Copy And
The marketing podcast where online service providers learn how to write copy that sounds like them, but converts BETTER.
I’m Sam Burmeister, your guide on this copy adventure. As a conversion copywriter & sales psychology expert, I learned the ‘right way’ to sell in my decade-long sales career.
Now, after spending the last 6+ years writing copy for hundreds of successful launches and helping dozens of entrepreneurs write better copy every week…I know what sells and what’s working in online business right now.
And what’s working is copy AND – Copy and messaging, design, strategy, navigating AI and more...
Together, we’ll put the pieces of the marketing puzzle together - and you will write copy that both serves AND sells.
Copy And
47. Launch Copy: Pre-, During, Post-Launch Mistakes
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In this episode, Samantha discusses the most common launch mistakes she's seeing right now, broken into three phases: pre-launch, active launch, and post-launch. As someone who's helped over a dozen clients land their first six-figure launch and contributed to several seven-figure launches, she's watching the same fixable mistakes derail otherwise solid offers. She walks through what's going wrong at each stage and exactly what to do instead, so you can avoid repeating these mistakes in your next launch.
What You'll Learn
- Why your launch starts 4 to 6 weeks before cart opens, and what you should be doing during that window
- Why the old "eight touches" rule no longer covers what it takes to buy something high ticket
- Why ditching your webinar because "people already know you" is costing you sales
- How many emails you need during a 7 day cart open period (the number will surprise you)
- The exact day in your launch when sales dip, and why that's not the day to panic and pull back
- What to do after cart close so leads who didn't buy stay warm for next time
Resources Mentioned
- Forgotten Launch Emails checklist: https://nomadcopyagency.thrivecart.com/launch-emails-checklist (use code PODCAST to get it for $1)
- Webinar Show-Up Email Templates: https://nomadcopyagency.thrivecart.com/webinar-show-up-emails-template/
- Clickable AF CTAs swipe file: https://nomadcopyagency.thrivecart.com/clickable-af-ctas/
Connect with me:
Nomad Copy Services → sales pages, emails, websites, and more.
Get on my calendar → if you’d like me to write your sales copy for you!
Free Opt-In Copy Bot → Write high-converting opt-in pages in minutes
Watch episodes with subtitles on my YouTube
Nomad Copy Agency writes copy that CONVERTS for service-based businesses. Inquire about done-for-you services here.
Hey friends, and welcome back to Copy and the Marketing Podcast, where I teach you how to write copy that sounds like you but converts better. And I am so excited for today's episode because as you know, I am an expert in launching. I have helped over a dozen people have their first six-figure launches, have been a part of several seven-figure launches, and that's how I got my start in copywriting, was helping people sell. My background is in sales, not necessarily in launching, but just in corporate sales. I have degrees in marketing and international business, and I don't believe that sales is a four-letter word. So I love helping people launch. My bread and butter is sales pages and sales emails. And the key to an effective launch, everyone will tell you this, is a really solid pre-launch. Your people have to be excited for you to sell to them, and that's also the number one mistake that I see in launching. So today I'm going to talk to you about the mistakes that I have been seeing, unfortunately, some of my friends making in their recent launches and I encourage you to take a few of these tips and put them into your next launch. So for example, you might hear me say that somebody ignored their social media because they got stressed out. Just take that as a personal note to make that one of the couple things that you will employ in your next launch to help it go even better than the ones that you've had in the past. So I'm gonna break this episode up into three sections, all in the same episode, but the mistakes that I see people making in the pre-launch, during the active launch, and then actually post-launch that are inhibiting their sales, and potentially ruining their next launch too. So let's see if that works. Let's dive in So first of all, your launch starts long before your open cart actually begins. A lot of people will tell me that they're launching, they'll come to me in Copy on Demand and say, "Sam, what, what emails do I need for a launch?" And I know I've said this on the podcast before, and I've mentioned every email that your launch needs to convert, which you can grab for just a dollar with the link in the show notes and use code PODCAST to make it a dollar. What I see people do is they come to me and they say, "What launch emails do I need?" And they mean only the sales emails. And yes, those are important, and yes, you need more than you think you do, but truly, your launch begins, I would say, a good four to six weeks before your launch actually begins. So what should you be doing in those four to six weeks before your launch begins is building your list, first and foremost. I need you to be putting your freebie out there. I need you to be getting yourself visible in front of your ideal audience, whether that means guest teaching in places, showing up more on stories, in posts, in reels, on TikTok. Wherever your audience is, I need you to be visible there, and I need you to be driving traffic to your email list, especially if you're going to launch using your email list primarily. That is your best opportunity to start warming people up, so you need to be doing a huge lead generation push, and in this case, I mean a list-building push. So you could do things like joint summits or bundles. You could be doing list swaps with other people. What doing list swaps does really well is if those people are also going to be your affiliates during your launch, it's creating a bit of brand recognition between the two brands, yourself and your affiliates, so that when that person goes to promote your active launch, you are also Driving your authority through association. So that's thing number one is be building your list for a good four to six weeks before launch. I