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The Art of Selling Online Courses
The Art of Selling Online Courses is all about online courses.
The goal of this podcast is to share winning strategies and secret hacks from top performers in the online course industry. We are interviewing successful business owners, asking them questions on how they got to the point where they are right now, and checking how their ideas can help you improve your online course!
The Art of Selling Online Courses
This New Email Marketing Strategy DOUBLED My Revenue
🔗 Running a course business making $1k+ monthly? Email me at john@datadrivenmarketing.co for a free business review to identify your growth opportunities.
Joe Armstrong (founder of 90 Day Korean and 90 Day Japanese) reveals how he doubled his previous best month's revenue using our email marketing strategies. We dive into the exact process that transformed his business, from ditching his "complicated, archaic" automated sequences to implementing strategic live promos.
Joe gets super candid about the challenges that were holding his course business back - unresponsive email lists, confusing metrics, and poor checkout conversion. You'll hear how he increased his order bump conversion rate from a dismal 1% to a massive 40% with one simple product change.
If you're running an online course and struggling with sales, this episode is packed with proven strategies you can implement right away - Joe did it all last-minute before Black Friday and still crushed it! I'm breaking down the exact Pain-Agitate-Solution email framework we use with all our clients to consistently boost sales and engagement.RetryClaude can make mistakes. Please double-check responses.
🔗 Check out 90DayKorean: https://www.90daykorean.com/
🔗 Check out Joe's YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@JoeArmstrongOfficial
We ended up doubling our revenue, like with just the strategies that you taught, when I was like, wow, this stuff works. We need to do this. All of these numbers, if you're tracking them, they do add up and they can make a huge difference if you get them right. I thought we had like a pretty decent tracking setup. Then, when I met you guys, I was like, oh, there's levels to this.
Speaker 2:Joe is the founder of 90 Day Korean and 90 Day Japanese, with over 10 years of experience. Uses systems, tools and processes to make the business better, help his team and improve the learning experience for his members.
Speaker 1:And the thing is, I remember at your talks, like you said, most people only do promos at Black Friday and New Year's and I was like that's us. I was like okay, well, we should probably listen to what they're saying. It went way up Like maybe I don't recall exactly the numbers, but it was something like maybe from 1% to like 40%, like it was a huge increase.
Speaker 2:That's life-changing, you know. Hello and welcome to the art of selling online courses. We're here to share winning strategies and secret hacks from top performers in the online course industry. My name is Jon Ainsworth and today's guest is Joe Armstrong. Joe industry.
Speaker 1:My name is John Ainsworth and today's guest is Joe Armstrong. Joe, welcome to the show, thanks, happy to be here.
Speaker 2:So you worked with us at Data-Driven Marketing starting I don't know, a couple of years ago something like that right. What was anything that had caused you to want to get help at the time?
Speaker 1:Yeah, actually. So the first experience that I had with you and your team was I listened to a talk I think it was in 2019 at DCPKK and you had given a talk on I think it was on the email series, and I remember the thing that really stuck out was the thank you page offer, and I remember after that conference I was so excited. I'm like, oh, that's genius, I should implement that right away. And I remember I went up to Chiang Mai after that and I like recorded the video up there and I was just really excited to get the thank you page offer set up. And then you had also done a I think it was like a 10 minute like walkthrough and just given us like an overview of how we should set up our emails and over the next few years we implemented that. And I was like, wow, this is really amazing.
Speaker 1:And I can't remember I don't actually remember exactly why we started talking to you after that, but I just remember that stuff was really good and I was like, okay, these guys definitely know what they're talking about. I should go talk to them. And I knew other people in the course creator space had worked with you and they just gave like glowing reviews. They're like, yes, you need to work with John and his team for sure. And yeah, I reached out to you guys and had great calls Like the initial calls were great. Yeah, we got great results right from the beginning.
Speaker 2:What kind of results did you get? How long? Let's just take a step back, actually 2019,. You saw me give a talk. When did we actually work together?
Speaker 1:I think it was the end of 2022. I think it was Black Friday around that time, like end of November, and at the time, like I was actually really like unsure if this is what I should do. I really didn't know. I remember you and I talked at DCBKK and I remember like just chatting with you and I was like, oh, I feel really good about working with these guys, like with you and with with your team. Like you really clear, I think you did it.
Speaker 1:You had done an audit for us and you clearly knew what you were talking about and it was just a really good like experience up until then. I'm like, okay, let me, let me try this out. And we did that for black Friday. And I remember it was like right at you know, we never really had like a super organized plan for a Black Friday promotion and we did it. We did what you guys said and it was. It was very much at the last minute, right, we were just trying to get everything in right before the I think the email is probably on the same day and I think that year we ended up doubling our revenue, like with just the strategies that you taught, when I was like, wow, this stuff works. We need to do this.
