The Power of the Post-Launch Period
Business owners pour so much energy and strategy into their pre-launch runaway and launch plans, but the post-launch period is often neglected leading to missed opportunities for revenue, growth, and insights.
My guest, Andrea Shah shares the 3 key moves we can make to improve your launch success today and in future launches.
In this episode, we talked about...
- why the post-launch period deserves as much consideration as your launch
- Andrea's top post-launch recommendations
- how to pick the perfect downsell offer
- who you need to hear from after your launch
- which metrics are helpful to use to improve your next launch
- what Andrea wished people knew about the post-launch period
...and much, much more
Things mentioned in this episode
Connect with Andrea Shah, Copywriter here
Learn more about Andrea Shah
Andrea Shah is a launch copywriter for fitness pros, wellness coaches and course creators.
Read the full transcript so you don't miss a thing
Andrea: So we all think about the basic stats, we all think about, how many sales did you make? What was the total, you know, and I say the total because there's not always like a one to one relationship between the price of your offer and the total sales you made, maybe there's some order bumps or something like that. So you want to figure out your final numbers. And then you also want to start looking at how many people click through to the sales page.
Sara: You're listening to the launch playbook podcast, the weekly podcast for service based business owners to discover the starts, stops and tools of transformation that go into launching their online offers. I'm your host, Sara Vartanian. And if you want to launch your ideas into the world faster, with more success and less burnout, well, friend, consider this show your secret playbook to get you there.
At the end of the launch, all the energy we've been running on computer out, leaving us focused on doing the bare necessities, turning on the waitlist page, shifting out a few links. And if we quickly skip to the program delivery, we're actually missing out on quite a few steps that matter to the success of our future launches. That's why today, I hope you'll grab your notebook while I chat with Andrea Shaw, a fellow launch copywriter as we talk all about the important post launch period. Hi, Andrea, welcome.
Andrea: Hello. Thank you for having me. I'm so excited to be here.
Sara: Oh my gosh, I'm so excited to chat about this post launch period. We have never actually dived into this in such a detail on the podcast. So I am really can't wait for today. But before we dig headfirst into our conversation, can you tell us a little bit about your story and how it brought you to launch copywriting?
Andrea: Absolutely. So I have in retrospect, looking back, I've always been a websites person, I was a teenager in the late 90s, early 2000s. And definitely kind of tinkered with HTML and writing my own website. So I've always been in that space. And when I graduated from graduate school, I took that experience. And I started working at a company that did website translation. And I did that for a few years, I was a project manager on some large scale website translation projects for travel companies Telecom. And then I had a baby. And as so many of us do, I looked for an alternative to the regular office job. And I ended up starting out translating and doing a little bit of copywriting here and there. And then in the six year sense, because we just celebrated a sixth birthday, I've pivoted to do a lot more copywriting and I got really into the launch space in the past year, year and a half, just discovering the long form sales copy that's needed to launch a project and kind of finding my niche with people who are doing courses in wellness and self development, helping them sell in a way that feels authentic to them sell in a way that doesn't feel salesy is how I always think of it.
Sara: Please. And you mentioned in our pre chat right before we hit record here, there was also a reason why you could have dug into this post launch period a little bit further, if you want to tell us about that.
Andrea: Sure. I mean, I'm a former project manager, and one of the things I learned is that you get to the end of a project, and it's really easy to kind of want to box it up and put it away and not think about it. But what I learned through experience is that if you do that, and you don't spend time thinking about the lessons, you've learned looking at your results, you tend to repeat the same mistakes later down the road. And the sooner you can kind of do I love this term, but it comes up a lot like a post mortem, the more you're going to get out of it, the fresher everything will be and then you can use those lessons and apply them to future projects, in this case feature launches future campaigns to really drive your own growth. But if you don't look into that sort of thing, and it can feel a little bit like Pandora's box, if you don't look into it, it can you can really miss out on some valuable lessons.
Sara: Right. So just to be sure we have all of this from the same page, just want to kind of recap what you're saying there. So we want to get on the post launch period is so important, like it shouldn't be dismissed so that we can really dig into those insights and use that information to move forward. That right, yes, perfect. So you mentioned earlier to me that you wish people knew that the amount of effort they put into the launch is just as important as putting in a good amount of effort into that post launch period. Can you dig into that a little bit further?
