Launching a Successful Membership on a Whim with Liz Wilcox

July 13, 2021
/ Digital Products Podcast
/ By Eden Fried

I may earn a commission from the companies mentioned in this post. Regardless, I only recommend products or services I use personally and believe will add value to my readers.

Lazy. Not a word you’d usually think about when it comes to a successful digital product launch let alone launching a successful membership, right?

Wrong! Today we’re talking about lazy launches, and I mean that in a really positive way. When I write “lazy launch” I’m referring to launches that don't require a ton of prep work, and don’t incite a ton of overwhelming work or stress.

Your digital product launch can be successful without the months of lead up preparation, the stressful and exhausting launch week, and the anxiety over whether or not your launch is going to succeed.

Joining me on the show today is one of our recurring guests – the incredible Liz Wilcox (she was actually on the first ever episode of the Rebel Boss Ladies Podcast!). I asked Liz to join me for another episode because she keeps doing really cool things that I want to share with you!

When I heard that Liz did one of her recent membership launches on a whim and with the goal of having 100 people join her new membership in a 30 day period, I knew I had to bring her back for an interview (and I’ll spoil the surprise now – she hit her goal of 100 sign ups on day 29!). There's so much to learn from her in terms of launching a successful membership.

Today we're going to talk all about the work that she did do for the membership launch, as well as the work that she didn't do, to hopefully shine a really bright light on what's most important for you to focus on when you're planning your launch.

Check out some of the other episodes of the Rebel Boss Ladies podcast featuring Liz Wilcox:

The Lazy Launch Product: an Email Marketing Membership Launch

Before we jump into Liz’s launch, let’s talk a bit about her product: the Email Marketing Membership.

According to Liz, the name literally says it all – if you need to know about email marketing, this is the membership for you. It’s for anyone trying to make email marketing work, whether you’re a hairstylist selling shampoo or a digital product creator selling a membership.

She sends out weekly templates of something that you can send to your email list, along with monthly lists of ideas of topics that you can send to your list so that you never have to feel stressed or make the excuse of “I don’t know what to write.”

The weekly emails include everything – promo emails, emails to gauge interest about creating a product, emails to get people engaged, conversion emails to get people to hit reply, to click, or to buy your product, sales emails, and more.

She’s also offering regular live Q&As for people who have paid for her membership where members can come in and ask any kinds of questions about email marketing or owning an online business.

Liz says (and I agree – I'm a member myself) that the benefit of this membership is she’s basically doing all of the work of email marketing for you, all you have to do is put it into your email service provider, switch out a couple of words, and click “send” – it’s that easy.

If you're interested in joining (it's only $9/month), you can click here.

Launching a low-cost digital product or launching a successful membership

Liz wanted to make a product that was so ridiculously low it was a no brainer offer, so she priced it at $9.

She says that there’s a lot of messaging about pricing in the email marketing space and trying to avoid cheapening your brand by pricing your products too low. Liz was thinking that when she sat down and wrote her first sales email for the product, but she also wanted to make something that was as inclusive as possible for everyone.

“I think the biggest pain point for people as far as email marketing goes is that it just seems so damn complicated. And I have such a fresh take on it, that I want to just make it as simple as possible. I really want to make sure everybody knows just how simple it can be.”

What are some other benefits of launching your product or launching your membership at a low price?

Once you start bringing people in and getting them signed up, you can always start raising your prices later. As soon as you have people signed up, seeing how amazing your content is and telling their friends, you can start to increase the price because you have people championing your product for you.

When it comes to launching a successful membership, there will be people who join for the content but stay for the community and the value that continues to come through those monthly experiences. That means recurring income for you – never a bad thing!

The Journey of a “Lazy” Launch from Idea to Actual Launch

While Liz actually took the steps to plan, pitch and launch her product in what feels like record time (60 minutes!) she had actually had the idea for it floating in the back of her mind for a long time.

Liz belongs to a Peer Mastermind group, and in a 2020 call one of the members had mentioned that she joined a low-cost monthly social media graphics membership. Liz remembers thinking to herself what a great idea that was – it’s low effort for the person running the membership, but high value for its members.

“I thought, oh shit. I could do that. My people, email marketing to most people is really difficult. But plug and play is an option for that, right? You get swipes, you get templates, whatever. It's easy to plug and play with email marketing if you are taking from someone who knows what they're doing.”

A few months later in March 2021, Liz sat down to write a newsletter and thought what I’m sure many of us think when we have to sit down and write – “what the heck am I going to say?”

The idea to sell something popped into her head. “My goal for the year is to make more money from digital products, so I can stress less about client work. And then I thought, like whatever synapses went off in my head, I thought about that membership from my Mastermind Group, and I thought, I think I could do that really quickly.”

And that’s when Liz decided to turn the idea of Email Marketing Membership into a reality… in 60 short minutes.

Launching a Successful Membership in 60 Minutes

It almost sounds crazy to write that – Liz did everything she needed to do to launch the Email Marketing Membership in 60 minutes.

She quickly came up with the different aspects of the membership she wanted to offer – the weekly templates, the monthly list of email topics, and the monthly Q&A

Then she went into her cart – she uses SamCart because it makes things super easy – and decided to create a new product.

