Ep. 54: Sales Without Social with Liz Wilcox | Email Marketing

Liz Wilcox 0:00
on social media, you’re just kind of throwing your hat into the ring. And there’s these, you know, 1000 other hats being thrown at the exact same time, right? But also is probably going to disappear in the next 30 minutes. And I’m going to have to post again tomorrow, but with email, it just sits there waiting for the person to open, like, yeah, sure, it might get to page two or three, and they never see it. But they’ll probably see it and they can make the decision to open it or not. And then if they do open it, then they have to read it and decide like, was this a waste of time? Or do I like what Meg is sending me?

Meg Casebolt 0:37
You’re listening to social slowdown, a podcast for entrepreneurs and micro businesses looking for sustainable marketing strategies without being dependent on social media. Social media is a double edged sword. It’s a wonderful way to stay connected. But it also can feel like an addictive obligation. And it’s even more complex for businesses, your audience might be right there, but you’ve got to fight with algorithms to maybe be seen by them. So whether you want to abandon social media altogether, or you just want to take a month off, it’s possible to have a thriving business without being dependent on social media. This podcast is all about finding creative, sustainable ways to engage with your audience without needing to lip sync, send to cold DMS, run ads, or be available 24/7. Let’s get started. Hello, and welcome to the social slowdown podcast. I am here with Liz Wilcox. Yay, Liz. I’m so glad to be here with you today.

Liz Wilcox 1:32
Oh my gosh, I feel like I finally made it on Miss case bolts show. I’m so excited.

Meg Casebolt 1:40
You have been on my like guest wishlist since I started building the podcast plan, like over a year ago just to like talk about how to make email marketing fun. Because I think people see it as such like a heavy thing that like, oh, I have to email my list and what am I going to do and like you’ve always made it feel light hearted, feel joyful, you know, and we all need a little bit of that in our lives.

Liz Wilcox 2:06
Thank you. Before we hit record, we were kind of talking about that. And one of my like, I don’t know, hard boundaries, as always, like, I want people to walk away whenever they hear me on a podcast like this or join my list or see me online to be like, Wow, that was kind of fun. So thank you for saying that. Yeah, email can feel like this. I don’t know like this not you’re never gonna untangle. But I really want to just make it simple and make online business. Just fun. And, you know, untangle that

Meg Casebolt 2:37
not for folks. Yeah. And I think also, there’s a lot of heaviness around, like getting it right, of like, I need to have the funnel in place. And I need to make sure that people are moving through it. And I need to have this nurture sequence that I need to do everything correctly. So there’s pressure that feels so like, debilitating in some ways.

Liz Wilcox 2:58
Yeah, let’s talk about that. So I actually have a sticky note that says email is emotional lives. I do it I do this for a living. I’m I mean, I live and breathe electronic mail. And I realized, like how dorky. But when I you know, when I meet somebody new, you know, I can forget that. But I know it feels heavy. And I think you know, speaking of social, like on social media, you’re just kind of throwing your hat into the ring. And there’s these, you know, 1000 other hats being thrown at the exact same time, right? And you’re scrolling and it’s just, you know, people take it or leave it. But with email, I think why it feels so like it has this finality to it is because you send out an email, and then it just sits there waiting for the person to open, like, yeah, sure, it might get to page two or three, and they never see it. But they’ll probably see it and they can make the decision to open it or not. And then if they do open it, like heaven forbid, then they have to read it and decide, like, was this a waste of time? Or do I like what mega sending me right? And that feels so much heavier than on social media where it’s like, yeah, I’m gonna make the same audio trending thing that everybody else is or, you know, I bought Canva templates. And so I know this looks good, but also is probably going to disappear in the next 30 minutes. And I’m gonna have to post again tomorrow is really different with email. So I totally get that. And that’s part of why you know that lightheartedness Meg was talking about like, that’s totally on purpose. I want you to feel good about it. Because you know, I joke heaven forbid they open it, but we do actually want them to open it. And email has this amazing unique I don’t know feature quality about it and when, like the main reason I love it is you can make real connections with people and the reason why it works so well. Why Ken sale for every dollar you put in, you could get 40 bucks in return if you do it right, is because you make those real connections, you can take those followers, you could turn them into true friendships where, you know, I know Meg and I have had a couple, you know, chains of emails where we’re going back and forth, and we’re talking about stuff we would not talk about on social media, you know,

Meg Casebolt 5:22
we’re definitely not in the comments of social media, because there’s a certain level of intimacy that happens when you’re in an inbox and like, like you said, the conversation is waiting for you to enter into it, whether that’s, you know, someone sends out a broadcast email or a newsletter and you reengage with what it is that they’re saying, or like somebody’s replying back and forth, you’re having a dialogue in a way that like, it just doesn’t feel that intimate dialogue when we’re even in like social DMS, it doesn’t feel quite the same way. Maybe that’s just me where I’m like, I just want this DM to be over. So I don’t have to think like, I don’t have to remember to go back and answer it. Whereas the emails will wait for me to like get there. I don’t know. Maybe that’s just my own weird neuroses.

Liz Wilcox 6:02
No, I think I think most people are like that. And that’s why email is so effective. Because while it’s serious, right, like, you know, that email sitting there for you to answer it, is also this intimate thing, like Mike just said, it’s really is like, I can ask real questions. I, when I’m searching for real answers, if I you know, if I need to know something about SEO right, this second, whose name Am I typing in? And I’m not going to her DMs because yeah, that’s, I go on Instagram to mindlessly scroll. Like I go to my email to find answers.

Meg Casebolt 6:38
Yeah, I always say people go to Google to find answers, but that’s when they don’t know who to reach out to. Right.

Liz Wilcox 6:43
Right, right. Yeah.

