Email course template: five days written out, free to copy

How to adapt this in an afternoon

Start by writing your promise as one sentence with an outcome and an owner in it: by day five you will have [the outcome], and you will know what to do when it does not. Keep that sentence visible, and hold every drifting draft against it.

Then fill the five slots in order of difficulty rather than in order of sending. Day three is easiest, because it is the concrete thing you know best. Day five is next, because writing the close tells you whether the promise is deliverable in five emails at all. Write day one last, once you know exactly what you are recruiting people into, but test its task first: do it yourself before breakfast, so you know the smallest win fits.

Replace the brackets consistently. [the one-page worksheet] is the same artefact in every email and should stay that way: one link, repeated for four days, is what separates a course from a sales sequence. With no worksheet, make the call to action a reply, and keep that identical too.

Then read all five out loud in one sitting, send yourself through the sequence from your own opt-in form, and read them on a phone in the order a reader gets them. Everything broken about an email is broken in a mail client and looks fine in an editor.

Day 1: the one thing to stop doing

Subject line: Day 1 of 5: the one thing to stop doing. Preheader: Two minutes and one piece of paper, and you have started. Every subject line here is written as the reader sees it; if your tool adds the Day N of 5 prefix to each email itself, type only what follows it, or the reader gets the prefix twice.

Welcome to [the course title]. Five emails, one each morning, and by day five you will have [the outcome].

Here is the thing I want to take away from you first, because it is the belief that makes [the thing you teach] harder than it needs to be: [the common assumption]. It sounds responsible. It is the reason most people stall, and it is the reason the obvious approach does not work.

What is actually true is narrower and more useful: [the reframe, in one sentence]. That is it. Everything in the next four mornings follows from it.

You do not have to believe me yet. Do this instead, and it takes two minutes. Get one piece of paper and write down [the concrete two-minute observation] exactly as it is today, not as you would like it to be. Do not fix anything, do not tidy it, do not look anything up.

That piece of paper is what days two to five work on. If you do nothing else this week, you have still got something you did not have at breakfast.

Tomorrow: the step almost everyone skips, and why skipping it costs more than doing it.

Call to action: Open [the one-page worksheet] and write down [the concrete two-minute observation].

Why this email is shaped this way: it delivers before it explains. A first day spent describing what is coming spends the highest-attention moment the course will ever get on an agenda. The action is deliberately trivial, because a course works by accumulating five completed small things rather than five read ones.

Day 2: the step everyone skips

Subject line: Day 2 of 5: the step everyone skips. Preheader: Unglamorous, twenty minutes, and it decides the rest.

Look at the paper from yesterday. Somewhere in it is the thing this email is about.

Almost everyone doing [the thing you teach] skips [the groundwork step], because it produces nothing you can show anybody and takes twenty minutes. Then they spend weeks on the visible part, it does not hold, and they conclude that [the thing you teach] does not work for them.

It does work. It is just that [the groundwork step] is what the visible part stands on. Here is the whole of it.

First, [the first sub-step]. Second, [the second sub-step], which is where people stop, so be warned that it will feel like nothing is happening. Third, [the third sub-step], and then stop. Do not go further today, even if it is going well, because the next part assumes this one has settled.

The test that you have done it properly is [the observable signal]. If you do not see that, the usual cause is [the usual cause], and the fix is [the fix].

Tomorrow is the one people come for: [the main method], written out in full.

Call to action: Do all three sub-steps on [the one-page worksheet].

Why this email is shaped this way: day two is where a course loses the readers it is going to lose, so it earns its place by being useful rather than motivational. Naming the moment that feels like failure before the reader reaches it stops them reading their own boredom as evidence the method is wrong.

Day 3: the method itself

Subject line: Day 3 of 5: [the main method], in full. Preheader: The middle of the course, and the part you keep.

This is the email to save. Everything else in [the course title] exists to make this one work.

Here is [the main method], start to finish. Begin with [the input you need]. You already have it from days one and two. Then [the first move], which usually takes [the rough time]. Then [the second move]. The order matters: doing them the other way round produces [the wrong result], which looks correct for about a week.

When you are done you should be able to say [the sentence a reader can now say] out loud, and mean it. That sentence is the point of the method. If you cannot say it yet you are missing [the missing input], which is worth going back for rather than pushing through.

Two notes. [the first note], which almost nobody is told. And [the second note], the difference between this working once and working every time.

Tomorrow: the four things that go wrong, and how to spot each of them early.

Call to action: Work through [the main method] on [the one-page worksheet].

Why this email is shaped this way: the middle day carries the most concrete material you have, because it is where a reader decides whether the rest of the week is worth the mornings. It is written as a procedure rather than an argument, so it can be re-read as a reference, which is what makes readers keep it.

Day 4: when it goes wrong

Subject line: Day 4 of 5: when it goes wrong. Preheader: Four failure modes, and the early warning for each.

A brochure would not include this email. That is roughly why it is the most useful one.

[the main method] fails in four recognisable ways, and all four are cheap to fix early and expensive to fix late.

