50:2 Most free courses get ignored. But these don't!

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Lee:

Welcome to the Trailblazer FM podcast. This is your host, Lee. And today, back by popular demand, it's the one and only Mr. Shiven Dhania. Mate, how are you doing?

Shiven:

Awesome. Since the last time I met you, I've lost five pounds. That's a big achievement for me.

Lee:

Epic. Fantastic. I've seen your progress on Instagram as well. You've been sharing all of that, being accountable to the community, which is phenomenal. And if you don't believe in folks, come and join us on YouTube if you're listening on the podcast because he's actually in his workout gear and he assures me he's just been to the gym. Now, mate, the reason why we've asked you back on the show is because you were an extremely popular guest. In fact, the most popular of 2023 so far. People got a lot of value from the episode where you shared what you'd learned from others with regards to creating newsletters for email marketing and also your own experiences, which was phenomenal. Also, the YouTube and the Instagram reels that we put out were really successful. We figured, Why not? Let's get you back since people want you back. We'll have you back. W e're going to be exploring something with you today called Educational Email Courses. I'm going to admit to everybody else, I know nothing about this. So you're our mentor today. I'm going to be pummeling you with questions to try and really unpack what they are, why they're useful for web agency owners, both at a business level for their own business, but also maybe how they are helpful as well for their clients.

Lee:

We're going to go through that. That's just to set everybody's expectations. For anything that we mentioned, folks, in today's episode, you'll be able to find everything on YouTube in the description, or you'll be able to find it over on trailblazer.fm. Come along to this episode and you'll find everything as well there in the show notes. So, mate, without further ado, that was an awfully long introduction. Let's jump straight in. Educational email courses, I'm going to refer to them as EECs for the rest of this because otherwise I'm going to fumble. Can you explain what EECs are and their role in a lead gen?

Shiven:

In the last episode, we talked about that writing a newsletter is the easiest task. It's growing, that's the difficult task. So how do you grow a newsletter? So in order to grow a newsletter, you build something called a lead magnet. Lead magnet, I hope everyone in the audience knows about it because it's pretty basic. I feel stupid explaining it, but you'll understand why I'm explaining all this. So lead magnet is something, a valuable document or a video or any PDF thing that's valuable for the audience. And you actually are bribing the audience with this lead magnet in exchange for their emails and that's how you build your newsletter. But what if your lead magnet is in itself a course? That's the next level thing that you can do. And that course is known as an educational email course. It's a lead magnet. In the simplest term, it's a lead magnet. Let's say you subscribe to Lee Matthew Jackson's five day email course about podcasting. So what you'll get is you'll get a series series of emails day 1, day two, day three, day 4, and day 5. And in all of those days, you'll get some mini packets and nuggets of information.

Shiven:

So it's like a course. It's like a normal course, but it's on email. And you'll receive one email every single day depends on how big your course is. It can be five day course, nine day course. Some people I know are building a hundred day course, 30 day course, 45 day course. So what it does is it tells the audience how valuable you are for them. So if you're running a direct response ad, it can be a 30 second ad, a 15 second ad. So you're not able to communicate that trust in that 15 second. But if you're building an email course, a five day email course, you have five days to touch your audience's heart. And that's the power of email course. It's not the content, it's not the closeness, but it's the time that you are able to serve your audience for a lot longer than a normal, let's say, social media post.

Lee:

It's showcasing your knowledge. It's also showcasing your dedication to educating your leads here or your audience. And you're also showcasing the consistency as well. You've clearly planned this educational course and it does therefore drip feed on the days that you say it's going to drip feed as well out. It arrives in your inbox, it's consistent. People know that they can know I can trust you, they know that you know what you're talking about, and they know that you are going to be reliable because you've said what you said. Now, you mentioned that some people do 30, 45, 100 day email courses. Is there a right number? You mentioned five, but 100 sounds insane. I'm almost thinking that people might have switched off by then. Exactly. What would be the magic number? Or how would you ascertain the magic number if It's different?

