Discover how Gemma Bonham-Carter turned email marketing and smart automation into a seven-figure business while working part-time.
Gemma Bonham-Carter builds education programs for online entrepreneurs. Through her flagship AI-focused courses and digital products, she’s served over 19,000 students worldwide—all while working just 20 hours a week.
Her secret? Email isn’t just another marketing channel. It’s the heartbeat of her seven-figure business.
The vast majority of sales in my business come via email. Email for me is like the heartbeat of my business and how I make sales.
—Gemma
When Gemma returned to Kit after outgrowing her previous platform, she wasn’t just looking for better tools. She needed smarter automation, clearer data, and the ability to scale revenue without scaling her hours.
Here’s how she did it, and how you can apply her strategies to your own business.
Why email became Gemma’s #1 revenue driver
Most creators treat email as an afterthought or a place to repurpose content from other platforms. Gemma flipped that approach.
“For me, if the majority of my sales are coming from email, why wouldn’t I make that the gold star piece of content that everything else can be repurposed from?” she explains. “It would feel like I was doing my revenue a disservice if I was focused more on YouTube videos if YouTube wasn’t the thing that was driving my revenue.”
The numbers back her up. While Gemma maintains a presence on Instagram and runs Meta ads, email consistently drives the actual purchases. Even her affiliate partnerships, where she regularly tops leaderboards, succeed because of her email list’s trust and engagement.
“I can send one or two emails that are very candid and straightforward and people trust me,” she says. “And I make a ton of sales. And that is totally just a direct result of having a deep relationship with my email list.”
How to automate your business using Kit
What Kit gave Gemma back
After migrating to Kit, Gemma gained three things her previous provider couldn’t deliver:
- Beautifully designed emails with a great user experience
- Smart funnels and automations with sophisticated segmentation
- Clear analytics to make better decisions as CEO
“I desperately wanted better data, especially as I was scaling the business and largely doing it via email,” Gemma says. “I needed to know how to make better decisions as the CEO. And lack of data was a big problem.”
5 selling strategies that boost revenue (include one that generated $158K in five days)
Strategy 1: Skip the generic welcome sequence
Most creators send every new subscriber through the same generic welcome sequence, regardless of how they joined the list. Gemma takes a different approach: she creates customized automations based on each subscriber’s entry point.
“I actually don’t really have a generic welcome sequence because we really make it specific to what they’re coming in from,” Gemma explains. “Maybe it makes it so that I end up having a lot of automations, but they’re a lot more aligned with why that person joined my list and making the right offer at the right time.”
This hyper-personalization works because it speaks directly to the problem the subscriber is already trying to solve. Instead of a broad “here’s everything I teach” approach, Gemma addresses their specific pain point immediately.
“Whatever they signed up from, I have an understanding of that problem that they’re trying to solve,” she says. She notes giving them the potential solution to that problem versus a generic and easy-to-tune-out message results in a lot more sales.
How to set this up in Kit:
- Create a dedicated sequence for each major lead magnet or opt-in form
- Use the Visual Automations builder to map out entry-point-specific welcome flows
- Add tags based on which form or lead magnet the subscriber came from
- Write emails that continue the conversation you started with that specific lead magnet
- Introduce your most relevant paid offer within the sequence (not a generic product overview)
- Use conditional logic to prevent subscribers from receiving multiple welcome sequences if they opt in to different forms
Your action step: Pick your top-performing lead magnet and create a dedicated 5-7 email sequence that speaks directly to that specific interest.
Strategy 2: Build a “forever funnel” for long-term conversions
The reality is that 97-98% of people won’t buy in your initial welcome sequence. Most creators let those subscribers go cold. Gemma doesn’t—she created what she calls her “forever funnel.”
How to create a forever funnel that sells year-round
“The idea behind this automation is that it is essentially a long-term sales funnel,” Gemma explains. “When someone comes into my business, there might be a primary funnel that they go through. And we know 97, 98% of those people are not going to be purchasers in that first bit of time.”
The forever funnel runs alongside her real-time emails, sending at a slower cadence—maybe one email every two weeks instead of weekly. This means subscribers get some extra touch points without feeling overwhelmed.
But here’s the clever part: Gemma changes the format of her offers within the forever funnel.
“If the original funnel was a webinar-based funnel with a sales page, well later in the forever funnel, I would maybe have a Google Doc sales page that was just like a lot more chill. Or maybe if it was a higher ticket thing, we’d invite them to a sales call.”
Why this works: Essentially what Gemma does is different opportunities to buy. She simply uses her best of content throughout the year and offers her products again in a different way down the line.
Your action step: Map out 12-15 emails spaced two weeks apart. Pull your best content from the past year, then repackage your main offer in at least three different formats throughout the sequence. Set it live and let it work in the background while you focus on creating new content.
Want more guidance on how to sell during Black Friday? Download our free Black Friday Automations Power Playbook to get the key automations you need to maximize your Black Friday revenue.
