Launch Lessons – Business Model Mastery workshop

As you’re about to see, I’ve rolled some lessons from the last analysis into this month, to good effect, and learnt a few new lessons to boot.

So there’s something useful in here for you if you run promotions of any kind.

At the very least, the discipline of running these numbers has been extremely valuable…

So I’d do this even if I wasn’t going to write about it!

But there's also a potentially devastating $20,000 mistake I uncover at the end -- keep reading for that...

Background On The Workshops

Throughout this year, I’m running “deep-dive” workshops on specific topics relevant to online education entrepreneurs:

• February was on finance.
• March was on one-person businesses
• May was on hiring for growth

I didn’t want to make courses, so I decided to try the live workshop format instead:

• topics where I can add real value
• practical and useful for attedees
• high energy for me
• opportunity for live Q&A

I’m creating 12 workshops in total. You can read about the rationale for this, and how it fits into my growth plans, in this article here.

Numbers From This Week’s Workshop

Here’s how Business Model Mastery did:

• Sales: 85
• Gross Revenue: $10,400
• Main product: $8,500
• Bump/OTO Revenue: $1,900 (18% of total)
• Audience segment: 13,914
• Conversion to list: 0.61%
• $ per email subscriber: $0.75
• Unsubscribes: 217
• $ per unsubscribe: $48

For comparison, here’s what my previous workshops did:

• 7-Figure Marketing Stack (2023): $11,683
• Financial Zen (Feb): $9,500
• One-Person Empire (Mar): $16,300
• Hiring Mastery (May): $9,900

(These were the live launch numbers. They’ve done a lot more on evergreen.)

Initial Thoughts

My headline thoughts are:

• Revenue was almost identical to last time
• Despite my list being smaller by 1,669 subscribers
• And sending only 6 emails instead of 9

Why did this happen?

Here’s the background…

Last year, I used co-registration (Sparkloop and Creator Network) to grow my email list.

I probably added a few thousand people that way.

But I had a strong feeling that the value of these leads was super low.

This has played out since I turned off Sparkloop a few months back. Those leads have been gradually unsubscribing and haven’t been replaced by a new flow.

This has meant my email list has shrunk a little in the last few months.

But on top of that, I’ve implemented a workflow for new leads where they won’t receive any broadcasts or offer from me for 2-3 months after they join the list.

(I’m mostly following my system from this video, minus the offers.)

Anyway…

Long and short of this is that my latest workshop only went out to 13,914 people, instead of the 15,583 people who received the Hiring Workshop a couple of months back.

And yet…

I made the exact same amount of revenue as last time.

Not only that…

Unsubscribes were down 24% from last time.

So, across the board, the quality of the list has improved, which is great news.

Big lesson:

Keep optimising for highly-qualified leads in my marketing.

This involves:

• resisting “easy” options like co-reg
• erecting barriers
• ignoring vanity metrics like list size or CPL
• focusing instead on value per lead
• keep running the numbers to stay on top of this

What I did differently this time

I did a number of things differently this time, based on my lesson from last time.

• Didn’t bother split testing email subject lines
• Sent 6 emails instead of 9
• Remembered to call out “New Workshop” in Email 1
• Focused emails on “Problem <> Solution”

This all worked like a treat.

Primarily because:

Sales results were the same with less effort.

I think there are a couple of reasons for this.

First, I remembered to call out the workshop in the subject line of email 1:

“New Workshop: A deep-dive into education business models”

…and it generated 42 sales. (64% more than Email 1 from the last workshop.)

Second, I focused the emails on Problem <> Solution, which was a big lesson from the last analysis.

And since I sent only 3 “content emails” this time, compared to 6 last time, I think it’s reasonable to say that the emails performed better.

But there’s one big caveat to all this.

The topics of these two workshops are very different — business models vs hiring.

Chalk and cheese, really.

And given the supreme importance of The Offer in marketing, I have to keep in mind that any difference in performance may simply be a question of the different offers… and nothing else.

It may be the case that the number of emails… subject lines… angles etc… just don’t make any difference.

But equally, it’s not an option to not analyse things.

I think there are two different tracks:

• What does the data tell you? (look closely each time)
• What is the global performance? (look once a year)

To see the complete picture, I’ll have to wait until all 12 workshops are done. Only then will the true impact of the offers reveal themselves.

Mistakes Made

With all that said…

1. Number of emails

I think only sending 6 emails was a mistake.

I was expecting better sales from Business Models than Hiring. It’s just a sexier topic… don’t you think? Or am I just weird?

And judging by the fact that I’ve had sales continue to come in since the Tuesday deadline, I do wonder if a lot of people simply missed the emails.

In that case, the lesson would be to:

Send a full week of emails next time!

…simply so that there are more eyeballs on emails.

This makes intuitive sense to me.

Next…

2. Upsells

While the order bump did well (16 vs 11 last time), I only made 3 sales of the upsell - 7-Figure Marketing Stack (7 last time).

3 upsells from 85 sales is far too low.

I think this is simply down to fatigue.

So many of you have bought this workshop now, that it does’t work as an upsell.

Lesson for next time:

Rotate the upsells!

(This will get easier as I add more workshops to the arsenal.)

3. Sales Page

And this brings me to the sales page.

Conversion on the sales page was only 2.7%.

This is abysmal.

By comparison, the hiring workshop sales page converted at 8.54% and Financial Zen at 7.2%.

If the conversion rate was 8.54% instead of 2.7%, the total revenue would have been $33,000.

Frankly, I’m a bit shocked by this.

Reading back over the two pages, my thoughts are as follows:

Hiring Workshop - The sales page focuses immediately on strong promise: “I built a 7-figure business working 6 days a month, by building a strong team.”, and then follows it up with a clear pain point: “Roles aren’t clear in your team, leading to dysfunction and confusion, you waste months of time & set the business back.”

Anyone reading this will at least understand what’s on offer here. Problem and solution.

Business Model Workshop - This sales page starts by painting a similar aspiration: “Eventually, the business was pulling in 7-figures in annual profit, and I had worked myself out of the business… “

…but the pain point is hidden way down the page, and isn’t really agitated at all.

Could it be that people reading the sales page simply don’t “get” why the business model matters?

What we know about sales is that avoiding pain is far more of a motivator than gaining something.

Perhaps that’s what I messed up this time.

Which is a shame, since the main lesson from last time was to focus on Problem <> Solution — I just failed to extend that to the sales page itself!

Silly me.

If you have any thoughts, I’d love to hear them.

Conclusion

My overall feeling about this is that I missed an opportunity by screwing up the sales page.

This workshop should have made $33,000 rather than $10,400.

Which is a real shame because the workshop itself was probably the best I’ve done so far. (Judging by feedback from the attendees!)

As such, my major takeaway from this is:

Focus sales pages strictly on Problem <> Solution in future

Seasoned copywriters among you will probably be rolling their eyes at this saying:

“This is Copywriting 101, Olly, you f***** this up!”

To which I would say…

Yes.

Yes, I did.

My biggest downfall has always been…

And probably always will be…

Trying to be too clever.

Just stick to the basics, Olly.

So, that’s that.

It’s not all doom and gloom, though.

The week before, I sent an email about an in-person retreat in Hobbitshire, and that produced some very unexpected results.

I can tell you about that in a future round-up if you want.

Until next time.

Namaste,

Olly