Shiven:

According to data statistics, I've studied... By the way, there's very less data about this because it's a relatively new thing. But yeah, the magic number is five or seven. That's the best thing that you want to keep. So five day email course or seven day email course, because I study a lot of people who are building email courses, this is a five day email course is the most common that I've seen. I've seen like 100 creators who have built an email course and 90 of them has a five day email course. Around five of them has seven day email course, but the rest five, they have like 100 days, 45 days, 60 days.

Lee:

I guess that must depend on their audience and the appetite for the information that that audience have potentially because...

Shiven:

It depends upon what company you are. For example, let's say you are a book educational company. So you give summaries of books. So you can easily build a hundred day course in which you are summarizing one book in one email. So 100 books, hundred days. So you can literally summarize. Yeah, that makes sense.

Shiven:

You can summarize.

Lee:

You did say this is relatively new, but I do know that I've signed up for email courses as many years ago. So 10 years ago, for example, I will have received drip fed emails on a particular topic. What's the difference with the EEC versus what I was receiving maybe 10 years ago?

Shiven:

Maybe what you were receiving was that educational? Did you open that email?

Lee:

Yeah. So it would be an email I'd receive and they'd say, get our five day email sequence on how to launch a podcast or something like that. And then I would follow that and it would be an email with the step one, this is what you do, step two, and tomorrow we'll send you the next stage. Tomorrow we'll send you the next stage. So that was the email that I received.

Shiven:

Perfect. That's what an email goes. What you received was in fact an EEC. What I'm saying is that in the present times, it's actually blowing out of proportions. Everyone is building an email course. And mostly everyone should build an email course because the market has become really noisy. Every second 14 year old kid is a creator right now in the world. And how can you differentiate yourself that you are not some inexperienced or an amateur? The way to differentiate yourself is to build a course. This is a marketing theory in the book, influence, that if someone teaches you something, there's a far higher chance of you purchasing from them than someone who is just persuading you that, Hey, buy my course, buy my course. So if you teach someone, if you add value to them, there's a far bigger chance because you've built a relationship with them. You are a mentor to them and you only have to teach once. You only have to write once. And every single person who will buy the course will get your mentorship. So it's like easily duplicable.

Lee:

Are you suggesting that we do EECs, the two versions, we can either charge to receive it or you can do a free version? Are you saying that both are on the table here?

Shiven:

Exactly, both of them. I've particularly seen some of the... There is this woman, Maria Coze. So she is the legend in course creating industry. She's creating courses since 2010, I guess. And she's making millions from just her courses. And it's crazy how much she charges for her courses, $10,000, $8,000 for every course. And still, she's getting the leads from her free email course. It's like a free eight day email course, and she's getting the leads from that free course to her $10,000 product. That's crazy.

Lee:

Well, that's essentially how I went. Many years ago, John Lee Dumas still has a podcast, E on F ire, entrepreneurs on fire. And it was actually his podcast creation, drip fed email sequence that I was getting that was helping me understand how to launch a podcast. And then I ended up spending £2,000 back then, maybe 10 years ago, which was for me a lot of money. But it did. That does go to show that this does work. Why do you think, though, it's blowing up now and that more marketers aren't really aware of it or at least aware of its value?

Shiven:

Because earlier, course creation and all this stuff was for the professionals. But right now, any kid with an internet access can create a course. The way to differentiate yourself is that... In Hindi, in India, we have this saying called, This means that people will not buy from you until they get a hands on demo. This is why car companies give you test drives for free. Test our cars, if you like it, just buy it. This email course can also be... If you don't want to look at from a lead magnet perspective, think of it as a demo that I'm going to tell you how I teach, what's my brand tone, what is my teaching style. And if you like it, then you'll buy my course. So this can be like a demo thing if you don't want to look at it as a lead generation tool. This can be a way to look at it. Another way to look at it is an authority building tool that people don't trust you until they see you teach them. So you're just teaching them for free and you're proving them subconsciously that, See, I'm a great teacher.

Shiven:

I've added value to your life and my free courses have transformed you. Imagine what my paid course could do.

