36: My Launch Day Playbook: How I Used Ethical Urgency to Sell 50% of My Course in 6 Hours

Ever wondered how to build real momentum before your launch goes live? In this episode, I’m breaking down how I grew a 450-person waitlist in 2 weeks, converted 50% of those sales within 6 hours—and did it all during back-to-school chaos and my husband’s birthday. If you’re launching soon and want it to feel exciting, not exhausting, this episode is your behind-the-scenes blueprint.

To read the full show notes, CLICK HERE.

Things I cover inside the episode:
 ✨ How I warmed up my waitlist without sounding salesy
 ✨ The pre-launch emails I actually send (and what I skip)
 ✨ How I handle last-minute launch-day tech + timing
 ✨ What I track during launch week (and what I ignore)
 ✨ The “early access” energy that gets people to buy fast
 ✨ The mindset shift that helped me stop panicking on Day 1

🔗 Helpful Links & Resources:
Episode 33: How I Built and Launched My Online Program Using ChatGPT (Plus My Exact Waitlist Strategy)
50% off your first year of Flodesk before unlimited pricing disappears!
Insta Stories that Sell Masterclass
Hop on the waitlist for the next round of The Messaging Edit
Hilary Krueger's Instagram Page (Who I ran Course Creation Camp with)

Connect with me:
🫶🏼 Follow me on Instagram for daily insights
🫶🏼 Join my 321 Create Newsletter for weekly content tips
🫶🏼 Check out The Content Coven Membership