Meg Casebolt 6:45
I think there’s a level of like, brand awareness of like, Yes, I have a question. But like, like I just said, when I was coming up with my list of guests, I was like, this is when I want to talk about email marketing. So here are the three people I want to talk about it with, like, I open your emails, because I know you write great emails, and there are people who, like I follow on social because that’s where they’re spending their time. But like, I don’t engage with them in the same way, I don’t look forward to it. And with email marketing, particular, like it’s going to be there, whether you’re like the algorithms not going to play the game for you in the same way. Like, I know that every Friday, I have specific emails that I get from very specific people, and I look forward to receiving them. And if they don’t arrive for a couple of weeks, I’m like, oh, like, what happened to just seem like, and and that’s not to say that everyone have to have that publication schedule. But there are specific emails that I always open that I can’t guarantee, I’m going to see even if I follow those people on social, I might not see their posts, because of just the the time of day that they post versus when I log in. It’s kind of tough to like, time everything correctly.

Liz Wilcox 7:49
Yeah. And if you with email with it, you know, quote, unquote, just sitting there, even if, if I become that really dedicated listener, that dedicated reader, if I don’t see your email, I’m going to search for you. Oh, yeah. Where were where was Liz’s email. I didn’t get that this week. Even last week, my last newsletter was always skipped a week, you probably didn’t even notice because the majority of people don’t. But the people that replied and said, I did notice, and I did remember you were at Disney. So I didn’t bother you, those people I can go in. And if I’ve got this, you know, new offer, or I have this idea. Those are the people I’m emailing to say, hey, what do you know, here’s my newest idea. Do you like it? Or is it dumb? Let me know. Like, I’m just emailing you. Because, you know, I know that. You know, you’re really engaged

Meg Casebolt 8:41
ambassadors, they’re gonna help you out. They’re gonna get great feedback. Yeah, great word. Yeah. And they’re gonna, and they’re gonna feel important to you, if you’re sending, especially personalized email. It’s not like, Oh, I’m going to tag these people in a segmentation, you can do that too, right? You can tag them and say, like, I’m gonna send that to my my gold tier ambassadors. But what’s even better is you go back into the email, and you say, hey, remember that time that you said this? Right, you can go search your own inbox to find those people for you who have used those terms. And you can sort of like, develop those relationships that are really they can, they can become really good friendships.

Liz Wilcox 9:18
Yeah. Oh my gosh, yes. So my first business was an RV travel blog. And there was this one guy, we’ll call him Bob. That’s not his real name. But he’s very private person. So see, Bob, I remember I’m not going to give up. No, no one’s ever going to look you up on this podcast. Anyway. I remember he was on my email list for years. And he always Oh, I’m going to buy my RV one day I’m going to buy my RV one day, you’re going to be the first person to know this. I just love getting your emails once a week. It keeps me motivated towards this goal. And I said, Oh yeah, you got it buddy. And I think he had my phone number. I think I gave it away in a sales email. Like oh, if you have questions just text me or something. And I remember, I sold the blog. So I don’t own that blog anymore. Somebody else does shout out to Deb. And I remember I got this text message, I think it was grocery shopping, I was doing something. And it was a picture of an RV. And I didn’t even I didn’t have his phone number, but I knew immediately I was like, Oh my gosh, Bob, you did, like you knew it was me. And there’s a real connection, right? And it’s, you know, we always talk about this ideal client avatar, but you can have lots of those on your list. And the more you use email as this way to like, truly create friendships and get to know your people, the more you’re actually going to understand the types of people that you’d like to talk to the types of people you don’t, what types of offers to, you know, start off with, or if you have an offer, how to tweak it, so it actually sells, right.

Meg Casebolt 10:58
So let’s talk about your offers. Because I feel like you have such an interesting, like business model that you have. I mean, you’ve really built this new business over the past few years on a very low cost. And like low profit offer. Can you tell me about that?

Liz Wilcox 11:14
Yeah, so I started Liz wilcox.com in December of 2019. And I was like, Okay, I’m going to do some copywriting stuff, because I know that’s what I’m good at. That’s apparently how I built my business in the first place. My first one was, Oh, I must be a good writer. People were telling me so. But I knew I was really, really good at email. And so I was like, I’m only going to do the copywriting to fund you know, to pay, pay me pay my bills feed my stomach type of thing, while I build up this email list while I create products teaching, how the heck to do email, you know, where it feels like a knot and untangle it. And it was about a year in and you know, my sales were okay, my digital product sales were doing okay, I had like a tripwire I think I’d done a workshop. And I was my copywriting was going really well. I think I’d made something like $20,000 in it was like February, and I was sitting down to write my newsletter. And I thought, oh, my gosh, most of the people I building this list for can’t afford $20,000 copywriting. Yeah. But those are the people I really, really want to talk to. And so I was looking through who was buying my trip wire. And it was $22 at the time, and I thought why isn’t everyone buying this? It was called 20 minute newsletter. So I’m like, everybody needs to know how to read a newsletter in 20 minutes. I can’t tell you how many conversations I have, oh, it takes me three days to write this thing. I’m like, why never in my life. So I was thinking about that, then I was thinking, my biggest metric that I do in my business that I track is percentage of customers. And I’m always trying to get to 50% at right now I’m at like 42.

Meg Casebolt 13:02
And when you say that you mean of the number of people on your list? 42%. Yeah, on your list have purchased something from you. Correct. All right. Thank

Liz Wilcox 13:09
you for that clarification. And so I thought, well, what can I create that gets the maximum amount of people to become customers, because that’s important to me. Also, that is less expensive than this tripwire people don’t seem to want to spend $22 on and gets people to actually take action. So that one day, they will be able to hire a copywriter, right, so that they’re actually making money. When I first started out, I had no money. And you know, buying a tripwire was like pulling teeth, I was like, Nope, can’t do it. Even if it’s 20 bucks. I can’t you know, that’s a tank of gas. You know, I just can’t do it. And I came up with what Meg is talking about my $9 a month membership where I just write newsletters for people. Like literally every single Monday morning 5am Eastern, you get a newsletter delivered to your inbox. And it’s templatized it’s like, you know, insert adjective here type of stuff, like, you know, insert quote here, whatever, whatever. It’s very templatized. And for me, it was I wanted to create recurring revenue, so I could eventually get rid of the copywriting. I also wanted to create something the maximum amount of people would say yes to not only for that percentage of sales, but because when I learned about email, I was like, Oh my gosh, move over Jeff Bezos, like it is over. Like, I just cracked the code on life basically, is how I felt. I mean, I had two jobs in high school when I realized I could click a mouse and start making money. I was like, why doesn’t everybody know about this? So that was one another driving force behind creating email marketing membership, which you know, hashtag SEO, never gonna change that. name as a great name,

Meg Casebolt 15:04
sometimes sname is just like the most obvious thing. Like, we don’t always have to be clever. We don’t always have to think about open rates. It’s like, what is what should I call my email marketing membership? Maybe I’ll call it email marketing membership.