Lee:

When you say adding value to their life, I think that really highlights the importance of giving people actionable takeaways that they can actually do. You want to be able to give them something that they can do that they can potentially see results with as well. I think what you're saying here is one of the best use cases for an EEC, especially if you have something next level like consultancy or a paid course behind it. The EEC, this educational email you're sending out is giving them that little taster of brand voice, authority, etc. But also throwing in those little valuable nuggets. I learned that many years ago, especially on, say, landing pages. If you want somebody to sign up for your email list at minimum, give them one thing they can do right now before they've even signed up for the email list. Even if it's something ridiculously easy, it just means that they've done something, they've seen the results. When I say change the picture, change your LinkedIn profile, I think it was, to a more professional picture, yada yada yada, and these are the benefits to what you should do. So someone's gone away and done that.

Lee:

I added a little bit of value to their LinkedIn profiles and they thought, Yeah, I want to sign up for this LinkedIn email list now. That sounds good. Could you share some success stories where these campaigns have worked for people?

Shiven:

By the way, you said a very important point that it should be highly actionable instead of just information. You're selling transformation instead of information. So this was this company, I don't remember the name, they did an experiment. They built a five day course and they named that course, five mistakes you are doing as a pet owner or five mistakes, five things that you can improve with your dog or something like that. It got clicks, it got conversions, it's fine. But then they changed the title to a full guide, a five day guide on how to transform your dog from an untrained stray dog to a well highly trained military dog, this thing. So it was a transformation based headline and it got five times more clicks within in just two days. So this is what the market wants. They don't need information. They have enough information on YouTube and blogs. They can literally check a blog for how to train a dog, but they need a transformation. And if your headline is filled, if your content is filled with Actionable tips, then hat will be more important. This is one case study that I can give.

Shiven:

Another case study is this is an Indian guy. His name is Digital Deepak. He is a single...

Lee:

I Know Digital Deepak.

Shiven:

oh, you know him?

Lee:

Wow. Well, not personally, but I follow.

Shiven:

I didn't expect that. Wow. He has singlehandedly dominated the Indian digital marketing coaching space. If you ask any Indian digital marketer that who's the biggest coach, he'll name Digital Deepak. Okay. He has a 100 day course. He has a 100 day email marketing course. By the way, that 100 day course is on launching your digital marketing agency. So if you are just a person who is at ground zero and you know nothing about digital marketing, I'll teach you the basics, the frameworks, how to find your niche, how to craft your offer, and how to launch the agency. And in the 100 days, it's like three and a half months, people learn all these things and they get very addicted to getting content from Digital Deepak because three and a half months is a big time for habit formation. People's habit can form in three and a half months.

Lee:

Well, especially as well, what he's offering is huge. He's not just giving you a taste of it. He's actually getting you to a level that you can then eventually progress to by further things from him once you've gotten to that level. So he's training future clients. Carry on, mate.

Shiven:

That's awesome. It's transformation, right. He's elevating you from level zero to level one for free. And then on 100th day, or I guess from 90th to 100th day, he starts soft selling you towards the bottom of the funnel. He has a course on how to talk to clients or let's say how to do sales and all these things. So for the people who have identified their niche, for the people who are identified what to offer and all these things, now they need the sales service or marketing or all these things. Then he sells it. By the way, this is a very interesting thing. Digital Deepak's course is around $200 to $300 Maria course's course is like $10,000. There's a huge gap in their prices, but still both of them are using email courses. This can be an example to show that email courses is not a very narrow or niche thing that works only this way or works only that way. No, anyone can have an email course. It doesn't matter whether your service is of $200, $2,000 or $20,000. Everyone can have an email course.

Lee:

One of the cool things that blew my mind, or the biggest takeaways, at least for me, from our last episode together, was how you can educate and develop a relationship with your potential clients just through the subject line. Because I pointed out to you that I actually get lots of newsletters that I never open and I just archive. I don't subscribe, but I keep getting them in the inbox. And you shared a story how somebody had seen these messages about copywriting in the subject and had just been archiving. But when that person eventually wanted to become a copywriter, they remembered that email sequence. They remembered the person behind those emails and thought, Oh, I better go check them out. S he went into our archives, found the emails, clicked through to the links, and eventually engaged with the coach that was offering the help on copywriting. Folks, remember, we'll put a link to the previous episode. You can go and listen to that. It's totally phenomenal. On EECs, how does that upscale that you've got? People are obviously going to be opening these. How do these help build that long term relationship with clients? I think we've alluded to, with Digital Deepak, the 100 term course where people are getting hooked in and they're being taken from zero to one.

