Episode #059: Low Ticket Email Marketing For Massive Success with Liz Wilcox
Low Ticket Email Marketing For Massive Success with Liz Wilcox
I'm SO EXCITED for this week's episode of the podcast because we have a special guest on that has done some Amazing things. Liz Wilcox is a brilliant email marketer who's built a THRIVING business with a $9/month membership.
I won't spoil all the details but when you tune in you're going to learn...
The value of balancing an abundant mindset with the foresight to play the long game
How Liz has been able to have a six-figure month on a product that costs just $9/month to join
The value of email marketing and how to be not-so-average with communications to your list
We cover a LOT in this interview and I think you're gonna LOVE it - so tune in, listen up, and get pumped...
LINKS MENTIONED:
FULL TRANSCRIPT:
Zach Spuckler:
This is Not Your Average Online Marketing Podcast, episode number 59. And in this episode, we are talking to Liz Wilcox about email marketing, low ticket memberships, and all kinds of incredible things. And without further ado, let's get into it. Hey, hey, hey, not-so-average marketer. Welcome to another episode of the podcast. Now, big shock. I am excited for this week's episode, as I always am, and I am really stoked because I have been talking about low ticket products and we have our membership, which is relatively low ticket, and we just love the low ticket ecosystem, and it's really served my business well.
And I came across Liz Wilcox through a mutual contact, Elizabeth Goddard, Lizzy, and I just fell in love with Liz's model. She is all about generosity, low ticket, high value, and I could gush on and on. I am in her membership, which when you hear the price, you're going to fall off your chair and be like, how can that be profitable? And when you hear the numbers behind it, you're going to get back on your chair and fall off again. And I could go on and on all day, but I won't. Instead, I will welcome to the show Liz Wilcox. Hey, Liz. Welcome.
Liz Wilcox:
Hey, friends. I'm so excited. This is so fun because I consider myself a not-so-average email marketer, so this is going to be amazing.
Zach Spuckler:
I love it. And I am so excited to have you here because we've only had two or three guests on the show since we have rebranded to the Not Your Average Online Marketing Podcast, because I'm so stinking selective about people who are aligned with our values and our brands. And we have another mutual contact who reach out to me on Facebook and was like, "Hey, I think you should have this person on your podcast," which frankly, I get constantly, which sounds so egotistical, but I just get a lot of requests to be on the show. And he was like, "It's Liz Wilcox. Do you know her?" And I was like, "Yes. Get her on the show." So I am going to start gushing it if I'm not careful. Please tell us a little bit about yourself, your business, your model, all that good stuff. And then we're just going to have a really good conversation today.
Liz Wilcox:
Awesome. Yeah. What's up, friends? So you know that feeling you get when you listen to an amazing podcast like this, and there's some wild woman that comes on and starts talking about for every dollar you spend with email marketing, you can 40 bucks in return, now go, go, go. So you get really hyped up and you open up that Mailchimp or Active Campaign account, and then you promptly feel dumb because you have no idea what to say. Well, what's up? I'm Liz Wilcox, and I help eliminate that problem really. And that's what my membership is. I actually write your newsletters for you for just nine bucks a month.
Zach Spuckler:
I love it. And I will say, I'm in the membership, which I might have already said, so I'm going to say it again. I love your membership because you literally are like, here is the template for what you could say. Here's a loose outline. So if you're anything like me, I like to think of myself as a natural storyteller. You give me the topic as the jumping off point. But then there are other days where I'm like, I can't be bothered to think about what I'm going to say today. You're literally like, just put your words here, just fill in the blank. It's so good. And you have examples and walkthroughs, and I love what you just said. You're like, everybody gets you all hyped up and then you feel dumb because you don't know what to talk about. Can you talk to us a little bit about how you got into the world of email marketing? And we're going to talk in a minute about your conversion rates and some of the incredible things that you see, but how did you first get into email marketing, and what about your strategy is not so average?
