After a $233,467 email sponsorship ad spend and 93 solo email campaigns promoting webinars for a client — most of them split-tested — we made some great discoveries.
This was NOT selling some $2,000 course.
Every deal closed from these campaigns was worth somewhere between $500,000 and $2,000,000.
When you’re dropping around $2,500 for a single email send, every word has to fight for its life.
NOTE: My client was BUYING the email sponsorships, not taking on advertisers to their own list.
Here’s what I learned — the good, the bad, and the unexpected.
The set-up
The client was in a medical niche.
Their business had two arms:
- An educational and growth program for clinic owners.
- A separate, service-based offer that only made sense for a certain percentage of those owners.
They had a few referrals from the first arm, but wanted to increase volume.
The plan: buy “solo” sponsorship slots in industry newsletters.
That’s where you get your own dedicated email blast.
Literally just your ad.
In our case, that ad drove people to a webinar.
The webinar would educate, build trust, and get qualified people booking calls.
Those calls, if they went well, could turn into the kind of deals that make CFOs smile.
The audience?
Busy and analytical business owners who were medical professionals.
Translation: smart, skeptical, and allergic to hype.
Lesson 1: Personalisation that fits the audience works
We tested adding the recipient’s first name in the subject line — sometimes with “Dr” in front when appropriate.
It consistently boosted response by 3–5%.
Why?
Because it wasn’t forced personalisation.
It was exactly how they’re addressed in their real lives.
Seeing “Dr Smith” in a subject line in a professional newsletter feels normal, not creepy.
It’s a tiny signal that this isn’t just a mass blast — and in a busy inbox, even small signals can get you the click.
Lesson 2: Clickbait falls flat on sophisticated audiences
We tried a few sensational, curiosity-heavy subject lines early on.
They bombed.
The winners were the straightforward, benefit-rich lines: “How to [achieve result]” or “Want [benefit]?”
The more analytical the person, the more they want to know exactly what they’ll get for their time.
If you’re talking to CEOs, surgeons, or anyone with serious stakes, drop the carnival barker act.
Respect their intelligence and get to the point.
Lesson 3: More registrations don’t always mean more sales
We found a “banger” webinar topic once — it doubled registrations and got more engagement in the live room.
We thought we’d cracked it… until a couple of months later, when the sales cycle played out and those leads turned out to be the wrong people.
They weren’t a fit for the service, and they weren’t buying.
It was a painful reminder: the topic has to be laser-focused on attracting only the right people, even if that means fewer sign-ups.
Vanity metrics don’t pay the bills.
Lesson 4: Multiple time slots respect busy people
One webinar time got decent numbers.
Offering three options — different days, different times — got better numbers.
Makes sense.
If you’re running a clinic, your schedule isn’t flexible.
Giving people choices isn’t just polite; it removes a barrier to entry.
Lesson 5: Get to the link faster
In one split test, we compared the typical 150–200 words before the first link with a tighter, punchier version that hit the link at around 80 words.
The shorter lead-in got 3.5% more sign-ups.
These people were scanning, not reading for pleasure.
Give them the what, why, and when — then the link.
Expand later for the ones who need convincing.
Lesson 6: Urgency works best right before the event
Our internal list sends taught us something useful: the day before, or even the morning of the webinar, produced the highest spikes in registrations.
A CEO might not know if they can make it seven days out.
But tomorrow at 2 pm?
They can check their diary and commit.
Lesson 7: Stories that remove objections beat “3 tips” emails
This service had its share of misconceptions in the market.
Some people flat-out misunderstood what it did or assumed it wouldn’t work for them.
When we told short, true stories of people just like them — what they worried about, what happened, and the results — sign-ups went up.
Stories don’t just “engage.”
They let the prospect pre-live the decision in a low-risk way.
When the story resolves the very objection they were holding on to, it’s even more powerful.
Lesson 8: Webinars outperformed an e-course
We tested turning the webinar into a 5-part email course.
The e-course got more sign-ups… but it tanked when it came to booked calls.
A live webinar has a date, a time, faces, interaction, and the chance to ask questions.
That creates trust much faster than an email series ever will.
Lesson 9: Show the date and time in the email
I assumed hiding the date/time and making them click would boost clicks.
Nope.
Showing it right there in the email actually increased conversions.
Busy people want to know instantly if it fits their schedule.
If it doesn’t, they won’t click just to find out.
Lesson 10: Let your customers talk for you
The most engaging webinars were case studies where a client was interviewed about their experience.
Peer-to-peer proof is hard to beat.
Prospects see themselves in the client’s story, hear the real concerns and how they were handled, and get evidence from someone with no reason to exaggerate.
Lesson 11: Visual congruency builds trust
We tested different images in the emails.
Generic stock-style images worked okay.
But showing a screenshot of the actual webinar registration page header — the exact thing they’d see when they clicked — worked better.
It reduced the disconnect between the email and the landing page, which made the click feel safer.
Lesson 12: Scarcity works if you have a reason
We started capping attendance at 25, even though we often didn’t hit that number anyway.
The difference?
We explained why.
In this case, so everyone could get their questions answered during the Q&A.
A believable limit with a customer-focused reason feels very different from an arbitrary “Only 25 seats left!!!” claim.
It made people act faster without feeling manipulated.
A strange bonus discovery
On the webinar registration thank-you page, we asked for a phone number.
Hardly anyone gave it.
We changed the layout so the phone number field was in a big, obvious box at the top, under the headline “Where should we send your webinar link?”
Suddenly, around 80% filled it in.
Same request, just positioned differently — and it unlocked a ton of extra contact info.
After 93 campaigns, a quarter of a million in spend, and countless tests, the big takeaway is this:
When you’re paying thousands for every single email send, chasing open rates is a distraction.
You care about who registers, when they register, and how ready they are to take the next step.
Everything else is just noise.
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