Master The Inbox

Your Black Friday offer is live, but what should you email next besides another reminder about the discount? Monica Badiu walks through eight types of Black Friday emails, from announcements and value-building messages to objection handling, social proof, FAQs, bonuses, urgency, and last calls.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode

• A short announcement can work when your audience already understands the offer and has been prepared for the sale.
• A value email should explain the outcome and relevance of a purchase alongside the savings.
• Objection-handling emails can address time, experience, technology, or price without assuming a discount resolves every concern.
• Social proof becomes more useful when the student’s starting point and experience relate to the reader’s hesitation.
• Urgency should explain what actually changes when the deadline passes.
• FAQ and bonus emails can answer practical questions and make implementation support easier to understand.
• A last-call email can be direct when earlier messages have already explained the offer.
• You can combine email purposes or use fewer than eight messages, depending on the buying decision.

Resources Mentioned

• Black Friday Emails That Don’t Suck — Monica’s course with walkthroughs, examples, and templates. https://www.monicabadiu.com/course-black-friday-emails-that-dont-suck/ 
• Master The Inbox Black Friday season — the wider collection on campaign preparation and strategy. https://www.monicabadiu.com/black-friday-podcast/ 
• Copyhackers — discussed as an example of explaining purchase value in context.
• Mindvalley — mentioned as an example of a more developed announcement email.
• Master The Inbox on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/company/108863531
• Master The Inbox on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/mastertheinbox_

Hi. And welcome.
My name is Monica Badiu. I am a marketing consultant turned conversion copywriter and copy coach. I help online course creators and info product businesses sell more through persuasive, non-spammy, no fluff copywriting.

I teach about copywriting, digital marketing, and conversion strategies tested in my businesses and with my clients. 

Other links:

• Get to know more about Monica Badiu: https://www.linkedin.com/in/monicabadiu
• Join the free Master the Inbox community https://www.skool.com/master-the-inbox-school-4845
• Visit Monica’s website: https://www.monicabadiu.com 
• Listen more Master the Inbox episodes: https://www.mastertheinbox.com 
• Get your Black Friday resources: https://www.monicabadiu.com/black-friday-resources/ 
• Read Monica’s blogs: https://www.monicabadiu.com/blog
• Get your freebies: https://www.monicabadiu.com/freebie
• Get help with your copywriting by scheduling a free discovery call: ...

Before you increase your Black Friday email sends, find out who still wants to hear from you and what they need now. Monica Badiu shares email re-engagement strategies drawn from campaigns she received in two research inboxes, including useful resources, permission checks, and offers for former customers. You’ll learn how to choose an approach for different subscriber groups, collect information that improves your segmentation, and decide what to do when people don’t respond.

Show notes

A former student, someone who downloaded a checklist, and a subscriber whose goals have changed can all look inactive in your email platform. Drawing on campaigns she received during September, Monica explores how to reconnect with each group and turn re-engagement into useful information for your next promotion.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode

• Re-engagement, permission checks, and customer win-back campaigns serve different purposes, even when they overlap.
• A useful resource can give subscribers a reason to respond before a more direct confirmation email.
• Former customers need messages that acknowledge their purchase history and possible next step.
• Questions about a subscriber’s current situation can reveal whether your planned Black Friday offer fits.
• Clicking for a coupon tells you something different from choosing newsletter topics or confirming a subscription.
• Topic mismatch can explain inactivity when someone has already solved the problem that brought them to your list.
• Excluding long-term inactive contacts from a promotion is a different decision from permanently deleting their records.

Key Takeaway

Choose one lead magnet and spend 10 minutes drafting a question about the problem it helped people address. Give subscribers three or four clear answers that describe where they might be now. Before sending, decide how each answer should change the content or offer they receive next.

Research Context

These examples come from emails Monica received in two research inboxes. They show her experience as a subscriber, not the senders’ complete campaigns, internal segmentation, or performance results.

