Honest Review of Perfecting Email Course By Sophia Lee

This review of the Perfecting Email course from the SEVEN-figure blogger By Sophia Lee tells you everything you need to know in deciding whether to buy it.

(Sophia Lee is one of ONLY two blogging course instructors I recommend out of 100+ courses I have taken over nearly a decade).

Background

Important note: First, I am going to share a bit about my own blogging journey and how I worked my way through Sophia Lee’s courses because I think it’s really important in helping you decide whether Perfecting Email is a good fit for you, or whether you may first be a better candidate for her other courses.

I first found Sophia Lee on YouTube, and she really blew me away! At such a young age (~25), she had created so much success from a full-time blogging business she had first started in college, and she spoke with such confidence and wisdom.  

Here is a sample video in which she provides some email marketing tips:

Now, I say this as someone who has blogged for YEARS and followed at least 100 others like her who had succeeded at blogging and were teaching what they had learned.

There was something really unique about Sophia Lee, and I really liked how she seemed to really be able to latch on to what was going to grow her business and let the rest of the noise go, which I and many others struggled with. This is such an important aspect of a very small, growing business like a blog, where generally one person wears most of the “hats” in the job.

I started by taking By Sophia Lee’s Perfecting Pinterest course. At the time, I really needed more detailed help on that platform. I had learned all the basics already, but it wasn’t really taking off for me, so I was willing to invest in a more detailed strategy.

I found Perfecting Pinterest to be the most detailed, nuanced course I had EVER taken on any topic, and I quickly multiplied my statistics. It remains my favorite course of all time to date, and I think anyone other than an advanced Pinterest professional can benefit greatly from it.

For bloggers of ALL levels: Read my full review of Perfecting Pinterest.

Next, I purchased By Sophia Lee’s blogging course, Perfecting Blogging. This particular course was too “beginner” level for me personally, as I would consider myself pretty advanced at this point in blogging, BUT it IS the one and only course I DO highly recommend for other beginners.

Perfecting Blogging really de-mystifies blogging and teaches newbies exactly what to focus on and how, without any noisy distraction or confusion (and there’s a lot of noise out there). I only wish I found it a few years sooner.

For new or struggling bloggers: Read my full review of Perfecting Blogging.

Review of Perfecting Email

Now, let’s finally talk about By Sophia Lee’s newest course: Perfecting Email!

At this point, I am willing to buy anything and everything Sophia Lee sells. It just so happens that email is a topic I personally needed help with at this point in time.

Two months ago, I left my full-time job to focus on my blog full-time. To give you an idea of my stats, at the time I first wrote this post, my blog was 2.5 years old; however, I had learned about blogging for nearly a decade and worked on other blogging projects during that time as well. At the time I first wrote this post, I was getting about 200,000 monthly page views, had 10,000+ email subscribers, and had 10,000+ social media followers.

(I don’t necessarily like to so openly share my current stats, but I do think this is important for you to know in my honest review of Perfecting Email.)

Over the course of growing my blog, I was really focused on growing my page views. I have done this primarily by search engine optimized (SEO) blog posts.

However, from years of learning about blogging, I knew that email was really important because EVERYONE says it’s the one thing you can have total control over (versus Google and social media). So, I did set up an email system well over a year ago, but it was the easiest and most basic one I could find as, at the time, I couldn’t really justify the time and cost of a detailed email system.

Now, however, my blog has grown a lot. I am working on it full-time, and my email list is growing at a much more rapid pace. I am about to launch my own products and want to be able to sell them via email.

Having gone through the Perfecting Email course now, I can say that my situation is “good” for the type of person who should be taking this course, but still a bit advanced at times. However, I got a lot of value out of taking this course in conjunction with another course that was more beginner and intermediate in nature, Email Marketing Jumpstart.

(This is why I told you my whole story!)

Who Should Take the Course

In this review of Perfecting Email, I’m going to tell you exactly who should take the course before I talk about the components of the course because I think the most important thing you need to know about Perfecting Email is whether it’s right for you right now.

Perfecting Email is an advanced course that teaches you very detailed and complex email strategies, like sales sequences and segmenting your audience. It is NOT for beginners or those who just want to send a newsletter.

Perfecting Email may be right for you if any or all of the following situations apply to you:

• You have an established blog, social media account, or another type of brand (i.e., retail) that is getting traffic, growing, and making money
• You already have a few thousand email subscribers
• You understand the basics of email marketing
• You are willing to invest time and money into your email strategy

I think it also helps if you understand the importance of email and how you intend to monetize your own list, but if you don’t, you can still consider these things as you take the course.