Speaker 2:Doubling your revenue, man, that's legit, isn't it Okay? So was that double from your previous best month, or double from the previous Black Friday, or? What do you mean by double?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I have to look it up, but I'm pretty sure it was by far our best month ever and it was double our Black Friday revenue. From that we've ever had like our best Black Friday month. And the thing is, I remember at your talks, like you said, most people only do promos at Black Friday and New Year's and I was like that's us. So I was like, okay, well, we should probably listen to what they're saying. So, yeah, we started doing promos regularly, like according to what you said, and yeah, they performed really well. Like we actually had this really kind of complicated, archaic, automated promo set up already, like we had developed it over the years and it was, you know, like from being in business for many years, like you just end up tacking this stuff on and without like a really clear strategy. And then once we stopped doing those, we actually didn't stop doing them immediately, we just paused them and we would do the live promos and they just performed so much better. So it was clear, okay, we need to do the live promos.
Speaker 2:Okay, so let's dig into some of these tactics, because I want to make sure that anyone listening to this who's like shit, I want to double my revenue. I want to have this cool stuff. They know kind of what it is they need to do. So what was different about these live promos than about the previous automations that you'd got in place?
Speaker 1:Yeah, there are a few things. One is that we actually had a strategy For the previous live, the automated promos. We had put together these offers but they were pretty generic and they weren't timely and we didn't like we didn't really have any clear tracking set up. And then, once we started working with you and your team, like we started writing these promos and they're structured and I'm a huge fan of structure. So I was like, oh, this makes sense to me, like right, the promos this way, make them timely, make them relatable to the people.
Speaker 1:So it's like what time of year is it? What's going on? Why is that relevant to them? Why is that interesting to them? Like, give them value and then show them how your like product will solve that problem or get them to where they want to be. So it just seems like it was a way more valuable series. It was way more timely, way more relevant for the people that were receiving it. And we actually tracked it. That's one of the things that was, I'd say, you guys have helped us with. The most is really with tracking. Like we're still using all the tracking systems you help us set up. That's with for the promos, for our initial first sequences when people opt in just all of our KPIs like extremely helpful to have all that stuff tracked and I thought we had like a pretty decent tracking setup. But then when I met you guys I was like there's levels to this.
Speaker 2:Okay, so a couple of things to dig into there. So talk us through with the tracking. Why is that useful? Because most people I talk with they don't have any tracking setup. So I'm going to guess that you, dear listener listening to this podcast right now, do not have much in the way of tracking setup. If I asked you questions about what is your, was your opt-in rate on average over the last three months, you'd have some kind of idea, maybe, but not like specific numbers or what's the conversion rate on your most recent campaign compared to the one before. So all of this stuff to most people sounds really boring and they don't want to do it and they hate spreadsheets and they don't like looking at it. So they need people listening, need to know why this is worth doing. So can you kind of make the sales pitch for, like, how has that helped you?
Speaker 1:Sure, yeah, there's really two ways that stand out to me. The first thing is that you could know what's working. Like you have some kind of a performance benchmark, like are you, is this where you should be? Cause you guys have, like, provided us with some kind of benchmarks for where these numbers should be, and like you can identify where things are not working right, like is it the sales page? Is there, is there something in the emails? Maybe like something wrong with the cart? Like there's so many places to things could go wrong. So by being able to track those things and having benchmarks, you can figure out where in that whole series of steps where you're having problems, and you could focus on those like the most effective points. So that's one, and that, to me, was like the clearest reason.
Speaker 1:But the secondary reason that I didn't really think about was you can catch when things break. I remember you had said this at one of the talks and you're like, yeah, no matter how complicated that things get or no matter how much you have things advanced, things break all the time, and that's totally been my experiences. Things break and you don't always identify them. It could be like something wrong with the software, could be the connection. It could be any number of things, something that someone changed and it had some other side effects that you didn't think about. So it allows you to catch those things before they go on for too long, and I think that's actually one of the biggest things. It's like not losing. There's like the element of gaining and then the element of not losing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I think that I think a lot of people have like some kind of a romantic attachment. Romantic might sound like a weird word to use, but it's how it kind of feels to me, like they're connected romantically to the idea of having big, long automations as like their email sequences, cause it's like that, that dream of make money while you sleep, thing, right, you know, it's like that, that dream of make money while you sleep, thing, right, you know. It's like, okay, you set it all up and it just runs and you're just making money while you're away, and it's like, yeah, but you can. You can two things. One, you can do that with manual campaigns. You write them and then you reuse them whenever you know. You're like, okay, well, I've written it now, but I'm gonna, it's gonna go out in two months, and then you can set up those campaigns to go out automatically. But when you set up those automations this is connecting back to what you said about stuff breaking they break and you don't know and it's so hard to know. And if you've got the tracking, it's easier to know, but it's so hard to know which bit breaks.