will tell you that in my most successful launch, about seventy percent of the people who ended up purchasing from me had been on my list for less than six weeks. So if you seem to think that that is not enough time to build authority and get people to buy from you, of that seventy percent, about twenty percent of them had been on my list for less than a week before they ended up purchasing from me during my launch. So be building your list, be nurturing that list, and start building your authority with them. Which brings me to my second point is building authority with your new list or your existing list. How do you build authority? A couple of different ways. Let me give some examples. First of all, if you're launching, say, a course, let's say that you're launching a Pinterest course. You could be building your authority by talking about other sources of traffic and how Pinterest compares to them. So comparing yourself to the perceived competitor is a really great way to build your authority. It shows that you know what you're talking about and you know what the other options are. Another thing you could do is talk about design ideas or the creative inside of Pinterest so that you show you know not just what the alternatives are, but how to really rock it inside of what you are teaching about, which is Pinterest, or tell other people's success stories. People love social proof. Tell client success stories. So that's one way that you could nurture is by sending emails that build your authority by showing that you understand your audience and showing that you are the best person to learn this topic from. Just don't put information that people would get behind the paywall up front in your emails. Another example, I have a lot of personal trainers in my audience. So if you were a personal trainer and you were starting a group training program, what should you be talking about? And by the way, I'm talking about this in terms of emails, but be everywhere. Be omnipresent. So you could be talking and building your authority. This is again, middle of funnel. If you go back to my last couple episodes, you'll know what middle of funnel is. This is where you're really nurturing people and getting them ready to buy from you. So your middle of funnel includes your emails, but also your social media content, and what you're talking about in other people's groups and more. So if you're a personal trainer, you could also be sharing success stories of your past clients. You could also go into something like myth-busting. So this is what other people think, but then third thing here is talking about your philosophy. So myth-busting and talking about how you do it and how you are different is a really great way to build your authority. What is your standout factor? What makes people see you from a mile away? Be talking about that in the four to six weeks before your launch. The next mistake I see in pre-launch is people only choosing one place to be marketing themselves in pre-launch. So they may only be using their email list. However, if you are driving people from your Instagram over to your email list, talking about the same things in both places amplifies your message. Also, many people are not going to follow you on a single platform, but they'll follow you on another. And really, when you think about the data, only forty percent of people are opening your emails, and only like a couple hundred people are seeing each post that you make unless the algorithm just really freaking loves you. So even if you think that you're talking about the same thing over and over, some people may only see one of your pieces of content, and it might not even stick. So don't be afraid to, one, talk about your stuff in multiple areas: email, social media, different types of social media, et cetera. And two, be saying the same thing over and over. You will feel repetitive. You will be so sick of hearing yourself talk, but it's also gonna get you into a really good habit. And to amplify this, you may have heard that somebody needs an average of eight touches before they buy. This is a statistic that I learned back in marketing school and I was taught that eight touch rule in terms of a touch is just simply an exposure to your brand. And the example that he used was Trident gum. And he was saying that you needed to see a couple of commercials on TV and then maybe something in print when you were reading a magazine, and then you would see it at the store. And then finally, that gum would be at the end cap right before you check out at the store. So that was the tipping point that got you to purchase. There were like eight different touches in there. However, we live in a more cluttered world than we did back when I was doing my degree, and also most of us are selling things that are a bit more high ticket than a pack of gum. So we need a lot more touches. So also, when we think about the data saying that like less than half of people are seeing our advertising and seeing our marketing, and that we need even more touches to convince somebody to buy something that is higher ticket, you should be sick of hearing yourself talk. So that's mistake number three is not talking about our stuff enough and on multiple platforms. Create an ecosystem around who you are and what you offer in your pre-launch so that you don't just be one of those people who posts like once a week and then all of a sudden come out of the gate during your active launch with like ten posts in a week and people not even knowing who you are because you haven't taken the time to build the authority before the launch Another mistake I've been seeing recently, and I think this one is really interesting, is not giving people face time with you before they buy. So a lot of people will work on building their list, potentially with a PDF, a download, a low-ticket offer, and then not show up face-to-face with their audience. This could mean a couple things. One, showing your face live on Instagram or TikTok or LinkedIn, or not giving people an opportunity to get on a webinar or a workshop with you as a pre-launch event. And the trend that I've been seeing this one with is people who have done really successful webinar launches in the past, which means that people get to be in a virtual room with them and see their face and learn their expertise and get really psyched