You may be wondering whether you need to have as many readers, followers, or subscribers as I do to take Perfecting Email. No, not by any means! But, I do think it definitely helps to be somewhat established and ready to take this on as your next big project.

If any or all of these scenarios are true for you, read on to learn more about Perfecting Email.

If this sounds too advanced for you, read my reviews of Email Marketing Jumpstart, Perfecting Blogging and Perfecting Pinterest, which are more beginner and intermediate level in nature.

Course Contents

Perfecting Email contains dozens of chapters, most of which are videos. There are also a few templates and samples mixed in for you to review.

(If you don’t like videos for whatever reason, there are also transcripts of the content underneath the videos for you to read if you prefer.)

I first listened to the entire course once through before taking any action because I knew it was going to be advanced, so I wanted to have a general idea of ALL the content before I dove in and implemented it step by step.

I would definitely recommend this strategy for ALL of Sophia Lee’s courses. They are all really detailed and interactive. They are not the type of thing like a podcast where you are just listening to see if you learn one good idea. You are going to actually dive in and do the work alongside her mimicking each step. (That’s what makes her courses so powerful!)

The table of contents is listed below so you can see exactly what’s included in Perfecting Email:

Welcome to the Perfecting Email Master Course!

• Why An Email List is SO Important
• What Programs We Use For Our Email List
• Who is Sophia?
• Facebook Group!
• Glossary

PART I: The WET Ingredients of Email

• Let’s Talk About the Wet Ingredients of Email…

All About Printables (!!!)

• These RUN our Website (and here’s why)
• These Are the Printables You Should Be Using
• What We Use To Design Printables
• Alllll about Copyright with Printables
• How Often We Update Printables
• Should You Use a “Free Printables Library”?

The Secrets to Successful Opt-Ins:

• What the Heck in an Opt-In and Why It Is So Dang Important
• These Type of Opt-Ins BY FAR Perform the Best
• The Exact Places We Put Our Opt-Ins
• The Most Efficient Way We Have Found To Create & Use Opt-Ins (this has saved us so much time)
• It’s About To Get Trippy…
• BSL Case Study: Active Campaign Forms
• Where to Actually Make a Form
• BSL Case Study: Active Campaign Pages
• One BIG Reason We Moved
• Single Opt-In vs. Double Opt-In

A Real-Life Example…

• Create a Printable With Me
• Create an Opt-In With Me

PART 2: The Dry Ingredients of Email

• Let’s Talk About the Dry Ingredients of Email…

Email Overview

• Different Types of Emails We Send
• These Are The Only Things We Really Focus On

The Million Types of Emails We Send (and how we’ve perfected this strategy)

• First Email Overview
• The Uber Importance of the “FIRST EMAIL”
• The BSL First Email Template

The BSL First Email Template

• This Is Where We Link All Of Our Printables

Welcome Sequences

• Welcome Sequence Overview
• Where We Write Our Sequences
• What We Actually Include in These Emails
• How Often You Should Be Sending Emails in a Welcome Sequence
• We Saw A Huge Change When We Added This To Our Emails
• How to Get Your Subscribers to Interact (this is HUGE)

You Will Looveee Automation (the key to ROI in your emails)

• Why Automation Makes Our Lives Way Easier
• The Nitty-Gritty of Automation
• This is Complicated – Tagging & Lists
• How We Actually Set Up Our Automations (strategy city in this method)

All About Weekly Emails

• How Often We Send Out Weekly Emails
• The Goals of Our Weekly Emails
• Difference Between Our Blogging Email List and Other Emails
• How We Use Segmenting To Our Advantage

Email Sales

• How We Actually Earn Money From Emails
• We Have Found That Sales Sequences That Are This Long Perform The Best…
• What We Include In Our Sales Sequence Emails
• This REALLY Brings In The Sales

The Big Switch To Active Campaign (and what we’ve learned)

• We Learned This The Hard Way…
• Reports & Statistics
• Our AC Organization
• Contacts

Unsubscribers & Cleaning Out Your Email List

• REPEAT THIS OVER AND OVER (and maybe even print it out) (1:03)
• How We Clean Out Our Email List

Pros

First, Perfecting Email is very affordable compared to other blogging courses. I have paid multiples of the price to access other blogging courses and have gotten less out of them.

