How to launch a course in ConvertKit (and send abandoned cart reminders)

Have you ever thought about creating an email course?

Email courses are one of the easiest ways to share what you know with your audience and generate income as a creator. Plus, you can do it all within ConvertKit!

Justin from Creator Wizard ended up earning $40K with his course. How did he do it? His course launch was backed by abandoned cart emails - that is, tracking subscribers who were interested in the course and following up with anyone who didn’t complete their purchase.

Abandoned cart emails are a great tool for reminding people to purchase from you. After all, how many times have you left an item in your own shopping cart and forgotten about it?

Today, we’re going to walk through the steps of building an email course, selling it, and setting up an abandoned cart automation that reminds people to purchase - all within your ConvertKit account!

Note: you will need a paid ConvertKit account in order to use automations for this method.

Step 1: Create your email course

Creating an email course may take a little bit of time, but it’s much easier than a regular online course.

One of the easiest ways to do this is to use existing content - whether that’s from your blog, newsletter, YouTube, or another platform. We have a template you can follow here to create the content for your email course. Grab the Email Course Templates.

In terms of the technical set-up, you can create it all using a ConvertKit sequence. In this video, Angel will walk you through the entire process of creating an email course in a single weekend.

Step 2: Sell your course with ConvertKit Commerce

Once your email course is set up using sequences, you can use ConvertKit Commerce to sell your course. Here’s how:

Start by creating a product for your email course. Check out this article for detailed instructions. Note: under fulfillment, you’ll want to choose ‘Something else’.

Connect your product to your sequence. Using a visual automation, choose the ‘Purchase’ option and find the product you just created from the drop-down menu:

This will create a product node at the top of the automation.

The next step is to tag customers with the tag ‘Has Purchased tag’. This will come in handy in the next step.

Finally, add your sequence below the tag node.

Now anyone who purchases the product will automatically get added to the email course sequence 🎉

Step 3: Set up your abandoned cart email

Now it’s time to promote your email course and track anyone who shows interest so you can win them over with an abandoned cart email!

First, grab your abandoned cart email template.

Once you’ve copied the automation template into your ConvertKit account, you can begin setting it up.

Note: Within the automation template, you can click on the notes icon for further instructions on setting the automation up.

How the automation template works:

All subscribers will start at the landing page at the top of the automation
An automatic welcome sequence gets sent that pitches your email course. Action step: Change the link in the email to reflect your newly created product (from step 2). You’ll also want to check the box that says ‘Tag subscribers who click this link’ and find the tag called ‘Viewed Product Landing Page’:

The automation will wait 1 day to give people time to purchase
The automation will check to see whether the subscriber has the tag ‘Viewed Product Landing Page’. If they do have the tag, the automation will wait 2 days then check to see if they’ve purchased the product already. If they do not have the tag, they will be sent a product reminder email.
Lastly, the automation will send an abandoned cart email to anyone who viewed the product page but doesn’t have the purchased tag.

The automation template includes an abandoned cart email, but you can also find some abandoned cart email templates you can use to customize yours.

Have you tried selling an email course? How about using abandoned cart emails?

Comment down below with your ideas and any questions you have about this set-up.

Don’t forget to grab the automation template here.