey what was holding this person back so enough talking or we will do more talking but I also want to do some building with you that's probably why you are here so the tools that we are going to use our active campaigns so that's our email service provider with active campaign we're going to send all the emails and then we're also going to use deadlines funnel that's a really cool tool to create authentic deadlines they use a bunch of tracking methods to make sure that as soon as their unique deadline expired that they cannot access the deal anymore so these are really cool tools I will also put two affiliate links in the description in case you want to help me out because I get a small commission for that now then we're going to dive into the automation so you can either build with me what you can import the example in the description below so what we're about to build I already built I already created like an export and you can just like with a few clicks import that into active campaign so you can either open a new blank automation and create with me or you can import that example and then you can just watch the video to see how it works so let's dive into this so I already started with creating the automation because I wanted to add the emails because it always takes very very long and it was very boring to watch so these are the emails that we just talked about right those are these emails so we have a welcome email than less than one till five a bonus lesson a cool story an email about the last day that the offer is valid your questions answered and your last chance and later on we are going to add do you hate me email so obviously we do not want to send all these emails at once but I always recommend people just throw all your emails in because it just makes the whole building process a bit easier because you still see what you have to do so you can just already create all your emails you do not have to completely fully write them but just like create some drafts and then you can start building the automation already so what we want to do we want to send lesson one till 5:00 every morning at 10:00 a.m. so to make that happen we are going to use some delay actions so we're going to add some weights so what you do you click there and then you go to conditions and workflow and what we can do here is we can wait for a specific time like do we want to wait for 10 hours 12 hours 24 hours or whatever or do we want to wait until specific conditions are met so you could say let's wait for one day but I really want to send the emails in the morning because I've seen for myself that's when most people open their emails if that's different for you you can obviously change that but instead of saying hey I'm going to send it one day later I want to have full control and when someone is receiving this email because if they sign up for the course at 10:00 in the evening they're going to get all the lessons at 10:00 in the evening and we really do know one that right so what we do is we're going to wait until midnight so we're going to say current time and then you can choose if you want to wait for the current time of your contacts time zone or for your time zone so I'm in Europe Berlin time zone so you can either choose if you want to have everything delivered in your time zone or in your context time zone so context time zone is basically handy if you have subscribers or contacts from all over the world and this is more handy if you know that everybody is like close to you so I'm going for context time zone and then I say wait until the following conditions are met current time in the context time zone is 12 a.m. safe and then we click Save again so now we send a welcome email then is waiting to midnight but we do not want to send the email at midnight right so we're going to add a second wait and then we do almost exactly the same we're going to say current time context time zone is 10 a.m. click Save let me click Save again so now our email sent it will wait until midnight and then it will wait until 10:00 in the morning and then it's going to send lesson 1 now why do we add two waits behind each other why do we know just say hey ok wait until 10 in the morning just because maybe someone is signing up for the course at 7 in the morning and then if we would only have this one it would already send the first lesson 3 hours later and we do not want that because in the welcome email we say like hey do you want the next lesson right now or do you want to have it tomorrow so always do this so between each lesson we're going to add that so this is going to be a bit of slow process I will try to do it quick so we say current time context time zone is 10 a.m. click Save and then above that we're going to add 12 a.m. so midnight current time context timezone is 12 a.m. like safe and then we click Save so then we already did it for these lessons so we have to do it one to three more times so I really try to do this quickly with active campaign always needs a while to load so we're going to wait until midnight then until 10 in the morning then again until midnight here it would really be great if you could just like copy these weights that you do not have to create them over and over again but unfortunately that's not how activecampaign works so we do this again we wait until 10:00 morning and we have to do it one more time yes one more time all right stay with me current time is 10 in the morning say and then above that we wait until midnight so you always first wait until midnight and then until 10:00 a.m. all right okay it's done okay okay so we have our emails and then every time we're going to wait until midnight and then until 10:00 a.m. so then lesson one will be sent and then we wait until midnight we wait until 10:00 a.m. now