It may seem expensive, but in my opinion, it’s a very reasonable business expense if email is something you are dedicated to tackling. Just imagine what it would cost you to hire an email consultant (likely thousands)!

And, I have learned that when you try to DIY it yourself with free content, it’s generally not as organized, detailed, or easy to learn. I am getting the benefit of Sophia Lee’s three years of experimentation by paying for this course, which, to me is more valuable than spending three years learning the same on my own.

I also like the fact that I will continue to get the benefit of receiving updates to the course so that I don’t have to test new strategies myself. The money I have paid for Sophia Lee to be one of my email experts extends to the future!

Check the current price of Perfecting Email.

Second, I say this all the time, but again: Sophia Lee is the most engaging instructor I have ever learned about blogging from, and it’s SO easy to follow her step-by-step. She excels at breaking things down into micro-steps and telling you every single thing she does to succeed, as well as reinforcing the most important points. When I am considering the value of a blogging course, this is exactly what I am looking for, and this is why I only promote her courses.

Third, the course comes with membership in a Facebook group filled with fellow students, as well as Sophia Lee herself, so you can ask questions and learn more even after you take Perfecting Email.

Fourth, Perfecting Email is really detailed. It completely blew me away that it just kept going and going so far beyond my expectations. I kept thinking, “There’s no way there’s still more,” and I could almost feel how long it must have taken her to put this course together.

Lastly, as a student, you will get access to course updates about technology changes, revised strategies, etc. I’d say this occurs about once a year for Sophia Lee’s courses. Perfecting Email was most recently updated in July 2023.

Cons

It pains me every time I have to talk about the cons of By Sophia Lee’s courses because I just think she’s an absolute master at her craft and I honor her tremendous success as a young businesswoman, BUT it’s only honest, fair, and helpful to talk about the cons of Perfecting Email.

First, as mentioned earlier, Perfecting Email is not for all levels. It’s an advanced email course. That’s not a “con” — just a feature of the product, but it’s so important that I think it bears repeating as you decide whether it’s for you.

(Beginners can check out my review of Email Marketing Jumpstart or even consider doing both of these email courses, as I did.)

Second, the email provider Sophia Lee uses and recommends is Active Campaign. From both the course and my own research, this is a more expensive, more advanced email provider. While it has a lot of bells and whistles, I did the comparisons, and I could not justify the expense. I tend to think most bloggers will agree with me on this one.

Using another email provider was certainly possible with Perfecting Email, but it did mean that I didn’t get to follow all the videos step by step.

(I used Email Marketing Jumpstart for Convertkit tutorials.)

Third, the one other aspect of Perfecting Email I took issue with was whether to use a “single” versus “double” opt-in for new subscribers. A single opt-in means that, when someone gives you their email address, they are placed on your email list. A double opt-in means that the person would also need to confirm their subscription once more before being added to your email list.

I have researched this issue before and came to a different conclusion than Sophia Lee. I don’t think this issue makes the course not worth taking by any means, but I do think it’s important to note that I think it’s something you should probably take a closer look at outside of the course.

Last, I would have loved more email templates and “swipe copy.” I got the impression that Sophia Lee didn’t want people to copy her emails word for word, and I certainly don’t blame her for that, but it would have been helpful and timesaving, especially as it’s common for blogging courses to give you this type of thing (I used “swipe copy” from Email Marketing Jumpstart). I’m hoping she adds something like this as a bonus in the future.

Is Perfecting Email worth it?

Ok, so now we have reached the ultimate question in this review of Perfecting Email: Is it worth it?

Worth is always a very subjective question. For me, as a full-time blogger specifically looking to tackle email, I definitely think Perfecting Email was worth it.

As mentioned earlier, I personally believe Perfecting Email will be worth it for:

• those who have an established blog, social media account, or another type of brand (i.e., retail) that is getting traffic, growing, and making money
• Those who already have a few thousand email subscribers
• Those who understand the basics of email marketing
• Those who are willing to invest time and money into your email strategy

One thing I especially think is unique about this course is that I can see non-bloggers, like shop owners, really benefitting from it as well.

And I think you can probably skip it if: You are a new blogger or are not super invested in dedicating time and money to a detailed email strategy. Instead, I recommend you read my reviews of Perfecting Blogging and Perfecting Pinterest to find a course that better suits you right now.