AL 019: Can I Earn More with Flash Sales and Discounts?

AL 019: Can I Earn More with Flash Sales and Discounts?

Liz Wilcox: What’s up? Liz Wilcox here, and I am so excited you’re listening to AskLiz. I think this is the 19th one we have done, and I’m actually going to take a question from the community, not one that is recorded. Back in July, I did this big Christmas in July flash sale, and I did this really fun sort of strategy around the wait list, and people have been asking me about that.

So I wanted to share it today. I’ve got the wait list page pulled up, and I wanna … I just wanna start with what it is. So I basically said, “Hey, we’re gonna have this wait list, and you got to be on the wait list if you want to see the sale.” So I have something on my personal brand site called the Annual Pass, and that’s where you buy a year of my membership. My membership’s 9 bucks times 12 months. That’s $108.

So it doesn’t seem like a deal, right? But when you join the Annual Pass, when you join for a year, you get access to all my other products for free, and that’s what makes it super-duper worth it, right? ‘Cause I’ve got, you know, different courses and workshops, and I do live events during the year and live cohorts and stuff, but you can only get those if you are an Annual Pass holder.

And I only sell the Annual Pass three times a year, in March, a little flash sale in July, and then a big launch for Black Friday. So this flash sale, I noticed over the years, I … This is the 13th time I have launched this, or it would have been, will have been the 13th time. And I noticed the last few times that I had launched my Annual Pass, sales were steady, but sales were not growing, right?

I … You know, the first eight times, every time I launched, it was bigger and better than the last. And let’s say the 11th, tw- the 10th, 11th, 12th time I launched, sales just weren’t as expected. So my word of the year for 2026 is play. So I was like, “Okay, how can I make my Christmas in July sale,” ’cause I’ve always called it that, “how can I make this more playful?”

So I decided to do this wait list, and again, you can only get the Annual Pass if you are on the wait list. I’m not gonna send this out to my full list. And again, going with that, with that theme of play, I came up with a lot of different fun stuffs that I wanna show you or share with you.

So first, pre-purchase bonuses. Have you ever heard of such a thing? So pre-purchase bonuses were basically you were gonna get all of this stuff without even having to buy. So first and foremost, I was giving away a free trip to New York City. As you know, Pat and I just recently, on October 1st, last week, co-hosted an event all around collaborations and creating content.

That was in New York City, so I wanted to give away a free ticket to that and a free trip to New York City. So that in itself, you know, you might be listening and thinking, whoa, and of course, that, you know, had a cap. I think we spent $2,000 or $3,000 on that, but I was really, really excited to give that away, and only people, if you joined the waitlist, you were eligible to get that free trip.

Another thing that I did was give away five golden tickets. So if you joined the waitlist, randomly throughout three weeks, the waitlist was only three weeks long, randomly throughout that, I would give away golden tickets, and it was like Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory, you know, big fun, thrilling, and yes, a little mysterious, right?

So five golden tickets were floating around for waitlisters to snag before July 23rd. That was the day of the sale. But like you didn’t know what was in the chocolate factory in Willy Wonka, that story, you didn’t know what the golden ticket was, and it ended up being a bunch of like personalized me writing your emails kind of stuff, but I didn’t reveal that until after the fact.

Again, the word of the year is play. I also gave email feedback, so everyone on the wait list had an opportunity to fill out a survey and send me one of their emails, and I did live feedback throughout the event, meaning I would go live on YouTube. I would say, “Oh, you know, this is Shahar’s email. This is what I suggest.

This is Matt’s. This is what I suggest for him.” And literally every single person that I provided that live email feedback for ended up purchasing my annual pass. So I loved, loved, loved this. And then of course, when you joined the wait list, you also had a voice. So you got to help decide what features, what new features were gonna come to the annual pass.

But the best thing of it all, as far as pre-purchase bonuses goes, was something I called my Christmas Miracle Meter, and that was, depending on how many people joined the wait list, that was how many bonuses you got to unlock. Now, this is just so, so fun. So at 250, they unlocked a mini course on list building.

