Presented live on Tuesday, March 30, 2021
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You should take the time to plan out your launch funnel…
Because all the days of your launch are not equal.
The first day and the last day of your launch CAN be the most profitable.
Which is why you should give these two days the attention they deserve.
Jo’s going to show you how.
She’ll give you a behind-the-scenes pass to see how we mapped our Day 1 mini-funnel to kick off our upcoming launch…
…so you can be sure you’re sending the right message to the right readers on the right day.
Transcript
Introduction [00:00]
Joanna Wiebe: Today we are talking about emails. Emails for launch. Particularly emails for the first day of a timed launch, which might be like, Joanna how could you possibly take 20 minutes to talk about just the emails sent on the first day of a timed launch?
And a timed launch being like you’ve got a start date and an end date, so basically like a campaign. Most people would call it a campaign, increasingly it’s just called a launch in some spaces.
What to Expect in This Tutorial [00:36]
Joanna Wiebe: I’m going to share my screen and we’re going to talk through the emails that we have planned for day one of the upcoming April 15 Copy School launch. So last week in Tutorial Tuesdays – part one of this three part series, we talked about the pre launch stuff.
So what we’re going to do with Mini Copy School and segmentation, in particular. And then, of course, the question is okay well why are you segmenting so much? Or why is that a big part of what you’re working on and that is because as we talk about all the time in Copy School, segmentation is a huge part of getting people to open your emails.
And keep opening and reading your emails. If you’re going to actually depend on emails at all as part of your business, you want to make sure that people are opening those emails.
How to Increase Relevance in Your Launch Emails [01:52]
- Start with segments
- Develop action-triggered maps
- Write 4x the emails
Joanna Wiebe: Here we go, part two of three so right we’re talking about increasing relevance it’s a huge part of getting people to again, as I said, open your emails and keep opening your emails. So that, when the time comes for them to actually get that paid value from you they’re more likely to.
So for us, I mean, starting with segments where our pre launch efforts, as I said, included a big emphasis on segmenting visitors. And I say included because in our brains it’s like it’s already ready to go, but it still hasn’t launched yet so that’s coming up soon.
Then we develop action triggered maps, and that means you don’t just send an email to everybody, because it’s day one. So here’s our launch email as it’s often called. We want to make sure that every time someone takes an action that is a signal that they’re interested. It doesn’t mean that they’re interested in buying.
They could be very curious and they just want to watch the launch happen, that’s sometimes a scenario. But we want to make sure that we’re kind of defaulting to this idea that if someone clicks on the link in an email, that doesn’t just mean send them to the sales page.
It means a lot of things, right. That means they care. They may not buy right now, but they could buy later. We’re going to want to tag them. We’re going to want to retarget them. We’re going to want to send follow up emails. We’re going to want to time what they do next.
All sorts of things that we need to think about as conversion copywriters if you’re involved in creating emails for launches or for any campaign. Or if you’re involved in just making funnels. Simply saying, hey client here’s the email for day one, is just not enough.
Because by day three you haven’t really tapped into any of the reactions that people have to your emails. So what you’re going to see in these action-triggered maps is going to be a little detailed.
Because it’s good to be detailed. We have time, it’s an important thing to do. We have to make time for it. And for us, increasing relevance here is actually writing four times the emails. Now that doesn’t mean one person’s going to receive four times the emails.
We have four key segments, three of which each get their own sequence. And then the fourth one kind of is like a catch all for those who didn’t segment out during the pre launch stuff and who don’t segment out during the prelaunch stuff.
And then we have a whole bunch of other little emails actually too, for existing Copy Schoolers who have other things that we’re going to be telling them about. For people who have just purchased one program from us. And now’s a chance for them to get into Copy School and more and more and more as we go.
So there’s going to be a lot of emails. We’ve already chipped away; we’ve got most of them written now. And I was gonna walk you through a template today, but, as I was putting this together, I was like well this funnel map alone for day one for one segment, is actually quite a bit to walk you through.
