Glossary
Email course
Also called email mini-course, course by email.
Last reviewed 18 September 2026
What is an email course?
An email course is a finite sequence of lessons delivered one email at a time, in order, on a clock that starts when each reader joins, and it ends on a day both of you knew about in advance.
Finite is the load-bearing word. A newsletter is a standing arrangement with no end and a course is a promise with a last day, which is why people finish courses and do not finish newsletters, and why a stranger will agree to five mornings when they would not agree to something indefinite.
The per-reader clock is the other half. Five messages scheduled a day apart work once, for the people already on the list; everybody who arrives on Wednesday starts at day three of something whose beginning they never saw.
See also
- Drip campaign
A drip campaign is a stored sequence of emails sent to a person on a timer after some trigger, run towards a goal the sender chose, which is the same machinery an email course runs on and a different promise to the reader.
- Welcome sequence
A welcome sequence is the short run of emails a new subscriber receives after joining a list, sent to introduce who you are and what will arrive, and it is the mail people are most likely to read because it is the only mail they are expecting.
- Five-day challenge
A five-day challenge is a sequence of five daily emails that each ask the reader to do one small thing, usually with a sixth email that makes an offer, so the unit of progress is an action rather than a lesson.
- Completion rate
A completion rate is the share of confirmed subscribers who reach the end of a course, and for a five-day course measured by a click on the last day it commonly runs between one in ten and one in four, with longer courses lower.
Read next
This term is covered properly in Email courses: the complete guide to writing and finishing one, which is a longer piece on the subject.
Every other term is on the glossary index , the longer writing is in the guides, and what this site itself does is on the home page.
Thinking of writing one of these?
5dayemail hosts a five-to-ten day email course: you write it once, and everyone who joins your list gets one email a day, in order, starting from the day they confirm.
Accounts are opened a few at a time rather than by signing up. Leave your address and you will be written to when the next ones open.
One message, when there is room. No course emails, no newsletter, and the address is not passed on. Ask and it is deleted; what is kept, and for how long, is in the privacy policy.