There’s a badge of honor often talked about in the online marketing world about the elusive Million Dollar Launch. 

The truth is -  I’m not that competitive, but ever since I’ve been doing launches I’ve thought - yeah, that would be cool to do a 7-figure launch.

Ya know - I was curious about it! But I held it lightly.

To be honest, I wasn’t interested in doing a Million Dollar Launch (capitalised for dramatics) if it meant spending $900k on ads, affiliate commissions and team costs (I’ve seen this happen). I didn’t need it for ego reasons (profitability is way more important to me)… but…. 

The reality is that there aren’t that many women in the online space that have done it, so the truth is, it was a secret goal. 

Our previous two PLF-style affiliate launches hit $750k each so I thought it was only a matter of time… 

You can read up on the lessons from our first big launch in 2016 here. 

The last few years online launches got more complicated as everyone got more distracted and anxious online. 

I also wanted to simplify our business and so I closed down our affiliate program and brought our Facebook ads in-house. I was worried we wouldn’t be able to do a simple, chilled 7-figure launch without them. 

Silly Denise, I should have read my own book! 

Funnily enough - simplifying immediately increased our revenue. Our 2019 launch grew 70% to $841k USD. Pretty close… actually over a $1m in Aussie Dollars. 

You can read a review of our “half the work, double the profit” launch here.

After about 8 years of launching, 6,000+ people helped in our programs and millions of dollars in launch revenue, maybe 2020 was the year for our Million Dollar Launch? 

Read on to find out … (spoiler alert YES)

First up - we didn’t try and reinvent the wheel - we followed the advice of our launch mentor Jeff Walker and implemented his Product Launch Formula program.

Each year Jeff runs a free live masterclass all about how to launch and what’s working in online launches. 

2020 Results

We don’t share these numbers to show off – there are so many more people doing bigger and better launches than us, we’re just sharing the real stuff. 

We hope you find just one piece of practical or inspiring info to help your next launch be more chilled, prosperous and fun! 

(BTW Mark wrote most of this article. He loves long articles and statistics. If you have techy / launch questions about anything message him on insta @mark_dt not me, cos I’ll be like “I dunno”) 

Let’s get into this… dive in below.

2020 launch quick stats

*All numbers in this article are in USD. 

• 407 new customers
• 24% growth
• Revenue: $1.04m (about $1.5m Australian Dollars based on the Jan 2020 exchange rate). 

After 10+ launches we had hit 7-figures without affiliate partners or a massive team!! Yay. 

The real, real numbers

Here’s the thing most online marketers don’t tell you. When you do a 7-figure launch, you don’t get all that money straight away and some of it you might never get! 

Cash received in January: $263k

20% of our sales were “pay-in-full” meaning we had 324 people on 6 or 12 month payments plans. 

So we actually received $263k of cash with around $70,000 per month in payment plan revenue each month for the rest of 2020. 

Costs:

As we had no affiliate commission to pay this was a highly profitable launch. Apart from small investments in tech and video editing, our main expense was advertising, where we spent $90,000. (Another thing people don’t tell you) 

The main sales tool for this launch was a webinar, for which we had 8,000 people register. These leads were from our list, warm traffic and cold traffic and we achieved an Earning Per Lead of $120+ which is very strong. 

Let’s look at 7 key tactics we used to have our best launch ever:  

1. Juicy Offer

We tweaked our offer from the previous year to make it as attractive as possible. We created a juicy, irresistible Money Breakthrough package:

• Combining our 3 best courses - Money Bootcamp, Sacred Money Archetypes and Manifesting Course (the latter two are not available separately) 
• $2,497 - about $1,000 cheaper than the individual prices of the 3 courses
• Long term payment plan - option to spread the cost over 12 months. Our standard payment plan is 4 or 6 months (although we did offer it in May for people affected by Covid). 
• Year long coaching - instead of running 6-week intensive rounds of Money Bootcamp we moved to monthly group coaching. 
• Invested in a course mentor to our community (After putting it off for a long time and believing I needed to be in our group every day, this has been one of the best investments I’ve made in our business). 

What could you package up to give the most value to your customers? 

 2. Multi-Currency Offer 

A quarter of our sales came from a secret “launch within the launch”. 

We ran targeted campaigns to audiences in Australia and the UK. These are two key markets for our business where paying in US dollars can be painful due to the fluctuating exchange rates and bank fees. 

So, we offered Aussies and Brits the opportunity to buy the same Money Breakthrough package but pay in their home currency to save on conversion fees. 

This was done before the main launch cart opened and the audiences were kept separate in terms of emails and advertising. 

Result: over $300k. We’ve done the Australian offer before, but this was the first year we’d offered a Pounds option and it really worked and removed an additional barrier that stopped people buying. Next time, we might try a Canadian dollar option. 

In August 2020 we also tried a small targeted offer to Europeans with the option of paying in Euros and although not as successful, probably due to the smaller list, we had 25 people join and pay in Euros. Still a nice $50k mini launch. 

Better than a kick up the clacker as we say in Australia. 

Could you offer multiple currency options or create a tailored offer for a segment of your audience? 

Yes, it’s more work so only do this if your core offer is solid otherwise you’ll get overwhelmed. 

 3. Long Term Payment Plan + Default Plan

As I mentioned, 80% of people purchased on the payment plan. Offering a long term payment plan with as low monthly payment as possible makes a huge difference. 

