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Olly Richards runs a $10M online education business with impressive email strategy.

I spent the last week learning from his 117-paged case study Google doc, so today I’ll be sharing my key takeaways with you.

(But learning is nothing without action, so I’ll share my action items with you too!)

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Basics (boring, but hard to get right)

Many founders have shiny object syndrome.

We lack focus, move on from experiments too quickly, and try to diversify too soon.

My learnings from Olly were:

1. Stick to 1 channel until it makes you at least $250k annual revenue

2. Write 1 sentence describing how your business stands out

3. Focus on selling your ONE core offer first

On memberships

I always felt iffy about running membership subscriptions. I don’t like being charged monthly, so why would I sell that to others?

Olly’s found something else that works for him:

30 day challenges.

You can opt in when you want, but most students opt in every month.

And it’s a lot easier to get a “yes” to challenges than a monthly subcsription (which feels scarier and often has higher churn).

(This model might not work well for SaaS businesses though.)

Brand and content > direct response marketing

Brand/content marketing = people learn from you and like/trust you

Direct response marketing = urgency and scarcity tactics to make people buy immediately

That’s my definition, at least.

Direct response marketing has its place, but I prefer brand and content marketing.

My audience is ready to buy from me even before hitting the sales page (and often I just send them a Stripe link).

Email marketing

Olly optimizes for getting an email first. Once you have an email, you can nurture the relationship with the prospect.

My takeaways here:

• Lead magnets can work well

• Have an automated funnel to sell the core offer (by telling a story)

• Have occasional promotional campaigns

• Don’t forget about customer after-care (don’t send “buy now” emails to customers)

Funnel

I went through the StoryLearning funnel myself and immediately pulled out my credit card.

Here’s what it did well:

1. Pop-up with email capture (for freebie); I opted in

2. Page with “wait, don’t skip the next step” with a link to the course

3. Landing page for 7-day free trial, which has a refund guarantee

4. After pulling out credit card (for free trial), upsell to level 2 for a bundle deal

I went from just wanting a freebie,

To pulling out my credit card for a $300+ course purchase.

Action items

Here were my action items for my newsletter/course business after reading the 117-page case study.

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