Andrea: Absolutely. I feel like a lot of times we spend so much time strategizing about pre launch content, the emails the sales page, but then we don't take time to figure out what worked and it's really understandable because a launch is exhausting. Anyone who launches knows how tiring launches can be and there's definitely an impulse to get your rest when they're done and to kind of put the whole thing to bed and not dig too deeply into it. But the reality is that if you don't dig deeply into it, you're missing all kinds have awesome insight, like figuring out which emails sold the most, there's more money to be made after a launch. If you know what to do and when to do it, there's opportunities to get really valuable feedback. But you have to have a plan in place for that you've kind of written down and thought about before you actually hit that post launch period. Otherwise, you're scrambling a little bit, you know, you take the sales page down, you glance at your stats, and if you don't have a plan in place, it's easy to end up missing out on some of these golden opportunities in the days and weeks after your launch.
Sara: Yes, so true. And I'm so excited about the recommendations, you're gonna share it because I know you, you let me in on them earlier to if you're listening, you want to get your notebook out, because Andrew is going to share her top post launch recommendations for us, and she's going to walk us through to them.
Andrea: Yeah, so I have three recommendations for your post launch period. And the first one in particular, you really want to think about while you're planning your launch emails, it happens after you take that sales page down, it happens after that cart, close email goes out. But in the next day to a couple of days, after you send your cart, close email, one of the things you can do is send a down sell email. And this isn't anything revolutionary, but it is the option and email that gives people who didn't purchase your course, or join your membership, the option to get in on your offering at a lower price point typically. So if you offer a course that's in the mid to high four figures, some of your audience just simply might not be there financially. And that's okay. But in fact, you want to affirm that they've made the right choice by not joining that's part of the downside is not to make them feel like they lost out on something, but to make them feel like you understand their choice for not joining. But you also know that they're interested in what you had to offer. So here's an alternative way that they can get in on some of your content some of your offers. And one thing that that does is if they buy in, it also builds a relationship where they might come back and take your course or your program when they're in a position to do so in the future. One of my favorite opportunities is I've seen a lot of course creators selling if you're selling a group coaching program, a program with a live element, one thing they do is they strip off the live content out of it and the coaching calls and in one to one sessions, and they just offer the module. So instead of a done with you sort of group coaching program, you now can just do kind of a DIY, self guided version of that. And they'll sell that for a fraction of the price, it's still usually a significant commitment. But it's nowhere near the original commitment of the full synchronous group coaching course. And so that can be a really valuable option, especially because time commitment can also be an issue for people. And so for the people who can't make calls once a week, the DIY option can
be really.
Sara: So how can folks know what is their perfect dental product or offer after launch?
Andrea: I think it's really useful to look at what the price point on your original offer was. And to try to understand, go back and look at the objections that you first compiled when you were building your strategy. And figure out is price going to be the main objection for some people is time going to be the main objection for some people is readiness going to be the main objection for some people, there might be some people on your list and in your funnel, who love what you're offering, but there's simply not at a point in their business or the personal journey where they're able to invest in your product where it makes sense for them. So for those people, you might suggest something that simply an earlier stage of your program and earlier you know, it could be a digital product, it could be a workshop, I have a client I worked with who's down sell, we decided to make a very simplified version of her course and introductory like a one on one level program. She already offered it as a separate standalone product and it had been a bonus with her launch. But for the down sell, she offered a discount on that, so that people who wanted to nail the introductory aspect of the program could do that could join in and buy that and then when the next launch rolled around, they might feel better positioned to join her full fledged program.
Sara: I like that what we did in our launch to launch a book club earlier in the year, just telling listeners how we decided was our launch event was sales page hot seats. So people came in because they're interested in the sales page. And then from there we of course try to welcome them into the launch labor club where they get all the launch copy templates plus copy feedback like they would have experienced on those hot seats. And so people who didn't buy our down sell was my sales page template so they could still get like the training on how to write a sales page and the template for how to do it the workbook we did since they came in interested in that but then of course we're able to join for whatever reason some people were saying times some are saying many some just one of the sales page and all the other coffee. So that's how we chose our dance help. They're like really linked to the launch event.