We were an affiliate partner for Marie Forleo’s B-School and we saw our results jump 50% when she added the 12 month payment option. 

Guess what? When you offer a payment plan - people’s payments will fail. 

It’s a rite of passage and part of being in business. Expect anywhere between 5-20% of people to default at some point over a 12 month period. 

For some it’s only a matter of updating a credit card or missing one payment but there will be repeat offenders and some who stop paying altogether. This takes admin and someone has to email the people and update the cards.

I highly recommend that you automate or outsource this to a “bad cop”. When I was starting out, this process involved using a different email address and writing from “Dave in accounts” to ask for prompt payment. 

After years of doing in in-house, we outsource debt collection to an agency called Gravy who manage the whole process, win back over 70% of failed payments. Yes this costs money but they are experts and saves us time and energy. 

While we don’t get all of the money from people on payment plans, we do get a good chunk and certainly more than most similar businesses. 

 4. Increased Ad Spend But More Targeted

At the peak of our affiliate program, we paid out $600k in commission and it was great but a good affiliate program requires a lot of work to do well. 

Instead of hiring a new person to manage the program, we wanted to trial diverting money from affiliate commission to increased Facebook advertising spend.

We’re also spending more each year on advertising outside of launch period to grow our list and generate evergreen sales. 

Compared to 2019, our ad spend for this launch was doubled, up to $90,000 but overall still worth it. A $45k increase in ads for a $200k increase in sales. 

4 weeks out: We spent about $10k / 10% of the ad budget warming up our list by running ads to key articles and videos to prepare people for the upcoming webinar and launch. 

We spend approx 40% on lead gen, or about $40k for 8,000 leads. 

On the face of it, this averages at $5 a lead and is totally manageable, but a portion of our leads were already on our list and had been for a while so the CPL from a cold audience would be higher. 

Then the other 50% of spend was on sales ads once the cart had opened, including about $15k on the close cart day. 

Next year we’ll spend a larger percentage on sales conversion. 

Our topline conversion rate was just over 5% (407 sales / 8,038) leads, but this includes the targeted Aus and UK offers so should be more like 3.5%. 

Our focus next year will be to increase traffic to the sales page and increase overall conversion rather than push for more leads. 

Even if you’re only spending $1,000 on your next launch, what’s your lead gen / sales split and how can you warm up your audience before the launch? 

 5. Webinar with Prize

Our launch included ~8 days of lead generation promoting a webinar, then 5 days of open cart. The webinar was the big conversion event to share, teach and explain the offer. 

We put a lot of effort and investment into generating leads and getting people to turn up live on the call so we wanted to make sure it converted as well as possible.

This year we upped the ante and offered an extra special prize. All customers who joined during the webinar were entered into a draw to win a free place at an exclusive mastermind retreat with me at our Rose Farm including money towards travel (valued at $8,500). 

This increased sales on the webinar by 30% and led to over $150k worth of sales during the 90 minute call. 

Sales webinars are pretty stressful for me and we’ve had several tech issues over the years, but they’re great for connection, conversion and giving value to your broader audience. 

The majority, like over 90%, of people on the call and who watch the replay won’t buy, but they may stay on your list and social media for a month or a year and buy in the future. 

 6. Keep the timeline tight 

This is an important launch for us, but it doesn’t have to be a long launch. We’ve learnt from previous launches that adding days does not add dollars. 

So we keep the launch timeline tight. Drive our leads and audience to the webinar with a Fast Action Bonus, then have 4 further days of open cart. 

Each of the UK and Aussie dollar special offers were only available for only 5 days. This helps capitalise on the momentum of the warm-up and pre-launch and maximises revenue with a fixed hard deadline. 

Optimising our launch timeline is definitely something we refined over time and learnt a lot from Jeff Walker. 

Within his course and community we’ve learnt from people who have done 30 day and 3 day launches and everything in between. 

Jeff’s own launch for his Product Launch Formula coaching program is coming up in mid-September and we’re an affiliate partner and will be offering a very detailed set of behind the scenes bonuses and training as a bonus. {Scroll down for all the details!}

 7. Simplify Systems

The final major win that helped this launch run smoothly and successfully was SIMPLIFICATION.

In the three months leading up to the launch we transferred our whole business, website, all products, courses and sales pages over to Kajabi. 

We’d been with Infusionsoft for about 6 years and we’d grown to 100k contacts, 1,600 tags and hundreds of campaigns. It was time for a reset and clean slate. 

The migration took time but it helped us streamline and simplify. We were able to scrap subscriptions and use of InfusionSoft, LeadPages, GoSpiffy, Wordpress, WP Hosting, Access Ally, Deadline Funnel and probably some more I’ve lost track of. Simpler and cheaper systems and no visible impact on launch outcomes. 

Where can you simplify and achieve the same or better? 

We’re now starting to work on video scripts and plans for our next big launch and we hope this review has sparked some ideas to help yours.

What do you want to launch this year? Could a product launch help get things moving in your biz?

xx Denise and Mark

P.S If you have any questions about anything, just DM @mark_dt on Instagram and he’d be happy to walk you through it. 

Product Launch Formula

Jeff Walker will next run his annual Live Launch Masterclass and open enrolment for the Product Launch Formula coaching program in August 2024. As a proud alumni and affiliate partner I offer an exclusive bonus if you join PLF through my partner link. Join the waitlist here