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Transcript

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People convert when they feel like they're in on something early. I focused messaging on that feeling of being like in the know right, not left out. In fact, people wrote to me and they said, I'm setting an alarm to get up early. To buy because I'm afraid it's gonna sell out. So like that's the kind of vibe and excitement and energy that you need to have behind your programs. Hello. Hello. It is a beautiful day. It is September 2nd and my door's opened for the messaging edit today. So I've kind of been taking you behind the scenes of what it is like to create, develop and sell a new program, and today is a biggie. Well, today was big in general, you guys, today was our, there's so many things happening. Uh, my kids went back to school today. It is my husband's 44th birthday today, and. I opened the doors for the messaging edit. So, we just kind of like went all in today and I obviously knew it was gonna be a nutty day and I just kind of leaned into it. I'm like, all right, it's gonna be a little crazy. But I started off the day beautifully because I woke up to two sales first thing in the morning, which is always a very good sign to me, that there's gonna be some good momentum behind. A cart, open doors open day. Okay, so I wanna pull back the curtain on how I built some really great momentum with over 450 people on my wait list in just two weeks. If you don't know what a wait list is, it's basically you gauging your audience's interest in what you're doing. if people don't want it, it's not gonna sell. If you have nine people on a wait list. It's not gonna sell. that's not proof of concept, right? So we want proof of concept. I have this idea, this is the problem it solves. I'm gonna be the one leading you through this process. Are you interested? Would this help you? And I've already talked on previous episodes about how I came up with what I was gonna focus on and teach this fall. It was with the help of my audience across multiple different places. I pulled, I asked, I got the feedback. They said they wanted it. And not just a couple people.'cause sometimes people are like, I asked if my audience wanted it, and they said yes. I'm like, well, how many? Well, I just posted one story about it and three people said yes. You guys, that's, that's not gonna get the job done. Okay? So we need volume and, you know what, that's what this whole program's about. Honestly, the whole messaging edit is to get people to talk to you, to get people to care what you're doing, and for you to be the first one that pops into their head when they realize they need help. Okay, that's, that's what we're here for. Okay. So I'm actually 50% sold out at this point. It is currently 12:00 PM in the afternoon. My cart has been open since 6:00 AM so you know, six hours, half a day, and I'm 50% sold out. I have 10 people who have said yes, and I have about five in my dms and emails asking questions and very, very interested. So I'm feeling really good. Like the shorter a cart open can be the, the less amount of time I have to launch the better because launchings tiring and it's very stressful. So if I can like get this done in 48 hours and have my 20 people and move on. I'm gonna be like shouting from the rooftops. Okay, so I wanna talk about how I managed it all on this day with my kids going back to school. My husband's birthday, oh NPS like flow desk, just dropped an absolutely huge bombshell about pricing changes. So more on that in the show notes and a little later on, but it's big. Basically their unlimited pricing is going away, and I'm a partner of theirs. I absolutely love their business. I love their owners. I, they're just wonderful. And so they were like, and this is happening on September 2nd, and I was like. Hmm, I don't think I'm gonna be able to focus on that'cause I have a launch. Um, so if you're planning your own launch or you wanna feel more confident next time you have a doors open situation, this is gonna be your step-by-step guide to help you warm up your audience and prep for a conversion ready launch day. Even if life is very much still happening in the background. In fact, I almost think it's better. When I'm more distracted and there's more going on and I can't give my launch a hundred percent of my focus, it actually makes the days go by faster and feel a little easier. So here's what I'm gonna walk you through today, how I warmed up my wait list to get a 450 plus people excited about it. This secret to getting sales on day one without spamming everybody. What I track and what I don't track during my launch week, how I handle last minute decisions like bonuses and my sales emails, how many I am gonna send all that good stuff, and what this looks like in real life, including, you know, alarms, link changes. And kid chaos.'cause that's just life. That's just life. It's always busy. So let's talk about building a wait list that's ready to buy. So two weeks before my cart open, I started talking about this program everywhere. I talked about it in captions. I talked about it at the end of my carousels. I talked about it in my emails, my newsletter. I talked about it in my stories, and I think that's it. That's where I hang out. I talked about it in the podcast. Yes. So two weeks before a cart opened, I just started talking about this program all the time. I got people used to the name of it, I got input from everybody on, you know, what to name it. all kinds of questions. I was asking people, what do you wanna see if I can weave a magic wand and your messaging would be fixed and clarified, how would that. Feel like all that good stuff, so not just me trying to sell it was, you know, trying to lead with value and curiosity, if you will. And I also started sending warmup emails to that wait list. So basically I had a flow desk form. Hi. I absolutely love Flow Desk. Don't forget to check the show notes for a link to get 50% offload ask before the unlimited pricing goes away. they have forms, standalone forms. People just click a link, a form opens up. Hey, give me your name, give me your email. You're on the list. Bada bing bada boom. It's beautiful. It's simple. They then had a confirmation email saying, welcome to the wait list. Here's what you get with that. And there's 75,000 different ways to structure this, you guys. But what I decided to do is that the wait listers would get 24 hour access doors open to them first. Okay? I also decided they get$500 off. And bonuses include two of my programs, a Stories that sell Masterclass replay, and a course creation camp, which is a robust course that I, had with my friend Hillary. And it was amazing. It was amazing. It was how to like, create, launch, and sell an online course. Okay. So that's like a pretty sick bonus if you ask me. So, you know, I just looked at what do I have? What, what's a low lift for me? What can I include for bonuses? How much do I wanna give them off? and yeah, and just letting'em know, like you get first access to 20 