Yesterday I wrote an email titled “Who wins? Marcus or Bob?”; read that one if you haven’t yet.
It was a story about 2 fictional people I created, Marcus and Bob.
They both wanted to build a creator business, but went about it in different ways and with different philosophies. The gist of the email was about how I believe full transparency and honesty, even though it’s slower to get started, is the correct way to build a sustainable and profitable business.
I didn’t think about that example out of the blue though.
Full transparency is a belief I recently reinforced in myself and something I’ll be striving towards at all times—including with this email.
See, last week I was running a promotion for a new offer I came up with called Ready, Set, Launch.
A quick summary:
It was a $100 14-day challenge where I would help 10 participants ideate, build, and profitably launch their first digital product. I created a whole curriculum, made some training material, and scheduled 4 live calls throughout the 14 days where I’d cover important topics such as methods to validate a product, what questions to ask when settling on the delivery of your product, and the promotion framework and pricing strategy I use to make product launches a guaranteed success.
I don’t remember when I came up with the idea of doing a challenge offer like this, but I immediately loved the sound of it.
So last week I finished the details of the offer and decided it was time to promote. My first email went out Monday, December 11 and I immediately sold the first of 10 spots.
I was ecstatic.
You don’t often get sales with the very first email. Most launches are slow and the actual sales only really start coming in 2 days before the deadline. So already I knew this was going to be a success.
It wasn’t.
Over the following days, I didn’t sell a single spot. Not one.
I didn’t think much about it. Surely more people would buy the final day. Right?
Well, kinda.
It was in the last 40 minutes of the promotion that I got my second sale—which also turned out to be my last.
I didn’t know what to do.
I built most of the curriculum around the fact that there was a community aspect involved. And a lot of the promises were about the added value of this. Would this event be as valuable for the participants with only 2 of them?
Maybe. Maybe not.
I wasn’t sure.
If there’s one thing I don’t want to do, then it’s to deliver a sub-par experience.
So to play it safe I decided to cancel the challenge and refund both participants their investment. I didn’t want to leave them empty-handed though, who knows how excited they were about the offer, or if they had already made/canceled plans with the challenge in mind.
That said, I promised them that I’d turn the curriculum I prepared into a full-blown standalone low-ticket digital product, which they’d both receive entirely for free—as a thank-you for having put their trust in me when making their initial purchase.
Did I have to do this?
No. I didn’t.
But this goes back to my philosophy of honesty and transparency. So does the fact that I’m sharing everything in this email you’re reading right now.
Anyway.
You’d normally expect me to transition into an offer right now, don’t you?
Well, not today. I’ve got nothing to sell you.
Not even a link to click.
Instead, I want to play a game. A marketing game.
See, obviously my offer of last week underperformed. That’s not a big deal. But I have to look deeper into it and learn why it underperformed. What did I do wrong? What could I have done better?
I first thought about a few things:
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Was my copy not good enough?
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Did I address the wrong objections?
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Wasn’t I clear enough about my offering?
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Was it because I didn’t use a separate sales page?
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Is it because I didn’t have a strong unique mechanism?
And there’s definitely something to be said about all of those.
As I continued thinking I realized the problem was deeper than that. I was dealing with a fundamental problem that not even the best copywriter on the planet could’ve fixed. No amount of crazy bonuses, nor a tremendous supply of testimonials and social proof would’ve made this promotion an absolute banger of a launch.
But I’m not going to tell you right away.
Here’s the deal:
You’re on my email list. You’re most likely selling something, whether your products or your service—or you want to start doing so. Either way you’ll have to level up your marketing skills as well.
So this is an excellent exercise for you.
What do you think is the real reason why my promotion underperformed? What should I have done differently?
Reply to this email with what you think the problem was.
And I’ll get back to your theory, sharing my thoughts and ideas about your proposed problem (and potential solution) as well as what I believe the BIG problem that ultimately doomed the entire promotion (and how I could’ve fixed it).
Looking forward to seeing your guesses.