Speaker 2:I had a client who came to us and they had changed something in their business two years earlier and when we did the audit and separately as far as they were concerned their revenue had gone down gradually and had never gone back up again. And when we did the audit and we did all the tracking, we're like it changed exactly here and it changed in this way. At this point, you know, like as in your number of people to this sales page went down dramatically at this point. What is it that got changed there? And they were like, oh, I think we changed this thing. And we went and looked at it and we're like, yeah, that would make sense. And then they, then they could change it back, you know, and it basically it cost them hundreds of thousands of dollars because they changed something and they hadn't tracked what was going on and what was not happening.
Speaker 2:And you know it's all done with automations. So I think that one's massive. But yeah, so there's two parts that you said. One was it allows you to see when something breaks, and the second one was about reaching up to kind of benchmark levels. I want to dive into that when something breaks a little bit more, because I feel like a lot of people struggle to really internalize what that means how that kind of looks. Have you got any examples of where you have seen that something did break and because you had the tracking, you were able to spot it?
Speaker 1:I can't think of anything off the top of my head that broke, but there's times where we can identify things doing worse, For example, if your revenue is decreasing or it's not where it should be. Sometimes you just have this vague feeling. You're like things aren't going good, but where and it's really helpful to be able to pinpoint that stuff. It's like where is it? Is it in the opt-ins? Is it in the email sequence? Is there a problem with the emails getting sent? There's just so many things that could happen, especially how the marketing is changing. Online marketing is changing very quickly, so it could be something breaking or it could be something just performing much less, not as good as before.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah, I had somebody I was trying to help recently and, um, if you're listening, you know who you are and she was telling me how she felt like campaigns were performing worse or that something was doing less well. And I'm like, I recognize your feelings, you know it is valid to have emotions about these things, but I cannot help you based on I've got a feeling that things are worse. Like we have to have actual numbers like where was it worse? Okay, you made less money, you know that, but did the campaign perform worse? Did you have a smaller email list? Is there less when within the campaign? Was the click-through rate worse? Was the open rate worse? Was it less people to the sales page? Like we have to look at this.
Speaker 2:Otherwise we could just spend ages trying to fix something and just fix the wrong thing. And I think, like most course, creators are like incredible creatively, like you know, can come up with all kinds of ideas, can make all this great content, build up an audience, but really suck at this kind of number side of things and therefore don't know exactly where to focus. Okay, so there was two things right, so we talked about one, which was when something has gotten worse or was broken, then you can kind of figure out where to focus, what to do, how to how to you know, know what area at least to be working on fixing it, which makes your life much easier, because then you don't have to try and change everything, you're trying to just change the thing that actually got worse. So the second one was about the benchmarks and kind of knowing what area to focus on to improve. Can you talk? Can you talk everybody through that, a little bit like how that worked for you, how that was helpful.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's.
Speaker 1:It was helpful because it gave us an idea of the parts that we were weak at and where where we weren't hitting the marks.
Speaker 1:Because if you're kind of like close to average on some of these parts, then it's not the biggest leverage point to focus on those right. If you're like maybe 90% of the benchmark, whereas another place if you're at 10%, if you just fix that 10% of benchmark, if you could double that to 20, which might not be that hard you can get like double the results and it just has such a huge impact if you can identify those areas. So it's really like the way I see it is where you focus your energy, like what are the things that you really need to focus on? And then track those numbers and then see if what you've done works, because we've done it, we've done both right, we've we've had times where we've identified those things and then we change it and they do get worse, like they've gotten worse some case, and then you switch it back and then you try something else and then that performs a little bit better. So you stick with that and you know you just go through that iterative process nice, yeah, and I think it's.
Speaker 2:It's so vital. And it was fascinating to me when, when I started this business, I was trying to figure out what those benchmarks were, because this is what I'd done in previous businesses but I couldn't. It was so hard to find the data on what the benchmarks were for. Like, what is a good quality conversion rate on a sales page for a course business when it's going through from an email campaign? And it's like because nobody else was tracking it, and I was like, oh my god, so we had to track it for all of our clients, run the tests ourselves, see what we could get to, and then, well, we know that's the best we've done so far. Is that great? Is that average Like, is that an area we should be focusing on? And it took a lot of searching until we were really sure of like, okay, this is a good option. Right, this is a good conversion rate from email campaigns etc. But then that allows us to help others with it.