spots and then after 24 hours, the spots are gonna open up to everybody. And I decided to let the bonuses and the money off last for. 72 hours for, so for three days. But I, I'm totally selling this thing out before then. I'm just gonna call it right now. I'm 50% sold out right now, and I hope to even get a couple more sales while I'm recording this darn podcast. So these emails that I sent. To warm up my wait list just was letting'em know, Hey, here's who this is for. Here's who I'm looking to work with. Here's the problems you may be experiencing. Here's how this program is gonna fix that. And oh, by the way, get ready because the doors open in this many hours. You know? So I'm just reminding them why they're on the list, what I'm gonna help them with, and when it's go time. Okay. So I used. Super clear calls to action to join my wait list for 14 days in a row to build my wait list to, I wanted 400 people and in the end I got 450 in two weeks. So I talked about it every day. You guys, I talked about it every day in my stories. I'm not gonna lie. So I, I worked real hard at this and I also sent two emails to my entire list. To encourage them to join the wait list. Okay. I forgot to mention that. So those are the emails that went out. Here's a pro tip. People convert when they feel like they're in on something early. I focused messaging on that feeling of being like in the know right, not left out. In fact, people wrote to me and they said, I'm setting an alarm to get up early. To buy because I'm afraid it's gonna sell out. And somebody else said to me, can you take me off the emails? I'm having so much FOMO and I know I can't purchase this course right now because this, this and that. And I was like, no problem. There's a way to opt out. I've got you. So like that's the kind of vibe and excitement and energy that you need to have behind your programs. Okay, so step number two, email strategy. That doesn't feel gross. You've probably heard that only one to 2% of your list converts. So I, I have a better conversion rate than that. It's typically four to 5%. I wanted that fi four to 5% to be from my wait list only. So if you do the math That's nine people. So I again convert more at four to 5%. So nine times two is gonna be 18. So I'm really hoping to get 18 people from my wait list, and the rest is gonna be from my just general email list or my stories or whatever, my feed. So, yeah, that's important. Right. And on day one, so far, in 12 hours, I've had 10 people, Which tells me that my pre-launch content did its job. So again, here's what I sent. I sent warmup emails leading into launch week to my wait listers. I've sent two emails to my entire list to encourage them to join the wait list in the last two weeks. And so far I've only sent one door open email, and that was this morning at. 5:00 AM Eastern Standard Time, and I actually just sent one before I hopped on to record this saying Hi FYI we're 50% sold out and this is only to my wait listers. So if you went in, I would probably get on it. So I only pre two to three actual sales emails ahead of time because truthfully, I don't know how the launch is gonna go. So I like to stay flexible. I don't wanna waste my time writing emails that I don't need to. I've done that before. Kind of sucked. it's a good problem to have. It means you prepped six to seven emails and you only needed three because you sold out right. And I am not one of those like 20 people. And then I let like five more people slip through That's no 20, we're gonna get 20 and everything's shutting down. Like the doors will close. I've had like one or two people sneak in before, like I was at my kids' practice and I wasn't able to like shut, you know, the doors down officially and they snuck in. Fine. Like that's, that's fine. But I don't mess around. If I say a number, I mean it. So that's what I've sent so far. I just sent that other email saying, heads up, 50% sold out. I don't think I'm gonna sell out today. I don't think I'm gonna get 10 more people between now and midnight. I'm hoping tomorrow, but you know what, the first, always the biggest, for me, that's always the most momentum. So it could go a little slowly and that's okay. I want the right people and it's all good. number three. Managing tech and timing without losing my mind. So my kids were getting ready for their first day of school today. We had to get outfits on, we had to get pictures. I had to curl my daughter's hair. We had to make sure backpacks were ready to go, and school lunches were packed. It's also my husband's birthday, and the kids wanted to open his presents before they left for school. So we had to like celebrate that. And then Flo Desk drops the news that like unlimited pricing is going away and today is the first day that I'm allowed to talk about it. Uh, link in the show notes for that 50% off. Uh, by the way, your grandfathered in, so don't panic. If you are in flow desk and you're paying$19 a month. You're golden. You're, you're in for life. If you used my code and you got, 50% off for your first year and then it's gonna go to 38, you're golden. You're locked in. So they're grandfathering everybody in, which is why if you're interested in getting in, you gotta do it now, uh, before the price. Is based on the number of subscribers that you have. So I, for one, would be kind of screwed'cause I've got a good size list and luckily I'm not screwed because I'm grandfathered in. So anyways, I literally had to set alarms. To update my sales page buttons from join the wait list to buy now, I had to swap out my Lincoln bio verbiage. I had to update, my stand store links so that it said, you know, buy now instead of join the wait list. I had to fix the trigger on my many chat keyword. For I was, again, I'm trying to grow my wait list. Well now I'm not trying to grow that wait list, so I had to duplicate my many chat flow and completely update it to, you know, buy now. So I pre-scheduled the tech parts as much as possible. But if you're like me and still doing some of this manually, like alarms are gonna be your best friend or an SOPA standard operating procedure, which is something I talked about in one of the previous episodes. I've got SOPs and it listed all those things out for me to do. Um, step number four, launch day, prioritizing my people. Without lying about it. So here's a little secret. I actually can't technically open the doors to just my wait listers and my membership, the coven, but I do treat them like VIPs for the first three days. So again, I can't technically go on my website and be like, only allow this link, like to certain people that just, it just doesn't work that way. So. What I do is I try to make sure they are very much in the know via email. So you join my wait list, so you're gonna hear from me first. I'm gonna be reminding the heck out of you, and I'm not gonna be reminding my entire other, you know, 14,000 subscribers. They are getting first dibs. I'm speaking to them directly. I'm reminding them and I'm offering them presale bonuses and a discount to get in early. Again, I'm