Thread by @alexhillman

A peek inside the @30x500 early enrollment email system.

This 6 email sequence is sent to _only_ our enrollment waiting list (approx 18% of our total list). It converts between 1.6-3% list-to-sale, on a 4 figure purchase.

Wrapped up this sales sequence last night with our 2nd best early enrollment numbers since 2016.

Only better was this past January, which tends to be out best launch of the year anyway (new year momentum, etc).

Notable: it took us 4ish years of testing (and the addition of my recent strategies in how we design and automate our launches) to build our launch numbers back up to what they were when we ran 30x500 as a limited-seating live bootcamp.

We used to predictably sell out 4 or 5 bootcamp a year, with 30 seats each.

It was a TON of work, but also the only way we could have learned critical lessons in how to teach effectively.

When we redesigned 30x500 from the ground up in 2015, we threw away the predicable sales of 150 students per year in favor of:

- better lessons/exercises, more student successes
- a more accessible format
- less demanding on our time/energy

But the change in format also meant we had to change the way we launched. We couldn't rely on scarce seating of a live class to move seats anymore.

Launches were never TERRIBLE but they were no longer predictable.

And worse, to compensate, we kept changing multiple things at once. Writing entirely new launches every time. Never *really* knowing what worked or why.

Numbers were creeping back up slowly, then 2017 happened. Between life and health issues, we only managed to launch twice and neither were particularly great launches. We didn't even sell 100 seats total all year long. 😔

At the top of 2018, we had agreed to do a January launch but Amy was too sick to work. I had not pulled my weight as a partner in the year prior (and our numbers showed it) so I decided to dig in and figure out how to take the lead on getting our numbers back up.

The challenge I always had was that Amy is the face of the biz. People expect to hear from her, and frankly, she's a better writer.

Not that I couldn't write, but it was gonna be weird for me to just jump in. Like the track on the album where they let the drummer sing. 😂

So I came up with the strategy of digging through our past launches, looking at the stats, and pulling out the best of Amy's writing.

I started assembling emails around themes that mirrored our readers's biggest pains. Lots of editing, combining, and remixing.

I put together a launch sequence focused on one of our audiences biggest pains (fuck this job/employer). I treated it like a mixtape of sorts. A greatest hits album.

I realized my role could be the producer, to Amy's role as the recording artist.

I built that launch over approx 3 weeks of research, editing, arranging, and tuning.

That launch blew our previous sales records out of the water, growing sales by over 40% more than our best (for this format and at this price point).

With...zero NEW content from Amy.

I did this again 2 more times last year.

Each time, I tried to make ONE thing in the sequence better. If it made a noticeable difference, I applied that thing to all of the launches. If not, analyzed why and tried again.

This strategy doubled sales from the previous year.

So...I'm doing it again this year. So far on track to beat last year's numbers by somewhere between 30-50%.

And now that Amy is feeling better, she can create NEW stuff too, for the first time in a couple of years.

This makes the "producer" in me very happy.

That's also saying nothing of the systems I built around our smaller products and seasonal sales, which have grown by 2-5x since October of last year.

In a few weeks we are going to share details on the next new @stackingbricks product that I'm proud to take the lead on: Systems that Sell.

STS is for people who HAVE products, MAKE sales, SEND newsletters, but (like us) do everything on the fly and get burned out.

There will be a little bit of focus on the tech itself, but this is mostly the strategy I created and deployed to finally get our biz growing again AND do it using almost exclusively content we already created.

Peeps on our list will hear about this first, and can sign up for less $$ while we finesse the material (aka beta pricing).

If you're not on the list, now's a good time to get signed up...you can get on it stackingthebricks.com, right on the homepage!