Resources Mentioned

• Revive Your Email List — plan your re-engagement campaign and decide what to do with subscribers who respond or remain inactive.
• Why your Black Friday emails might never reach the inbox—and what to do before November — the related deliverability episode and article.
• Master The Inbox Black Friday season — more conversations about preparing your campaign.
• Master The Inbox community — resources and support for course creators.
• Kit and Klaviyo — email platforms mentioned when discussing personalised messages.
• Duolingo — mentioned in Monica’s language-learning example.
• Master The Inbox on LinkedIn
• Master The Inbox on Instagram

Hi. And welcome.
My name is Monica Badiu. I am a marketing consultant turned conversion copywriter and copy coach. I help online course creators and info product businesses sell more through persuasive, non-spammy, no fluff copywriting.

I teach about copywriting, digital marketing, and conversion strategies tested in my businesses and with my clients. 

Other links:

• Get to know more about Monica Badiu: https://www.linkedin.com/in/monicabadiu
• Join the free Master the Inbox community https://www.skool.com/master-the-inbox-school-4845
• Visit Monica’s website: https://www.monicabadiu.com 
• Listen more Master the Inbox episodes: https://www.mastertheinbox.com 
• Get your Black Friday resources: https://www.monicabadiu.com/black-friday-resources/ 
• Read Monica’s blogs: https://www.monicabadiu.com/blog
• Get your freebies: https://www.monicabadiu.com/freebie
• Get help with your copywriting by scheduling a free discovery call: ...

A bigger Black Friday discount won’t tell your audience why your course is worth buying. Monica Badiu and Charlotte “Charlie” Sargeant, founder of The Creative Strategy Lab, unpack the customer research that helps you build a more relevant offer. You’ll learn to identify buying motivations beyond price, turn customer language into messaging, and test your positioning through email before your promotion starts. For course creators, coaches, and consultants who want a stronger reason to buy than “70% off.”

Episode Summary

Choosing your Black Friday discount is easier than working out what would make someone want your offer. In this conversation, Monica and Charlie explore buyer identity, speed, convenience, and desired outcomes—and explain how testimonials, sales conversations, and email surveys can help you decide what to sell and how to position it.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode

• Following competitors into deeper discounts can attract buyers whose main reason to return is another price cut.
• Your Black Friday course offer competes for the same budget as purchases outside your industry.
• Buyers at beginner, intermediate, and advanced levels need messaging that reflects their specific challenges and confidence.
• A faster route or a done-with-you option can appeal to customers who value convenience more than a lower price.
• Testimonials, Reddit discussions, social comments, DMs, and sales call notes reveal language you can use to explain your offer’s value.
• Counting recurring customer problems gives you a starting point for testing messaging instead of choosing an angle on instinct.
• Monica’s two-step email research process connects audience struggles and future goals to the offer she plans to promote.

Key Takeaway

Before writing your next promotional email, spend 10 minutes reading five customer replies or testimonials. Note one problem that appears more than once, keep the customer’s wording, and identify which part of your offer addresses it. Use that connection to draft your opening paragraph before you mention the discount.

About the Guest

Charlotte “Charlie” Sargeant began in paid social and moved into creative strategy as customer insight and ad messaging became a bigger part of her work. Her agency leadership experience included overseeing creative strategy across more than £22 million in annual ad spend. She founded The Creative Strategy Lab, where she helps marketers use customer research to shape messaging and offers.

Connect with Charlotte on LinkedIn or visit The Creative Strategy Lab for her work and newsletter.

Resources Mentioned

• Build your campaign with the Black Friday podcast season
• Charlotte Sargeant on LinkedIn
• The Creative Strategy Lab and newsletter
• Master The Inbox on LinkedIn
• Master The Inbox on Instagram
• Reddit — one of the customer research sources discussed.
• Copyhackers — the company behind Copy School, mentioned in Monica’s buying experience.
• Kit, ChatGPT, and Claude — tools mentioned in the discussion about email and research support.
• Google Analytics — mentioned when discussing where traffic and revenue come from.

Hi. And welcome.
My name is Monica Badiu. I am a marketing consultant turned conversion copywriter and copy coach. I help online course creators and info product businesses sell more through persuasive, non-spammy, no fluff copywriting.

I teach about copywriting, digital marketing, and conversion strategies tested in my businesses and with my clients. 