Preparing Your Launch Funnel: Segmenting Your Visitors [04:55]
Joanna Wiebe: So, I’m going to walk you through it. So, as you know, we’re segmenting, this is back to number one on that previous slide. We’re segmenting as many people as we can, really early on. Make sure we know who’s reading what email, so that we can send them messages that matter to them.
And that really does mean that everybody’s going to get a day one, first email. But a freelance copywriter cares about things differently and talks about things differently than an in-house copywriter.
Yes, they both want to get good at copywriting. But the freelancer does because they need to make money, they need to look pro in front of their clients. They need to get more referrals, so they need really good results.
Whereas an in-house copywriter needs to battle against this familiarity that their team has with them. Being seen as a wordsmith having to constantly educate their team about like, I don’t just randomly right shit down. I’m here to get sales for you.
So those are two very different things. There might be overlap there, but if we just send all copywriters one email, that’s when we run into things like really long emails. Because it’ll have parts for if you’re a freelancer and then a whole paragraph of things. If you’re in-house, and this has a whole paragraph of things.
And conditional messaging can help us overcome that we’re using some conditional messaging as well. But by and large, we’re just going to treat every segment as its own sequence. Its own funnel and work through actually targeting them. And that doesn’t mean spending more time, that means writing more emails.
Day One of Our Launch Funnel [06:25]
Joanna Wiebe: So, let’s look at day one for just one segment. So you just saw those four segments, we’re going to talk about one day. This is launch day for one segment. So we always want to start with the trigger for anything we’re doing a time launch like this.
Where you’ve got a launch day and a close day. Unlike an evergreen or an onboarding sequence or something like that. The trigger here is the date is April 15 and the time is 8:57am PT.
Okay that’s the trigger that we’ve got. Start with that, and then we need to go from there. And again this is just for day one. Day two, or the second round of emails to move people further along, or that haven’t purchased yet is going to have a different trigger.
And, in most cases, that trigger will be, the date is April 16 and time is 24 hours from the last time from the last email they got or that they last opened. Okay, so most people write one or two emails for the whole list for launch day.
And those one or two emails are like a massive blast to the list that day. Like the start of day, the first email introducing, or the launch is here. And then later on in the day, maybe at four o’clock, there’s a second email. Sometimes. That doesn’t often happen, a lot of people just write one email, max two emails. And again, it’s going to the whole list.
But we need to think about all of this stuff. And the reason I’m teaching you this right now, is because we’re conversion copywriters or we’re digital marketers, or we’re conversion consultants and we’re trying to increase conversions.
It’s not enough just to say hey let’s do launch emails. We can do better than that. We just have to dedicate ourselves to doing better than that. So we know that day one, and the final day of a launch funnel or campaign are typically the top performers.
And that can vary, so I say typically because, if you have a really good slump bump in the middle, and you have to throw a bonus at things, or do something else to get people to care in the middle of a launch.
So there are times when the first day and the final day or not the top performers. But very often we see that bridge, where it’s like a peak and then it’s kind of like a drop in the middle. So if we know that day one is so important, why are we sending one email to our whole list and asking them all to care in the same way?
Is it just because we’re like the power of all of our prelaunch activities and the fact that they’re excited for it, we’re just launching this thing? There’s a lot baked in. Interest in jumping in right away. So we’re just going to rely on that. I say okay fine that’s true. That’ll still be true, even if you work harder and segment better.
It’ll still be like great your pre launch activities worked really well, now let’s email strategically and land people on the right thing. So we need to work harder on day one. Definitely for us, instead of having one email going to everybody, or two emails going to everybody.
For one segment on day one, we have five emails and seven landing pages. And they don’t have to be landing pages, so I’m just calling them landers here and you’ll see why. Now the point here is not Jo, great quantity. You must have a much better idea of this than people who just send one. Nope.
It’s not about that. It’s just when you look through the triggers and the things that people can do and will do or won’t do, and time delays. You know that you have to do more than just put a single email out there that drives to a sales page, and that drives then once you purchase, to a thank you page.
So typically a launch day funnel will be, email goes to sales page, goes to thank you page. And there might be a win back or an abandoned cart email in there. Two emails, two landing pages that you have to create. And you’ll see that we need to do more than that.