up. Those people are ditching their webinars because they think that people already know them, and that's not the case. If you are constantly building your list and building your audience, those people are literally new people, but also people change over time. And so people who've been on your list or been a subscriber to you for a long time might not remember you, might not understand why you are relevant to them right now. So giving them some face time is going to be a positive impact on your launch. I highly recommend a launch event where people get to sit with you and learn from you live as much as possible even if, and especially if, you've had a successful webinar launch in the past. People are looking for people that they can trust right now. And if you take yourself out of the business, and take yourself out of the launch, or think that people know you well enough and you don't need to be there real time, it's not gonna bode well for your launch, even if you're famous. So Again, whether you are small potatoes listening to this, or you have had a wildly successful webinar launch in the past, I encourage you to get as much face time as you can with your audience in your pre-launch right up to your launch event and even through your launch. But we're talking about pre-launch right now. Final mistake in pre-launch that I see people doing is not sending enough reminder emails to their launch event. So a lot of people are still having webinars, workshops, mixers, whatever, as their launch event. And when I say launch event, I mean that one big thing that you drive a bunch of people to, where you pitch your offer, and that is where you open your cart. So what I see people doing is getting all of these people into a calendar invite for their launch event and then not interacting with them because they're too busy trying to get more people into the launch event or get people registered. So what happens is, let's say that you get five hundred people registered for your webinar. If you send them one email that says, "Yay, you're in. Click here to add it to your email," and then they don't hear from you for a week... I'm a millennial. A classic thing with millennials is we love canceled plans. We love last-minute changes. So if you are only sending them one email a week before an event, they're not gonna show up. They're gonna say, "Okay, great. There's a replay. I'll hopefully catch it and maybe watch the middle thirty minutes on one point five X speed." Right? So instead, what I want you to do is... And I do have a template for these emails. You can get them at the link in the show notes. They are the webinar show up emails, but they work for challenges, they work for webinars, they work for workshops, any live event. I recommend sending at least four emails. You can also go back and listen to a previous episode where I outline everything that should go in those emails. But really, you need to be sending, that first email that lets them add it to their calendar, but you also need to nurture those people really well during the days leading up to the webinar, so that they know exactly what they're gonna walk away from that webinar, workshop, or challenge with, which is going to be something that is absolutely transformational to them. And then it gives you more people to pitch to live when you get them on your webinar. So that takes us right up to active open cart. So let's talk about the mistakes that I've been seeing pop up during active launch. First things first is people not sending enough emails. My recommendation is that you should be sending at least three emails on the first day of open cart and four on the last day of open cart and at least two a day during open cart There's a big asterisk here about what does your audience respond to and how often are they checking emails? I always use my brother as an example. He's a union painter. That man checks his email, like, twice a month. So he might need a longer open cart and fewer touches because he's gonna open his email after a couple weeks to, like, 20 emails, and it's gonna be overwhelming for him versus someone who's chronically online and works a desk job like me. I check my email multiple times a day. So if you're selling to me, I want you in my inbox every time I open my inbox. So there is a difference here, but in theory, if you're doing the average service provider launch where most of your people are online and you're opening cart for a week, you're gonna need about 20 emails to go out during that week. Does that sound like a lot? Yes. Are you thinking to yourself right now, "If somebody sent me 20 emails in a week, I would unsubscribe"? Yeah. Also, yes. As somebody who has written for well over 100 very successful launches, the unsubscribe rate does not go up that much during a launch. If people don't want your emails, they will unsubscribe. They are not your people. And if you don't have the capacity to write that many emails, just know that your people do wanna hear from you, and their chances of unsubscribing are lower. More touches equals more impact equals more sales. Next thing I've seen, and I've seen this a lot in sales emails recently, is no buttons in the emails, and this one baffles me. But you need calls to action or CTAs in your emails, and you need them to be buttons. People need to see with, like, sparkles and arrows where they should click in an email. We need to make it so stinking clear. Friction will kill your conversions. So we need to see clickable buttons in all of our sales emails. Third thing is a mindset thing. Again, I'm not a coach, but, I have been in the trenches with entrepreneurs as they've launched, and everybody goes through the pit of despair. If you know what a bell curve looks like, then you know what an upside-down bell curve looks like. And I will tell you that for most of my clients, like the vast majority, 90, 95%, this is people who are hoping to make a five-figure launch, this is people who are hoping to make a seven-figure launch, are going to get the most sales on the first and last day of their launches. There are people who love urgency, and there are people who love waiting till the last minute. In my last launch, I had somebody email me and say, "Hey, I'm gonna buy from you. I just wanna get the rest of your launch emails, so I'm not gonna buy until the last day." You have to remember