← The Email Sound Booth with Liz Wilcox
The Email Sound Booth with Liz Wilcox
Episode 56: How the Black Friday Sale Went
00:38:36
Did I hit my sales goals? What were the open and click rates like? How does this compare to last year? How do I feel about it overall? Get all your questions answered here!
Loading summary
Transcript1 lines
- [00:01]
A
What's up? Liz Wilcox here. If you're watching YouTube, you can see I've kind of got like, I don't know, I don't want to say ghetto, but sort of ghetto set up here. But it is cold, y'all. I am recording. We have a cold front in Florida right now. And I bought my house back in May of 2024, so I haven't been in it very long. And I just learned how to turn on the heat. It was like almost six sixty degrees in my house. And in the summer, I keep my house at like 80, so I am freezing. So I'm in my living room trying to get these podcasts recorded for the week. So if you are watching on YouTube. Hello, welcome to my living room. So, anyway, speaking of welcome, welcome to episode 56 of the Email sound booth podcast. I'm Liz Wilcox and I'm really excited to share today how my Black Friday sale went. So if you listened to episode 54 just a couple episodes back, you know, I had some major giant ridiculous goals. So let's see if I hit those goals today. I'm, I'm really, really, really excited to share. So let's review the goals that I talked about in episode 54, which, of course, if you want to go back and listen to that, you can find the link in the show notes. So my number one goal was to have fun the week of the sale, right? There's so many things that go into launching and I find that most people, they hate launching because they only have monetary goals. But I try to always pick out some goals that are about, like, me and how I feel during that week so that I don't lose my ever loving mind if and when something breaks, things don't go my way, et cetera. So have fun was my first goal, and I think I did. I actually had quite a bit of fun this week. It was fun watching the sales. I tried not to get too attached to them. It was fun just watching because the last few years in online business have been really weird, kind of difficult. Very much different than during the pandemic. Very much different than when I launched email marketing membership, when people were spending a lot of money where my, where my offer. And I mentioned this in episode 55 or yeah, episode 55, where my offer was so novel, right? Oh, my gosh, nine dollar membership. Oh my gosh, $108. All your products for free. Now it seems like a lot of people are doing things where they bundle everything together for one price. And so I was just, I Was just looking at this launch in a more fun way of like, I wonder what's going to happen this year, given all of those things. I just said, what is going to happen? So that was fun in itself. Also, I went camping with my daughter and her best friend. I went to the movies, I went swimming, all this stuff. So overall, I give myself like an 8 1/2 out of 10 for have fun. The second goal was to be present. I give myself probably an 8 and a half or 9 out of 10 there. I took my daughter and her best friend I just mentioned camping. I took them swimming. I went to the movies with them. Shout out. Moana, too. It was really, really good. It was better than I thought it was going to be. And I only worked one time when I had the girls with me. So normally I don't have anyone with me on Thanksgiving. And so it's easy for me to, like, work, work, work, work, work. But this time, I really, you know, even when Patricia, my assistant and real life manager, really, when she was like, hey, can you look at this? Can you look at that? You know, I tried to do that as quickly as possible and just get back to being with my ladies. So I give myself, yeah, like a 9 out of 10 there. I only worked one time, and honestly, that was when the girls, they were kind of sick of me. I was kind of sick of them. You know how it goes. Um, and yeah, okay. The next thing was to create a product people are happy with. I feel like I nailed this. You know, it's can never be perfect, but I feel like, again, maybe an 8 1/2 out of 9 or 9 out of 10 here. I'm already seeing in the email, sound booth, Facebook group that people are going through the membership, looking at all the stuff, mapping out how they want to do things, watching the list, building, training, et cetera. And that feels so good. And I'm seeing so many posts of, oh, my gosh, I'm finally inside the annual pass. I'm so excited. So it feels like I did create something people are happy with. But the caveat to this goal is I have to work on this goal all year round. Right? And that's part of what the annual pass is. And part of keeping this goal, you know, close by, is I promise things throughout the year, and with this sale, I promise seven live events. So I have to keep bringing the heat. And I'm actually