Lee:

So that's one really good example. But are there any other examples of how EECs can help build those long term relationships with potential and existing clients?

Shiven:

Okay. So first of all, we mentioned these case studies. So the next point that I would like to mention that how to build a relationship is actually by making your audience aware that they need something. So the biggest misconception in a lot of agency owners, consultants, and freelancers is that their prospective clients know their problems. No, they don't know. They don't even know what problem they have in life. They don't know what is the solution. Through your email courses, when you make them realize, when you make them aware, because you're literally teaching, you're transforming them from level zero to one. You're making them aware of the industry standards, of the market, of all the skills. And they'll understand that there is something about this industry that I don't have. This is how you build a relationship because as I said, if someone teaches you something, that's the biggest form of relationship that you can have. Mentorship, becoming a mentor and becoming an automated mentor. You just have to write it once and then you became the mentor of every single person who receives your email. So in simplest words, I would say you are creating demand through your EECs.

Shiven:

Demand that your audience didn't know it existed. Let's say you have a newsletter, let's say you have a social media audience, let's say you have a YouTube channel or podcast. Yeah. So it actually generates demands. Okay. So when you make people aware of what they actually need in life, you become a mentor for them. And that's the biggest form of relationship that you can have with them because you are a mentor. They'll do whatever you say.

Lee:

One of my favorite phrases is you don't know what you don't know. Like I said, you can start to educate people as to who you are through those subjects lines, say, in the general newsletter, through educational content such as this course here. You can start to teach people that they don't know things, that there are gaps in their education. You can also teach and help fill in those gaps, and you become the go to, you become the mentor. What are some common challenges, though, when trying to put a course together?

Shiven:

So last time I was there, we discussed about the challenges in newsletter, right? And we discussed that writing is the easiest part, but in EECs, writing, in fact, is the hardest part. It's easier to hold someone's attention for 30 seconds in a Reel. It's a little harder to hold someone's attention for, let's say, a 1,000 word blog, but it's extremely hard to hold someone's attention for days, for seven days, for eight days, for 20 days. So if you want to build a fantastic, a fabulous email course, you need to have a solid copywriting background or copywriter in your team because you need to understand that what your customer thinks, what are his problems, what are their fears, what motivates them, what incentivizes them. You need to understand each and every thing about them and then write about them. By the way, when I'm building an email course for a client, so I'll tell you the biggest thing, what most copywriters don't do. Most copywriters, they get, let's say, a project from someone that, Hey, write me an email. And they just start writing. Writing should be your last part. The first part should always be ask where does the audience live on the internet?

Shiven:

So let's say if you want to build an email course around the sneaker community, the young college students who love sneakers, and you're building an email course on how to choose the sneaker that fit your personality. So the first thing, the absolute first thing is you need to go to YouTube channels that the young sneaker community follows. You need to go to Instagram pages, Reddit community, and read all the comments. I literally did comments for two hours just to get into the mind, what is the thing that most of the people are talking about? So let's say for after two hours scrolling, you found that most of the 18 year old sneaker guys cares about showing the girls of the college how cool these sneakers are. Now that will be my headline for the 5 day email course. Buy a sneaker that make her notice you, stuff like that. This is a bad email.

Lee:

I get the idea. If that's the need or that's the question that they're asking, then you're hooking into that.

Shiven:

Just don't talk about stuff in circles. In copywriting, you just got to hit the nail on the head. People, there are a lot of newsletters that say that will make you smart, but people don't subscribe those newsletters. But there are some newsletters who say that will make you sound smart in front of your friends, and they subscribe to that newsletter because people don't care about being smart. They care about sounding smart.

Lee:

They also care about that particular result. Not only are they saying will make you smart, well, that's good. I like the idea of that. But the moment you then feed into what it is they really want, that's the difference. Now, one thing I learned, and I'm not sure if this applies to copy necessarily, but we've been looking at things like, can we make our own Instagram shorts or how can we improve our videos? One of the things that I learned was that what you should start off with is raise a question or create curiosity and then instantly answer that. But the answer should also raise a question and create curiosity. That's a way that you can keep people watching a video. Do you think that applies with. Copyright sing as well?

