Lessons Learned from a Launch

I came of age on the Internet during Jeff Walker's Product Launch Formula days. If you've been around the Internet for as long as I have, you probably remember PLF. You may even have his book like I do in your personal library.

Like all formulas, PLF worked until it didn’t. Because, as is the way of the Internet, once a formula is presented, everybody uses it and everything from that point forward looks the same.

Once every launch looks the same, the results that the original person experienced and brags about are a thing of the past. I don’t have any hard data to back up this statement. It is my opinion because it has been my observation and my direct experience.

However, the Internet has grown up a bit since those days of PLF. Many people successfully launch products and services via email every single day.

I figured, why not give it a go with my latest program?

I believe in the program I created. I’ve lived the program I created. I spent quite a bit of time thinking about the value it offers participants and why it matters. I did my research. I validated the content through conversations and stats, and I listened to the likes of people like Seth Godin who say eventually you have to ship what you make.

As with almost everything I do, I approached this project as an experiment. 

Pretty standard fare for things like this.

To attract people to join the program, I decided I’d do a 5-day email campaign to three active segments of my overall email list (roughly 890 people). No paid ads. No affiliate partners. I modeled the campaign after many 5-day email campaigns I’ve experienced as a list subscriber.

I also chose not to do weeks and weeks of pre-launch content experiences like podcasts, webinars, and social posts leading up to "opening the doors."

Before I set up the messages in my CRM (I use a program called MailerLite) I reached out to my inner circle who had either worked with me in past programs, or were people I have gotten to know, like, and trust in the online space who have expressed interest in knowing what I'm up to.

Then I got to work writing the content for each of the five messages.

The Launch Content

We are living in a Chat GPT world, so after mapping out a general outline for how I wanted the email sequence to go down, I turned to artificial intelligence to help me expand on my ideas. (I know, I know -- I made a point at the start of this post about not using AI to write this post, which I didn't. There are times it is extremely useful and the launch project was one such time. For the record, I wrote 98 percent of the campaign content myself. Chat GPT helped fill in the gaps.)

I’ve been writing a long time on my own and am definitely in the top 1 percent of writers with respect to my skills. But I’m also not stupid. If new tools can help me get my work done faster and more efficiently, I’m going to use them. Chat GPT is crushing it in this department and was a valuable ally in my writing process for this program launch.

The first two days of the campaign were purely content around the topic of the program. I realized after the first day's content went out that I'd forgotten to replace the [Your Name] place holder I use when initially composing messages in Google docs with my name. Oops.

The third day, I introduced the program with a link along with some valuable content.

The fourth day was the “hard sell” -- all the different things that marketers do to build up urgency and encourage people to seriously consider joining. 

On the fifth and final day, the message was mostly content and storytelling with a gentle ask at the end.

I didn’t send any more messages after the fifth one. No “only 12 hours left” or “We are starting in 6 hours” emails.

Five days, five messages. That’s it.

Here’s what happened, broken down into categories:

Timing

Going into it, I recognized I was choosing a tight turnaround between nurturing my list with useful content and asking for people to join the cohort. This launch has not been weeks or even months in the making with a ton of build-up, free webinars about the subject, and any of the other hoopla that tends to surround online launches. I put it together rather quickly and it was over within two weeks from start to finish, tops.

I considered the pros and cons of this approach. I wanted to do the launch, I wanted the program to be eight weeks live once a week, in a cohort for an hour and a half over Zoom (as opposed to an evergreen DIY course). I didn't want to offer it during the summer when many people are on vacation, including me. I was up against the calendar. So onward I marched.

I knew I was taking a risk in setting up a program like this given the current collective mindset “out there” -- loads of uncertainty, post-pandemic stress disorder, quiet quitting, etc. But I also know you never know who’s ready for something when it shows up in their inbox. I have been known to join programs at the last minute and am aware that many people share this characteristic with me.

In the past when I’ve offered coaching programs, I've sent emails directly to individuals who I thought would be interested. That approach worked; I have former students who loved working with me inside those programs. For this program, I wanted to do things differently.