Andrea: Yeah There's and there's so many options you can choose, it doesn't have to be there's no, nothing's written in stone, let's put it that way. Like you mentioned, the templates can be really appealing. a simplified version of a course could be appealing. For some people, the right option might be to offer a one to one coaching sessions at a discounted rate. You know, if you're offering a high ticket program, and people aren't able to commit, you and I have probably both seen programs, masterminds that come in with a five figure price tag, people who aren't willing or able to commit for that might still be interested in joining a one to one coaching call for half an hour an hour and using that as an option to learn a little bit more from you without having to make the high investment to.
Sara: Absolutely. And I really like how you mentioned that people who buy that down, tell me then more Be ready down the road to take the next step with you as well.
Andrea: Yes, absolutely. I don't ever like to write people off after one March, especially if you're segmenting your list so that people have the option to opt out of your launch emails, and someone sticks with you through the launch sequence. That is someone who's really interested in what you have to offer, it just wasn't the right time for them. And so you want to try to meet them where they are. And just nurture them, you know, understand, I always like to think of it as like planting seeds. It's not really a great analogy, because you never know when these seeds are gonna sprout, which technically you do with like real flowers and stuff. But the seeds could sprout anywhere down the road, and someone could come back later on and buy your product. And so you still want to encourage them.
Sara: Absolutely. Now for those downsville emails, how many should we be sending? Because I know a lot of clients I speak to, there's, there's sometimes and maybe you've had this too, there's some hesitation around. Now we've already sent out all these opencart emails, we've sent maybe eight or 10 emails over a period of five days, and now more aggressive. So how many should we send. And let's start with the timing of those a little bit.
Andrea: So I like to keep it to one or two, I really don't like to do a lot. This is probably like blasphemy to some people. But I think you absolutely can be in someone's inbox too much. And especially if they are experiencing any kind of FOMO where they really wanted to do something and they couldn't for whatever reason they couldn't make it work. You don't want to press too hard on that kind of sore spot, you know, you want to give them an opportunity. What I would say that you don't want to push too hard on this one that you know a couple of emails, maybe a social post that mentions it or something like that, but I wouldn't I wouldn't go you know, I don't think you want to follow up a 10 email launch sequence with another six emails about your down sell. I like to keep it pretty light for for people who are already a little bit fatigued by having stuck through an entire launch sequence.
Sara: Agree I usually like to go with two I used to like the one announcing it a few later. And then just one reminder. And we're done.
Andrea: Yeah, and time limited. I think that's the other thing is that especially if you're offering a discount, or a limited event, you want to make it a limited time thing. You don't just want to offer a product from your shop, typically, without discounting the price or anything like that, because then you're just sending an email to say I have this thing, right fine to talk about your home, right? But you want to incentivize it a little bit.
Sara: Okay, so that is your first post launch recommendation. Let's move on to the second one.
Andrea: Sure. So my second post launch recommendation is to send a survey and the more you can segment to send this survey, the first thing I'm going to say is, the more the more you can segment to make sure that the people who received the survey are the people who didn't buy your product, the more information you're going to get out of it, it can be really beneficial to talk to people who bought, what my preference is usually to talk to them after they've had some time to use the program or the membership. So as far as serving immediately in the in the post launch period, I like to talk to people who chose not to buy. And I like to ask them a couple questions. And again, this is something where you're asking someone for a favor. So I like to keep it relatively light a short series of questions. So you need to think carefully through the kinds of questions you want to ask them. And you can have a couple different goals with the survey. One Goal can be to tweak your launch strategy and your launch copy for the future and to get feedback for that. And the other goal that can be really beneficial is to shape future offers, you know that a certain percentage of people didn't buy this offer. And so your goal may be to learn if this offer isn't meeting their needs, what offer would serve them better, you probably want to pick one of the two goals and shape your your questionnaire around it. And then you want to ask a few questions. And I've seen people ask as many as 12. Again, this is somewhere where if you're asking people to do like free response questions, I like to keep those to four or five, six, maybe a couple multiple choice questions, especially to understand. For example, if you're selling a course, you might ask someone what line of work they're in, and one or two other demographic questions, but I like to keep it something that can be completed in five to 10 minutes. I don't want to go too intense with it.
