In today’s episode, I’m going to walk through the launch recap for Inbox to Income and give you statistics for online course launching! LOTS of you requested that I go into detail about our content marketing strategy, so I spend several minutes discussing exactly that! I’ll also let you in on how many opt-ins we received, and how many sales we actually made. This one is super special, so listen in!

Listen to this episode on Apple Podcasts or Spotify!

Online Course Launch Review: Inbox to Income

Today, I’m sharing a launch recap for Inbox to Income AND giving you all of my statistics for online course launching.

If you had not heard about it yet, let me share with you that at SK, we recently launched a brand new online course all about email marketing called Inbox to Income.

It’s an advanced email marketing course on the nitty gritty of how to actually make money with your email list. It’s not just fluffy information about creative freebies and sending out newsletters. Instead, it explains things like: What are the live campaigns that go into making money? Or, what are the automations you can set up to make money on autopilot? 

We cover topics like freebie creation and newsletters, don’t get me wrong. However, there is a RIGHT way and a WRONG way to do it. We also cover things that I think actually make email marketing worth your time for your small business.

Now, let’s go over the launch recap for Inbox to Income, and review what happened.

My Launch Strategy

We did a completely organic launch, which means we didn’t do any paid advertising. We did something big and different for the creation of this course in using a program called Camtasia. 

Camtasia is a program where you can essentially record directly from your computer. It will automatically piece together the slides you recorded and your face that you recorded with your camera. We also used CamLink. Camlink allows you to use your DSLR as a plugin to plug your camera in and use it as a webcam.

It worked so well and I absolutely loved it! This new setup saved us so many hours of having to go through and edit. 

Overview of Pre-Launch

About two months before the launch, we sent out an audience survey. The survey included a couple of questions specific to email marketing. Based on that survey, I started outlining the course. 

About one month prior to launch is when the course filming began. I filmed the course in a two week time span.

Two weeks prior to our live webinar, the course was mostly finalized. At this point, the beta testers began taking the course. 

Overview of Launch Week

The statistics for this online course launching: We ran the live webinar on Thursday & Friday (September 28 & 29) before the public launch. The webinar offer included a discount and a few bonuses as incentive for purchasing during the class. The following Monday (October 2nd), it launched publicly to our entire audience online with a course discount (and no bonuses). The launch ended at midnight on Friday, October 6th at midnight.

The course is sold at $547 full price, and $397 on sale (a $150 discount). Those who purchased during the live webinar, webinar replay or during the launch week sale paid the sale price. Because this is a mid-high ticket offer, a payment plan option was included.

Content Marketing for This Launch

For the marketing of this launch, we were using solely organic content and leveraging the audience who we already have on our email list, YouTube and Instagram specifically. Those are the main three places we are focusing when pushing an offer. 

In the weeks leading up to the launch, we really leaned into pushing the free webinars HARD. Later, when the public launch began on October 2nd, we made a switch and leaned far more into email marketing because it’s more of a hard sell to get people into Inbox to Income during launch week. 

By the way, if the topic of content marketing interests you, we are coming out with a brand new live program in early 2024 called Visibility. Click here to join the waitlist!

Email Content Marketing for This Launch

Email Marketing: We shared four priming emails every Monday before webinar week. The goal was to give value and get people to think about email marketing in terms of how impactful it can be for them.

Seven days out from the first webinar time, we sent our first email about the webinar – the “Free Email Class.” The following week on Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, we sent four more webinar promotional emails that shifted into a hard pitch to join the Free Email Class. The first part of the week focused on all the subscribers could gain from the class, while Thursday & Friday were more of a “last chance” type of offer.

Those who registered stopped receiving pitch emails and instead received webinar reminders. 

Here are the emails that went out during our Monday-Friday public launch week: Monday at 9am, Tuesday at 9am, Wednesday at 9am, Thursday at 9am, Friday at 9am, and lastly, Friday at 9pm, three hours before the sale price would close.

Social Content Marketing for This Launch

YouTube: There were three YouTube videos we posted that helped pitch the webinar. They were shared the week before webinar week, during webinar week and during launch week. They were all centered around email marketing. 

Podcast: We had one podcast episode that was a Q& A on email marketing. That episode went live during webinar week. 

Instagram: While promoting the webinar in a ten day time frame, I posted five Instagram reels and two feed posts about the email class. The direct call to action was to opt-in for the email class, and most of the posts were using Manychat to automate those leads.

On Instagram stories, I posted a total of thirty slides about the free email class. Some of these were grouped together, so it could have been something like five slides about the email class, all related to the class and all posted back to back. The Manychat automation ran 346 times in that ten day time frame. The actual number of completed opt-ins from Instagram during that ten day time period was 329 submissions. 

During launch week, I posted sixteen Instagram stories, four reels and one feed post across the five days (with the goal of users ultimately getting the link to the sales page & joining the course). We saw five people comment in order to receive the Inbox to Income link.

Instagram is not where I’m looking to sell. I’m looking to sell via email. That’s why you can see a huge difference in us posting twice as much about the webinar than about the online course when it actually launches. I know that I’m going to make more conversions once they’re on my email list.

Launch Stats

Now I want to break down my statistics for online course launching specific to Inbox to Income.

The total number of Webinar signups that we saw after sending out multiple emails and promoting across social media: we saw 937 opt-ins total (462 for the Thursday afternoon class and 475 for the Friday class)

The sales generated from the live webinars was $5,876. That includes all three payments of the payment plans and any upsells that were a part of the selling process. 

As far as lead generation sources for the webinar, we had 329 opt-ins from Instagram, from YouTube we had 33 opt-ins, and from our email list or sharing about it on our website, etc., generated 606 opt-ins.

Total, including the webinar and launch week, we ended up selling 55 courses. 18 opted for the payment plan while 37 paid in full. The total sales generated from those 55 people (accounting for all three payment plans and any upsells that were implemented during an eight day period) added up to $23,683. 

$22,427 was from Inbox to Income. $1,256 was from upsells. Webinars that Sell, The Reels Mini Course and 35 Days of Instagram were the three products for which we saw upsells.

What Went Well

Firstly, having two webinar times. I know I’ve talked about this before, but I am a huge fan of having multiple webinar times. You never know if one’s not going to go as well, if you’re going to have tech issues, or if you feel like your energy isn’t quite right.

Our second webinar went so much more smoothly than our first. I feel like if I had only done one, I would have been a little disappointed.

Another thing that went well was that we had set up the replay BEFORE hosting the webinar. Once I was done with the live webinars, we immediately flipped the webinars to evergreen. That way, any people who were encountering YouTube videos, reels or other content pointing to the Free Email Class could immediately opt-in, watch the replay and join the course. We’ve seen a few sales since then, meaning it has converted well and that’s super exciting!

What I’d Do Differently

Number one, have the course filmed a lot sooner. I had a hard time with this course creation process. The outlining and fleshing out the content took me so much more time than I thought, but I am so proud of how the course turned out and I’ve already gotten amazing feedback from our students!!

The second thing I would do differently is get more help with launch related tasks (we have already hired someone to help in this area)!! Our team was really maxed out on what we could do. We were realizing we definitely need more help, especially when it comes to launching something big. In the next launch, I’m excited to give myself even more capacity to show up more than I did during webinar week and launch week.

Having so much on our plates with our small team really did take some of the joy that I have in crafting something amazing when it comes to the creation process. Normally, I really enjoy that and I feel like I didn’t get to enjoy it as much this time.

Let me know if these BTS statistics for online course launching were helpful for you & your business by leaving a comment!