Speaker 2:And if anybody listening is like, if you've got a course business already and you're doing at least a thousand bucks a month in revenue, drop me an email and I will do a business review for you where I will take you through and I'll ask you, like I'll send you a form so that you can send me your numbers, and I'll I'll sketch out for you, like, okay, this is the areas where you are underperforming. This is how much you're're underperforming by. If you fix this, this is how much more revenue you could get, how much more you could grow your email list, et cetera. And at the end of it, you will understand, this is the area I should focus on. This is how much better it could be, this is how much more revenue it would make me.
Speaker 2:And then, if you go find the relevant podcast episode, you'll know what to do to to increase at that. So just drop me an email and put business review in the title, uh, in the subject line, and, uh, my email is john. John at data driven marketingco, um, and I'll do that for you. I do like two or three of these a week, so if I get a load of requests through, it might take me a little while to get through it all, but just bear with me and I'll get over to you totally for free. So, joe, you talked us through, okay? So we had the KPI tracking, we had the improved strategy.
Speaker 1:Can I add one part to the KPI thing?
Speaker 2:Yeah, go for it Absolutely.
Speaker 1:So one thing that I wanted to also mention that I think is really that was really helpful. What you guys did is knowing which KPIs to track, because it feels like there's infinite numbers you can track, but you guys gave us the sheets for that and then you explained why those numbers were important and you can see how they fit in. It's kind of like a puzzle, right, and you can see where everything goes. So I feel like that's super helpful, because otherwise you could be tracking too much or too little, and I think it's really important to figure out how much to track.
Speaker 2:Yes, absolutely, and actually just thinking about it with the KPI tracking.
Speaker 2:If you're listening and you want to actually set up these KPIs, if Joe has sold you on this and you're like, yeah, man, I should do this I don't want to do it, but I should do it, it'll make me more money Then drop me an email about that as well and I'll give you access to our KPI tracking course.
Speaker 2:So this is something that we normally only give to clients, but I decided recently we're going to give out a couple of the fundamental things for free to listeners of this podcast. So just email me, john at datadrivenmarketingco, and put in KPI tracking in the subject line and you have to promise me that you'll do it. You have to promise me that you'll actually do it, and then I will follow up and I will check if you actually did it. But if you're like, yeah, I will do that, then basically I'll send you through our course and it includes the templates, so it'll show you how to do kpi tracking and it'll give you the template so you can actually go set this up for yourself. About joe about how long do you think it took you when you first set it up, when you were working with us?
Speaker 1:the setup didn't take long, I'd say the thing that took the longest is just getting used to doing them.
Speaker 1:So I had to spend a decent amount of time like just getting used to the process, but then I was able to um to hand it off to my team and they've been really good about doing that. But if I had to quantify it, maybe it wasn't that long, Maybe it was like an hour, Cause it's just basically filling in the spreadsheet. If I recall right, it's not. Especially if you just do the basic tracking, it's not that long. And then I think it's good because you'll feel better, because you'll know those numbers and you'll know how to get them. So I think it's really good for just peace of mind yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:it's not a massive project. It's something that a lot of people I to me. I'm like of course you gotta have a spreadsheet. Like how would you not? How did you do anything without a spreadsheet? But I am aware that that makes me the odd one, that most people don't feel that way and that most people don't want to fill this in. But it's not a massive project at all to do this. It's like these numbers were available in Google Analytics, in your checkout software, in your email marketing software, this kind of thing. These are just available, but there's too much data there and you don't know what to look at when you pull out, like you said, the right ones, put them in a spreadsheet, then it's actually. And if you then know what is good, what is bad, then it's actually relatively straightforward to do it.
Speaker 2:Okay, so we've talked about KPIs a lot. We've talked about the fact that you had these timely email promotions that you started doing. How often did you start doing those promotions Did you do?
Speaker 1:it every month like we recommend, or were you doing it less frequently? The beginning, like for the first year, our goal is to we got roughly about one email promo per month, occasionally two, occasionally two. And then I think the second year is when we got to about two per month, not quite two, but maybe one and, yeah, almost two not every month.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah, nice, okay, yeah. So our recommendation to everybody used to be two and what I found was and I still there's still what we do for clients we'll normally do like one bigger promotion, maybe one flash sale. But I found it was such an ask of people, the idea of two. They're like, oh my god. So I was like, all right, let me just recommend one and then at least that's going to get you most of the money, like when you do two it doesn't double your revenue over doing one, but it does increase it further. So it's like that's kind of the uh, if you do one, that's like your 80 20 you can get like a bulk of the results from it. So so what was the process like for writing those promotions? What can you kind of teach people about how to do that?