Sara: And what other type of questions would you suggest we ask what are some of them Most, the ones that you've asked with your clients have been really insightful.
Andrea: I have on my favorite question, and it's usually when you kind of want to phrase as bluntly as possible is aside from price. What's the number one reason you didn't do this? Because all we'll use price as our number one objection, if someone gives us a chance, I didn't have the money, it costs a lot. But that's always covering for something else. There's almost always when someone uses price, there's a message behind that the message might be that I thought the price was too high for the offer. Or the message might be that I didn't have the time. So I didn't want to commit this amount of money. So when you already tell them, Listen, I know, money is an issue. It's an issue for all of us. Can we move past that and talk about other issues? I think that that can sometimes get to the bottom of some of people's main concerns. And then you can ask them some questions. Again, think back to the objections. And the frequently asked questions and that sort of thing that you use to shape your launch strategy and your launch copy, and try to pinpoint are some of these objections, things that caused you issues. Another one is, if we could offer something different? What would you expect to see, you know, what would you like to see from us in the future? What could we have done differently that might have made you interested in the product that sort of questions?
Sara: So do you recommend a balance of like multiple choice and open ended or mostly open ended?
Andrea: I would say I like I said, I like to use multiple choice for a couple demographic questions. So for example, if you sell a copywriting course, you might find it beneficial to ask a multiple choice question or two to find out are people, service providers, coaches, other copywriters, so you can categorize their responses, think about your avatars in the future. But then once you get beyond a couple multiple choice demographic questions, I usually like to leave the rest open ended and give people a chance to respond.
Sara: And then you were saying that we want to send this survey out to the people who didn't buy Are there any other further ways to qualify, it should only be people who, let's say, clicked the sales page and didn't buy or should be anybody who was receiving those launch emails that didn't purchase.
Andrea: I feel like it depends on the size of your list. If you have a relatively small list, you might just want to send it to anyone who was receiving those launch emails, but didn't ultimately purchase. If you have a big list, especially you know, if you're a heavy hitter with, say, 100,000 or more people, you might want to narrow it down a little bit further to people who did go to that sales page, who did click through at some point in time, and I have definitely received recently, several surveys that specifically say that that I see, you click through to the sales page. And I wanted to understand why you didn't buy. So I think people are commonly doing that. But I would say you don't want to narrow it so much that you got too few responses to be really useful. You know, it's good if you can get some quantitative data on top of your qualitative data.
Sara: And speaking of that, is there a magic number for how many responses would be ideal to get that would be helpful for us for insights.
Andrea: I don't necessarily think so I think any insight you can get can be useful. And one thing that I like to ask is to gather people's contact information, and then to ask them if they'd be comfortable talking with you more about their buying process and their decision making around your offer in the future. So that even if you don't get a ton of responses, you could theoretically go back or your copywriter or your launch strategist could go back and interview those people who indicated they were open to it and get a little bit more in depth with them. That's one way even if you don't get a ton of responses that you can delve deeper. But no, I wouldn't say that there's a maximum or a minimum number of responses that you need. One thing I have seen with some of my clients is that because you're asking this of people who aren't fully committed to you, they haven't invested money in this product. Sometimes they need a bit of an incentive. So I've seen people offering like an Amazon gift card for $15. Or to enter people in a drawing or some kind of giveaway. And I don't think that that's a bad idea. I think it can, you know, just increase your number of responses a little bit. And people like to feel compensated for their time, especially, I mean, I get, this is the thing I've been thinking a lot about, we get so many requests for feedback in our everyday lives. If you buy a car, if you buy milk at Target, there's a request on the receipt for a survey. We're just constantly getting asked for feedback. And so I think when you incentivize that a little bit it softens people to you.
Sara: I love that idea. I think something we've done the timber surveys in my own business is sent out like saying we're going to draw like we're going to give the draw three coffee cards, maybe you're gonna be one to get one for that. And then whenever we do do interviews, but for my own clients or from within my own work, we give them coffee cards for their time.