Liz Wilcox 15:16
Yeah, I remember I wrote the first email. And I was like, I’ll come up with a better name later. And then a couple of weeks later, I was like, Wait, this is literally the best name ever. Why would I change it. But anyway, so I’ve done I created EMF, which is my main bread and butter now. And over the course of, you know, a year and a half, after that, I’ve created some other workshops, I’ve done them live and then just put them on Evergreen. And at the time of this recording, I haven’t even updated them, I haven’t turned them into mini courses, I, you know, I haven’t re recorded to add based on feedback, like they are what they are. But it also allows me to keep them low cost. And to just be like this, my brand is only semi professional, but the content is so good. Like, we’re gonna have so much fun. There are sound effects. You can’t see me right now. But I have a border around cancer, as we record, I’ve got my logo in the corner, all this stuff, I’m going to keep it fun. It’s not going to be like incredibly polished, I’m sure the story is much too long, right now. But the content is so good. And the price is so good. Like you’re gonna love it. And so I’ve created this, you know, very, I don’t want to say low effort. It’s been, you know, I’ve, I’ve spent the better part of a decade learning email marketing, and, you know, being, you know, trying to be of service to people. But as far as like, perfectionism goes, we’ll call it low effort. And seriously, people love it. I love it. I freaking love doing my workshops. My slides are fun. I mean, I have like dancing chips I make. They’re all crazy colors. I mentioned the sound effects, and then even my memberships selling that every single month that has created a life for me where, honestly, this is 2022 I’ve been really ill most of the year, I have a ton of food allergies. And I didn’t know it. But I was basically eating myself sick because I could barely eat anything. I fainted. I got a concussion from that then I’m still recovering from, but the membership in these lower cost offers. And we’ll talk about how I’ve grown up with affiliates in a second has allowed me to actually live my life and figure out why I passed out in my house. Figure out why I feel so tired, even though I’m barely working anymore. Figure out why I’m constantly out of breath. And I couldn’t have done that if I had kept on with the client work and just always put those digital products. I know maybe we’ve got a lot of service providers listening, you know that oh, what just I take the client work because it’s high dollar. And it takes a long time to build your list. Well, I’m telling you that you’re right, it does take a while to build your list. But it’s so worth it not just for, you know, the fancy car or the house that you dream about, like if something happens to you, God forbid, like it happened to me. I don’t know where I would be without my membership. I support three households, I have three leases in my name. If I didn’t make money, like you know what would hit the fan. And having this membership if you feel like that. Having this membership and having an email list that I can rely on. Like when my truck broke last month, and it costed over $6,000 to fix I literally held a flash sale called the Ford Bronco sale, Bronco slash sale. And I was able to you know make like $3,000 and like two days. And so I was able to cover most of those costs. Oh my gosh, that is priceless. That is worth taking one less client or giving yourself Fridays to work on building your email list and your SEO and all those long term game things. Whatever it is you decide, oh my gosh, it’s it’s worth everything is so invaluable. It’s become so invaluable to me.

Meg Casebolt 19:17
Right? And I think you know, a lot of people start with services because it really is that this the fastest path to cash. And I say that a lot because it’s like sometimes you don’t need to have the SEO and you don’t have the you have to email you have to like meet one person who can give you a referral to your next client who can give you a referral to your next client. Like you don’t have to build this giant machine. But if you have the machine, then you can ease off a little bit like if you have a quiet month or if you have a health issue or if you have something come up like there’s a safety net underneath you. And especially for those of us who are business owners who are freelancers who are solopreneurs Who are you know, we’re kind of like doing this thing we don’t always have and emergency fund, we don’t always have like a rainy day slush fund to dig into. And you know, we don’t have FMLA that we can go, Okay, I guess I’m taking some paid sick time off, because that’s just not a thing for us. So it’s almost like we have to create our own safety net, by and for a lot of us, not everyone, but for a lot of us it is that sort of leveraged membership or digital product sales, something that you can, I remember the first time I ran a flash sale, it was, gosh, three years ago, because it was my kids first day of kindergarten. And I, it was like a $50 workbook or product or something. And I was like, well, the kid will graduate from high school, and I don’t know 2032. So it’s gonna be $20.32. Like, sometimes you have the air right and be like, it’s his first day of school. So today only because he’s in the class of 2032. This product is I don’t know, 61%. And be so cool. And I made like, I don’t know, $1,000 in $20, sales, it wasn’t a major day. But there’s something about being able to send one email and make $1,000 from it, and not have to then go deliver a service. That’s the other piece of it is I can send an email and have someone book a book a package with me, but then it’s like, okay, now I have to deliver that package.