Day One of Our Launch Funnel [10:36]
Joanna Wiebe: So for us, day one for each segment looks a lot like this. There are small variations, this is where the in-house copywriter segment. We’re going to dive into it, but the point here is that there is not one email, hanging out, driving to a landing page. And there’s like three elements on this.
There’s a lot happening here. A lot of thinking strategically because we want to get the most out of day one. If we don’t have to email a person again because they bought on day one. Awesome. Now we’re not worried, are we spamming people? We are sending things when we’re being relevant. We’re only sending things when people show an interest in it.
And two, if we can get them to buy sooner, they don’t need to get another email from us. It’s amazing. All the emails I get from that point on are like, hey welcome, here’s what you should be doing inside Copy School. Which you can see over to the side here.
What Your Day One Funnel Needs [11:30]
Joanna Wiebe: Now, here’s what your day one funnel needs. And we’re already like 15 minutes into this tutorial. So it’s a very good thing I didn’t plan to walk you through a template, or it would be a lot.
Your day one funnel needs:
- An email that gets triggered at the start
- A sales page to land “clickers” on
- A confirmation page to land buyers on
- A winback email to send to non-buyers
- A follow up email to land “non-clickers” on
- Time delays for emails throughout the day
- Tags to apply based on what people do and don’t do
- To consider all actions, not just sales actions (so also buyer actions)
An email that gets triggered at the start, obviously, that’s where you typically go. A sales page to land anybody who clicks on. A confirmation page to land buyers on. And winback email to send non-buyers, that’s like an abandoned cart email. Then a follow up email to land non-clickers on and that’s something that rarely happens.
So these first bullet points here typically you already know about. This follow up email for people who don’t do anything. They open that first email, but they don’t click anything. Okay we’re going to wait a little, four hours six hours, whatever it is.
And then go back and send them a separate email that feels more one to one. We need time delays for emails throughout the day. We need to apply tags and we need to consider all actions, not just sales, actions.
So, do you have all the emails for buyers in place, in the funnel that you have as well? That’s an important thing. And if you work with clients, they’re going to want to see that.
And if you don’t work with clients, you have your own in-house thing. Or you’re doing this for yourself. It’s really important to document this, so that you’ve got all of your ducks in a row.
Day One of Our Launch Funnel [12:45]
Joanna Wiebe: Let’s take a look at what that actually looks like here. So let me zoom in a little. This is for the one segment. So here we have this in blue below is what we’re going to cover. So you want to have a ‘why’ for every single email that you send.
So we have detailed plans that we’re not going to get into. But you can see them up here in this little tab. A plan for each segment that we’re going to be reaching out to. And this is what this particular segment needs to know on launch day.
We have our launch email, then we have what happens if they click or don’t click. And there’s always going to be that this or that, so they buy or they don’t buy, they click or they don’t click is what it really comes down to.
I don’t have any special rules in here, for if they open or don’t open. That is definitely a strong consideration, but we’re trying to move people who are actually clicking. We had originally something that was they’re actually opening the email, which shows that they’re more engaged than somebody who is not even opening it.
So I don’t want to just resend on opens all the time, which is pretty common and perfectly legit. I just don’t want to do it because we’re already really deep in on trying to convert people who do show interest. Because they do nothing, we’ll figure out later when it comes to evergreen.
What to do about those people who don’t even open in the first place. So we have click or doesn’t click. Now if they don’t click, this is the part that a lot of people just ignore when it comes to email planning.
Click, of course the click leads to a long form sales page, in this case, or whatever you’re doing that first email leads to a place where they can buy, or collect more information to get closer to buying.
But what about when they don’t click? So we’re going to wait six hours and they’re going to send a one to one feeling follow up email. And that’s going to be an invite to a demo that we have on Friday. So they open the email, which shows interest but something’s kept them from clicking through.
The email was bad? It was too long? Who knows what it might have been? We don’t know, so we’re going to send a short email that feels very one to one. And actually is written one to one by a person, it just happens to be in an automated way.