that you are catering to different types of people and different buying styles, different levels of neurodivergence, different habits, different financial situations. So what I mean to tell you here is that the mistake I see people making is not pushing through this pit of despair, which is what I call, that middle day of the launch. So if it was a Monday through Friday, you're gonna get the least amount of conversions on Wednesday, I swear. So if you don't push through that pit of despair, if you let the low level of DMs bother you, if you stop sending emails, if you think, "Oh my gosh, I got ten conversions on day one and one today. I've seen the trend go down for the last three days, I think this is it. I don't think I'm gonna hit my numbers," my encouragement to you is to push through. I have a ton of copy ideas, but that's what I talk to my clients about when I do launch strategy, so I'm not gonna dig into that here. But there are a ton of ways to push through the pit of despair. The biggest mistake that you can make is to stop pitching and stop going full steam ahead midway through your launch. And again, I wanna mention this one more time, is not giving people enough face time during your launch. You're gonna be spending a ton of time answering emails, writing your sales emails if you didn't do it ahead of time. I encourage you to get on Stories and talk to people. Answer questions. Do Q&As on Stories, do Q&As in your email, give social proof, have your best clients in the past speak up on your behalf or do a live with you. Invite your hottest leads to a private Q&A where they can suss out if your offer is right for them. You could do a private webinar for your hot leads. So there's a lot that you can do, but I encourage you to, keep giving face time during your launch. Then cart close happens. You go all in on the last day of your launch. You block out that day. You're sending DMs, you're asking last minute questions, you're sending your nine-word email, and then your cart closes and you are exhausted. The worst thing that you can do after a launch is to stop talking to your audience If you go dark and dip out, people who might have been warm but didn't buy from you are going to perceive you as somebody who only cares about the money and not about the nurture. So you've got a couple of options for where to go from here. You can upsell or you can downsell, and those are probably two separate audiences. So the people that you just sold to, you can offer something else. You can offer a VIP add-on or a one-on-one. You could, to the people who didn't buy from you, offer the first part of your course or a downsell to just the course without the live component. Remind your audience of all of the other ways that they can work with you, including your digital products, including your one-on-one offers, including a different course. I'm sure you've got other things in your business than what you just launched, so put that in front of your people. Continue to sell. You don't have to continue to sell at two to three emails a day, but you do need to continue to talk to your audience. Depending on what industry you're in, you could also do a launch debrief. People are nosy as hell, and that is going to be a highly interacted with, very personal email, which a lot of times when we sell, we end up feeling like we're not really connecting with people 'cause some people might shy away from a sales conversation. This is a great way to just be very human in front of your audience. Same thing goes for social media. Try to stay active over there. Also, don't forget about onboarding your new clients and students. You're gonna want to make sure that you roll out the red carpet for people when they buy from you. I cover these emails in the Every Email Your Launch Needs resource, which I'll make sure is linked in the show notes with the code PODCAST to get it for a dollar. But there's a ton of ideas for how to make sure that that red carpet is rolled out, so that you don't seem like you put all your effort into selling and none of your effort into the people who either didn't buy from you yet, because those could be future buyers, they are leads after all, they're following you for a reason, or not giving enough attention to the people who have bought from you. We don't wanna give them the wrong impression So in conclusion, there's a lot of like silly little mistakes that I've seen recently in launching. There's the pre-launch. Again, I see people just not being quite as bold as they could be. Give your people some face time. Speak highly of yourself. Build authority. Let your affiliates and friends help you build authority. Show some social proof. During your launch, don't get discouraged. It's gonna pick back up at the end. It always does. Make sure that you've got clear calls to action in your emails. Push through the pit of despair. Give people as much of you and your face as possible and your teaching. Give them a flavor for what it's like to work with you. And post-launch, don't disappear. That's the biggest thing. Stay present. You may even wanna schedule out a couple of these emails before your launch ever starts so that you can take a break, but it looks like you're online. And if you want some help with this, of course, I have written for so many successful launches. My most recent launch that I wrote for, the person went from a 20K launch to a 55K launch two months later when we changed up a bunch of the copy on the sales page and emails. So I know what is working right now. I know what works long-term because I understand sales psychology. If you're not ready to work with me, grab the launch emails checklist. There's over 40 emails on there. It will at least give you some ideas of more emails that you can send if you're only sending a few emails during your pre and during your launch. You can grab that with code podcast. You can also grab the clickable AFCTAs resource. I'll make sure that that's linked. So if you're struggling to actually call people to a purchase in your emails and those emails aren't converting, that's a great place to start as well. If you have any questions, reach out to me on Instagram. You can find me at nomad.copy. You can email me at samantha@nomadcopyagency.com. And if you'd like me to write for your next launch, go to nomadcopyagency.com/contact. Have a great week.