really excited about doing that this year. Liz has got her mojo back here. Okay, now let's talk about numbers. I know probably why you clicked and listened to this episode. How much money did I actually make? So my goal was to make $150,000 from new customers. So that's 1,389 sales. Did I do that? Absolutely not. I didn't even come close. Oh, Liz. So optimistic. But I feel really good about our numbers here. So I'm going to look over here. I wrote everything down for us. So I made 919 sales. So 919 new passholders came into the membership. I'm so freaking excited about that. So that's, that's $99,029. So 99 out of 150k, that's pretty stinking good. But I, I knew that the, the thirteen or fourteen hundred dollars or I'm sorry, fourteen hundred new customers. That's an incredible goal. Right. So this time I created an upsell. Normally there's no upsell. In the past I've done an upsell to a one on one call with me, but I just, I literally don't have the space on my calendar to offer that and to be like actually present in those offers. So I don't offer that anymore. Even though it would be easy for me to turn that on and start making cash, Uh, I just think it would be unfair to the customer cause I'd be hella distracted. Uh, and when you're paying someone for one on one attention, that person should be the opposite of distracted. Right. Attentive is the word I'm looking for. Anyway, so I had this co working upsell which was a hundred dollars, um, so it would almost double the, you know, the price of the cart, so to speak. Um, and it's for 100 sessions. So twice a week for the next week. I know I'm insane. Like this is a huge, Honestly, this is a huge offer. Like that's a lot of time for even, even if I don't do it, that's a lot of time for Patricia or if I have to hire this out. That's a, that's a lot of time. That's two hours a week where we are sitting with our customers every single week, over and over. That's a lot, you know, that adds up to, you know, over a hundred hours anyway. 100 bucks. 100. You know, that's basically a dollar a session that we saw. Hang on, let me look, let me get my numbers straight here. Hang on, I'm scrolling. Okay, so I thought this was a crazy good deal. I thought it was going to fly off the shelves, to be honest. But I'm genuinely surprised it didn't. The first night, it was only converting at like 3% or something. And so I read the copy on night one, and I'm talking like midnight. I was literally. So I. When I go camping, I do hammock. I like to sleep in the hammock. So I'm literally like in my hammock, praying the Internet stays, trying to redo this copy. And then the next day, it didn't upload. So Patricia ended up having to upload it for me. But anyway, so it did convert better, but overall, it really only converted at like almost 6%. And I think that kind of sucks. I was really disappointed because it's a hell of a deal. I mean, I'm offering me and my team and future team up two times a week. Like, that's a lot for a dollar a session. But for whatever reason, you know, it didn't sell that well. But we did sell 53 of them. And so that raised our total from 99,000 to $104,509. So out of the 150 was the goal. That feels absolutely incredible. I mean, I can be disappointed about the upsell. I really thought that upsell would do the freaking trick and hit 150, but it didn't. And that's okay. Side note, I am. I'm going to continue to sell this, you know, a dollar a session co working type of thing for the entire year. So if you don't have it yet, actually, I'll put that in the show notes as well for you if you want to purchase that. So then we had. Let's talk. So right now we're at a total of $104,509, you know, and the goal is 150 rate. So then we can talk about. I had another 19,000, a little more than 19,000 in rebills. So people that had the annual pass before and it happened to rebill or renew their subscription that same week. So that brings our total to $124,921 for the week in sales. So 124, you know, almost 125,000 out of 150K. Not bad. In fact, that's. That's effing amazing. Honestly, like, I cannot be mad about that. I will not sit here and be like, well, we didn't hit our goal. I feel so good. Like, that's crazy to me. It wasn't so long ago that hitting $100,000 in a year was my goal that I worked on for years and years and years. So to hit that in a week, like, holy schnikes, right? That's absolutely insane. That's an insane number. Especially, you know, and I don't like to talk about this a lot, but like, I understand there are a lot of business owners out there that are struggling. Their business isn't making these sales as easily as I am. So in this economy, in this especially, I'm an aunt or I'm an American based business. And with the election and the economy and all the ups and downs of just life here in North America right now, this feels like. And I'm not going to cry, I'm not going to cry. This feels like