Liz Wilcox 21:24
Yeah, so that’s the flash sale that I put on last month for my truck. It was like 3000, I knew the bill was going to be at least six. And I thought, Oh, I could send, we talked about those really targeted people that we know are, you know, really engaged with our brand. I said, Oh, I could send out to those people. And I could offer, you know, a VIP day or a sales page or, you know, I could just turn all that stuff back on I have it. And I thought Yeah, but then I’d have to deliver. And I have goals for the rest of the year, I have family coming into town, you know, my energy isn’t where it was, at the beginning of the year, I do have a safety net, I save a lot of money in my business. So I was like, No, I’ll just dip into the savings a little bit. And that was something if you’re like, Oh, I can’t make the leap or whatever. With the membership and with my digital products, growing it with affiliates, which you do in service providers that you get referrals, it’s very similar to that just on a bigger scale, I was able to actually grow the membership grow my digital product side with affiliates having other people promote it. While in my services, I slowly saved up for two years, you know, Penny here, Penny there type of thing, where by the end of 2021, I had saved my entire salary for 2022. I know. I mean, that requires a lot of discipline, I’m not gonna lie. And by discipline, I mean my bookkeeper hides money from me, I inserted, you know, a second party to be able to, you know, discipline me like that. And that also helped me make sales it was like, this is the goal is, you know, every month she’s like, this is the goal. This is your ahead this mature and usually it was, you’re not going to make it you’re not going to make like you’ve got to do something like if this is what you really want, you’ve got to do something so but that really helped me go all in and 2022 and grow the membership to where it is today. It’s over 2000 Members, if things keep going, it should be about 10,000 members by the end of 2023. You do the math on that.

Meg Casebolt 23:38
Actually, like I’m ready to pull up a calculator and be like, Okay.

Liz Wilcox 23:43
And it’s like a $1.2 million membership a year, right with 10,000 members. But the whole point of that is just like you want to diversify how you’re getting your name out there, you know, you need to do a little SEO, you might have one social media account, you’re building your list, like diversifying the ways that you make money is great, too. And of course, I’m gonna push, you know, build a list and you can sell your services and your products. And that’s the best of both worlds. Having even last month if I wanted to, to turn those services back on, even having that option and knowing Oh yeah, I’ve got 6000 people on my email list. I know I can make at least 10 sales. And I know exactly who’s probably going to buy them. That is so freakin powerful in your business. Versus oh my gosh, where am I going to find my next person? Oh my gosh, how many sales do I make need to make this month etc. And it really goes back to what Meg and I were talking about, like making those real connections in your email marketing. Man, it’s just it’s just awesome. That’s all I’ll say about that.

Meg Casebolt 24:50
Yeah, so tell me about the goals that you’re setting not just like I want to save up my entire salary a year in advance which is mind blowing to me. But you put in a recent email, that was one of the reasons I was like, I need to talk to Liz, now that you were like, I am setting like really big monthly goals for November 2022, which is when we’re recording. So talk to me about what that is. And like how you can set a goal, what that’s as huge as it is.

Liz Wilcox 25:19
All right, if I don’t make this goal,

Meg Casebolt 25:22
even worse, I am just, I know, I

Liz Wilcox 25:25
know. So what you got to know about this little Cox is, I’m a very high achiever. I’m an Enneagram. Three. So I want everyone reformer. I want everyone to think, wow, that girl’s got it going on. So I’m going to say this number and just and just, I just want you to remember, the little girl who was really poor and when I started my business, I didn’t even have internet on my phone. So if this if I say this number, and you’re like, immediately tune out because it’s so outrageous, like, just know that you know, even if, like in a decade to get to the point Yeah, even allowed me four years ago, I was like living in a trailer park next to a guy with no teeth and no shirt. Okay. So my hashtag, how to know how to spot a Floridian. So my goal for November 2022 is to make $100,000 this month. Thanks. Thanks for calling me out Meg. And I

Meg Casebolt 26:33
was excited. I want to see, I love when people set big, hairy audacious goals, even if their stretch goals, and they say them out loud. And they go like, hey, help me get there. And that’s the thing that I think you do better than almost anybody is like, Oh, I have a goal. And then I’m going to say to you like, how can you help me to get to there? And let’s do it together. And like, it feels like exciting to me in a way that yeah, you know, it’s not just like bragging rights, you know? Yeah,

Liz Wilcox 27:00
thank you. And so sidenote, we’ll get back to the goal in a second. I know, I literally have notes. But I actually wanted this goal in July. And I didn’t hit it because I hit my head instead. And I had to cancel a lot of things. And also, as far as you know, talking about goals, setting them and sharing them on email, that’s actually a strategy that I teach. So one of the things to get people to actually care about opening your emails, and to get people to invest in your business, buy your stuff, click your links, you know, join your Facebook group, etc, they first have to know that you are invested in them who are invested in the vision you have for them, right? Like Meg wants you to show up on page one, right? They have to know that Meg is actually doing things to make sure that happens, right? So when you share goals, like even if it’s oh my gosh, I want to get to, you know, I just want to make $1,000 sale, or you know, I want to hit 20,000 pageviews. This month, I was sharing that stuff in my travel blog. These people didn’t even know what the hell page. I literally like once a month, I’d be like the goals for the month. I didn’t even know that was a thing, right? I was just doing what comes naturally to me. But now it’s a strategy that I teach show that you are invested by sharing. Like today I my daughter spilt milk on my keyboard, and I had to buy a new one today. So in my newsletter, I might say I just bought a new keyboard for the business because I can’t type without it cost me 50 bucks, right that shows I’m in I’m literally invested in the business, right? I used to share, I think I bought a laptop and my subject line was like I just spent $2,000 on this blog. Right? Yeah. I’m Matt and my ideal audience. Were men in their 60s, like, do you think they care about this little girl in this RV? Like no, but I’m showing them that how invested I am in bringing them content. And guess what, I made more money than other bloggers I knew doing three times as much as me. I wasn’t even blogging. I was just emailing. Anyway, I want to say that to share, like, why today? And why in that email. I was like, Hey, this is what I want to do. Like my definition of success is to show you what’s possible. So like, here’s how I’m gonna make $100,000 from a $9 offer

Meg Casebolt 29:29
in one month to it’s not $100 million in a year where you have $108 coming in for each person. And you know, like, yeah, there’s something really Yeah. To me about breaking down this goal.

Liz Wilcox 29:41
Yeah. And so let me also say this, I’ve never done this. So you might be listening in December and you might join my email list and it’s a Womp womp. Okay, you know, we never we don’t know. But here I actually did this yesterday. I knew there was a reason why I stopped working and started journaling,

Meg Casebolt 29:58
because you knew I was gonna pull calls in all. I’m like, give me give me the metro.