The first is [the first failure mode]. The early sign is [the early sign], usually about [the timing]. Fix it by [the fix].

The second is [the second failure mode], the common one. It happens because [the cause], and the tell is [the tell]. Fix: [the fix].

The third is [the third failure mode]. Not your fault and not always fixable; what you do is [the mitigation].

The fourth is doing everything correctly and getting no result for [the waiting period]. That is not a failure mode, it is the normal timeline, and it belongs on this list because it is where people abandon something that was working.

Check your own work against those four before tomorrow. Most people find one.

Call to action: Run the four checks against what you built on [the one-page worksheet].

Why this email is shaped this way: naming what goes wrong is what converts a reader into someone who trusts you, because it is the material a sales page leaves out. Putting the normal timeline among the real failures also disarms the commonest reason a beginner quits, which is mistaking slowness for error.

Day 5: what you have now

Subject line: Day 5 of 5: what you have now. Preheader: Where you started, where you are, and one invitation.

Last one. Before you read any of this, go and find the paper from day one.

On day one you had [the starting state]. Today you have [the finished artefact], you know [the main method] well enough to run it again without me, and you know the four ways it goes wrong and what each one looks like early. That is [the outcome], which is what this course promised on the sign-up page.

What to do next week, in one line: [the single next action], then leave it alone for [the interval]. The commonest mistake from here is [the post-course mistake].

And one invitation, the only thing I will ask you for in this course. [the single honest invitation: what it is, who it is for, what it costs, and what happens if they say no.] If it is not for you, that is a complete answer, and the worksheet is yours to keep either way.

Thank you for five mornings. That is more attention than anyone owes a stranger. [your name]

Call to action: [the single honest invitation], stated once, with its price and its shape.

Why this email is shaped this way: it states the arrival rather than teasing, because a reader on the final morning is being asked to finish something. Reminding them of day one makes the progress concrete, which earns the one ask, and the explicit permission to decline keeps a finished course from reading as a funnel.

The day-six email, and why it exists

Subject line: One more thing, after [the course title]. Preheader: A question, and what happens to this list now.

The morning after day five you have people who read five things you wrote, finished them, and are still opted in. A course that stops dead leaves that audience to go cold. Send one more email, and make it small.

The body: one question and one statement. The question is what was the hardest part of [the course title] for you, asked as a genuine reply prompt, because those answers are the best material for the second version of the course. The statement is what this list is now for: finishers handed to [your newsletter], nothing further arriving, or [the next thing] coming and roughly when.

Say one of the three plainly, and say the same thing the opt-in page said, because a list assembled for a five-day course and mailed about something unrelated months later earns its complaints.

Call to action: Reply to this email with the hardest part.

Why this email is shaped this way: it keeps its own label rather than pretending to be day six of five, so the reader is never told the course has a length it does not have. A reply is the call to action because it is the highest-value response a small list can give you and the strongest engagement signal a mailbox provider sees.

The whole course as plain text, to copy or download

Everything above without the notes on why: five emails and the follow-up, each with its subject line, preheader, body and call to action, in sending order. The follow-up is written as a short letter here rather than described.

Paste it into a document first, not straight into your email tool. Replace the brackets with find and replace, so [the one-page worksheet] becomes the same link in all four emails where it appears, then paste one day at a time into the tool. A search for an opening square bracket before you publish catches the placeholder you missed.

EMAIL COURSE TEMPLATE: FIVE DAYS AND A FOLLOW-UP

Replace everything in [square brackets]. One email each morning, in this order. If your email tool adds the "Day N of 5:" prefix itself, delete it from these subject lines.

---------- DAY 1 ----------
Subject: Day 1 of 5: the one thing to stop doing
Preheader: Two minutes and one piece of paper, and you have started.

Welcome to [the course title]. Five emails, one each morning, and by day five you will have [the outcome].

Here is the thing I want to take away from you first, because it is the belief that makes [the thing you teach] harder than it needs to be: [the common assumption]. It sounds responsible. It is the reason most people stall, and it is the reason the obvious approach does not work.

What is actually true is narrower and more useful: [the reframe, in one sentence]. That is it. Everything in the next four mornings follows from it.

You do not have to believe me yet. Do this instead, and it takes two minutes. Get one piece of paper and write down [the concrete two-minute observation] exactly as it is today, not as you would like it to be. Do not fix anything, do not tidy it, do not look anything up.

That piece of paper is what days two to five work on. If you do nothing else this week, you have still got something you did not have at breakfast.

Tomorrow: the step almost everyone skips, and why skipping it costs more than doing it.

Call to action: Open [the one-page worksheet] and write down [the concrete two-minute observation].

---------- DAY 2 ----------
Subject: Day 2 of 5: the step everyone skips
Preheader: Unglamorous, twenty minutes, and it decides the rest.

Look at the paper from yesterday. Somewhere in it is the thing this email is about.

Almost everyone doing [the thing you teach] skips [the groundwork step], because it produces nothing you can show anybody and takes twenty minutes. Then they spend weeks on the visible part, it does not hold, and they conclude that [the thing you teach] does not work for them.