Andrea: It's well it's easy to do and I love coffee cards especially because you can you can frame it nicely you can say you know thanks for your time while you're filling this out, enjoy a cup of coffee on me like that
Sara: And it's pretty easy to by them for different people different that live in different areas and things like that.
Andrea: Yeah, that's that's one of my favorites. And I think it depends on the size of your list too, right? Yeah, we have a huge list, say, you know, you might want to give away a free power hour session with you or something like that, like, that's a really huge incentive, even if it's a drawing, people will do it. If you're working with a small list, maybe you feel more comfortable throwing $5 gift cards to every respondent, it kind of depends on your budget, but it's definitely worth budgeting for its adoption.
Sara: for sure. And I'm guessing too, like if you maybe if you had templates, or you had some kind of product, you could give them maybe a special incentive off that product. Or maybe, or maybe there's even like a special training in your archives or something you could pull out, I'm thinking now as we're talking and give it to people that's like, not easily accessible. There's other ways to gift without spending the money as well, too, right?
Andrea: Because I mean, I actually really like this suggestion you just gave him because I come across trainings all the time, where it's like, Wow, this looks like it probably was awesome. And I missed the boat by six months or a year, you know, when it's been taken off the market. And so yeah, it's a great option to just kind of reintroduce some something from your archives as a little bonus, or something like that. So that's another option. It doesn't have to be cash in any specific form. There's a lot that you can do to incentivize people by giving them your time by digging into your archives. There's a lot of creative options.
Sara: And I know one question that will come up will be will, what if people say something mean, in the survey? Like, how can people deal with that? Have you ever seen really terrible mean feedback? I mean, honestly, I haven't. That's something I try to always reassure my clients about, but like, how do we deal with reading that feedback around why someone didn't buy our product?
Andrea: Yeah, I haven't seen anything really mean. I mean, I've occasionally given a non buyer survey and gotten some very candid feedback, not necessarily mean, but feedback, I was the one I'm gonna backtrack a little bit and say one thing is, when you are asking these questions, it's tempting to use like a template or something like that. But I think you'll also want to exercise some sensitivity based on the type of problem people are trying to address with the program. So the example I'll give is that we send out an on buyer survey to people on someone's list, it wasn't a post launch survey, it was just a non buyer survey to their list in general. And it asked about like a champagne moment. And you've I'm sure you're familiar with the phrase, you know, the idea that you achieve this goal, and you pop a bottle of champagne, and you're relaxing and enjoying yourself. And one of the salient pieces of feedback we got was like, hey, in my line of work, we're just trying to make it through the day and a lot of us don't make a ton of money. And while I think your offers really valuable, this doesn't come across like the we've raised this question doesn't come across as particularly sensitive to some of our needs. And so that was actually a really valuable lesson. Like, it made me kind of open my eyes and be like, okay, yeah, we usually formulate these questions the same way. But maybe we need to reevaluate how we're asking them for some things online business owners might love the pop the champagne moment, but people who do work that is a little bit more, I guess, emotionally charged or challenging, might find that to be not an adequate metaphor. That's probably the harshest feedback I've ever gotten. I've never gotten I've never seen anyone say anything super mean, I think usually if they're really annoying, they just don't take the time.
Sara: I agree. That's my thing, too. But that's a really good lesson that you like they learned from that response.
Andrea: Yeah, absolutely. And and I think there's always um, there there are always a few, like occasionally grouchy people, but they can be useful to like, occasionally, you know, there's some real gems buried
Sara: Great will take you into that. I know that sometimes comes up when I when I talk with folks right about something that I would like, it's hard, it can be hard to receive feedback, but I think it is the way we frame it. And then the way we decide to look at it, like the lens in which we view it.
Andrea: And if you've got a troll ish response, I mean, you can discard it. Like, you know, there are people out there on the internet who don't always have anything nice to say. And at the end of the day, you can kind of just let them go, you know, you can, you don't have to pay attention to a disproportionately unkind response, you can delete it and move on.
Sara: Exactly. So tell us about your third recommendation.