Speaker 1:Yeah. So one thing I wanted to comment on and this ties into it is the customer avatar. So that was something that you guys had us do early on and to serve the customers. We do this to the buyers and the non-buyers, and I thought that was really useful because you get the customer language right, like you get to know more about them and you have a system for that, like how to do it and how to how to send out the emails and how to like encourage people to fill that stuff out, and then you get that information and then you use that to better understand, like, who's reading your emails and what they're looking for, and we use that to create the promos.
Speaker 1:At the time, what we would do is we would follow the SOP. So that's one thing that I really liked is that you guys have SOPs for everything you have like really really organized, and it makes things very easy to follow because once you have those, then you just know the process to do each time. You don't have to think about it. So your templates and the sop is tremendously helpful, and then that was helpful for us creating what an sop is, in case they don't know what that stands for yeah, sop is a standard operating procedure yeah, is that what acronym is okay and it's just a way.
Speaker 1:it's like a document and it goes through your process for how you do things regularly, so it could be like how you write an email promo, or how you do KPI tracking or how you handle like customer interaction, something like that. And that way we use Google Docs and it's shared with our team and everyone has access to it and it's really nice, because then you don't have to think about these cases each time.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it makes it so much easier. I write them for myself as well. So obviously we got them for training and in the coaching program they're available to all the people in there. But what? I'm working at the moment on how to get better at YouTube, and so every time I figure something out, I write it in the SOP, because I know how terrible my memory is. So I'm like if I don't write down exactly what steps to do, in what order, then next time I come back I'll do it wrong again. It's like I need this written down for myself. It's like step one do this, you do that, and then I find it really boring following it. I'm like, oh, I want to be creative and go and do it my own whatever way I feel like today. It's just like like, yeah, you know what works, though it's following the process, that's yeah, proven the thing that works, just works yeah, nice, okay, so wait a minute.
Speaker 2:I interrupted you there to explain what sops were, but you were explaining about email promos, I think yeah, right.
Speaker 1:So then that part was a bit challenging to write them because we weren't that good at them at the beginning.
Speaker 1:Like it was hard to like create the content emails and then have them tie into the promotion because they should all match up right?
Speaker 1:It should be like a promo that is, that solves some of your audience's needs and it doesn't have to be for everybody, right?
Speaker 1:Like you, you want to try to be specific to a particular group. So if you have, like, maybe five different profile types inside your audience, maybe you'll want to do a promo for one type profile A and then the next promo targets profile B. So you're really speaking to that person and we tried to come up with like some products or bundles or whatever made the most sense and then come up with a theme and figure out how they all tie together. So give value, help them solve a problem. I think we use the was it problem agitate solution framework and so try to identify things. It could be something that they know about, or maybe there's something that they just they've been experiencing but they haven't been able to actually put into words themselves, and then you help them figure out this problem and then you show them how you can help them with that, and then you offer them some promotion or some kind of package that can help them do that, and then that's their opportunity.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think that that's like quite a high level concept and it's so powerful the process of you've identified a problem that they have got they, they are experiencing it, but they don't quite know what it is.
Speaker 2:Just something's not working or something doesn't feel right or something isn't like they're not achieving what they want to do, but they don't know quite why. You know, and if you can define that problem and show them that you understand their pain point and what they're experiencing, then people are like, oh, my god, yeah, that's it. That's what's going on. Well, how do I solve it? And it's like if you then have identified a problem that they couldn't they couldn't identify it properly, then people are like, right, well, you must know how to solve it now, because I didn't even know how to define the problem. So then they're totally like ready to buy the next stage. So I was, um, I learned I'm learning bass. I had always. Anybody who's a musician is going to be like you're an idiot. How did you not know about this? But I've been learning it for quite a while and I've been working with a teacher. Recently I was doing it from online courses before and now I start with the teacher and I was saying to him I've learned all the parts of this song but I still struggle with remembering what order of the whole, what the structure of it, like when do I have the pre-chorus, when do I have the chorus? There's a slightly different version of the pre-chorus here. How do I remember what order it all goes in? And it's like oh yeah, everybody has that and what everybody does is they get a notebook and they kind of write out these notes for it. And I'm like I've been memorizing songs like just the entire song, like in one in one, like go through in my head and but you know, you learn it with tabs and then you learn which is like kind of a simplified version of sheet music and then you have these notes. It turns out which is a step I'd missed, and then eventually you memorize the whole, you can remember the whole song. And I was just like, oh my god, I've been doing all this work wrong this whole time because I didn't know this step was a thing. But I knew that I had a problem, right, I knew I had a problem of not being able to remember a song as fast as I would like to, and that kind of experience when I had it was just like, oh yeah, this is the same kind of thing that everyone goes through.
