3 lessons from my 1st digital product launch

Happy Wednesday! Welcome back to The Copywriting Gig. 

I'm Jim Hamilton. Over the past 7 years, my copy has contributed to $30m in sales for clients across health, biz opp, and B2B. 

Each week, I share 1 actionable tip to help you sell more stuff online.

I just wrapped up my first product launch.

- 5 weeks of prep work
- 11 launch emails
- 17 social media posts
- 1 live presentation

Overall, I’m happy with how it went.

I had a ton of fun putting everything together…

And even though I’ve started several businesses in the past and sold everything from t-shirts to jewelry to personal injury leads…

There’s a part of me that finally felt like a “real” entrepreneur afterward.

Which was super cool.

Now, with all that said, I did miss my sales target.

And one thing I learned from a mentor is that it’s okay to miss your target…

But it’s never okay to not know why.

So today, I’m revealing 3 lessons learned from the experience and how I’m going to carry those insights forward into my next launch.

Let’s dive in.

Read time: 4 minutes and 2 seconds

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Results From Launching 15-Minute Emails That Sell

Let’s start with a quick recap of my launch — by the numbers:

• Followers: 3,050 (LinkedIn)

• Subscribers: 750

• # of emails sent: 11

• # of days: 8

• # of sales: 18

• Total revenue: $900

Here are the stats from my shopping cart

My goal was to convert 5% of the list, which would’ve been 38 sales.

I fell well short of that, coming in at 18 sales.

I have few theories on why.

Let’s get into it…

1) It was my first time selling something to my audience

Success in business comes down to managing expectations.

And it’s hard to predict the outcome anytime you make a significant update to those expectations.

Up until now, everything I’ve put out to my audience has been free.

This was my first time putting out a paid offer.

So while I know converting 5% of the list was a reasonable benchmark to shoot for, based on my experience with clients…

You can’t get a good read on audience quality until you put something paid in front of them.

It’s the catch-22 all creators struggle with:

- Should you build your audience first, then monetize? 
- Or try to monetize from the beginning?

Ultimately, I think monetizing earlier is the better move because it means everyone who comes after will be conditioned to expect some things are for sale.

They’re bought in on the updated expectations.

Not the original version where everything is free.

But with that said, you still need a critical mass to launch something in the first place.

So while I knew this would be an X factor…

I think the timing was right.

Plus now I’ve got a benchmark (converting 2.5% of the list) to beat next time.

2) I drove traffic from email straight to cart page

My goal with this launch was simple:

Validate the offer with as little work upfront as possible.

This is why I positioned it as a live training…

So I could promote it first, then deliver it second.

(or not, if no one ended up buying)

Another choice I made to minimize upfront work was skipping the sales page.

I left it to my emails to do all the heavy lifting…

And set up a simple cart page to collect payments instead.

I have no doubt I’d have made more sales if I went to the effort of writing a full sales page…

But this represented a time cost I was unwilling to pay.

With that said, seeing a sub-10% conversion rate on the cart page tells me I need to do better.

So moving forward, I’m thinking about how I can split the difference so the cart page does a bit more selling…

Without going all-in on a full sales page.

3) I failed to close the awareness gap around personality-driven emails

This was a strategic blunder on my part.

For the past 6 months, I’ve taken a strictly content-driven approach to my newsletter.

I’ve done this intentionally…

Because my #1 goal has been to grow my audience on social media.

I don’t regret that, per se…

But it came at a cost I didn’t realize right away.

Because when it came time to promote on an offer teaching people how to write personality-driven emails that sell…

It became clear most people didn’t know what that meant.

And I don’t blame them.

I haven’t been sending personality-driven emails to my list.

So why would they?

I did try to do some educating in my newsletter and on social media through the pre-launch and launch…

But I wasn’t leading by example.

I violated the golden rule of “show, don’t tell.”

Now, the good news is that this didn’t totally torpedo my launch.

I still got 18 people to pull out their credit card.

Which is a huge win.

However, some crucial insights bubbled to the surface over the course of this launch that have major implications for my brand and positioning going forward.

I see a big opportunity here…

To carve out a broader lane for myself…

By pioneering a new approach that combines content and copywriting to unlock the best of both.

I’m hella excited about it.

So look out for more details about this pivot in the weeks to come.

Putting It All Together

3 reasons why I missed my sales target on my first product launch:

1) First time selling something to my audience
2) I drove traffic from email straight to cart page
3) I failed to close the awareness gap around personality-driven emails

That’s it.

Thanks for reading!

See you next week.

Jim Hamilton

P.S:

I couldn’t fit all my takeaways from the launch into this newsletter.

But if you’re curious…

I wrote ‘em all up in a Google doc + recorded a quick video to share more of my thoughts.

So if you’re thinking about your first or next product launch…

And are interested in some of the more nitty gritty tactical stuff…

Hit the link below to check it out:

My 15ME post-launch analysis (deep dive)

And if you have any other questions, feel free to hit reply and let me know :)