the cool thing that I want to do in this course is that people can basically create your own experience so at the end of each lesson and also inside the welcome email I will show you there are two links so we have a link that says I want the next lesson now and we have a link that says the next lesson tomorrow so you basically write like a nice welcome email I leave up to you how you do that and then in the end of that email you ask like hey you know you're the boss here you're the captain you can decide how you want to continue in this course so then if they want to receive the next lesson now they have to click this link if they want to have a tomorrow to click this link now those links that I'm using look like this so I created the page of my website that is called Mach circle number combs flash trigger slash now it doesn't really matter what's on these pages it's just important that it is a link because activecampaign can only track link clicks so if somebody clicks on the link we know but I can show you what my page looks like feel free to inspire yours and it's just really simple it just says next lesson is on its way the next lesson will be in your inbox in about 10 minutes and then I like to include a personal picture of me so feel free to copy something like this and then the tomorrow page looks very simpler then it says like okay talk to you tomorrow so make sure that you have these two different links here you see that we have two tomorrow linked so you have to include those inside your email then you go to next and then you will get a little campaign summaries basically like the email summary and then you have to make sure that link tracking is on because otherwise you cannot track the link clicks inside that email so what we're going to do if someone clicks the Now link we want to basically skip these two wait actions right and if they click the tomorrow link we are basically not going to do anything because then it will just wait until 12:00 and then it will wait until 10:00 a.m. so even if they do not click the links at all they will just continue but if they click the Now link we want to skip these two and we're going to do that with go so a goal allows you to jump to a certain step inside the automation so here I will say once lesson one and then we're going to click to add a goal and then we say has clicked on a link and then you have to select which email in which email so I want to do the welcome email and then you have to select which link now here's the Now link here tomorrow link I want to continue when I click the Now link let me click Save and they also see a bunch of other settings it's important that you leave this two below contacts position so know that when they're later in the automation they open an old email they open they click on all the link that is jump back you didn't really do not want that so leave this just as is and also if the contact does not meet the goal conditions you want to continue anyway so if they did not click they have to continue in the automation and then we click Save and then you see how it works so we have our email we wait until 12:00 we wait until 10:00 in the morning and then we send our lesson or if they click the Now link inside this email they automatically jump to the goal and it will receive the next lesson so we're going to do that also for the second lesson once lesson 2 click to add a goal then you select here has clicked on a link then which campaign lesson 1 they clicked now so it's very important that you do double double double check which email you selected so here I checked ok detect click less than 1 then they click they go they continue to the second lesson now we do that two times again once lesson 3 click to add a goal has clicked on a link now which campaign the second one and then now click save click Save again and then we have to do two more times go the ones Lesson four has clicked on a link in lesson three now click Save so it's always the previous lesson obviously and then we have to edit one more time go once lesson five and then we're going to check if they clicked something in lesson four so we select here lesson four click now click Save all right and then basically the do basic emo course is already there like you could just leave it there and then your emo course will be delivered but we want to send more reminders as soon as that deadline is coming closer right so we have our welcome email lesson 1 lesson 2 lesson 3 lessons for lesson 5 and in lesson 5 we're going to tell people about our limited time offer so after that they cannot continue to the next email to the next email whenever they want we are just going to say ok here we're going to wait until the current time and then here I'm going to choose Europe Berlin because deadline Phenom I'll show you in a bit works with time zones so I'm going to wait until it is midnight in Berlin click Save and then I'm going to wait until the current time in Berlin is 10:00 a.m. so I just chose dead time zone because that's how I've set up deadline for now they cannot check what time zone your subscribers in basically so it's a bit of a downside but I've also had great success with this like it still works but then maybe if you have subscribers in different time zones then this email can arrive from a later time of day now what we then have to do is we have to trigger the deadline we have to start deadlines fennel so we're going over to deadline fennel and then we're going to create a campaign so what we're going to do is that as soon as someone is receiving lesson 5 we want to start the three-day deadline so let's go over to deadline fennel and then we have to create a new campaign so here in the sidebar you can click create new campaign and then you'll get a screen like this so