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

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:

View the Emails

How to Establish Your Financial Foundations - a 5-day crash course on how to confidently manage your personal finances

Day One: The One Where They Take Inventory
Day Two: The One Where They Set Goals
Day Three: The One Where They Prioritize
Day Four: The One Where They Automate
Day Five: The One Where They Protect Themselves

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:

🎡 Video Tutorial: How to Set Up Automations in ConvertKit

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?‍

🎡 The Takeaway: If you enjoy writing & you're looking to grow your client base, I think creating an email-based course would be worth it.

Like the tweet mentions, it's an upfront investment. Whether your own time or paying for someone else's.

But from my experience with email & knowing how valuable just one financial planning client is, it's well worth learning.