Speaker 2:And if somebody was selling me an online course about how to memorize songs, it would have been like you know, it's just a small little module or something. If I'd been reading those emails, I'm like, oh my god, yes, that's exactly what I struggle with. And then you could have somebody, could have solved it for me. Nobody ever did so. I never bought that course, but I've solved it now, so it's all right, I've got my notebook, I've got my notes. It's very exciting. I'm learning.
Speaker 2:Time is running out from muse, if you know that one and um, okay, so that that's a really concept. And then that's something that you've used. So what you've done is you've taken the customer avatar work. You've identified a persona, you've identified a problem that they have or an issue that they're kind of facing. You've then decided that's the focus for this promotion. You might have put together a bundle that helped to solve that, or you might have taken one of your existing courses, whatever it was. You might have created something new. Who knows? You've, whatever it was, you might have created something new. Who knows?
Speaker 2:Yeah, you've then written a promotion that talks to them using the pain agitation solution framework, talks to them about that problem in the pain. One agitates that problem by explaining how that's affecting their life and the agitate email and then give them a small solution in the solution email and then said but we've got a full course that solves this. We're going to tell you about it next week. So for anybody who who hasn't heard us talk about that pain agitation solution framework, that's the basic way, the basic concept of kind of how you use it. There's a lot of detailed notes about you know exactly what you put in the pain email, etc. But that's the basic concept of it. Okay, I'm trying to just wind back through our conversation and making sure we're closing all the loops. Guys, we've had emails. We've talked about how you sent those emails Cool, anything else I was going to comment on one thing yeah, I'd given the example of the base.
Speaker 1:I really, I really love that example because it's great when it's great when you, when somebody identifies it also for you, right, like it's nice when someone can identify those problems in your own life. And then the next part to that is when they can give you the solution. That's exactly that. It's not just some vague solution. It's like okay, I have this problem with the bass and this is the issue, and then this is the exact solution to that problem. And it very clearly states that you don't have to guess. You're not like oh well, does this actually solve it?
Speaker 1:It's specific to it and that's why I I think that the I think that's one of the reasons why the regular promos are, another reason why the live promos work better, because you're speaking really specifically rather than generally, and I think that's really helpful from both sides, right like when it happens for you and then also for your audience yeah, totally okay.
Speaker 2:Um, I do want to carry on kind of working our way through the funnel, but, but I want to actually quiz you about something of like what was the that I'm super curious about? What was the experience like of working with the team Like, what was it like going through the instant course sales program? How was that for you? Like which? What was good about it? Because some people listening to this I know for definite, definite, are kind of thinking about reaching out to us and like working with us. But it's kind of a bit nerve-wracking sometimes to reach out to somebody. So could you kind of give everybody just like how was that? What was that like?
Speaker 1:yeah. So first I want to say that, like I was reluctant to reach out to right I didn't know if I should and I but I knew some of the other people in that were on your like testimonial page, so I thought I'd talk to them and talking to them was really valuable because they were able to give like really specifics about why it's great working with you guys. So I was like, okay, cool, this all sounds great. And I have to say like from the moment I was on board, I was really impressed with everything. Like I, like you guys definitely set a really high bar for what companies should be like. Like you were.
Speaker 1:The whole process of getting introduced to everything was really seamless and organized. Like me and my team felt very welcome. Like you guys were there to help all the time. Like I and you could tell that you and everyone your team genuinely cared. Like when we sent messages, we always got like thorough responses, like and it was, you know, even if you couldn't get back to us right away, you would say, okay, well, this person will get back to you at this time.
Speaker 1:So, just, super organized, very easy to follow all of the steps, and it gave us a lot of confidence that this stuff could work and that we can do it and that you guys actually really do care. Like you know, we there were tough times for sure, like we ran into roadblocks. We've ran into times where it was really challenging to do all this stuff, but like your team was always there to make sure to help us solve those problems and sometimes they were tough problems to solve, like they took a bit of time, but always, like you guys and you were really thoughtful about it. Like it's probably very easy to just give some kind of blanket response like you know, just do this or that, but you would really dig in and say, okay, well, here's like what we think the issue is and here's because of the KPIs you're at this level, you really got to look into this. Like this is what you should do on your checkout cart. So it's very like clear and actionable advice. And it wasn't that hard, right, like doing the stuff on the checkout not that hard, but some. I remember one of the examples was adding in some clearer like I think it was logos or designs on the checkout and then just making some adjustments to the checkout and then tracking that. So it was pretty easy stuff but you just want to keep monitoring that and like that was great.