At 500 people on the wait list, they unlocked an email emergency kit. At 750, they unlocked my Steal My Calendar pack. And the beautiful thing of this, we went all the way to 2,000, was it got people really excited. “Oh my gosh, you know, I gotta tell my friends,” right? People were sharing this wait list out, but also all of the things that the bonuses unlocked were pieces of the puzzle inside the membership.

For example, that list building mini course, that was something you already get when you purchase the annual pass. So not only were they getting excited they were getting these, this free stuff, they were also getting a preview of the membership, which was so super, super duper awesome. Loved that so, so much.

Now, again, with the, you know, it was Christmas themed, right? Christmas in July. So I actually had somebody in my membership reach out to me and said, “Hey, I’m actually a professional Santa Claus. Do you need anything from me?” So I paid him, I think it was he got a free annual pass, and then I paid him a- another 100 or 200 euro, and he made a landing page video and a sales page video, and that was so super fun.

So y’all, lean into the fun in your business. You will see results. So speaking of results, this is what happened. The sale was 48 hours only, but again, I wanted to lean into the fun, I wanted to lean into the waitlist. And so the very first email you got, so if you signed up for the waitlist, let’s say two weeks before the actual sale, right, whenever, time before the actual sale, you got a special offer and it said, “Hey, I’m gonna offer you this annual pass. It’s normally 108 bucks. You can get it 50% off right this second if you click this link, but you’ve only got 15 minutes, so do it now.” That landed me 250 sales before the actual sale started. So I got a lot of new customers, and what you’ve got to know about me is my– the metric that I care about the most is percentage of customers.

So I know if you give me a dollar now, you’ll give me $1,000 later, right? That’s the confidence level that I have in my ability to get you results, right? And so whether you’re paying me w- you know, whatever amount, I’m gonna get you results, and you’re gonna wanna come back, right? And may we all have that mindset.

Write that down. You gotta have that mindset too. So I don’t mind doing discounts, especially, you know, this is a sort of like fun waitlist. You know, we’re leaning into play here, and so I was like, “Well, let me just play with it. Let me see what I can see.” And so we made 250 sales before the event even went off. And then in that 48 hours, we ended up making an additional 100 sales.

Now, there were about 1,796 people on the wait list, and we said we made 350 sales. So I, I didn’t do the math. Let me go off script here. 350 over 1796. So we were able to convert 19.4 people on the wait list. So nearly 20%, we’ll just go with 19%, 19% of the wait list purchased. That feels incredible to me, and that is why I said, “Hey, you guys have been asking this in the community. Let me bring it to the broader audience with AskLiz,” because wow. Again, again, those pre-purchase bonuses I think made a big impact with those 100 sales and getting people to click over, you know, on the sales page. The 50% off, we made a crap ton of sales with that, right? And at first I thought, “Oh gosh, I wish I wouldn’t have done 50% off,” but who’s to say that they would have stuck around for three to one week to actually then get the, the real sales emails, right?

So I’m super happy. And again, 350 brand new customers, that’s amazing. And then as far as the, the, you know, I said almost 1,800 people on the wait list, 995 of them were brand new to LizWilcox.com, brand new on my email list. And so not only was it a way to gain 350 brand new customers, holy crap, that’s a lot of customers, it was a way of growing my email list too.

So don’t forget, launching can be a way to grow your email list too. I think the golden tickets were also super fun. I had a lot of new people that had joined the wait list. Again, people I didn’t know joined the wait list, and they were replying throughout the wait list when I would announce, “Oh, golden ticket winner Will, golden ticket winner Shahara.”

They’d say, “Oh, dang it. I don’t even know what it is, and I want it so bad.” So I think the golden ticket, if you wanna steal that idea, please do so. It worked really well. And then of course that live feedback, every single person that got live feedback ended up purchasing. So if there’s a way you can adjust that for your own business, that would be incredible too.

All right. That is the story of the wait list. I’m definitely doing this again for Black Friday. Black Friday is coming up in what? Like six, less than seven weeks. So be on the lookout for our Black Friday wait list. I cannot wait to have even more fun over here on the SPI side of things. All right. That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it.

I’ll see you next week, my friend.

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