Pricing Her Product

Pricing was a bit trickier – once she knew what she wanted to offer, she wasn’t sure how she wanted to price it. The one thing she did know was she wanted it to be a low-offer, no-brainer product that fit somewhere into her value ladder.

When she launched Email Marketing Membership, Liz had products that cost $22, $99, $250, $500 and $2000. She looked at her data, of how many people were on her list and who was buying from her, which was at about 5%. She knew that in her audience there were a lot of newer bloggers who weren’t buying even her $22 offer, so decided to make an even better offer for them.

Liz finally decided to set the goal of selling to 100 people on her list, and set her membership at the low price of $9, a totally no-brainer offer for her customer and $900 recurring every month for her.

Building Her Sales Pages and Emails

Next she created a really basic page on SamCart to sell the product – since it was $9 she just told it like it was, didn’t need fancy sales language, and this made it really simple. She used SamCart as the cart, sales page and everything.

Then she jumped into ConvertKit to create an email, which would be sent to everyone who purchased the membership. The email was pretty basic – it said thanks for joining, that there weren’t any deliverables at the moment, but to check back soon. She set up the integration and that was ready to go – about 25 minutes into her decision to launch her membership.

Finally, Liz jumped back to her newsletter that started this whole idea, and pitched her product. She sent it with the eye-catching subject line, “Can I have nine dollars?” and some quick copy explaining her idea.

This newsletter was sent to 831 people – Liz had a 57% open rate and 10.1% click rate. In that first day, 40 people signed up from that newsletter and the quick Facebook post that Liz put up.

As I mentioned, her goal was to sell to 100 people within the first 30 days, a feat she achieved on day 29.

Delivering the Product After Launching a Membership

Like her launch, Liz didn’t spend time making everything more complicated or building out an extensive online platform. She decided to use a simple Google Drive shared folder to get her templates out there.

It’s a $9 product, so having a fancy platform wouldn’t necessarily add a lot more value. Google Drive was the simplest and most efficient way of getting the content out there and she decided she could build something bigger out later, if she felt like it was needed.

Liz says that people had reached out and asked if she was worried that someone might try to steal her work since it wasn’t protected.

She says yes – it’s always a possibility that people are going to buy your product and share it with their friends. That’s a risk she’s willing to take, because she knows she’s not Tony Robbins or another big name. People aren’t going to be going out of their way to pirate her work.

It's also free marketing – if her work gets shared with other people, that’s at least getting her name out there. If people like it, they may head to her site to learn more about her.

Breaking Launch Stereotypes with the Lazy Launch

Liz and I both want to bust the myth that a product launch needs to be an elaborate, fancy, intricate and perfect thing.

First of all, it's impossible to do that. You’re never going to have a perfect launch.

Second of all, trying to make sure your launch goes perfectly is a huge pain in the ass. Launching in general isn’t always fun, and the more complicated you make it the more stressful and time consuming it’s going to be.

We want to simplify it and normalize the idea that you can launch imperfectly and still get great results!

Liz tries to show people that they can go for a launch, without needing the giant platform for her product or the long sales page, and can still be successful with a low-cost offer that delivers a lot of value. In fact, there is a lot to be said about uncomplicating your product platform – for example, almost everyone has a google account, and can easily access google drive, which means they don’t need any additional accounts or log in information for Liz’s product.

Liz loves launching, because she does it simply. A simple launch can achieve great results, especially when you’re really authentic about it and acknowledge it with your customers.

What Liz Didn’t Do When She Launched Her Membership

There are a lot of things that are “normal” for people to do during a launch that Liz didn’t do. Here are some examples:

Liz didn’t have a major sales page for her product, instead she just used her cart to have a sales and checkout page
She didn’t write her usual long sales copy that’s 10,000 words (or more!)
She didn’t send out a long sales email sequence leading up to her product launch – instead she sent out the first launch email to her list, then sent out a second email the next day to anyone that clicked and didn’t buy
She didn’t send out any more emails until her next newsletter to her list, the following week
She didn’t set up a big social media strategy, aside from sharing one post on Facebook and on Instagram stories when people joined

What Liz Did Do When She Launched a Successful Membership

Liz got people hyped and excited about her membership launch through her Instagram feed by creating authentic content, like day in the life and behind the scenes stories
She encouraged people to celebrate with her on social media whenever she made a sale or reached a new goal
She asked people to share her launch and product on social media and got excited whenever she saw someone else sharing

For Liz, a big part of why her lazy membership launch worked is because she works so hard to turn her audience into friends and not just followers. She’s connected with members of her audience, she knows what they need and they trust her, so she can offer this product and be confident that it will be of value to them, without needing all the bells and whistles.

It also goes the other way, too. Lazy launches can help you connect with your audience on a deeper level too.

“When you have lazy launches and you don't give all this energy to trying to make your webinar work and and doing things that aren't in your zone of genius, you can spend the time getting to know your folks so that you can create products that just sell even when you don't have the webinar. And the cycle continues and it gets stronger and stronger.”

Get More From Liz

Check out Liz’s website: lizwilcox.com

Want to sign up for Liz’s Email Marketing Membership? Sign up here.

Listen to previous episodes of the Rebel Boss Ladies Podcast with Liz here:

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