Speaker 1:Like every time we had calls with your team it was like very organized, like tons of value, like I always felt. Like every time we had calls with your team it was like very organized, like tons of value, like I always felt. Like every time I joined a call or had a call with anyone from your team it was always very worthwhile. Like I never thought, oh, did I need to be on that call? I always felt it goes great and it's great experience. My team too. They were very happy and always thought that, um, everybody on the daydream marketing team were like super helpful and just really nice people.
Speaker 2:Nice Thanks, man, I appreciate that.
Speaker 1:And I want to comment too, like I think like there's like a meta to this too, because you guys, the way that you run stuff had definitely has helped us think about how we run our business ourselves, like how we interact. So we're not quite in the same. You know, you guys are helping other course creators and for us it's Korean learners but just the way we think about it, how we interact and how we do our onboarding and how we work as a team, so we got a lot of inspiration from you guys too. With that it wasn't just directly doing the ICS program, but it was also just the general experience of working with you guys.
Speaker 2:Nice, that's cool. Do you have more SOPs now?
Speaker 1:Oh, we've got a few. We've got SOPs for everything, but it's nice. It actually is nice, I have to say, because what would happen is I remember before we would do partial SOPs and it was always. Sometimes you'd look at them and they weren't formatted nice, so it's hard to dig through them and figure out what they mean or like what was I saying at the time. But the template that we got from you was really nice. We use a version of that as our template and it's just nice because you just fill in those fields and you know how to read all the SOPs, because they have the same process and they have the same system, which makes it really easy.
Speaker 2:Beautiful, Nice. And if you are listening and you're like slightly unsure about you know you want to get some help. You think what Joe's talked about sounds great but you're not quite sure about it, just drop me an email, john, at datadrivenmarketingco, and we can have a chat just back and forth by email and I'll kind of let you know if it's a good fit and help you out either way. Right, let's get back into the funnel side of things. So we've talked through the KPI tracking, the customer avatar, the email promotions. One of the things that you said right at the beginning was that you had heard my talk about putting something on the confirmation page. Was that the tripwire funnel or was that an upsell, Because it's two different places? You put stuff on confirmation page.
Speaker 1:That was the tripwire. It has something on the thank you page.
Speaker 2:Nice, okay, so that's the thank you page after someone's opted in for one of your lead magnets or opted into your newsletter. So can you talk everybody through what the concept of that was? Why were you excited about doing that, and then what did you do? And then what kind of results did you get from it?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I was excited about it because it was something we already had in place and it had potential for it just felt like it was a wasted space, like we didn't really use it for much. So we had potential to have an offer on that page and for people to find out about our stuff. Like to make it easy for them to find out, because I get it from the other side too right. Like if you're like, if you're trying to learn something, you're trying to sort through all these pages, it's like how do you know what's really good and you know what should, what's really the right solution for them? So it's giving them like an easy way to get started with your program. Yeah, for us it was like something.
Speaker 2:And so what did you put as the offer on that page?
Speaker 1:The first thing I think we had was it might have been a $1 trial for maybe a week or two, for the program. And then I think we tested a few other things. We tested individual courses like smaller courses for as a one-time purchase, and then we ended up going back to the dollar trial and we tested different time periods, but we found that there wasn't like a big difference between them. So that's where we're at right now.
Speaker 2:Got it. Do you know the conversion rate of like how many people who get onto that page then take up that $1 trial?
Speaker 1:I don't know, but I know it's lower than the benchmark. I'm not sure what it is. It's a tricky one.
Speaker 2:Gone.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, we decided to keep that on there because we really think it's like the best product that people should be trying. So we thought, okay, well, it's still the thing that we should keep on there. Now we don't have we haven't really gone through and like tested that a lot, but um, yeah, that's where we're at now yeah.
Speaker 2:So the thing with memberships as a tripwire offer is they do tend to convert worse than a one-off paid course. Because these are people often who are new to your world. You know, they have not bought something from you before, they've only just signed up to your email list. They might have seen a bunch of your content on social, they might have gone through a bunch of stuff on your site, but they don't know you that well. So it's kind of harder to make that sale of a membership, even though it's only a dollar trial. Everyone's got the thing of like oh you know, if I sign up, what if I forget to cancel? And then actually it's not that useful. I had something the other day. I went through our profit and loss for the business and I found some software where I'd signed up for the trial and forgotten to cancel. I was paying hundreds of dollars a month for something I didn't need at all and I was just like it made me feel sick to my stomach.