Liz Wilcox 30:05
It’s like my landline. Right? So I literally wrote, how am I going to make $100,000 In the next 30 days. And so I wrote monthly upgrades, so people that are currently on my monthly upgrade to the yearly, so that’s going from nine bucks to $108 offer. And I said I need to make $33,000 from that. So that is 306 sales. Lamy Lamar, if you’re listening, I’m sure you are geeking out so hard with this data right now.

Meg Casebolt 30:37
Yeah, you. And I all went to that. Let that’s where we all met. And Andrea? Yeah.

Liz Wilcox 30:41
Oh, yes, yes. Then I want the monthly membership in general, honestly, right now. I think it makes me about eight to $10,000. And just will say passively for lack of better term. That’s just you know, people that are on the monthly right now. So

Meg Casebolt 31:00
a recurring will say recurring, recurring, passive, because you’re still creating for them, you’re just creating one thing to go out to a couple 1000 people versus having it just slide into your bank account without any work.

Liz Wilcox 31:13
Yeah, that’s a better word. So I very conservatively, if I’m going to get all those upgrades, that number is going to go down, right. So I put $4,000, which means I only need 445 charges. I currently have about 1000 a month. So that seems very doable. If nothing else, Liz Wilcox will make $4,000 in November, which will be just enough to keep the lights on I think, then the Black Friday Pass, which is the yearly and this is this is I’ll explain the offer right now it’s 108 bucks, or nine or $9 times 12 months. But then you also get all those other digital products. I was talking about those workshops, templates, et cetera, et cetera, you get those entirely for free. So it’s like when you buy a membership to Costco and you get inside the store. That’s my that’s my, you get all the hotdogs. Yeah, that’s my. So you know, you buy the you buy the past, right? And you get inside the Liz Wilcox universe for free. You don’t have to buy anything else for 12 months. Now, of course, everyone when I had this idea last year, I sent one email out what do you guys think about this, of course, everyone came back. You’re crazy. Send me the link. Like, as soon as you open the doors, I want in because I know there’s no way you’re ever going to do this again, because you’re going to lose so much money. But I’m going to take advantage of your crazy self, Liz. You know, that was kind of the consensus I was getting. So of course, naturally, I knew I had to do it. And now here we are a year later talking about how it’s going to make me more money than I could have imagined. So I need about $54,000 from that, and that’s exactly 500 sales. So that actually seems really doable. Given my data. Again, shout out to Laney, the last few sales that I’ve done. The first one, I had 125 sales. The second one I had like 230. The third one, I had 300 something then I did a quick flash sale, like knee deep and concussion and I still made like 200 Something sales, it was like $36,000 or something, you know, pretty much hung over from hitting my head. Oh, 500 on Black Friday seems really doable. My email list is my email list is like five times bigger than it was last year. And last year, I did two separate sales really quick back to back and made something like 30,000. So to make 54 This year seems really doable. And then my version

Meg Casebolt 34:00
rates remaining the same affiliate rates remaining the same? Exactly. Yeah.

Liz Wilcox 34:04
Yeah. Yeah. So the conversion rate is pretty good on it. I’d have to look back, honestly, you could Google again, Laney Lamar, Liz Wilcox, and we did a whole breakdown, I think in July of 2022. On the conversion rates. It’s really good. Yeah,

Meg Casebolt 34:20
we’ll make sure to share that in the show notes too. Well,

Liz Wilcox 34:22
yeah.

Meg Casebolt 34:23
I think also, the thing is, like, when people feel like they’re getting a really good bargain on something that they know is going to have value. They’re going to buy quickly, and they’re going to feel great about it. You know, like it has to be both of those pieces, though. Like I get all the time for bundles that are like $99. And like, don’t you want to contribute to it? And I’m like, but people aren’t expecting value out of a $99 bundle because like, there’s so many variables in there. So it’s in a $99 product that’s worth the entire value of the bundle and then they get everything else for free. It’s like well, half of that’s like it’s not all crap but like don’t know if it’s gonna be crap or it’s not gonna be helpful, and you’re just gonna feel overwhelmed by it. But like, if if someone comes to me if like, I didn’t know you, and someone was like, You need to join this email marketing membership, you need to join it today, you’re gonna get so much out of it. It’s only $108. You know, like, the word of mouth can be really huge here if people aren’t familiar with it.

Liz Wilcox 35:20
Yeah, and I think I’ve basically created my own bundle, right? So it’s like, really, you’re gonna buy the membership. But here’s, you know, I’m bundling everything together. And so instead of like Mike said, there’s this random bundle, and not that it’s crap. It’s just useless to some people. If I buy a bundle for a medal

Meg Casebolt 35:38
across the board, but you don’t I don’t want to be

Liz Wilcox 35:41
relevant. I don’t need the Instagram stuff. I definitely don’t need anything that’s email related in there, you know, like, so that’s just kind of garbage to certain users. I mean, other users might use that and think next thing,

Meg Casebolt 35:55
sometimes. Yeah, I know it, maybe it’s not relevant to you. And like, sometimes I’ll join one of those, or I’ll get one of those. And I’m like, Cool. 20% of this is worth it. For me. Another 20% might be really valuable for someone else, but like time spent digging through it is right. So time, time long.

Liz Wilcox 36:11
Yeah, that’s a time suck. Yeah. So with this, it’s everything is email related. I think there’s only one thing that I’ve created, that it’s about sales pages. So it’s very adjacent, but it’s not email related. But everything else is about email. Even my Black Friday is email Black Friday edition, you know. And so it’s all like, my main selling point is, you have everything you need for email marketing for 12 months, like you don’t have to buy anything else. For 12

Meg Casebolt 36:44
months, except me like a ConvertKit. Subscription.