Andrea: The third recommendation I have is to create yourself a spreadsheet or a document of some kind and gather the results from your launch. So we all think about the basic stats, we all think about how many sales did you make? What was the total, you know, and I say the total because there's not always like a one to one relationship between the price of your offer and the total sales you need. Maybe there's some order bumps or something like that. So you want to figure out your final numbers. And then you also want to start looking at how many people click through to the sales page. And maybe you want to look at the open rates for the emails in your sequence and the click through rates especially click through rates are becoming more important than email because we're all kind of adjusting to some of these new Apple rules about privacy and that sort of thing. And I think open reads will eventually be an important number again, but we all kind of need to figure out what the New Normal is there, but click through rates and figure out if you were the sort of person who is setting up regular posts on Instagram or Facebook, and you're using UTM code. So you can actually track who goes to the sales page based off your posts, you can figure out even which posts drove the most traffic. And then you can look at your strategy. And you can say, Wow, this email really underperformed, we need to visit the revisit the copy. Or you can say, especially if you only want a couple times a year, if you had some really high performing pieces of content on social media, repurpose those, you don't have to reinvent the wheel for every single launch, I think it's really important to know what worked, and then where you need to kind of go back in and dig around. And so start gathering some data, you can get really granular with data, but you don't necessarily have to just look at those open rates, click through rates, if you do any kind of heat maps on your sales page, and just give yourself an overview. And it's a little bit like, it can be a little bit tough medicine to swallow. Sometimes I think to look at your own statistics. But it's also really important because that's where you're going to figure out where you can improve. And if you work with a copywriter or a launch strategist, they should be asking you for this information. And then the other reason I want people to gather it is so that the next time they hire someone to help them out with a launch, you can hand it over and say, here's all the data from my previous launch. So now that we're tweaking the strategy, you know, what didn't work before and what worked great, because if something worked great, you don't want them to change the parts that were absolutely on fire, you know that had people jumping into your sales page and hitting buy right away.
Sara: It's a really good point. So when we're looking at all this data, and you're saying that there's no way it can be a lot of things that we could change a lot of information, how do we decide how many of them to implement so that we can actually then track like, which ones really push the needle? Like, do we do them all? Are there a few that you would suggest focusing on first?
Andrea: I would say if you have any emails that really underperformed, that's an easy way to change things up, you could split test them with a new subject line, or you could just change the subject line. And again, with things like split testing, it all kind of depends on how big your audiences, right? If you've got a huge audience, go for it, split test stuff. If you've got a smaller audience, maybe you just make the change for this launch and see. So subject lines are a really easy way, changing the text of an email that underperformed. Even some little design changes could make a big difference, like you know, do I need to make the click through like I have a button? Do I need to make the button bigger? If I did a click through link as a CTA, maybe I should try a button. I wouldn't advise changing everything all at once. I think you want to be careful not to change the things that are working unless you're completely overhauling your strategy with the help of someone who's really advising you to do that. But if you're just tinkering by yourself, or if you're asking someone to come in and make a few tweaks to your sequence, you do want to know what worked. Because when copy works, that works when when a sales strategy works, that works. You don't want to mess with what's golden.
Sara: Right? And then when you're saying about split testing, will you tell folks a little bit more how to do that like is that they need certain tech to do that, like, how would they go about that?
Andrea: Yeah, you can usually do that within your email provider. And usually, for example, when I'm providing copy for a client, I almost always provide them with two subject lines. And then they can either send the email out to half their list with one and half the list with the other or they can try one. And then the less advanced version of split testing is trying to get one launch with one subject line. And then the next launch trying it with a different one and seeing what worked. And the same is true of your sales page. If you wanted to get that fancy with it. You can in theory have different versions of your sales page that people are directed to from different places. And you can randomize that even so that see you change just the headline, you can randomize it. So 50% of people see one headline 50% of people see the other there are there is tech that you can do that with, you probably want to look into having someone who's experienced with the launch tech help you set that up so that you get the randomization right, and that you know that when you're looking at data on this, you've actually sent it out to half and half rather than just cross your fingers and hoping for the best and hope it wasn't the right people.