Speaker 1:That's what that feels like.
Speaker 2:I was like, okay, right, I get definitely why people don't want to sign up for that membership. But if it's your best offer and it's the thing that's going to help people the most and they'll get the best results with it, then there's obviously value to that. I was working with somebody earlier this week who he's got a I forget if it was a I think he had a $7 trial $7 one month trial or something like that for his membership and his membership is I forget exactly, but something between 30 and 50 bucks a month, something like that, and he was getting with his on if you include the sign up page and then the follow-up sequence. So his whole welcome sequence was aimed around getting people back into that membership. He was at five percent conversion rate small sample size because it was just early days, but five percent and that was really strong.
Speaker 2:What we're aiming for with a tripwire product normally if we're selling something for like 27 on that confirmation page is about a three to 10% conversion rate. The best we've got with anybody is 12, but 10 is already like surprisingly high, even with warm traffic. So if you're doing anything around the kind of three to 5% with your membership, I'd say that's probably pretty strong, you know it's obviously it's it's a lower number than it is for for with with one-off products, because of that kind of concern that people have, right. So what's? What's the next step that you've got there then, do you have, like the other elements that you have, order bumps and up sales on that, on that tripwire product as well?
Speaker 1:yeah, I think when we, when we first implemented that, we already had I think we had order bumps already and upsells, but they weren't. I think they needed to be improved. Yeah, so I think we had some basic version and then we did better versions of them. That was one of the things. Okay, one of the things that was really great is our order bump was not it was really really specific. Order bump was not it was really really specific. Uh, we had it for a specific, for getting a Korean name, which is only a very small percentage of the people, but we just didn't have anything to offer. So we're like, okay, well, let's do this. And then you guys encouraged us to create a product that would appeal to people um, buying the main product and we did it went way up. Like maybe I don't recall exactly the numbers, but it was something like maybe from 1% to like 40%. Like it was a huge increase. It was great, like that did so much better. So I was like, okay, well, that was a good idea.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, Nice. Yes, that's beautiful. I was talking to someone the other day who he's just had his first five figure month because of his tripwire funnel. He started working with us, he started doing the monthly promotions, he started doing, you know, working the sales pages etc. But then we also worked with him to set up a tripwire funnel and then that gave him that boost of like. I think for him it was like an extra 1500, 2000, something like that a month. That then meant with the email promotions, that's tipped him over into doing 10,000 a month. And oh, just, I love that. It's so beautiful to see when someone like gets that and like first gets like 10,000 a month. It's like that's life changing, you know.
Speaker 1:For sure. And it's just like. It's just shows right how all those numbers add up right Like. And it's just like it's just shows right how all those numbers add up right Like the, all the conversion rates, like the, the bump, the upsell, all of these numbers.
Speaker 2:if you're tracking them, they do add up and they could make a huge difference if you get them right. Yeah, yeah. So what else did you do, working with my team, that has helped you with the business? We've talked through email, promos, customer avatar, kpis, upsells, order bumps, tripwire funnels. Was there anything else that had been helpful and helped you to kind of grow the business?
Speaker 1:Grab a water while I think about that. Yeah, one of the other things that we've worked on, too, is improving our sales pages, and that's still a work in progress, but just having some kind of format or a template to follow and then filling in those gaps and really just putting ourselves in like the shoes of the buyer more and trying to improve those. So you know, for each of the promos we have like a different version of the sales page or we update it for that product and just doing a better job overall. Yeah, we spent some time on the sales pages and I thought that was helpful too.
Speaker 2:Nice, if you want to hear a podcast episode just about the sales pages and how to improve those, if you go find episode 16 from July 8th 2021, it's called how to create high converting sales pages and monetize your traffic and in that episode, we go in depth on exactly what to do to improve your sales pages. Nice, well, this has been amazing, joe. I really appreciate you coming on today and sharing with everybody what had worked for you and what you'd implemented and the kind of results that it got To manage to implement this and quite quickly have what did you say? You doubled your previous best Black Friday by implementing a lot of this stuff and I think the best month ever yeah, like doubled our best month.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you doubled your, your previous best black friday by kind of implementing a lot of this stuff and I think the previous the best month ever, yeah, like doubled our best month yeah, um, so that's outstanding.
Speaker 2:So hopefully this has been useful. Go grab those other podcast episodes. Drop me an email if you want access to the kpi tracking or if you want that business review and I will get back to you with that. And thanks so much as always for listening. And, joe, thanks so much for coming on thanks for having me on.