the absolute, like most amazing blessing. I could not be more steeped in gratitude right now. Uh, so, you know, while I didn't hit that goal, holy mackerel. I am so grateful and so blown away by the numbers. Cause that was more than last year, which I think I have written down somewhere. And we'll get to that in a minute. So let's go a little deeper here. These emails just, you know, for your information, FYI, these emails were sent out to about 9,000 people. If you want to know all the emails I, I sent out, you can go to, let me look episode 52 and that's where else I'll share like the 18 emails that I sent out and I'll put that in the show notes as well. But so the emails, they differentiated, which again you can go to episode 52 for that, those details. But they were sent out to about 9,000 people, plus or minus. And the conversion rate for people that clicked, for people that went to the sales page and bought or didn't buy, the conversion rate was 13.8%, which I believe last year was about 11%. So it's actually converting better, which I feel really good about. And I did pay Ash Chow, I'll put her in the show notes as well. Copywriter to redo the sales page, which she said I had great bones. So she didn't add like, you know, it wasn't a brand new sales page, but it was a revamped sales page. So shout out, ask Chow for getting me, helping me get that higher conversion rate. That feels really, really good. Also, I did sell, if we're still talking numbers here, right? So I did sell that co working because I wanted to hit that 150. Right. I did sell the co working to existing annual pass holders. So if you're a passholder, I sent you an email that said, hey, I'M offering this new co working thing. It's not included in the past because it actually is a giant service. I can for a hundred dollars, you know, I just simply can't justify offering you that much support, you know, when you're only paying me $108, but you can upgrade for $100. And we did. Again, I thought this would. I thought everybody and their mother would buy this, but they didn't. I only made 13 sales. Now, granted, I only sent one email, but that was additional 100 or $1,1300. Right. So now we're over 125. We're almost to. Or we're over $126,000 for the week. Insanity, Truly. And then I did a down sell. Now, I was going to wait until today, the day that this podcast launches or drops, to do the downsell. So I was going to wait, you know, the sale was Monday through Friday. I was going to wait till the next Monday to do the down sell, but I was like, screw it, I really want to hit 150,000. I'm going to do the down sell today. So I did the down sell on Saturday that was sent out to only. It was only sent out to people who clicked but didn't buy and it was not sent out to people who were in the membership. Because remember in episode 52 where I share my email strategy, I said that I didn't want to annoy current members, right? So current members, they got a lot of emails. Not as many as people who aren't in the membership altogether. But, you know, I want them to stick around. I don't want to annoy them. They're my customers, Right. You know, when they say no, they say no, right? So I didn't send the downsell to current customers. And so I think it was like 600 or so people. And honestly, again, the conversion on this, I thought it would do well, but it didn't. I only sold two and both of. So the upsell was $65 for six months of templates. Like, you don't have to join the membership, you don't have to be a passholder, but you can just have these templates. 65 bucks for six months. I thought that was a pretty good deal. And then there was a bump for 35 to get the video walkthroughs right. To get the explanations of the templates. Nobody took me up on the bump, only two people. It's kind of embarrassing, honestly, but what, you know, transparency is key here. Only two people took me up on the offer, two out of 600. That's a terrible conversion rate. And both of them took the payment plan. So I'll get 65 bucks for it this month, 65 bucks for it next month, which, honestly, I love payment plans for that reason, because it's like an unexpected surprise of like, oh, yeah, there's rebills. This is fun. So anyway, the down sale totally fell flat. Should I have waited until Monday? Probably. But I got excited being only, you know, like, $23,000 away from my goal. And also, I could tell that I was burnt out because I didn't even want to send more emails. Like, I couldn't even be bothered to, like, resend to unopened. Right. I couldn't even be bothered to know send to which. This is something I forgot to do. You know, I was also going to send that same email with a little different language to people who were on the wait list but didn't buy. But again, I. I was tuckered. I can imagine my email list was tuckered, y'all. I. I slept 13 hours last night because I was so tired and I barely even worked. Patricia