It does work. It is just that [the groundwork step] is what the visible part stands on. Here is the whole of it.

First, [the first sub-step]. Second, [the second sub-step], which is where people stop, so be warned that it will feel like nothing is happening. Third, [the third sub-step], and then stop. Do not go further today, even if it is going well, because the next part assumes this one has settled.

The test that you have done it properly is [the observable signal]. If you do not see that, the usual cause is [the usual cause], and the fix is [the fix].

Tomorrow is the one people come for: [the main method], written out in full.

Call to action: Do all three sub-steps on [the one-page worksheet].

---------- DAY 3 ----------
Subject: Day 3 of 5: [the main method], in full
Preheader: The middle of the course, and the part you keep.

This is the email to save. Everything else in [the course title] exists to make this one work.

Here is [the main method], start to finish. Begin with [the input you need]. You already have it from days one and two. Then [the first move], which usually takes [the rough time]. Then [the second move]. The order matters: doing them the other way round produces [the wrong result], which looks correct for about a week.

When you are done you should be able to say [the sentence a reader can now say] out loud, and mean it. That sentence is the point of the method. If you cannot say it yet you are missing [the missing input], which is worth going back for rather than pushing through.

Two notes. [the first note], which almost nobody is told. And [the second note], the difference between this working once and working every time.

Tomorrow: the four things that go wrong, and how to spot each of them early.

Call to action: Work through [the main method] on [the one-page worksheet].

---------- DAY 4 ----------
Subject: Day 4 of 5: when it goes wrong
Preheader: Four failure modes, and the early warning for each.

A brochure would not include this email. That is roughly why it is the most useful one.

[the main method] fails in four recognisable ways, and all four are cheap to fix early and expensive to fix late.

The first is [the first failure mode]. The early sign is [the early sign], usually about [the timing]. Fix it by [the fix].

The second is [the second failure mode], the common one. It happens because [the cause], and the tell is [the tell]. Fix: [the fix].

The third is [the third failure mode]. Not your fault and not always fixable; what you do is [the mitigation].

The fourth is doing everything correctly and getting no result for [the waiting period]. That is not a failure mode, it is the normal timeline, and it belongs on this list because it is where people abandon something that was working.

Check your own work against those four before tomorrow. Most people find one.

Call to action: Run the four checks against what you built on [the one-page worksheet].

---------- DAY 5 ----------
Subject: Day 5 of 5: what you have now
Preheader: Where you started, where you are, and one invitation.

Last one. Before you read any of this, go and find the paper from day one.

On day one you had [the starting state]. Today you have [the finished artefact], you know [the main method] well enough to run it again without me, and you know the four ways it goes wrong and what each one looks like early. That is [the outcome], which is what this course promised on the sign-up page.

What to do next week, in one line: [the single next action], then leave it alone for [the interval]. The commonest mistake from here is [the post-course mistake].

And one invitation, the only thing I will ask you for in this course. [the single honest invitation: what it is, who it is for, what it costs, and what happens if they say no.] If it is not for you, that is a complete answer, and the worksheet is yours to keep either way.

Thank you for five mornings. That is more attention than anyone owes a stranger. [your name]

Call to action: [the single honest invitation], stated once, with its price and its shape.

---------- DAY 6 (THE FOLLOW-UP, OUTSIDE THE COUNT) ----------
Subject: One more thing, after [the course title]
Preheader: A question, and what happens to this list now.

You finished [the course title] yesterday. Thank you for five mornings.

One question, and I read every answer: what was the hardest part of the course for you? Hit reply and tell me in a sentence. Those answers decide what the next version fixes.

And what happens now: [one of three, and the same one the sign-up page promised: this list becomes your newsletter and arrives this often; nothing more arrives from this list; or the next thing is coming, and roughly when].

[your name]

Call to action: Reply to this email with the hardest part.

Stretching it to seven or ten days

Five days suits most subjects. Stretch the course only where the reader needs a night between two parts of the work, because each extra morning has to carry its own action. Never stretch it with an introduction day, a recap day or a bonus day: those give the reader a morning with nothing to do, and a morning with nothing to do is a reason to stop opening.

For seven days, split the method. Day three of the five-day version becomes three emails: the input and the first move, then the second move and the sentence the reader can now say, then the two notes applied to their own worksheet. Everything else keeps its place, so the failure modes land on day six and the close on day seven.

For ten days, split three things. The groundwork becomes two emails, doing it and then checking it. The method becomes three, as above. The failure modes become two. That leaves one new day, a worked example from start to finish on a real case of yours, placed after the method so the reader sees it done before they are told how it goes wrong.

Three things do not change with the length. Every email keeps one action and the same call to action. Most days still land at 200 to 500 words; a longer course is more mornings, not longer emails. And the follow-up stays outside the count. Rewrite every prefix, not only the new days, because "Day 3 of 5" in a seven-day course tells the reader the wrong length. Email course subject lines sets out a full set for five, seven and ten days, and the email course outline generator builds the same skeleton for any length from five to ten.