Shiven:

There's this framework called AIDA, Attention, Interest, Desire, Action. The headline should hold attention. The first line should hold the interest. The entire content should focus on desire, and the last sentence should be focused on action. That's the way to go for it.

Lee:

That's pretty much your course headline. I can never say it. I get them all muddled up, but then just keep repeating that throughout or even on an everyday basis. How do you think our audience now our web agencies, how do you think a web agency who predominantly sells web design services, web development services, how do you think they could use EECs? What courses do you think they could release in order to create that lead magnet?

Shiven:

Okay. While brainstorming about the course ideas, there are three factors in mind. Number one, what is the motivation of your target audience? Let's say your target audience's motivation is increasing the ROI on their website. Their website is not converting because their design is not good. That's the motivation, increasing ROI. Now, what's the thing that you are providing? You're providing web design. The third thing is what content of yours got the most views or likes or what blog post of yours got the most clicks. For example, let's say you wrote a blog post saying, These are the design elements on the website that increases conversion. Let's say. So you have to find an intersection between these three. Your email course should be titled, How to Make Design a Weapon for Conversions, stuff like that. This can be...

Lee:

Oh, I subscribe to that. That's a great title. How to Use Design as a Weapon for Conversions.

Shiven:

Nice. This can be the headline and idea for your course. In that course, in the five days, day one would be about how to design your homepage such that the visitor's mind is attached. The second day 2 will be how to write case studies and how to design the case study page in such a way that the visitor reads all of it, stuff like that. Day five will be five elements. On the fifth day, you'll pitch them and it will be like, we're having a good time. We had five pretty interesting days. By the way, if you don't have any time for applying all of this and if you want us to handle everything for you, just schedule a call. And there's a far greater chance of them converting. Then let's say you would run a direct response ad.

Lee:

Is there any data as well on a lead magnet that's just a PDF that has all those five things in versus an email course? Are people more likely to read read the email course on, say, over five days than the... Because I know I download the PDFs, think I'll look at that later, and then I never do.

Shiven:

Same. I tell you, I have this folder. It's called Super Cool Stuff, in which every single lead magnet I've downloaded, I just put it on Super Cool Stuff. Right now, it has around 127 PDFs that I haven't opened. So I don't know the data is repeated or not. There's some digital marketing agencies in the world that have done the survey. And according to the survey, there's 73 % greater chance of people opening and buying your email course than, let's say, PDF. So it's 73 % higher chances.

Lee:

I think I'm going to convert all of my PDFs based on this conversation to just straight fed email courses because if you think about it, I'm in my email every single day. I'm one of those people, probably like many nowadays, who at least subscribe to Inbox Zero, where I'll go through all my emails every day. I want to be at Inbox Zero by the end of the day, even if that means I'm archiving, I'm putting something to a side via snooze, etc. And that, even 10 years ago, was how I consumed that original course from John Lee Dumas. I don't think I would have ever consumed his course, his drip fed course through email, or bought his product in the end if he'd have just provided an email download, or if he'd have provided an online course, because that's just so many extra steps that I have to take versus it coming into my inbox that I'm going to be in anyway. I'm probably going to read or at least snooze it if I think, you know what? I forgot I signed up to that. That is valuable. That headline has hooked me and I don't have time to read it now, but I'll snooze it for a couple of hours and then I'll go back and read that.

Lee:

I am more likely, just on personal experience as well, I am more likely to read them.

Shiven:

That's an awesome point. I didn't think of it that way, that people have this tendency to go to inbox zero, but they can't go to their social media scrolling zero because it's infinite. They cannot scroll down their social media.

Lee:

Oh, man. It drives me insane. It drains me, mate.

Shiven:

It really does. But they can get their inbox to zero. So they have this tendency to just even if then they're not reading, they'll just scroll through all of their emails and they'll archive or delete or stuff like that. So they will check out your email course if they have subscribed.