Sara: And let's go back to that email format. So when you're saying to test the subject lines, because let's say an email underperformed, so underperform would mean that it really didn't have the same open rates or click through rate as the other emails let's say that it was underperformed in terms of like your data. So that's your measurement that you're looking at how Okay, so overall, they all perform like this. And let's say these two are quite a lot lower. That's how we identify it.
Andrea: And I think I really recommend looking at it within the context of your own data and not saying this is the industry baseline and if you need to look at the industry baseline If you don't have a baseline of your own, if you're a little bit confused, that's fine. Although what you're going to find out about industry, baselines can really vary. And you don't always know what data set someone's pulling from to make those generalizations, which is why I like people to use their own contacts. So if you have an email sequence of 10 emails, and virtually all of them had saved 15%, open rate, and then one of them had a 5%, open rate, you still might want to look at that one and say, Okay, I was doing I was acient, with all these others, where can I improve. And that's the thing too, right? Like, you could have a 60%, open rate, and then one email with a 40% open rate, which isn't bad, but you still might want to improve on that one, you know, every little incremental improvement can pay off down the line.
Sara: And then the reason we focus on the subject lines is because that is what helps to subject lines are what get people to open.
Andrea: You can also play around with preview text, which I I see on my phone, and in Google, not everyone does. But that can also be something to experiment with. And of course, you can experiment with the text of an email, if it totally bombed, feel free to change the text of an email and amazing subject line still might not salvage an email that doesn't fit with the rest of your launch sequence. But I would Yeah, I would say you can you can experiment with the text of an email to and I mean, the nice thing about an email sequences, we send out a lot of them. If one of them doesn't work, you have room to experiment with that and and still keep the ones that did work.
Sara: I love that permission to scale. It's not like it's not the end of the world if one doesn't work, because we have that's why we have a sequence, right? It's like lots of opportunities.
Andrea: Absolutely. And it's not even I mean, I think the other thing, and I'm sure you'll agree, if a launch doesn't work if you don't get the results you want. Sometimes that's data that you need to take in and process but it's still useful data. And in some ways, you can probably learn more from a launch that didn't work at all than a launch that kind of went okay, you know that you can close the results you want. But you didn't knock it out of the park. That's not always as instructive as a launch where you're like, wow, okay, clearly something was off about the messaging or whatever I need to reevaluate here. It's all data as far as I'm concerned.
Sara: Agreed. So you shared a ton of insights for us. But if it boiled down to one, what is the one thing you wish people knew about the post launch period.
Andrea: I would definitely say that if there's one thing I knew, I wish people knew about the post launch period, it's just not to shy away from your data and to to get yourself at rest you need to celebrate if you had a successful launch, even to kind of mourn a little bit if you didn't have the launch that you want and give yourself time and space for that. But then also go back and dig in and learn from it. It's data can be a little bit intimidating, like we talked about with the surveys. It's always a little bit nerve racking to find out what people thought of something, but you can't improve if you don't know what the issue was in the first place. And so all this data, the surveys, all of that is a way to really dig in and get better the next time.
Sara: Amazing. Well, thank you so much, Andrea, for joining us, Steve for this really important chat about this post launch period. I'm sure the folks will find so useful. I was jotting down some notes as we were talking to as lunch copywriter. I can always learn more from other fellow lunch copywriters. I appreciate these conversations. Will you please share with the folks listening how we can learn more about you and potentially work with you?
Andrea: Absolutely. You can find me on my website, which is Andrea shot calm. And I'm also on Instagram. I'll give you my Instagram handle to drop in the show notes. Sarah, I am around for lunch coffee packages and VIP days.
Sara: Perfect. So yeah, all of those will be in the show notes. You can check Andrea out and definitely talk to her about getting some help with your launch and your post launch period. Thank you so much for joining us, Andrea.
Andrea: Thank you for having me. It was a great conversation.
Sara: Thanks for tuning in to the launch playbook podcast. If you want to get weekly launch secrets in your ears. I hope you'll hit subscribe on iTunes so you'll never miss an episode. Because who knows? It could reveal just the thing you've been looking for to make your next launch a success. And be sure to leave a five star review on iTunes telling me how this episode inspired your launch plans. Until next time, keep putting your big ideas out into the world. I'm rooting for you.
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