Other links:

• Get to know more about Monica Badiu: https://www.linkedin.com/in/monicabadiu
• Join the free Master the Inbox community https://www.skool.com/master-the-inbox-school-4845
• Visit Monica’s website: https://www.monicabadiu.com 
• Listen more Master the Inbox episodes: https://www.mastertheinbox.com 
• Get your Black Friday resources: https://www.monicabadiu.com/black-friday-resources/ 
• Read Monica’s blogs: https://www.monicabadiu.com/blog
• Get your freebies: https://www.monicabadiu.com/freebie
• Get help with your copywriting by scheduling a free discovery call: ...

You can have the best discount, the best copy, and a big list and still watch your Black Friday campaign fail because your emails never reached the inbox. 

In this episode, Monica Badiu shares what she learned after flying to Poland for 48 hours to sit in a room with email deliverability experts who collectively send millions of emails per month including Bouncer CEO Radek Kaczyński, deliverability expert Aleksandra Szulecka-Szmyt, and Kath Pay from Holistic Email Marketing

The decisions you make in September and October determine whether your Black Friday emails land in the inbox or spam, and by November, your reputation is already set.

Resources mentioned:

Revive Your Email List → monicabadiu.com/revive-your-email-list/ If you want to go deeper on the re-engagement piece specifically, the part that most course creators need to start with, the Revive Your Email List course walks you through the exact three-step framework: how to audit your list, the email templates to re-engage inactive subscribers, the nurture strategy for bringing people back after they re-engage, and real case studies from actual campaigns. 

Join the community → skool.com/master-the-inbox-school-4845 And if you want to stay close to everything Monica is sharing on Q4 — offers, funnels, what to send your subscribers, copy teardowns, the full Black Friday strategy — the Master The Inbox Skool Community is free to join and active throughout the season.

• Connect with Radek Kaczyński https://www.linkedin.com/in/radoslawkaczynski/ 
• Follow Kath Pay https://www.linkedin.com/in/kathpay/
• Learn more about Bouncer https://www.usebouncer.com

Hi. And welcome.
My name is Monica Badiu. I am a marketing consultant turned conversion copywriter and copy coach. I help online course creators and info product businesses sell more through persuasive, non-spammy, no fluff copywriting.

I teach about copywriting, digital marketing, and conversion strategies tested in my businesses and with my clients. 

Other links:

• Get to know more about Monica Badiu: https://www.linkedin.com/in/monicabadiu
• Join the free Master the Inbox community https://www.skool.com/master-the-inbox-school-4845
• Visit Monica’s website: https://www.monicabadiu.com 
• Listen more Master the Inbox episodes: https://www.mastertheinbox.com 
• Get your Black Friday resources: https://www.monicabadiu.com/black-friday-resources/ 
• Read Monica’s blogs: https://www.monicabadiu.com/blog
• Get your freebies: https://www.monicabadiu.com/freebie
• Get help with your copywriting by scheduling a free discovery call: ...

Everyone talks about ad budgets and creative strategy for Black Friday. Almost nobody talks about what's happening in your nervous system while the dashboard is flashing red. In this episode, Monica Badiu sits down with Rita Ainsworth — a performance marketing veteran who burned out twice before walking away at the peak of her career — to talk about Q4 ad strategy, the hidden cost of running campaigns under chronic stress, and the counterintuitive truth she discovered: doing less is often the highest-leverage move a high performer can make. Whether you're running ads or managing email campaigns this Black Friday, this conversation will change how you prepare.

About Rita Ainsworth

Rita Ainsworth spent over a decade in performance marketing, managing multi-million dollar ad budgets and leading teams across international time zones. After burning out twice — including one episode that left her unable to work more than two hours a day for months — she walked away at the peak of her career and went deep into the science of stress, energy, and the nervous system. She now coaches founders, operators, and marketers on how nervous system state shapes performance, decisions, and leadership. Her practice is built on one principle: state before strategy.

• 🌐 Website: ritaainsworthcoaching.com
• 💬 Find Rita on LinkedIn
• 📋 Take Rita's Nervous System Quiz: find out if you're regulated, stressed, or heading toward burnout, plus practical tips based on your results.
• Find Monica on LinkedIn

Hi. And welcome.
My name is Monica Badiu. I am a marketing consultant turned conversion copywriter and copy coach. I help online course creators and info product businesses sell more through persuasive, non-spammy, no fluff copywriting.