Liz Wilcox 36:48
Yeah, right. Right. Something you’re probably already Why aren’t you like you’re already wasting your money on because I know, dang, well, you’re not sending out emails. You know, you’re not if you’re not making the money you want to make, et cetera, et cetera. Like, basically, as much as I am going to come 90%, you come 10%. And we’re going to do it all for 108 bucks, like it truly, I mean, in my mind is a no brainer. And that allows me to, you know, talk to people like mag and be like, Hey, girl, here’s what’s going down. Like, do you know anybody that Oh, and here, you know, here’s your affiliate link, right?

Meg Casebolt 37:27
And sorry about that, like you have this Black Friday sale coming up. And you don’t want to have to like spam it all over social media, when people are going to be busy and spending time with their families and standing in line at the store or whatever, like you, but you need to reach a whole bunch of new people on this specific Day weekend. How long is this going to be open? And like? How are you actually getting it in front of new people?

Liz Wilcox 37:51
Yeah, so the sale is going to be in the week of the 21st. So before, you know the Monday before Black Friday, through that Sunday evening, so it’ll be open a week, that’s the longest I’ve ever kept it open. But I just feel like you know, given my health and not that I’m like super ill or anything, I just have a little bit of low energy. And I feel like I’m not the only one. You know what I mean? And so I just want to give everyone ample opportunity to get the past if they want the past. Normally, it’s only open for like 48 hours. It’s a scramble. I always have people I missed it. I’m waiting. You know, I have to wait four more months, which is great for a waitlist, but I just want to give people ample opportunity. I even have people already emailing me. I’m afraid I’m gonna miss it. Is there any way you can open it early? And that’s crazy to me like it’s your calendar? That’s not my Yeah, I’m like, I’m like I talked about it. I’m Oh, see. I’m like I’m the email any you know, you’re gonna get more than one for me. So don’t worry. So I’m just I’m doing it for a week. We’ll see how it goes. You know, I’ve done like four or five of these so far. So every time you know, you want to try something different. See what happens, especially with the big goal. You know, I want to make sure everybody that wants to get it can get in and how the heck am I getting new people? Well, I’ve done a few things. Normally I say no to bundles that could be a whole nother episode. I don’t like bundles as far as email leads go. Personally for my email list. They don’t do much for me other than increase my ConvertKit bill.

Meg Casebolt 39:37
So when I’ve done them and I think you have to do them to see if they work for you, but go through a couple and you’re like well, nobody actually bought the paid thing because they were so overwhelmed.

Liz Wilcox 39:46
Yeah, so I’m doing I’m doing one I think one more bundle than I paid to be in actually. So I’m I’m experimenting to see if those leads will be good leads that convert into the $108 sale. Other than that, I’m doing a big affiliate push, I actually increased the limit or the commission from 25% to 30%. So I’m going to use that as you know, a selling point to my affiliates to say, hey, now you can make even more money per sale, like I’m not increasing the cost, I haven’t increased the cost. I’ve only increased value as I’ve created more products that go into this bundle, or those bonuses, however you want to look at it. And now you’re going to make more with the sale. So at this point, I think I have about 300 active affiliates. I just moved cart. So I had about 600 affiliates. But I’ve moved about half of them over which is still Yeah. Wow. Amazing. If I could get even half of those people to sell that would be great. The last flash sale? I did. I think I had I don’t know, I think it was at least 300 people made sales in the last flash sale, even just one, which is absolutely incredible. You know, if we look very conservatively, if I can get 150 people on the bandwagon, every single month, I pay between 100 and 150 people. So conservatively, if that number stays the same, and everybody makes one sale, then you know, I’m what 25 30% There my goal already, so that would be absolutely amazing. But yeah, basically new eyeballs means getting affiliates involved. And honestly, I don’t do a lot of affiliate incentives other than, hey, you’re gonna get cash. Because most of my stuff is very generous. My regular digital products, you get 50%. And then with this sale, it’s just such honestly, and this is me tooting my own horn here. Yes, it is such a great deal that I find most affiliates will say, Meg, maybe you can back me up or refute this, that it’s such a great deal that they feel so good about offering it like this, oh my gosh, this lady’s crazy type of offer, that I don’t really need to incentivize them further than the 30%. And just, you know, doing a real service.

Meg Casebolt 42:21
Yeah. And I think as as somebody who does affiliate promotions for brands or software that I use myself, it’s almost like the work that they do is so valuable that the affiliate money is just bonus money for me. You know, and love it for search as a brand. Like all of our affiliate payouts every year is like, probably 10 $12,000 a year. It’s not a huge income, but it’s like free money coming in for talking about things I already like can do. And so when it makes sense for us to promote things like it feels good to promote them, it feels good to know that I’m supporting other businesses, it feels good to know that I’m getting people’s into the right hands of people that I trust, you know, it, I think affiliate marketing gets a bad rap for people just like go to share a sale and sign up for things and then write blog posts about them. And then you’ll make all the money and like you don’t have any connection to it. But if you are discerning about the types of things that you promote, and you don’t just blast people with, like, oh, go buy this thing through my affiliate link all the time, but you really are thoughtful and conscientious about the ways that you’re talking about it and integrate it into your own marketing, it can be a really nice way to just like, have money coming in. And the same thing as somebody who offers affiliate promotions, where it’s like, I love when people buy my products with affiliate commissions, and I get to pay out my friends because like, it cost me you know, 2530 40% depending on what the promotion is, and when it’s happening and all that shit. But like, that’s a lead, I wouldn’t have gotten otherwise. And if I had to pay Mark Zuckerberg to go bring in my cost per lead, it would be way more than, you know, in your case, often, like $4 a month that people are spending way more than that on their acquisition costs. And it’s recurring, it’s over time, but like that’s, that’s 50% that you wouldn’t be making without that person. So it’s like it feels very supportive and collaborative in a way that other marketing styles just kind of don’t have that collaboration and cooperation.

