I created a blog post about why I’m writing pure HTML & CSS. At the bottom I created a section about building your own with a button to subscribe to a mini-course. This was a strong lead magnet and about 1.9% of users signed up to my mailing list.
When I first released the course I used a bold text link. I later changed this to a button. The button improved conversion by about 70%.
Although my parents are not in my target market, they commented that there was “nothing to click on” in my messages. They missed the link text completely.
I had two old lists of email addresses that I had collected but never communicated with. The open rate on an email to this list was very, very low and the unsubscribe rate was very high. It’s probably not worth importing a list like this.
When I did my first mini-course I setup and automation with 6 daily messages. What I noticed is that the more email messages you send the more likely users are to unsubscribe. My first and second email had no unsubscribes (0%) but the 3rd, 4th, 5th, and 6th email all had various unsubscribe rates. This could indicate something about the quality of the emails but I’ve received positive feedback that specifically mentioned things covered in the 3rd email.
My current conclusion is that it may be better to send a single email with the entire mini-course rather than sending one per day and overwhelming someone’s email inbox.
Written by Joel Dare on July 26, 2025 and updated August 9, 2025.
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