I teach about copywriting, digital marketing, and conversion strategies tested in my businesses and with my clients. 

Other links:

• Get to know more about Monica Badiu: https://www.linkedin.com/in/monicabadiu
• Join the free Master the Inbox community https://www.skool.com/master-the-inbox-school-4845
• Visit Monica’s website: https://www.monicabadiu.com 
• Listen more Master the Inbox episodes: https://www.mastertheinbox.com 
• Get your Black Friday resources: https://www.monicabadiu.com/black-friday-resources/ 
• Read Monica’s blogs: https://www.monicabadiu.com/blog
• Get your freebies: https://www.monicabadiu.com/freebie
• Get help with your copywriting by scheduling a free discovery call: ...

Have you ever wondered how often other course creators are emailing their lists — or what they're actually sending? In this episode, Monica Badiu shares six findings from a real competitive study she ran for a client in the language learning space, based on a few hundred emails received over the past year from creators teaching English, French, Spanish, and more. From sending frequency and welcome sequences to launch structures and list hygiene, this is what email marketing actually looks like behind the scenes — and what you can take directly from it for your own list.

What You'll Learn in This Episode

• How many emails the most consistent-revenue creators are actually sending per month — and how solo creators compare
• Why emailing only during launches is creating a cold list problem — and what to send between campaigns instead
• What "the angle" is, why it's the single biggest differentiator between creators selling similar things, and how three creators selling the same course type use completely different emotional frames to convert
• What a deeply personal, front-loaded welcome sequence looks like in practice — including one that opens with a regional British greeting instead of "Hi first name"
• Why the deadline email is non-negotiable in every launch — and what separates a deadline email that converts from one that feels like noise
• Why re-engagement campaigns are rare among course creators — and why that's a costly mistake, especially if you're running ads

Resources Mentioned

• 📧 Re-engagement Campaign Course — the exact strategy, email templates, and nurture sequence to win back inactive subscribers and clean your list properly → https://www.monicabadiu.com/revive-your-email-list/ 
• 💬 Find Monica on LinkedIn → https://www.linkedin.com/in/monicabadiu/ 
• 📸 Find Monica on Instagram → https://www.instagram.com/itsmonicabadiu/ 

Hi. And welcome.
My name is Monica Badiu. I am a marketing consultant turned conversion copywriter and copy coach. I help online course creators and info product businesses sell more through persuasive, non-spammy, no fluff copywriting.

I teach about copywriting, digital marketing, and conversion strategies tested in my businesses and with my clients. 

Other links:

• Get to know more about Monica Badiu: https://www.linkedin.com/in/monicabadiu
• Join the free Master the Inbox community https://www.skool.com/master-the-inbox-school-4845
• Visit Monica’s website: https://www.monicabadiu.com 
• Listen more Master the Inbox episodes: https://www.mastertheinbox.com 
• Get your Black Friday resources: https://www.monicabadiu.com/black-friday-resources/ 
• Read Monica’s blogs: https://www.monicabadiu.com/blog
• Get your freebies: https://www.monicabadiu.com/freebie
• Get help with your copywriting by scheduling a free discovery call: ...

You have decent open rates. But clicks? Nearly zero. And sales? Not happening. In this episode, Monica Badiu walks through the seven specific reasons your sales emails are getting opened but not acted on — from subject line mismatches and weak CTAs to bad timing and emails that are trying to do too much. 

What You'll Learn in This Episode

• How to diagnose whether your bottleneck is inside the email, on the sales page, or at checkout — before you change anything
• Why a curiosity-driven subject line can actually hurt your click rate if the body doesn't deliver on its promise
• What segmentation has to do with clicks — and how two versions of the same email can speak to completely different audiences
• Why vague, repetitive promo emails fail even when the offer is solid
• The difference between action-based and benefit-based CTAs — and which one actually gets clicked
• Why your email's only job during a promotion is to make clicking the sales page feel like the obvious next step
• How to use timing and current events to make your promotional emails feel immediately relevant
• What real urgency looks like — and why "sale ends tonight" isn't enough anymore