Liz Wilcox:
Great question. So I started off very different from other email marketers. Y'all, I started off as an RV travel blogger. So if you're a blogger listening, or maybe you're a service provider, but you want to be more of the content creator, physical product seller, that was me. I had no idea what I was doing. No joke. I was in an RV and I turned on the TV and there were these young people buying a $200,000 RV. And I was like, what are they doing? And I googled them and I was like, they're bloggers? What? I could do that. Little naive Liz, right in her twenties. And so I started an RV travel blog, and I'm listening to podcasts like this, and everybody in their mother is saying, "Oh, if I could give you one tip, I wish I would've started my email list sooner. Email, email, email."
And y'all, if you've ever been in an RV, you know how small it is. And if you've ever been in the woods, you can imagine my internet connection. So I didn't have time for games, I didn't have time for head trash. If people were saying everything is for the email list, I just cut out everything. And anything I did was to build the email list and to talk to the email list. And over the years, I got really good at it. I built my list, and how I knew I needed to get into email marketing, and I knew my method was not so average, was I did the thing. I created an online course. Everybody and their mother. Online course, create it. And so I did it and I had 141 people on my wait list. I did a Monday through Friday, typical five day closed cart type of thing. When the cart closed, I had made 141 sales.
So if you're not sure of average conversion rates, that's one to 3%, maybe 10% if you're really, really good. I had a hundred percent conversion rate. So word got out. I started telling friends, and then they knew people in the business world. I was really broke. And so I wasn't in all these online spaces where you had to buy, pay to play, so to speak. I couldn't afford a business coach. I couldn't even afford a $300 course. I was just doing things that my gut told me to do. I'd listen to a podcast here. Oh yeah, that's good. I've gotten what I need. I can do that. And so word got around. And when I got into this online business space, everyone, especially copywriters, I discovered copy writing. And they said, "Well, who's your copy writer?" I said, "Well, I didn't even know what that word meant." I was like, "Isn't that a legal thing?" And I said, "Oh, I write all my own words."
And they said, "Oh, there's no way." And I was like, "Well, here's my receipts," and you can actually go to lizwilcox.com and see the screenshot today. And they were like, "Oh, wow, that's really exceptional." And that was the moment that Zach was asking me about that I knew I needed to get into email. Clearly I had something that other people weren't getting. And given my background, y'all, when I figured out I could click a mouse and make money, I was like, move over Jeff Bezos. These rich folks have been lying to us. I grew up really poor. And so when I figured out I had this unique ability to write emails that converted and it made me money, I wanted to then go out and find other people like me who desperately needed to rise above their circumstances and find that money too.
Zach Spuckler:
I love this because you said something that really stuck out to me, which is you said, I wanted to help people rise above their circumstances. And I think so often in our industry especially, where we see 1997 courses and multi-thousand dollars coaching programs, and full transparency, we have a $2,500-a-quarter coaching program. I've got no qualms against the high ticket. My issue, and I think we talked about this briefly, is when it's like, if you want to work with me, it's really expensive. And you have to basically risk for some people their livelihood to take a risk on this person who they met 40 minutes ago on a webinar who's selling this pipe dream that we know statistically is not going to work for them, and they don't even get to sampled the wears, right?
One of our core values is accessibility, making at least part of our business or our information accessible either through our podcast or low ticket offers, and when the time and finances are right, working with us in a more advanced setting. But I think you blow us out of the water with that, because can you talk to us a little bit about your membership? What's inside of it? The pricing? I know you mentioned it briefly, but I just want to reiterate, you have made your business and your brain so ridiculously accessible. So can you talk to us about maybe the mindset around that and then we can kind of get into the numbers around it too?
Liz Wilcox:
Yeah. Well, number one, I-
Zach Spuckler:
... kind of get into the numbers around it too.
