Should You Create an Email-Based Course (as a Financial Advisor)? - YFCD #33

Welcome back,

This week, I want to share some thoughts on a tweet I saw about email marketing:

First, I think it's a great idea.

And I want to share a 5-day email series I wrote back in 2020 in case you'd like to have a starting point for your own:

These were written awhile ago & I didn't edit them, so they're designed to be easily customized to your own brand & voice.

But the whole point of an "email-based course" is to further educate your audience while building trust & making someone aware of your work.

And the template above is just a framework - you could do 10 days, 1 month (weekly emails), etc.

My emails are more education/DIY-based so using the example within the tweet, you could teach people what you do as a financial planner over a certain number of days via email.

Maybe break it down by planning topics (similar to the template) and explain common mistakes you've seen, how to fix/avoid them, and what it looks like when an advisor helps.

They could be all text-based like the template, or you could record videos to go along with each & host them on YouTube or Vimeo.

But once you have the content ready to go, you also need to set up the automations within your email software.

There are a lot of different tools out there, and I have a step-by-step tutorial for ConvertKit below:

The second part of the tweet talks more about growth:

I've never ran ads to an email-based course, but I've spent ~$200 on sponsoring newsletters over the past few years. If I was more confident in the direction I wanted to grow, this number would be much higher - and I plan to do more this year.

In 2022, I purchased two ads in Josh Spector's newsletter for creative entrepreneurs (20,000+ subscribers) to help get more subscribers to my own newsletter. At the time, I wasn't trying to convert anyone to a client. I just wanted to get as many subscribers as possible and had no real offer on the backend. Just education.

But if the ad was for an email-based course, there would be plenty of call-to-actions throughout after you've created the strategy & automations (above).

Personally, I don't use an email-based course at the moment.

At the end of 2022, I switched to a big asset that someone can easily understand, consume, and I can market forever:

I'm not sure there are any stats that show an email-based course or PDF has higher conversion rates in the long-term, but I like the idea of a PDF more.

And there's nothing that says you can't do both.

In my situation, I could turn the 11 chapters of the book into an 11-day email series branded in a different way.

What expertise could you share within a series of emails?

Launching the "Physician Cents" Podcast Brand

On Friday, Tyler Olson & Chad Chubb launched their podcast dedicated to med students & physicians. Knowing both of them, it's going to be extremely successful and I'm excited to see how they grow it.

I've spent the past several weeks putting together the creative side of the brand - like the logo, podcast cover, and website:

Club:Curated

SEO Basics for Financial Advisors - a checklist and guide to establishing your digital presence via search

How I Got My First Brand Deal as a Creator - my 19-month journey to getting paid to create financial education content