did the bulk of this during the week. Shout out, Patricia. Don't worry, y'all. I am going to get her the best Christmas and birthday party because her birthday is also around Christmas, so she's gonna get some extra love from all of us this month. All right, let me look at my notes here. Okay. So again, you know, everybody was kind of tuckered. I could tell by the end of the sale they were tired. So. Okay, well, let's talk about that for a second. And this is. I'm going off script. I didn't write this down, but the first day we sold, it was something like it was over 200 passes. And so I thought, oh, my gosh, we're gonna sell 300, maybe 400 passes on the last day. So I was like, there's no way we're not hitting this 150 goal. But I could tell by the end, again, people were tuckered out. People who bought bought in the beginning. But we did. We did match our sales. We did exceed our sales on the last day, but not as many as I thought, actually. Let me. I can look at that for us. Give me one second. How many did we sell on the last day? Clicking. I'm clicking, I'm clicking. Okay, so we sold 281. So close to 300. And I thought it would be more like 381, because let me look at the first day of sales. We sold 215. So still quite a bit more than the first day. But I thought it would be again, close to double. So around 400 sales. But I think what I didn't take into account was people are just more tired than last year. The trend, you know, the trend of, you know, more sales on the last day than on the first day. That held true, but not to the extent of like my last year's sale or the year before or whatever. Usually I can definitely count on doubling. This year I didn't double, but I did exceed, which again, I still feel amazing about all things considering. Wow. I just feel like the luckiest girl in the world, honestly. Like, you know, remember that Britney Spears song, She's so lucky. That's how I feel right now. So if you purchased, if you rebuild, if you upgraded to the co working or if you're just a customer in general or even if you just open the emails, honestly, I love you. I have so much respect for you. I'm so glad you're here. I like, I can't get enough of you. Okay. So thank you is what I'm trying to say. All right, so let's, on that vein of like being tired and everything, let's look at something that I want to dissect here that I think proves my point that people were tired. Let's talk about open rates and click rates. Okay, so usually my open rates are the bomb diggity. They hover. For a newsletter, they hover between 55 and 65%. Yes, I know those numbers are inflated, but that's still in general, pretty high. Right? So last year I added up all my emails and the average open rate was 55.8% and the average click rate was 2.36%. So about 56% open rate, you know, 2.36. Click rate this year was so much lower. Holy cow. Honestly, I've never had open rates this low. Even during a launch, even when, you know, open rates were inflated. So this year the average open rate was 47.7, which, that's, you know, that's what, 8% lower than last year. And then the Click rate was 2.17. So the click rate remained, you know, almost the same. Right? Just a slight difference. But the open rate was low, which leads me to believe if I could have gotten those open rates higher, then I probably would have hit that 250k or that 150k for the week goal. Right? Because if more people opened, the click rate was just a little lower. Probably would have come pretty darn close. So when I look at it that way, given all the information I had, the 150k goal for the week wasn't that insane? It sounds insane, but it wasn't that insane because we came close to it. Even though our open rate was super, super low, our click rate remained on average about the same. So. Oh the hell. Well, right now, last year I sent 17 emails and one time I did the resend to unopens. Okay? This year I sent 18 emails and two times I did the resend to unopened. Both times those were in the middle of the sale. The middle of the sale is usually kind of like the valley. You know, you have peaks in your sale and you have valleys. The middle of the sale, like Tuesday night, Wednesday, full day are usually my like lowest sales. So that's when I was using the resend to unopens instead of sending new emails. So my conclusion from all of this, other than, you know, if I could have gotten those open rates higher, probably would have hit the goal given that the open rates were lower. I think people were just more tired this year than last year. There's less excitement and honestly, this is a little sad. There might be less hope than last year. Right? Last year a lot of my messaging was around don't give up. I know times are hard and a lot of my messaging this year was very similar. But I feel like there was more hope last year and that that is shown in the open rates. Right? So I'm kind of, kind of sad. Not for myself, but