Expectations

Having never done an email launch before for a program, I decided I had nothing to lose. I told myself, no matter what the results, I would learn some lessons. If some folks signed up, great. If no one signed up, great. That’s the mindset I’ve adopted over the years of running my own business. No attachment to the outcome makes for good sleeping at night.

Here’s what anyone who sells anything online is up against these days:

Given the overwhelming amount of information we are exposed to every day, convincing someone to join your program who may know you but has never worked with you OR who doesn't know you at all but is on your list because they opted in for something at some point via your website is a big ask.

This is why gobs and gobs of content marketing and sometimes years and years of emailing someone is what all the big names in marketing talk about needing to do consistently if you want to have a profitable online business.

These things take time.

You don't fill your courses, programs, seminars, or live events with one email blast.

You don't get a million downloads of your podcast or a million subscribers to your blog or YouTube channel overnight.

You don't build an email list of tens of thousands of "raving fans" because you dangled one "freebie" through #linkinbio

You don’t become a LinkedIn influencer because you posted one essay that got some likes.

That old cliché comes to mind about this being a marathon, not a sprint.

To succeed requires a long, steady, consistent haul. 

Brand Equity

I suspected I was up against these factors despite having a consistent presence and personal brand online for close to 15 years now including my podcast, blog, courses, programs, and books. During that time I have built a small email list composed mostly of intelligent people who are leading in one capacity or another. (Quick sidenote -- if there's one mistake I'd love to go back and correct about my business, it would be focusing more attention from the beginning on building and nurturing an active email list.)

I predicted going into this experiment that I would lose some people from that list -- people who either joined years ago and have no idea who I am along with people who don’t want to hear from me for whatever reason.

I don't take unsubscribing personally. I’m grateful when people unsubscribe. I do it all the time to lists that are no longer relevant to me or are blowing up my inbox incessantly. It’s part of running an online business.

I will continue to build my brand and brand equity through what I create. People who are interested in what I do will join my list and stick around. People who aren't, won't.

If anything, this experiment reinforced for me that I'm on the right path.

Numbers & Feedback

As for the program -- one person said yes and signed up. This person has worked with me twice in previous programs and knows my value as a coach.

I received a total of eight email responses and two voicemails to my content at various times during the launch, telling me how valuable what I had written was and how grateful the person was that I had shared what I shared.

I also received feedback on how great the course looked and that the messaging was on point. But the timing was not good for the individuals who liked what they saw. Their calendars were already booked, and they were over-committed as it was.

All things considered, really awesome feedback and proof of concept I suspected was there.

As far as the specific email campaign data over the five days:

4,439 emails went out to an overall average of 887 recipients made up of three specific segments of my overall list of subscribers
35.69% (1,574) of the messages were opened
2.20% (97) clicked on the link to the program registration page
0.75% (33) unsubscribed
0.02% (1) spam complaint

I am not sophisticated or skilled enough at this time to be able to analyze or talk intelligently about these numbers, but I don’t think they’re that bad. I could be completely wrong with this assessment, of course. I will spend some time learning about the data and perhaps do a follow up post about my discoveries. 

Final Reflection

Because only one person signed up, I decided to not follow through with the program and promptly refunded their money. Issuing a refund cost me $18 (credit card fees get passed on to the merchant) but that’s a small price to pay to learn the valuable lessons I learned from this experiment. 

I have no regrets. I'm grateful for the people who wrote to me and complimented the content, told me the program looked amazing, and actually told me why they couldn't join.

I know I have developed an amazing program that I can offer in the future to the people who expressed interest but couldn’t fit it into their schedule during the time I offered it. I recognize that perhaps doing a longer "build up" to the program could help nurture people into saying yes.

I challenged myself to do something extremely uncomfortable and nothing bad happened.
Of course, I would have liked to have filled the cohort, and that didn't happen. All part of the process.

I learned from Jim Rohn a long time ago -- you can come up to the plate and do something four times out of ten and get paid millions of dollars and have an amazing life. We aren’t going to hit a home run every time we go up to bat. We're going to strike out, we're going to ground out, we're going to fly out far more times than we put the ball into play, and that's okay.

You never know when that perfect pitch is going to come across your plate and you'll send the ball out of the park.

So batter up. I'm ready to play. There's always next time. Here we go!