Resources Mentioned

• 📋 Free Email Bottleneck Assessment — find out what's blocking your email revenue → https://www.monicabadiu.com/email-revenue-self-assessment/ 
• 💬 Master The Inbox Skool Community — three plans based on how much access you want → https://www.skool.com/master-the-inbox-school-4845

The 7 Reasons at a Glance

1. Subject line and body mismatch — you earned the open but didn't deliver the promise
2. No segmentation — the same email going to everyone speaks to no one specifically
3. Emails that aren't saying much — vague content with no story, no transformation, no reason to care
4. Weak CTA copy — action-based instead of benefit-based
5. The email is trying to do too much — selling, closing, and sending people to five different places at once
6. The email isn't relevant to where your reader actually is right now
7. No real reason to act now — urgency without stakes

Hi. And welcome.
My name is Monica Badiu. I am a marketing consultant turned conversion copywriter and copy coach. I help online course creators and info product businesses sell more through persuasive, non-spammy, no fluff copywriting.

I teach about copywriting, digital marketing, and conversion strategies tested in my businesses and with my clients. 

Other links:

• Get to know more about Monica Badiu: https://www.linkedin.com/in/monicabadiu
• Join the free Master the Inbox community https://www.skool.com/master-the-inbox-school-4845
• Visit Monica’s website: https://www.monicabadiu.com 
• Listen more Master the Inbox episodes: https://www.mastertheinbox.com 
• Get your Black Friday resources: https://www.monicabadiu.com/black-friday-resources/ 
• Read Monica’s blogs: https://www.monicabadiu.com/blog
• Get your freebies: https://www.monicabadiu.com/freebie
• Get help with your copywriting by scheduling a free discovery call: ...

Your open rates look fine. Your list is growing. So why isn't revenue following? In this episode, Monica Badiu introduces the one metric that tells you whether your email list is actually profitable — revenue per subscriber — and walks through a real example of a course creator with 16,000 subscribers who discovered his list had doubled in size while his results stayed flat. If you've ever wondered whether you're building an audience of buyers or just readers, this episode will show you how to find out.

What You'll Learn in This Episode

• Why open rate, click rate, and list size can all look fine while revenue stalls
• What revenue per subscriber is and how to calculate it in under a minute
• The real story behind a 16K list that doubled in size but didn't double in revenue
• Why not all traffic sources are equal — and what that means for how you build your list
• How a mismatch between your audience and your offer shows up in your numbers before it shows up anywhere else
• Why a 30K list can outperform a 200K list — and what that tells you about list quality vs. list size

Resources:

• Take the free Email Bottleneck Assessment → https://www.monicabadiu.com/email-revenue-self-assessment/ 
• Find Monica on LinkedIn → https://www.linkedin.com/in/monicabadiu/
• Find Monica on Instagram → https://www.instagram.com/itsmonicabadiu/

Hi. And welcome.
My name is Monica Badiu. I am a marketing consultant turned conversion copywriter and copy coach. I help online course creators and info product businesses sell more through persuasive, non-spammy, no fluff copywriting.

I teach about copywriting, digital marketing, and conversion strategies tested in my businesses and with my clients. 

Other links:

• Get to know more about Monica Badiu: https://www.linkedin.com/in/monicabadiu
• Join the free Master the Inbox community https://www.skool.com/master-the-inbox-school-4845
• Visit Monica’s website: https://www.monicabadiu.com 
• Listen more Master the Inbox episodes: https://www.mastertheinbox.com 
• Get your Black Friday resources: https://www.monicabadiu.com/black-friday-resources/ 
• Read Monica’s blogs: https://www.monicabadiu.com/blog
• Get your freebies: https://www.monicabadiu.com/freebie
• Get help with your copywriting by scheduling a free discovery call: ...

If selling makes you uncomfortable — if the word "salesman" makes you cringe, or if you feel a little bit of shame every time you hit send on a promotional email — you're not imagining things.

That discomfort was engineered. Literally. In a boardroom over a hundred years ago.

In this episode of Master the Inbox, I'm taking you back to World War I, when a wartime propaganda machine accidentally created the modern idea of "selling" — and why that outdated, broken model is still destroying your ability to actually connect with people today.