you can give it a campaign name so I will call it email course and then the category is I've set it up with products so in this example we're going to do it for products that is called phenols that's convert now then you have to set up how which integrations you are going to use I'm going to use active campaign and WordPress because my website is made with WordPress and then I'm going to click Next then you have to select a blueprint so they have different ones so we're going to use the email cite sequence and then a special offer so the email sequence is our free email course and then we're going to send a special offer now then we're going to click Next and then you have to set your deadline length so if you want to use 3 days then you leave it to three days and then if you want you can also change the time but most often I use one minutes to midnight and then you have to select a time zone this is what I was talking about you cannot just say okay the time zone of the subscriber because that my federal just doesn't know that so I'm going to say here Center European Time Berlin and then below there's also some explanation which okay if they join Wednesday then the deadline is from Saturday but if they join Thursday then the deadline is on Sunday now when we click Next and then we have to add our final steps so I find the name of final steps a little bit confusing but it's basically all your landing pages checkout pages that are related to your offer those go in here and then where do you want to redirect them when the deadline expires so I'm just going to add a page here please flash journals that convert special offer the space does not really exist but I'm just making something up now and then we're going to redirect that page to Moscow norcombe slash offer expired something like that so this is going to be the page that we're going to send people to and then after the design expired they will see this page now let me click finish and then we have set up our campaign but there's still some things that we have to do so if you use deadline funnel for the first time you have to go over to your tracking code and you have to put that on the pages where that are related to your campaign or you can use it edit to the header of your website but you don't have to keep in mind that it can slow down your website a little bit on pages where your don't really need it so I really like to edit only two pages that I need for the campaign so you have to do that and after that you have to go to integrations so go to integrations and then it will show you a list of the integrations that you have so I'm going to click my main integration basically and then you have to select a custom field where you want to save the subscribers deadline in so it's actually really cool so deadlines finals going to create like a little text for you that says when the deadline expired and then you can use that inside your emails if you want so i created a custom fields called deadlines inside active campaign and then i'm going to store that inside that custom field and then what you have to do is you have to copy the webhook so a web book is basically a little URL you see it here we copy it we edited the automation and then active campaign is going to send data to that URL to that web hook whenever you want to and then a dead moment's deadline funnel knows okay John or Peter or umber or whatever his or her deadline is done and then so copy that go back over to your automation and right after lesson five we're going to add a web hook and we paste that in there let me click safe so right after they receive lesson 5 the deadline the three-day deadline we will automatically start now what you have to do then you have to like throw like the test contact inside your automation and like skip everything and then go towards your webhook and then you will see here that the status was successful but I'm not going to do that now it takes quite a long before that's triggered but you can do that I don't think we think you actually have to do it but just to double check that it's really working so then we're going to edit our campaign so then you see here also here you see the URL again and then what we want to do is we want to check our final steps so here we have our final steps these are the pages that we just created like we just edit this which is like my fake sales page and then our offer expired page and this is why we want to redirect people to so what we want to do is we want to use some special email links so if you go over to email setup you see that you get like a special link now what this allows you to do is that if you add this to your emails then it doesn't matter on which device they click that link the deadline will always be in sync and I think that's really cool so even if they open it on their tablet or on their computer or on their phone or maybe even if they forward the email then the deadline will always be the same so instead of linking people to this page you have to copy the URL I will do it here copy and then I'm going to edit to lesson 5 edit this I can also see immediately how you do that so here obviously this is not the case get the offer now something like that obviously you have to write a better email than this paste it in here and then you'll see here that this the email variable so activecampaign will automatically add the email to receiver of the email to the link so that's how they are able to track who's who never say ok perfect now then what we want to do we want to add our email timer and I think this is really really cool inside deadline funnel so you have a timer like a deadline timer and animated timer that is going to like take down no service proper English but suitable like tick down towards the deadline so first thing