Description: tried just about everything to make sales via email and it just isn’t working? Try a flash sale! No, you don’t have to give some crazy discount. But yes, it should drum up excitement. Here’s how to do it and how it’s gonna teach you a lot about the health of your email list.
Transcript
Hey friend! This is the Fresh Princess of Email Marketing speaking and you’re listening to Episode 12 of the Email Sound Booth podcast. Lucky me! Today we’re going to talk about a trick I think you should use to jumpstart sales from your email list. This is for you if you struggle with big launches. Or if you’ve been kinda floundering. Or even if you do alright and you’re just looking for a quick cash injection.
Yes, of course. I am talking about running a flash sale. A quick, maybe 48 hour sale exclusive to your email list offering some kind of discount or bonus to new customers when they purchase.
For example, every once in a while I like to offer a discount code that can be applied to any and all of my products. In fact, one time my truck was in the shop and the repairs were like over $6k. So I sent a few emails to my list. I’ll read you that first email in a minute so you can see what I mean, but first…why run a flash sale?
Well, like I already said, it’s a good cash injection.
But I do recommend trying the flash sale if you’ve been struggling to make sales via email. To me, the flash sale is a very good indicator of the health of your email list.
If you can’t make sales with a flash sale, your list is likely pretty darn broken and you need to do some real reflection as to why that is and how to fix it. (I’ve got other podcast episodes on those topics, btw.)
So I say run the flash sale and see if you get any bites.
If you do, great! You’re moving in the right direction and maybe, during your normal email newsletter routine, you’re just missing out because you aren’t selling enough or offering enough reasons your customer should buy right now.
If you don’t makes sales, great in another way! Now you really know with certainty that you have either a problem with your product (it’s not the right thing), a problem with the messaging around it (we aren’t talking about it properly), or a problem with the list (they aren’t the right people). And chances are, your gut knows which one it is.
Now that we know why we’re gonna run this flash sale and what we’re hoping to learn from it (because, yeah we wanna make money but really this flash sale is going to teach us about our list, right?)
Let me share two quick must-haves about your flash sale:
#1—it’s gotta be significant and exciting. Meaning, a 10% discount really ain’t gonna get everyone clicking over to the cart. The 25% off is pretty significant in that last email, right? Especially when I pointed out they could use it on my email audit service.
#2- exclusive to the email list. this makes people feel SMART for being on the email list. Like, they are getting major benefits for being on your list and will want to stick around for the longterm. Get it? ahh…so smart, Liz!
And here’s one thing it doesn’t have to be:
The flash sale doesn’t have to be a discount.
Sure it can be 35% off for your 35th bday. Or it can be buy one service, get the second one 50% off.
Those are exciting. Those are significant.
But it can also be adding in a wild and fun bonus, ya know. If discounts aren’t your thing.
You can try “buy this and get a $50 credit for your next service.” Someone who does this well is a lady named Lizzy Goddard. She has credit in her business you can buy, kinda like a gift card or airline miles. haha! You could try that.
Or you could offer “buy that and get a free 1:1 call with me” or some other really enticing bonus. It could even be “buy this product and get that other product for free.”
It doesn’t have to be a discount.
Alright, let’s go back to that Bronco flash sale I was talking about. Let me read this first email to you. And remember, this flash sale was just that…a flash sale. No warming up or warning my subscribers that it was coming. A completely out of the blue email. Here goes:
Subject Line: ford bronco flash sale
My loss is your gain [FIRST NAME GOES HERE]!
In other words, my 1989 Ford Bronco (and daily driver) is in the shop.
And while parts for this bad boy are pretty cheap, the labor required to fix what is broken/leaking/etc is most definitely not.
So I’m running a weekend flash sale!
Right now, you can snatch up any of the products on my website for 25% off.
Here’s how to get in on it:
- Go to lizwilcox.com/products
- Pick the products you need (so you can finally get your email marketing in order)
- Enter discount code 89BRONCO at checkout.
- Badda bing. Badda boom. Your price will drop by 25%.
Of course, I’ve got some rules [FIRST NAME GOES HERE]:
- This offer is ONLY for my amazing email community, so please! Don’t share that code.
