Tiny Courses, Big Results

In the early aughts, I read a book about permission marketing by Seth Godin and this idea forever stuck with me: Do not spam people. 

Not because spamming people is mean, which it is, but because in the long run, it doesn’t even work. Because inbox beggary is a shortsighted gambit to force people to buy now. And most don’t. Because that’s not how buying works. They’ve no reason to trust. And now you’ve lost them.

It’s why I despise most marketing forms—they are obviously a trap.

It’s also why for years now, we’ve pushed clients to convert their best ebooks into a format we call the tiny course. We chop that same material into chapter-by-chapter emails and drip them out as lessons. We have found it can help marketers retain that lost trust.

Today, I’ll share five examples with enough detail you can try it too.

It's not the ebook, it's the trap door beneath

There is nothing wrong with PDF ebooks. They’re an easy way to produce high-design, user-friendly content when you don’t have full control over your own website.

Rather, the issue is how marketers use them as bait. Today’s buyers know when they pull that proverbial book from the shelf, a trap door opens and they may never escape the dungeon of calls and texts.

So back in 2021, when a client asked if we could rewrite a hulking ebook produced by a prestigious pricing firm that was a bit too academic, we said, why not also chop it up? We could piece it into chapters and call it a “course.” We’d tell readers that if they signed up, they’d get these same lessons over eight weeks.

Their readers are busy startup CEOs, so this was a great benefit—whereas before, those CEOs would have downloaded and forgotten it, the client would now send them helpful reminders.

Plus, now our client:

• Had permission to be in their inbox.
• Got eight memorable touches, not one.
• Could measure the progress of each reader.
• Could improve the open and click data.
• Could link lessons to articles to generate recurring traffic.
• Could update those links to feature new content.
• Was continually improving their email sender score.
• Had a winning, repeatable template.

And so a format was born. We didn’t invent courses, obviously. But we are trying to popularize our email-only “tiny” version. What’s so beautiful is that it uses tools the client already has—they are just emails and a landing page.

Bessemer has earned  4,000+ signups

Christine Deakers at Bessemer Ventures Partners hired us to build that first tiny course. We rewrote the overly academic ebook for clarity, then expanded it into emails with introductions and guidance. Clarissa also added "progress bar" graphics at the bottom of each email for that dopamine rush of completion.

It’s worked so well, they’ve expanded it into a suite of courses and we are working on a fourth.

See Bessemer's pricing course.

Loopio got 400 signups in the first 3 days 

Next, our friend Jillian Woods at Loopio wanted to test whether they should build an actual learning academy, and a "tiny" course allowed them to try it out on the cheap. While we interviewed proposal experts to write the material, her demand team collected pre-signups which helped them hit their goal within three days of launch.

See Loopio's Academy.

Spekit’s course helped sales sell

Each Spekit chapter is based on one or more interviews with sales and marketing luminaries and was an opportunity for Spekit to draw those individuals into its orbit. It also gave Spekit’s salespeople a high-value offer to prospects: Train your teams for free.

As with many creative projects, the client made some post-launch changes and while we now can't fully stand behind the design, the writing is rad.

See Spekit's sales enablement course.

We created tiny courses to promote our own paid writing course

We've also created several for ourselves. We haven't promoted them much but they generated 200 signups mostly through word of mouth which seeded our paid course launch. (I'm particularly proud that people rate them a 9.6 out of 10. And for the price? What value. I've said it before and I'll say it again, your marketing is a product. It should be good enough people might pay for.)

Sign up and see.

Sign up for any of the tiny courses profiled above and have a look. 

Though, if you plan to create one yourself, this is one question every team must grapple with: Do we have information worthy of a course? Let's discuss that next.

Without substance, there is no trust 

Every tiny course we have built has been based on rich material and interviews with real experts. If you don't have similar material, the format cannot save you and yours might be no different from those empty ebooks marketers use in their form traps.

If we want to re-earn buyers’ trust, I believe it is all of our responsibility to produce substantive material. People don’t read ads, but they do read things that interest them—some of which are ads. Aim for your courses to be so good—so genuinely instructive—that nobody knows the difference.

 How to apply today’s story

Pitch a tiny course to your boss or client. Share the above examples and model yours after that. 

In the next issue

What it takes to invent and grow a brand publication. 

Inside Fenwick

Our rebrand draws near and, excitingly, it involves visual patterns. Otherwise, we’re in a busy season and producing lots of designed PDF ebooks I can’t wait to share. Also, did I mention we share what we’re each reading on our team dashboard? It's a small joy.

Learning insights

The thing that most excited people about our last writing cohort? Learning to be concise. Rhonda O'Connor, who just completed it, explains it this way:

"I've been in my current role five years and know I'm developing a 'curse of knowledge,' making assumptions about my audience. This course helped me get back to the basics—being precise, concise, and easy to read."

Worth reading

Other lead magnets. (Tiny courses being one of them.)

Ireland’s Memory Machines. A good long read. Hat tip to Brian Kerr. 

Always fear the datasaurus dozen. Terrific read and an important one for us content marketers, who for reasons of need and speed, might repeat bad data unknowingly.  

The Real Meaning of Humanity’s Origin Story. An excellently argued book review. (Paywall.)

Canva’s programmatic SEO strategy. 

Animalz’ favorite content marketing resources.

Butterick’s practical typography. Also hat tip to Brian Kerr.

Books don’t sell. By Seth Godin.

Live footage of tech companies adding AI to their product.

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