you want to do is you wanna create what it looks like so what I like to use here is here did you have like a bunch of different options but I really like this one then I'm going to click continue I'm going to change the colors I'll say here okay when I have it yellow yes and then you see that it looks like this and then you'll see how it's like animating and this will always be in sync which that deadline it's really cool right now then you click save and exit and then you have to copy this code so this code you can use in all your emails so instead activecampaign you direct the HTML block inside your email and then you click paste and then you can use that in a bunch of different emails if you want so usually I'm not already using it in like less than five but I would more use it in like hey you have one day left hey you have until tonight like those emails now it's maybe a bit too early but I just want to show you how you can really easily add that so after you've done that you maybe also want to add a timer to your webpage so we're not going to do that right now but I just want to show you how you do that so you would set it up again we have to copy the URL paste it there and then you see what kind of timers you can add to your page so you can either add a display floating timer like a floating bar it's like yeah floating plop bar on set on your desktop with like a big big big timer or you can use an inline timer and it looks much more like this that you can add something like that to your web pages I really like to do that then you can just copy this code and you can add it to your pages so for every different guide of timer you want you can also use like dynamic text you have to add a new final step and also a new redirect I'm not sure why they went for this way setting this up I think it's a bit confusing but that's how you do it you just have to add a new final step for each kind of timer and for every different kind of page so if you for example also have a checkout page then you also have to add your checkout page maybe a floating bar and inline timer and dynamic text you just have to do this a couple of different times so let me click Save here and then you can add that to your page you can also edit the appearance if you want now and that's basically all you need to do with deadlines fennel now deadlines fennel will automatically start the deadline as soon as this let me scroll down this webhook is triggered then automatically starts so does not matter when they open the email the deadline will always be three days after this this email is sent at midnight now and then we're going to wait till midnight we're going to wait until 10:00 a.m. and then we're going to send a bonus lesson that you can just be creative but something super duper valuable in there that someone is like well away I did not expect this I thought the course was only five lessons and I'm getting an extra lesson wow that's really cool now and after that we're going to add a simple wait so here we're going to say we're going to wait for one day now why do we wait here for one day and here every time we wait until midnight and then into 10:00 a.m. that's because we do not know what time people receive these emails in case they clicked I want it now because then yeah they can receive it at all different times of day right so that's why we always have to wait till 12:00 a.m. and then 10:00 a.m. and then here because we know that the bonus lesson will be sent at 10:00 a.m. and there's no way for them to automatically continue to the next one we just say wait for one day and then we know the cool story will be received at 10:00 a.m. the next morning one day before the deadline so yeah I like to use a cool story but you can literally send everything you can also send success stories maybe of people you've had that had success with your product or service and then we're going into the last day so we're just going to say here again wait for one day and then this is our last day this is the last day the offer is valid and this is a really important day these emails are really really important because most people will buy on the last day so this will be sent at 10:00 in the morning and then I want to send this at 2:00 in the afternoon so what we're going to say is we say wait until specific dishes are met current time Europe where Maine is let me look for it is that you can do either 2 p.m. 3 p.m. or 4 p.m. I really like 3 p.m. not sure why it's just like a few hours after the other one that means click Save so then the people will receive that email at 3:00 and then we're going to send a last chance email and we're going to send that one at 8:00 so we say wait into the current time is 8 p.m. all right and then we plant our whole follow up section like of when we're going to send the reminder emails basically so all these emails are reminders but they also have some kind of value in them right so we sent a bonus lesson it is a reminder but it's also something valuable we sends the cool story it's a reminder it's all something valuable and on the last day we're just hard selling we just said ok short email like the deadline is tonight you have to act now also hear your questions answered yeah it's all about the product the product the product not so much value but I think that's ok and then again we remind them really hard hey the deadline is tonight and then again you add that email timer in there and then also a last chance email now and that's basically it but also not really because we still want to end the automation somehow so what I like to do is we wait until the offer expires right so we say current time that we know that is expiring at midnight so at this point at this time the whole course is over the the they received all the lessons