Liz Wilcox 44:30
Yeah, I love paying out affiliates every single month. It’s super fun. I think this year already without the Black Friday thing so far. I’m pretty sure I’ve paid out over 50,000 And so for me, a lot of those people only make one or two sales a month and it’s so awesome. I’ve had people email me. Oh my gosh, Liz, you just sent me $30 This is the first $30 I’ve made online And You’re darn tootin I’m crying over that is so amazing to me. And again, it’s just goes back to like showing people what’s possible. And I know email is one of those like, bread and butter things for any business. I don’t care if you’re a local business, ecommerce digital course creator or service provider, if you can get email, right, like, you know, you’re golden. And so being able to share a real solution and have people promote it is like, so freakin amazing. I love my affiliates so much.

Meg Casebolt 45:39
I love your business model so much, and how like, everything feels good. Everybody feels good about it. Like your you, your readers, your affiliates, your team like it feels so yeah, collaborative, cooperative, positive, generous.

Liz Wilcox 45:56
Yeah, I actually I was on a panel. And I said something about oh, I give 50% away, and someone said, Why don’t want them to make more money than me. So I do 40% or something. And I thought, I didn’t argue on the panel. But in my head, I was like, Well, I don’t I don’t care about that. I just want people to feel good, like, again. And that and you know, numbers wise. 40% is awesome. And it’s also an awesome thing to give your affiliates. It’s just for me, I’ve always like I read one time. And this is this is how Liz willcox’s If I didn’t once and I like it, I just go with it. Like, I created my first digital product. It was a book, I made it in Canva why I didn’t create it in Word, I have no idea. Other than the first person told me to create it in Canva. And I stopped asking questions. So that’s where that 50% comes from? Is somebody said, oh, yeah, that’s pretty standard. So I never really questioned, you know, oh, I you know, they get more money than me because it’s like, well, I just have to make more sales. And I actually love making sales. I mean, hence, I just read, you know, from my journal here, oh, I need exactly 300 sales. You know, like, you can’t see me, but like, I’m showing that right now. And so, like those big numbers really excite me. And that’s not for everyone. You know, some people like higher ticket stuff,

Meg Casebolt 47:21
I think part of it is that you have built a business model that allows you to have profit, while still having that profit margin of 50% going out to affiliates, whereas, you know, because because everything is leveraged because no matter how many people you’re sending that email to, you’re gonna write one email, and it can go to 10 people or it can go to 1000 people. And that part isn’t the part that’s changing, right? Or maybe, maybe I said that weird, but like when I think about when when we sell an affiliate sale for a product, like we’d love to put in the time to do that work for clients, if it’s like a VIP day, we still have to show up. So I don’t want my affiliates to make more than me if I still have to show up for eight hours.

Liz Wilcox 48:06
Yeah, 100%. And that’s why you’re sending the

Meg Casebolt 48:09
email, no matter how many people you’re sending the email out to. And that person is bringing in more cash into your business. And you can just make more sales and feel really good about it, then like why the hell not?

Liz Wilcox 48:19
Yeah, and definitely, this goes back to just really, you know, knowing what feels good for you, and knowing your numbers at the same time, and then you’ll be able to figure that out. So with the yearly why it’s, you know, was 25. Now 30 is because I give everything else away for for free, they are not going to make another purchase for 12 months. So to give half of that away. I actually like financially cannot do that I would have to make $200,000 This month, and I’m not there quite yet, maybe one day.

Meg Casebolt 48:52
And I think so I have another question for you. And then we’ll wrap things up. I want to know about you know, when I think about having 1000s and 1000s of paying clients coming in, it gives me a little bit of heartburn. Because I’m like, yeah, how was the customer service on this? Now with a product, it’s $9 versus $900. I feel like there’s a level that people are like a little bit more chill. But I wonder if you’re getting if that’s part of your like, approach to all of this is I still have to pay people to handle all of the you know, I don’t have my affiliate link won’t work. And oh, I can’t get into this email today. And like, how is how’s the reaction of your audience in terms of needing technical support? Yeah, this is such a great

Liz Wilcox 49:34
question. And it was

Meg Casebolt 49:37
hard to answer. No, no. So

Liz Wilcox 49:40
one of the reasons why like 50% Giving away 50% for affiliates and still profitable My business is extremely lean, lean. The reason why I was able to save an entire year salary is because I don’t really spend a lot of money I’m not on a lot of other people’s email lists because they gotta go copywriters and I will just be buying everything right I, you know, I stick with a few things each month that costs money. My, my membership itself was on Google Drive for 13 months, I had over 1000 members before I spent $1. On that membership other than the cart, right, which I’m already spending because I have other products. So being able to keep the business lean also allows me to keep the business lean I you know, so with the cars as far as the customer service goes, the membership is $9. So almost everyone on a subconscious level understands they are paying $9 for an incredible value. And I’m, you know, after almost two years of the membership, I’m not afraid to say that this is a frickin stellar value. Most people especially people that in the b2b world, when they get inside, they usually email me and honestly, some lecture me about the price and how I need to up in I’m like, Okay, well let my bank account talk to your bank account. We’ll see what I need to raise prices on. Anyway, it also having a membership has allowed me because it’s it’s very low maintenance, you know, it’s low maintenance costs. I actually spend, I’m pretty much the person that answers all those customer emails. Really? Yeah, I still do. I do have a calmer life manager. She’s my assistant slash sister slash life manager slash best friend. And she’s picked up the slack quite a bit as I you know, my head, hitting my head, etc. But truly, most of the customer service emails I answer, especially the ones that are email specific, I definitely answer 100% of those. Just today, I answered three emails where I was personally looking at someone’s email, they email me, that does not that’s not included in the membership. It’s not. But because I have this membership, I have 2000 plus people I’ve made. At the time of this recording I’ve made over $200,000 this year, mostly from the membership. I have the time. And I don’t I do not have clients. I’ve taken two clients this year, and that they were repeat clients from the past years. And they’ve been very small projects, just like touch ups on stuff I’ve already written. And so pretty much the only thing I do nowadays is create the content for the membership, which takes me about 45 minutes a week, and answer emails. And so

Meg Casebolt 52:47
here’s a clickbait headline, how to make $200,000 a year and 45 minutes a week. You know, I