You'll hear the story of George Creel's Committee on Public Information, the 75,000 "Four-Minute Men" who delivered scripted speeches to captive audiences in movie theaters, and how Edward Bernays (Sigmund Freud's nephew) took those same tactics and rebranded them as "public relations" — using psychology to sell cigarettes as "torches of freedom" and engineer the American breakfast.

These aren't just interesting historical footnotes. This is the blueprint we've all inherited. And it's the reason selling feels like warfare instead of service.

In this episode, you'll learn:

• Why we've been conditioned to view selling as a one-way blast of information designed to conquer minds
• How the "Four-Minute Men" of WWI created the modern sales monologue (and why it worked then but fails now)
• The difference between propaganda (which exploits your needs to help the seller) and persuasion (which addresses your needs to help you)
• Why your audience has developed "thick protective armor" against being sold to — and how to get past it
• What it actually means to sell as a conversation, not a monologue (with real examples from my client work)
• How to write emails that feel like letters from a trusted advisor, not a carnival barker
• Why respecting the "no" is one of the most powerful things you can do for your business

If you've ever felt icky about promoting your course, if you've hesitated before sending a sales email, or if you've wondered why your audience isn't responding to your offers — this episode will give you context for that resistance and a completely different path forward.

Hi. And welcome.
My name is Monica Badiu. I am a marketing consultant turned conversion copywriter and copy coach. I help online course creators and info product businesses sell more through persuasive, non-spammy, no fluff copywriting.

I teach about copywriting, digital marketing, and conversion strategies tested in my businesses and with my clients. 

Other links:

• Get to know more about Monica Badiu: https://www.linkedin.com/in/monicabadiu
• Join the free Master the Inbox community https://www.skool.com/master-the-inbox-school-4845
• Visit Monica’s website: https://www.monicabadiu.com 
• Listen more Master the Inbox episodes: https://www.mastertheinbox.com 
• Get your Black Friday resources: https://www.monicabadiu.com/black-friday-resources/ 
• Read Monica’s blogs: https://www.monicabadiu.com/blog
• Get your freebies: https://www.monicabadiu.com/freebie
• Get help with your copywriting by scheduling a free discovery call: ...

If you've been treating your sales funnel like a tech problem — obsessing over pages, buttons, email sequences, and automation triggers — you've missed the entire point.

Funnels aren't about software and they never were. In this episode of Master the Inbox, I take you on a journey from 1898 Philadelphia (where the AIDA framework was born) to a potato field in Idaho, to a movie theater concession stand in Chicago — to show you what funnels actually are: decision architecture.

The best funnels I've seen are not designed to simply extract money. They're designed to reduce the cognitive load of saying yes and guide people through a conversation, not a sales pitch. And they work because they're helpful — not because they're clever.

You'll learn:

• Why Elias St. Elmo Lewis's 1898 framework still matters (and where modern marketers lost the plot)
• The real reason Russell Brunson's potato gun funnel worked — and it wasn't the upsell
• How movie theater popcorn sizes reveal the psychology of friction in decision-making
• Why most course creators are asking for one giant, high-pressure decision (and leaving money on the table)
• What the grocery store checkout line teaches us about cognitive load and buying mode
• How to structure order bumps and upsells as helpful next steps, not aggressive add-ons
• Why your squeeze page sets the tone for your entire funnel (and how most people get this wrong)

If you've been building funnels and they're just not converting — this episode will help you see where the breakdown is happening. And it's probably not where you think.

Hi. And welcome.
My name is Monica Badiu. I am a marketing consultant turned conversion copywriter and copy coach. I help online course creators and info product businesses sell more through persuasive, non-spammy, no fluff copywriting.

I teach about copywriting, digital marketing, and conversion strategies tested in my businesses and with my clients. 

Other links:

• Get to know more about Monica Badiu: https://www.linkedin.com/in/monicabadiu
• Join the free Master the Inbox community https://www.skool.com/master-the-inbox-school-4845
• Visit Monica’s website: https://www.monicabadiu.com 
• Listen more Master the Inbox episodes: https://www.mastertheinbox.com 
• Get your Black Friday resources: https://www.monicabadiu.com/black-friday-resources/ 
• Read Monica’s blogs: https://www.monicabadiu.com/blog
• Get your freebies: https://www.monicabadiu.com/freebie
• Get help with your copywriting by scheduling a free discovery call: ...