Lee:

That's a very good thing. That's where the subject line is always still going to be very, very important, isn't it? Where you hook them in with that question, that curiosity or whatever it is, because they will skim the subject line at very minimum. Even if they've forgotten they signed up and they have day three captures them just as they're about to archive it. They're like, oh, what's that? Because I do that based on YouTube titles. A lot of the time what I do is I see really good YouTube titles and I'm like, I need to sleep now, but I need to watch that later. So I do. I add it to watch later based on just that title. I don't always watch it later, so I need to work on that. I've got, like yourself, I've probably got I think I've got 900 videos. I'll send you a screenshot. I've got 900 videos in watch later and I've had to end up just organizing it by the most recent that I've added because clearly 900 ago is probably not relevant anymore. I've been working my way through just those videos. I'm glad I have actually because they absolutely hooked me in with those titles.

Lee:

If I look at all those titles, they're very similar. They've created curiosity. They've created a question in my mind. Or they've highlighted that there's a gap in my knowledge and I know I need to watch that. Most of them nowadays are about how to grow a YouTube channel. Hey, folks watching on YouTube, thank you so much for supporting us. I've had the podcast for years. We get tens of thousands of downloads. That's wonderful. But YouTube is a nut that's really tough to crack. We've got, say, 1.2K subscribers. You're all legends. Thank you for subscribing. Hit like, subscribe if you haven't. But we would love to reach out with more people via YouTube because the podcast is a very one directional. I upload it, people listen to it, but there's no feedback. They don't talk back to me. I do get nice emails regularly. People do leave reviews on iTunes and other podcast platforms. If you've not done that, please do that. It'd be really lovely. Make my day. But it is still predominantly one directional. So really looking to YouTube growth for myself to see, can we build a community on YouTube and actually talk back with people via the comments?

Lee:

So that's like a little plug, but it's just an example of the sorts of videos that I myself am collecting. And that taps into my need, which means all the people that are offering courses in that but are offering free stuff on YouTube and email courses as well. In fact, I've got a five day email challenge coming to me at the moment from Sean Cannell. I can never remember his last name. But I'm doing his five day challenge at the moment on YouTube just to help me learn. And of course, what I ended up doing was buying his upgrade for the basics of a YouTube channel, etc. Yes, I absolutely spent $27 because that sounded like a great deal at the time. So I do know it works.

Shiven:

Well, then we have a live case study in front of us.

Lee:

There you go. Yeah. Well, I think that's all that needs to be said about that. Thank you so much for hanging out.

Shiven:

With me again. Thank you, man for inviting me.

Lee:

Yeah. Like you said, this isn't necessarily new. It's new as in people are talking about it more and more. I think as well, like you said right at the very beginning, anybody can launch a course. That actually has slowly eroded and devalued the industry really, hasn't it, over the years? If we can step up and offer some of EEC as a demo, as a credibility booster, as a valuable educational tool to potential clients, to potential leads, then that is absolutely going to set us apart from the person who's hoping to wing it using chat GPT and try to throw together a low value course and fleece the market, which is unfortunately what I'm constantly seeing out there on Instagram and on all of the ads, et cetera. So yeah, EEC folks, it's it's at. Mate, how can people connect with you? And then we shall Say goodbye.

Shiven:

So I am on Instagram @shiven_dhania. So maybe the links will be in the description.

Lee:

Links will be in description and everywhere.

Shiven:

Then Twitter and LinkedIn. Then I have my newsletter in which I'm documenting my learnings. Every single one of the things that I learn every single day, I just post it on my newsletter. Also, I'm a big fan of how you summarize everything, man. It just blows my mind every single time I come on this show. Thanks, man. How can you summarize every single thing that has been said in the last 30 minutes. It's crazy.

Lee:

I've said it on many podcast because a couple of people have pointed it out. I think we may have even mentioned it last time. If I can't say back to you what you've told me, then it means I've not learned anything. Clearly, what's happened is you've educated me, and that's why those things have stayed in my mind. It's not because I am incredibly good at remembering stuff. It's just that I've hit many aha moments and then they don't go. Folks, if you're listening to this episode or watching on YouTube, let us know either on the comments on our website, trailblazer.fm, or on YouTube down below in the comments. What are your biggest takeaways? I've shared a few of mine. What are yours? It'd be great to have a conversation. Shiven, you are a freaking legend. Thank you so much for your time. I'm looking forward to the next one.

Shiven:

Take care, mate. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. See you. Bye. Bye. You.