not reminding my 14,000 other subscribers. I'm focused solely on my 450 wheat listers. They're my warmest audience. They clicked something and filled something out that said, I am interested in this program. Talk to me, focused on me. Okay. So I chose one really juicy bonus that made early action feel super rewarding. The course creation camp that is not for sale anywhere else. I've run it live twice with my friend Hillary. I'll put her in the show notes, and it was really successful, so I included that. I limited it to the first 20 people. To create a lot of urgency. That's also what I feel comfortable working with. And I've limited the bonus and the, the money off, the$500 off to the first 72 hours or until I sell out, whichever one happens first. Um, so it's really all about what feels exciting and aligned for you and all that feels. Really good to me. And step number five, I wanna talk about what I track during launch week. So you don't need a 40 column spreadsheet, but I do track stuff. I track the emails that I'm sending, the subject lines, the subject, whatever you wanna call them. Subject, the subjects, what is there like a word I'm missing? The email subjects. That's a little more clear. I track the email subjects. I track, uh, how many people I'm sending it to, whether it's my full list or my wait list only. And I track the click through rate. So how many people are clicking? I track the number of signups per day just'cause I find that sort of fascinating. Uh, I will track how many of those signups are from the coven, my membership, and how many, were on the wait list. I just, again, wanna see what's working right. If the coven is my absolute warmest audience, like they're my membership people, they're gonna buy what I have to offer. I wanna cater to them, I wanna talk to them even more. Right? and if my wait list is highly converting, then I'm doing something right. And if it's not, then something's off. Right? So I'm just kind of tracking those sale conversions from wait list versus just public, public people. then I'm, I'm watching who's clicking but not buying. So with flow desks, you can actually, if your checkout is through Flow Desk, you can create abandoned cart emails and you can follow up with people like, Hey, Solia, put this in your cart, but you didn't, sign up or follow through or buy it. Can I answer any questions for you? Like, what's going on? Right? so I keep it simple. It's just enough data to make decisions without spiraling out of control, right? So some mistakes that I want you to avoid on cart open day is don't blast your whole list right away. I would really focus on your warmest leads first and your warmest leads are that wait list. So I've put a lot of time and effort into growing that wait list. I don't mess around. Like I need that wait list to be hot and I need it to be engaged. And my wait list is short. Like it's two weeks. Like this one was two weeks. I'm hitting the ground running. You got two weeks to join the wait list and then it's go time. I'm not. Starting a wait list like four months in advance for something. Right. Um, don't overplan your emails. I think you need a little flexibility here. Like again, I actually only planned my cart open morning email so far, and then I just fired one off. That was not planned because again, I like. See where the wind takes me. How many spots do I have left? What am I seeing, what's going on? What are questions people are asking me that I can answer in the email? So that's actually what I did in this follow-up email that I sent at noon today. Like, hi, we're 50% sold out and somebody asked this really weak great question. Like, why is it better to have 20 women inside that all do different things versus the same thing? So she's a photographer and she's like, isn't it better if it's like. All photographers inside a program about messaging, and I actually was like, I cannot disagree more. I absolutely love the variety of the type of entrepreneur in everything I do in my membership in this program. It offers you such a different perspective, and there's such a high chance that your ideal client is in there and they're gonna give you such a different. Perspective versus being surrounded by all photographers, all trying to do the same thing. I would think imposter syndrome would be high and it's kind, I think kind of hard to find your own voice.'cause you're hearing all these other ones, I don't know. that's just my personal perspective. and then another mistake to avoid is not to panic if things start slow. My husband reminds me all the time, he's like, em, you always freak out on day one. Like you always think you're screwed. It's not gonna work. No one's gonna buy it, and it always ends up being just fine. So. Launch week is a week, right? It's not a moment. I'm hoping this one gets down to a couple days. That'd be golden and amazing for me. But if it's a week, it's a week and I'm prepared for that and I'm okay with that. So again, don't panic if things start slow. So there's no perfect launch formula. It's only what works for you. Like really pay attention to the creators that do this well and that you get hyped about, right? And you're following along. Like people tell me that I don't need this program, but I'm so enjoying watching you. You launch, it's so fun, and I'm cheering you on from the sideline. that means a lot to me and I feel that vibe and that energy from my people in the dms and it just, and in my emails, and it makes me so, so happy. What matters is that your people feel connected and your content leads with value, and you feel good showing up, right? So this launch is off to an amazing start. 10 outta 20 spots are filled, and I'm honestly just getting started. I, I've, I've got a lot more at my sleeve. So whether you're launching next week or next quarter, or next year, I hope this behind the scenes has helped you feel a bit more confident and a bit more grounded in what actually matters. And don't forget. Flow desks, unlimited pricing is going away. So unlimited pricing means you are not charged per subscriber. You can have 10 people on your email list, or you can have a hundred thousand or more and it doesn't matter you're, you're charged the same amount. I have a coupon code. To get you 50% off your first year. So your first year will be$19 a month. After that, it'll be 38, which is still such an insane steal, and you will be grandfathered in. That price will never go up as long as you opt in now. So I just wanna throw that out there. I'm gonna put my referral link in the show notes if you wanna lock it in before that pricing's gone because it's. It's glorious, like it's just such good pricing. It's ridiculous. Okay, that's it. I will check in with you in a couple days when my cart closes with all my reflections on what I loved that I did, what I would like to fix next time around. Everything's in work, in progress, and my world, my friends. All right, show notes. Didn't even mention that. You can find these show notes on the creative bodega.com/blog/ 36. I will see you on the next episode.