they received all the follow-ups and either they bought the offer they purchased it or they did not so we want to check that here we want to check did they purchase it or did not purchase it so for that we're going to add an if-else so what we do then there are multiple methods for this but I like to do this we check if they have a tag so I created the tag that is called sales purchased funnels that convert so which my cart software which is trife card I can automatically add text to active campaign as soon as someone purchases something so I can do that depends a bit on how you were set up is if you can do that I know it's also possible with for example WooCommerce and it doesn't like an extra plugin or something but then you can also add text and then you know exactly inactive campaign who purchased what now but that's not really it because sometimes someone is already on your list and then it purchased with different email address and yeah then we just want to check if they visited the page because active campaign also has side tracking so you have to install that I will explain it in another tutorial or you can even find it in their documentation but then you can check if they visit a certain page so I will check if they visited a page called success purchased journals that comfort you need like unique pages for that so this is not a real page is just an example but if they would visit that page then I know hey this person purchased this product now then you see that the automation is splitting into two parts so the yes path is everyone who purchased the no path is everyone who did not purchase so everyone did not purchase we want to wait until the current time in the context time zone is 10 a.m. click safe so then we just know okay they get this email in the morning and then we're going to send our do you hate me email so here do you hate me and I've seen really good open rates with this subject because people are like what hates like hate is a really strong emotional word of course I do not hate you because you gave me so much value but yeah why did these people not purchase them do you hate me continue and then you can just keep this email really really short I could even write it right now you could just say that k-max noticed that you didn't purchase my offer yesterday that's ok I get that it's not for everyone but it would really help me if you could describe in describe in one sentence what kept you from buying thanks bs9 you can add something there I will just say you rock and this is basically the email you need hey max I noticed you didn't purchase my offer yesterday that's ok I got it's not for everyone but it would really really help me if you could describe in one sentence what kept you from buying and I actually got quite a lot of replies from that some are not so helpful but some people are like like a really good you have like explanation of what kept them from buying so sometimes they thought hey this and this is nothing clueless in them like how I really have to highlight that on the sales page or something so I'm going to click Next and then we're going to click finish and then that email is added to our automation click Save and then we're going to exit the automation so everyone will we did not purchase we'll just exit the automation and then what you want to do with the yes bath we're going to add one more goal now why we're going to add more one more goal why do we want to make people jump there now we want to make people jump there if there for example after lesson 5 and they already bought the course like a few minutes later or maybe after the bonus lesson they purchased the course or your product or service and if that's the case if they bought your offer then we do not want to send them more follow ups right like that's like 1 2 3 4 more emails if they buy it after the bonus lesson so we want to make sure that they skip these emails now to do that we add a goal and then we say has purchase offer click to add goal and then we check if they have that purchased tag or if they visited the page that contains success confirmed journals that convert if they ever visited that click save click save and then we exit the automation now and if you want you can also like double check that they at least being sent lesson 5 you can add that to the goal in case someone already purchased your offer but then they still wanted to follow your free course that happens sometimes so if you do not do this if you do not check if they at least have been sent the last lesson then that person will never get the course and it can be a bit frustrating so I really recommend setup something like this so check if they have to tak thank Jack if they visited the success page and check if they have at least been sent lesson 5 so it will never skip the main email course but it will skip all the follow-ups in case this person already purchased or will purchase during one of these reminders and this is it this is our email course automation so again I will put a link in the description below where you can just import this whole automation at once so it will probably save you a lot of time and then you only have to rewrite the emails so that you can create kick-ass converting email course so yeah that's it if you have any questions then just let me know and if this is helpful please give it like a little thumbs up and consider subscribing and yeah if you have any questions about anything then just drop a comment below

Channel: Max van Collenburg

Views: 1,120

Keywords: ActiveCampaign Tutorial, Email Course ActiveCampaign, Free Email Course, Marketing Automation, Email Marketing, Marketing Funnel, Funnels, Deadline Funnel

Id: hYIQGKPUx-c

Length: 44min 42sec (2682 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 18 2020