for my email list, for the people on my email list. I don't want you to give up hope. This is still if I'm doing it, and I know, I know I'm selling money to people who want to make money. I get it. But I also know that your people are out there. I know people are spending money. And so I don't want you to give up hope here. But thank God I had list growth in 2024. And this is the thing that I'm focusing on in 2025. And I want my people and the thing that I'm promising them in the new year, the pass holders is we're going to focus on list growth because thank God I had list growth because last year I sent these emails out to about 6,000 people. This year I sent them out to about 9,000 people. So if I didn't grow my list, I wouldn't have gotten close to those goals, you know, and because I grew my list, I made more money this year than I Made last year in this sale and overall for the entire year. And the year's not even over yet. And I've already exceeded how much money I made last year by like $60,000 or something. So grow your freaking list and come hang out with me. We're gonna do a lot of stuff in the new year to help you do that. So overall, last year, I sold 769 new passes with no upsell. Made about $83,000. This year, we did 919 sales with 53 upsell sales for that total of 104,509. If we count the down sell. Yep. The 65 bucks, the additional co working sales, it was 105,874. That feels amazing. Was it 150? No. But then, of course, we count the rebills, we count the rebuilds of the $9. You know, it was a lot more than I could have ever dreamed for. Excuse me. So now remember, the goal, the revenue, revenue goal for the whole month was $250,000, right? So if we add up the Black Friday sales, if we do the rebills from previous years of the annual pass, we do the rebills and the new sales of the $9, because people still bought the $9. Some people, I even told them, hey, I don't think you're ready for the annual pass. Or if you're on the fence, just join the $9 and see how you like it. This annual pass is going to come back in March 2025. So no stress. I never want somebody to buy it and feel stressed. Right. And then I did, and I mentioned this in episode 54 with the goals. I did a lifetime pass for people who had been annual pass holders for a few years. I said, hey, why don't you upgrade to lifetime? So that was an additional almost. It was like 34,000 in sales. So when we add up everything, including, like affiliate income and this isn't affiliate income for the month, this is affiliate income that's been paid out to me, not future payouts we made. This is so crazy. $235,881. Oh, my gosh. Not 250. But I still feel absolutely incredible about it. I'm definitely not going to sulk that I didn't hit 2.250k. That was a number. I just, you know, I looked at my numbers. Last November, we made $162,000. So I was like, oh, why not 250? Why? We're not going to go for two. We're going to go for 250, right? Because I'm extra. If you can tell by my outfit and calling myself the Fresh Princess, I'm a little extra. So this feels like absolute phenomena. Like, this is the most phenomenal thing that's ever happened in my business. I'm so grateful, I could scream. I'm grateful for my customers. I'm grateful for my email list. I'm grateful for my sister Patricia, who does pretty much everything for me at this point. I mean, obviously she's not recording the podcast. You know, I under. I'm not diminishing my role, but Patricia is amazing. We got to 94% of that goal. I'm just sitting in that. It honestly feels really foreign. The toxic side of me wants to reject that number and say I don't deserve it. You know, the toxic part of me wants to give away all the money. That's my trait, right? Make a dollar, give away $2. Anyway, I'm not going to get into my own toxicity here, but the healthy part of me feels so. Again, steeped in gratitude. I feel like, yes, I have worked so hard this year on just my word of the year was maintain, not grow. So we definitely did need this sale to do well in order to, you know, go into the new year feeling financially secure. Because I have. Like I've mentioned on the show before, I was on Survivor, that was incredibly mentally, emotionally, physically taxing. But this feels like. What's the word? Validation that what I'm doing in the online business world is good and people need it, and it's refreshing, which is part of the reason why I call myself the Fresh Princess. Right? Like, I want people to know, like, when you come over here, it's going to be like a fresh new perspective and experience. And it's very validating to continue to offer this sale and for it to continue to grow. This is the part where I get emotional and to see the numbers and more than just, wow, I just made $200,000. Like, that's, you know, it's awesome, but it's. I'm gonna do something with this money, right? I'm not hoarding this money, you know, just to hoard