Strategy 3: Make your sale a campaign, not a discount
The mistake most creators make is slapping 20% off their main offer the week before a big sale like Black Friday and hoping it sells. Gemma turns her Black Friday strategy into a five-day campaign with five different offers, each available for only 24 hours.
“My Black Friday revenue strategy is almost entirely email based,” Gemma says. “What it is today is a five days of deals campaign strategy.”
Inspired by Amazon’s Prime Days back in 2019, Gemma tested this approach for Black Friday 2019 and “absolutely knocked it out of the park.” In 2024, she generated $158K in those five days. Her students have seen similar success with this strategy—$52K, $73K, $84K, even breaking six figures across all niches.
But the magic isn’t just in the structure. It’s in the buildup.
“For a Black Friday sale to be really successful, you need to be thinking about it at least on November 1st, if not before then, because you need to spend that three, four weeks plus getting your audience ready.”
Her preparation includes:
- Positioning herself as the thought leader with incredible value content
- Building hype around what’s coming
- Announcing what she’s going to sell so people can plan their purchases
“It’s like getting the catalog at Christmas time as a kid and circling what you wanted,” Gemma explains. “All of that pre-selling work and that hype building is so incredibly important.”
The payoff? Subscribers who’ve been on the list for over eight weeks become the biggest buyers—not because they’re new and excited, but because they’ve been primed and they trust you.
Your action step: Map out your five offers and create your hype content calendar. The week before your promotion, set up your Kit landing page and all five daily broadcast sequences so you’re ready to execute when the campaign begins.
Strategy 4: Use order bumps strategically throughout the customer journey
Most creators only pitch once at checkout. Gemma layers in additional offers at key moments, both at the point of purchase and in follow-up emails.
“We do use Kit to have emails that go out in the onboarding after someone’s purchased something,” Gemma says. “So if they didn’t get the upsell [before], we have extra emails that go to them that give them the option again to buy that thing.”
The timing is strategic: buyers are already engaged and excited about implementing what they just purchased. An AI studio add-on for her Black Friday in a Box course, for example, becomes a natural next step for someone who wants to implement faster.
How to set this up in Kit:
- Create a post-purchase automation triggered by a purchase tag from your payment processor
- Build a 7-14 day sequence with 2-3 strategically placed upsell emails
- Frame upsells as implementation accelerators, not just additional products
- Use language like “make this even easier” or “get results faster” rather than “buy more stuff”
- Add a tag when someone purchases the upsell to remove them from the remainder of the sequence
- Include helpful onboarding content alongside the upsell pitches so the sequence provides genuine value
- Time your first upsell email for 2-3 days after purchase when excitement is still high but they’ve started engaging with the product
Your action step: Create a 7-day post-purchase sequence in Kit that includes two upsell emails positioned as ways to implement faster or get better results.
Strategy 5: Sell like you’re serving, not selling
Early in her business, Gemma over-nurtured and under-pitched because selling felt uncomfortable.
“I used to really in the earlier stages of entrepreneurship—and it’s probably related to lack of confidence—was really over nurturing, under pitching,” she admits. ” I had to kind of just fully step into understanding that selling doesn’t have to be anything that feels gross or selling can still be done in a way that feels like service to your email list.”
The reframe she adopted? “As long as your product helps people, you owe it to them to talk to them about it and to do that in your emails.”
For new creators, Gemma’s advice is simple but powerful: Don’t wait too long to sell.
“I see this often in other newer entrepreneurs as well,” she says. “And it doesn’t have to mean that every email is like some car salesman sales pitch. There’s a way of selling that is very value driven and has a lot of story and narrative within it.”
Your action step: Review your main welcome sequence today. If you’re not mentioning a paid offer within the first five emails, add one. Write it as a story about how the offer helped someone like your subscriber, then include a simple call-to-action. You’re not being pushy—you’re being helpful.
The bigger picture: Email as your safety net
Beyond tactics and campaigns, Gemma’s approach reveals something deeper about why email matters for creator businesses.
My Instagram account could disappear tomorrow. My meta ads account could get locked. I could be thrown off YouTube. But as long as I have my email list, I could always make sales. I know I can make sales, always.
—Gemma
Even better: “Even if my programs evaporated tomorrow, I have a whole bunch of people on an email list who trust me and we’ve built a relationship together. I could just offer a service. I could be like, ‘Hey, guys, I’m offering this service and I’ve got three spots’ and I know that they would sell out.”
But that confidence didn’t come instantly. “That wasn’t always the case. I had to work to get an email list that trusted me in that way. But it feels like a safety blanket as an entrepreneur to know that you have that.”
How to build a seven-figure business with a small audience
Gemma hit seven figures a year by treating email as her business command center—not just another marketing channel. With the right systems in Kit, you can do the same.
Ready to build your email-first business? Start with Kit’s free plan and upgrade as you grow.