So it feels one to one, that doesn’t mean it’s actually one to one. You can reply and actually talk to that person. And then, if they don’t click still, then we’re going to end that. They’re still going to go back in tomorrow, to the next email, and if they don’t open that then.
We’ll have rules about moving people off the list if they’re not opening either, because we do not want to ruin our sender rating in order to keep blasting people. If they do click, then this is where they’re going to go, to a confirmation page for that Friday demo with an add to calendar on it.
So if you have this part added in, you can see instead of just going straight through along the top. Now you have a new rule to make sure that your client or your team puts in place, you need to have a second email.
And you need to have a confirmation page or the place that you’re driving that second email to. And that’s going to basically wherever I have yellow on here, that’s where we’re ending an experience for a person.
Don’t look at the shapes, unfortunately Whimsical doesn’t use all of the same shapes that you’ll use when you’re learning how to do flows like this. And decision maps at school or something.
So don’t worry too much about the shapes. Those are just there for our reference.
They’ll be just there for your reference. But anything that’s a rectangle, is an email. Anything that’s an oval, is a landing page. Okay, so we have that. Now, if they do click, then it goes to the long form sales page.
And then we have a buy or doesn’t buy. Now buy’s a pretty typical thing. If they buy, they’re going to have two things happen to them. First they’re going to get tagged as a Copy School student, so that they do not receive any other emails from us on this.
If they’ve signed up with multiple email addresses there’s nothing we can do about that. And then the buys also, of course, go to the thank you page, and then there’s another experience there as well. Whether they click to go to the Copy School sign in page, or if they don’t.
What does it mean that they didn’t? We want to make sure people are activating. That’s a big part of reducing churn, which is a really important metric for anybody who has a subscription business like we do.
So we want to make sure we’re going through and filling this and now I’m not going to get into the details of this part. Just know that it is something that you have to work through when you’re putting together any map.
And, of course, this part, this whole segue. All of these elements here are basically a mini funnel. Those get reused every time, so it’s not like I’m making this up from scratch. Every Time someone buys, all of the things happening here on the right will always happen to them.
So once that funnel’s in place, you just keep sending people through to it as soon as they buy.
Okay, so what really matters here, then, is what about people who land on the long form sales page but don’t buy?
So we’re going to wait a certain amount of time, you want to make sure you’re not just saying if they don’t buy them trigger that email. Because that page might still be open and they might be doing all sorts of other things, so we do need to make sure we’re building in those time delays as well.
So they wait six hours, and then we send a second email. Now earlier, I was like okay well, most people send one maybe two emails on day on. This email to here is that second email. It’s going to people who have clicked through and what it is for this particular segment is a boss buy-in email.
They’ve shown interest but they didn’t buy it, so chances are good there are lots of things that could be happening, but we can hypothesize that one thing might be happening there is, oh crap I need someone to help me make this decision. Or crap, my boss is never going to have the budget for this, or not going to get it together in time for me.
Or they’re not going to see the value in this. They think I’m a wordsmith, all the things we know in-house copywriters are worried about based on interviewing them and surveys. So we have that boss buy-in email. The lender there is a PDF version.
So it’s not a landing page, it’s just a PDF version of our boss buy-in booklet that we’ve created for them. And then of course there’s another thing they can click there too, which is just to go back to the long form sales page in case they decide that they do want to buy it themselves.
And then we have the what happens if they don’t click? We’re going to tag them as Copy School curious. And then we’re going to close that. And from that point on, now we have a new tag that we’re going to think about when it’s time to plan the next emails.
So soon as I’m tagged Copy School curious, I’m going to probably be on another sequence that will go out 24 hours later, for people who are Copy School curious but haven’t actually moved on it. And that’s the long and the short of the whole day one sequence.
Now we’re doing this across six days and every day has a different one of these. There’s a lot of overlap in the actual funnel itself. So mostly it’s just the front part of it that’s going to change in the trigger, and then it’s for each segment as well. Thanks, Ange. Thanks, everyone. We’ll see you next week. Have a good week, y’all. Bye.