it. Like, I can't wait to see the amount of good that I do with the money for my business, for my sister, for my daughter, for myself, for my family, for my friends, but also for you, for my customer. To have a financially stable business is what you need to be the best, like, servant of your people. And I feel so blessed that next year, you know, I promised A lot. I promised seven live events. I'm also going to open up this pass and sell it three times next year. I only sold it one time in 2024, so that's going to be a lot. And because I feel financially secure, I am not going to have to have the stress of, oh, I have to sell this next year. This has to go right, and I'm going to be a better leader and servant to my people. And I just, golly, I feel so blessed and I'm gonna work so hard, and not in a toxic way, but I. I just can't wait to get behind all these new pass holders and all the new subscribers and the ones that are here with me, get behind you and push you in the direction that you want to go. And it would not be possible without this Black Friday sale that I do every year. So, hell yeah. I feel so successful right now, and I can't wait to help more people feel this way. I feel amazing about it. So, in conclusion, I want to share what I think contributed to the success. Well, number one, this is something I've done over and over and over again. I first launched this annual pass in 2021, and I've. This is like the seventh or eighth launch of it. So that contributes a lot to the success. I am not someone who just got on the scene six months ago. Those are outliers. And as much as I'd like to think I am like cream of the crop, top 1%. Like, I. It took me a while to get here. And that's pretty normal. Pretty average. Second, Patricia. I love Patricia. I mentioned her several times. I could not, would not have had such a successful launch. I had such an amazing community, a happy, supportive community, without her. This podcast, I actually had a strategy behind it. I do daily emails in Q4 to help with the annual pass sale. And this year I knew I needed to up the ante because I'd been kind of. I'd kind of disappeared all year because of the survivor bs. And so I knew I needed a way to get back in front of people to say, hey, I am a credible source. I am an authority in the industry, and I am going to show up for you. And that was the idea behind the daily podcast. I wanted to launch it in 2025, but I knew I wasn't going to get anywhere close to my goals if I didn't start showing up in 2024. So that's what I did. Also, I haven't even mentioned it. Affiliates. Thank you. If you sold the pass Promoted the pass in the last week. I am so grateful for you. 29% of sales this last week came from affiliates. Thank you so much. Again, just steeped in gratitude here. I cannot wait. I'm going to pay out over $12,000 to affiliates in next two weeks. And that brings me so much freaking joy. Let's do it again in 2025. Over and over and over again. The next thing, daily emails. I started daily emailing my people, I think around October 15th. So, you know, about five weeks before the pass. Again, that was to help me become a credible. You know, this is a lady that shows up source for email marketing. And also I do think the offer, because, you know, we mentioned the economy, we mentioned people are tired. We mentioned people don't have as much as hope. But this offer itself was not open for an entire year. And I do believe that contributed to some of the success because people couldn't get into it all year. That had built up some momentum. Right away. I started talking about the past. This summer, I did a live cohort, like a live class for two weeks in August. People were talking about the pass in there. And that really helped start the momentum really early. About like, wait, what's the pass? Because I had. They hadn't heard about it. New subscribers. So they heard about it. They were excited about it. I had built up so much momentum. So that first day of sales, remember, we got 215 sales. You know, I think that contributed to it, it not being open all year round. Ah. And of course you. Thank you for being here and giving me, you know, as you listen to the podcast, as you opened up emails, as you hit reply, as you were in the Facebook group, you know, participating and engaging and encouraging, that helped me just get crap done. And it's going to help me in the new year. Like, oh, I'm so excited for all new passholders to see what they can do and to help them get there with their email marketing. Overall, again, we made about almost $236,000. The goal was 250. No, this is not a failure. This was a highly successful launch that I could not. I'm tearing up that I could not be more grateful for. Thank you so much for all you do for being here in the community. As always, I'm Liz Wilcox. You are awesome. And I will see you on the next episode of the email sound booth podcast.