- Email Marketing Membership and my 1:1 calls are exempt. Sorry!
- You have to purchase BEFORE Monday comes along.
Okay, let’s get to it!
- Liz Wilcox
PS. You can even use this for my email audit service– The In Sync Inbox. It’ll go from $500 to $375…so if your ESP is a mess and you have no clue what to do to actually make money with email, now is the time to snatch that bad boy up.
PPS. I’m hoping you find it refreshing that I told you exactly why I’m throwing this sale instead of trying to pretend this is all about you. I mean, it’s definitely a win-win here…but I wouldn’t have thought to give you a discount if my estimate didn’t about give me a heart attack. xoxo
Okay, so now you can kinda hear just how simple this can be. That email had a 55% open rate with a 6.3% click rate, sent out to a little less than 5k people.
I sent four emails over 48 hours and made about $4800 bucks. That’s $100 an hour!
Now what can I learn about my email list from this flash sale?
#1- they are engaged. Even the last email I sent had a 53% open rate.
#2- they were excited for the discount but excited to help me at the same time. Remember, my flash sale was selfish. I really needed the cash! And my audience answered the call. That’s the mark of a really strong community and shows they also have a lot of trust in their mentor, me. Side note: the email list was almost 3 years old at this point. That’s 3 years of significant investment and teaching on my part for them to reciprocate in this way. Don’t worry if you’re not there yet.
#3—Despite having a greatly engaged list, I still didn’t meet my goal of $6k made. This indicated to me that I probably should have sent out one more email and maybe even opened up the discount for my 1:1 calls. But wait! I didn’t want to work much more and I didn’t actually NEED the $6k. The $4800 was more than enough to make sure I wasn’t sweating paying my bills AND the car repair bill. But if I had really needed the money, I could have deployed those two ideas and made up the missing $1200. Also, it was an indicator that I needed to grow my list. If I wanted a 6k flash sale one day, I needed more people on my list to do it.
Now let’s look at it from “omg I did this sale and I only had a few purchases.” Let’s say I ran the exact same flash sale, but only made less than 10 purchases and a few hundred bucks. What am I going to learn then? Let’s also say the open rates were 30-35% with click rates less than 1%, except maybe the first email has a higher than normal click rate.
#1—my list is not really engaged. 30-35% open rate is low for a surprise flash sale where I’m offering something amazing to my list. My list should care more. I have some work to do on how to fix that. Maybe I should grow my list or maybe I need to scrub the list of people that aren’t opening my emails.
#2— Less than 10 people took me up on my flash sale offer. If I sent to just 500 people, that’s not really a lot and I thought for sure people would jump on this. If they didn’t jump on it, maybe my offers aren’t actually what people need. If they are, maybe they have the wrong name, price, or I’m just talking about them completely differently than what they need. Do I talk about the offer enough that they know what it is? If not, is the sales page helpful? Does the price answer a lot of questions about the product or invoke a lot of questions about the product? Where did these people come from anyway? How did they sign up for my list and why? Are those answers a natural segue into what I offer? Perhaps the people on my list aren’t serious about my solution or they don’t know how serious I am about helping them. If I start emailing more about my solutions, the wrong people will jump off the list and the right people will stay and eventually purchase. Yep. That’s my plan.
See what I mean here, my email friend? This flash sale, no matter what happens, is going to teach you a lot about your list.
And that’s why it’s a trick I use to jumpstart my list anytime I feel like things are slipping, so to speak. And I hope you do too.
In fact, if you’re fired up right now and in need of some templates, you already know I’ve got you covered inside Email Marketing Membership. That’s my $9/month email newsletter template club where you get access to a library of templates that help you get your email game in order, including a 48 hours flash sale sequence.
If you’re already inside the membership, just go to the email library, click sales, and scroll down until you see something titled Weekend Flash Sale. If you’re not in the membership, head on over to the show notes and try it out for a month for just $9. Cancel anytime. But use those flash sale templates to learn something about your email list! And do it soon!
And as always, come back and share in the reviews of this podcast how this episode helped you today. I’m Liz Wilcox. You’re awesome. And I’ll meet you at the next episode of the Email Sound Booth.