Liz Wilcox 52:54
say mag and I’m like turning red because it sounds so click Beatty, it sounds on freakin real. And sometimes I’d be sitting in my house and I’m like, I start to sweat because I think oh, this is all gonna fall apart like this is actually what you’ve done is actually impossible and stupid Liz, and everyone’s gonna cancel tomorrow. And everybody’s gonna realize, like, you know, they’re nine bucks is better spent on Hulu or whatever, you know, they gotta save nine bucks, their insurance went up. I don’t know, people do cancel anyway. And I

Meg Casebolt 53:27
think also like what you just said that like inner critic monologue that’s happening. Like there are a lot of people who say like, entrepreneurship is really unstable, because you don’t know how much you’re gonna make month over month. You don’t have like a salary. Yeah. But then I think about people like when I was working in a full time job, and I had a salary and I got fired. That was all my basket, you know, actually, yeah, never got fired. I got furloughed for a while when I was working for a nonprofit during like, you know, so it was like, we’re about 20% of my income, and there’s nothing I can do about it. And I didn’t know how to go out and make more money in that case. Whereas with you you have you have income coming in from 2000 people so if even if you have like 20% of your people all unsubscribe randomly because the cost of bananas went up because I

Liz Wilcox 54:12
slept somebody at the Oscars

Meg Casebolt 54:16
you still 1600 People you still have 600 affiliates you still like the assets that you’re building are greater than just yeah, the month over month sales and I know that you think really long term about that to have like, Okay, if I you know, how many will it based on the amount of churn doing the retention numbers, like if I continue at this rate, here’s how much I’m going to have in a year in two years in five years. Like you’re building long term not just like what how fast can I make it this month this day, which is here. Yeah.

Liz Wilcox 54:44
And for me, and maybe this is a you know, I don’t know the way to wrap up. I have a deep financial insecurity y’all like, let you heard it here first, like the reason I want to make $100,000 This month is in case I make $0. Next year, you know, it’s like, you know, I said it, like I support my mom financially, I’m a single mother, you know, I have a lot of mouths to feed. And I don’t, I can’t predict the future. And I don’t want to be, you know, like these airlines that need a government bailout, the government is not going to bail me out. And that part, that part is why, you know, in my plan, you can see my journal, but I, I, on the next page, I wrote, What will I do with the 100k when I make it, and number nine is save $20,000 for housing in 2023. Because I like it, let’s just be real. I’ve been homeless before. And so that’s one of the reasons I do the nine times $1,208 offer. So it’s not for me to go buy a brand new car when I make $50,000 is to save that, and divide it by 12. So that I guarantee that income. So anyway, you know, on that note, we started off with the word light hearted.

Meg Casebolt 56:15
But this is reality, you know, like, especially in post, pandemic times, and those of us who have had COVID are all like, wow, things could change overnight. And especially for those of us in like, intellectual infopreneur type businesses. Yeah, our brains are our biggest asset of everything that we’re building. And when you talk about like, I have a concussion and I had to take essentially a couple of months late, like you have to have a plan.

Liz Wilcox 56:43
Yeah, and thank God, I had the plan, because seriously, I had to take about five weeks off work, like people thought I was still working. I wasn’t actually I was only writing my newsletter. That was pretty much it. And any, you know, podcast interviews were any obligations, like I cancelled all those. And I really didn’t work. And if I wouldn’t have saved that money, and Ben smart and created something recurring, it could have gone a lot different. But it all goes back to like, I just love email and having those connection, those real connections with people. So when I say oh, man, my head really hurts. I’m so sorry. We’re not going to do that workshop for another two weeks. Everyone is like, Oh, cool. No problem, you know?

Meg Casebolt 57:30
Yeah, that’s absolutely true. Well, if people want to come find out more about you, if they want to join email marketing membership, if they want to get the Black Friday bundle, obviously, I’m an affiliate proud affiliate. So you guys definitely check the links in the show notes. But if they just want to go straight to you, and buy it from you, so you get the whole 100% I’m cool with that, too. How

Liz Wilcox 57:46
do they find you? Yeah, I thought we were going to talk about Black Friday emails. But with the bundle you actually get my Black Friday training, you get all the Black Friday emails you could want. But anyway, yeah, you can find me obviously, I’m an email marketer, I’d love for you to join my email list, you can go to Liz wilcox.com. In the top right hand corner, you’re gonna see a hot pink button. You cannot miss it. It says free email swipes. So if you’re like, Oh, what the heck was like what of substance can you create for me, you can see kind of some samples, you can see an entire welcome sequence already written for you. Just take out Liz Wilcox put yourself in. You’ll also get three newsletter templates that are pulled directly from the membership, one to show you how to get people to click, one to show you how to get people to reply, and one to show you how to get people to buy directly from your newsletter. And if that’s not enough, because I know, writing from scratch totally sucks. You also get 52 subject lines completely for free. All of that is free Liz wilcox.com hot pink button. And of course in the show notes. If you want to join the membership, you can try it out for $9 a month, or get the bundle get the yearly pass become a Passholder. I’d love to have you commit to email for a year, you get into the membership where you get that weekly template. But you’re also going to get a Black Friday training a sales page training with a template, you get some just pre sell it templates. So if you’re thinking about a product, but you’re not sure if anybody will actually buy it, that’s for you. And probably about a dozen other trainings and or mini courses that are going to light your world up. I can’t wait for you to have them. That’s 108 bucks.

Meg Casebolt 59:22
Thank you so much. And also that was a great pitch. Thank you so much for being here today, Liz. I really, really appreciate it.

Liz Wilcox 59:29
Yeah. Thanks so much, Meg.

Meg Casebolt 59:32
Thank you so much for listening to the social slowdown podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe or come on over to social slowdown.com and sign up for our email list so you never miss an episode. We’d also love if you could write a review to help other small business owners find the show you can head over to social slowdown.com/review Or grab that link in our show notes for easy access. We’ll be back soon with more tips to help you market your business without being beholden to social media. Talk to you then.

Please forgive any typos as this transcript was automatically generated by otter.ai.