Liz Wilcox:
Yeah. Well, number one, I have a very abundant mindset. No joke, when I figured out I could click a mouse and make money, I really did think, "Wow, rich people have been lying." It sounds silly and like a joke, but that literally was my mind. And when I figured out the online thing, I was like, "Everybody needs to get in on this." And when I created my membership, I was doing high ticket stuff, I was doing copywriting. I knew that that could make me a lot of money upfront. To be honest, I was going through a divorce. I was separated. I was supporting two households with my own income. So yeah, like Zachary said, I was charging high ticket service providing, but I knew I didn't love that completely. I want to focus on lizwilcox.com, not your.com.
And so I had just signed $20,000 of projects, and I should have been elated, right? I've got two leases in my name. I'm a single mom. My sister lives with me. I support everybody financially. This is enough money, I'm doing the math, this is enough money to get us, this was February, to get us through May. And that poor person in the back of my mind was like, "This is great. This is great." But there was something inside of me, I was sitting down to write my email list and I'm like, "Most of these people are like me wondering where their next dollar is coming from and feeling that desperation," or at least, I know there's got to be at least one other person on this email list of 800 that feels the way I feel every single month. You're doing the math, literally pen and paper, how long is this contract going to last me? And what do I do in an emergency?
And so there was just, I don't know, this inspiration of, I need to create, I need to get rid of this project-based money and I need a recurring revenue model for myself, for my family, but also I actually want... The gifts that I'm giving to these high-end clients, I actually want to give to the people that need them. And so with those two thoughts, I came up with my membership. I literally, at the top of the hour when I said, "What do you do when you sit down to write your newsletter?" That was me. I was like, "What do I write these people? I really want to help them, but at the same time, I really need money. I really need these people to convert, I'm working my butt off." And I came up with this newsletter membership. That is the thing, that is... I lead with that because I know newsletters are the hardest. And I know most people will pay for sales emails, et cetera, but really none of that will work if you don't have your newsletters in check.
The reason why I had that hundred percent conversion rate is because I knew how to talk to my people via email newsletter every single week. I knew that was my gift that I needed to share. And I was thinking long term, I was like, "Well, I can do service providing for two more years, and if I can just grow this membership. What if I could just get a thousand people in, that would be $9,000 a month?" And the idea of that, you might have well have said, "Liz, you're going to be Jeff Bezos." That was so much money from a digital product that I was like, "Yes, I'm willing to work two years for that." And that is something that Zach and I were talking before we hit record about that long-term game. It wasn't how do I make money right now? It was how can I create something that's stable for my business, stable for my personal life, and really help the people that really need it? Because that's my values.
Accessibility is also one of my values. Affordability is very important to me because I was gate kept for so long that I had to come up with my own strategies and it was really frustrating. And a lesser man might have given up, so to speak. I don't want you to give up. So I said, "Okay, I'm going to create this membership. It's going to have newsletter templates in it. And, oh yeah, I'll throw in a live Q&A once a month. And with the template, I should probably make a video walkthrough so they can actually understand, because these people aren't writers, that's why they're struggling. They need to know." And that comes from my education background. I know how to differentiate instruction.
And so I was like, "Okay, I'm going to write this... Here's what's included." And I wrote this email up and then that was, where's the price point? And I thought back to that Liz, and this is where I get emotional, I thought back to that Liz when she was first starting and her then husband saw that she spent a hundred dollars on WordPress for the year or whatever, and how upsetting that was for the budget. And so I knew it had to be under $10, and $9 just felt really good. It felt like even if that person is budgeting dollar to dollar, can I get enough trust from them to just give me $9 and just for the next 30 days, do what I ask of you and see if the needle moves.
And so that was the subject line of the email was, "Can I have $9?" And it had all this stuff, "Hey, here's what I'm thinking. Here's why I'm going to charge a low price. It's not garbage, I just actually want you in on this. Let's go." And that is still to this day why I charge $9. Zach said he was introduced by a mutual friend, that mutual friend is actually my business coach. And for about 12 months he argued with me. He was like, "Liz, you got to raise the price. You got to raise the price." But he was just doing that to solidify my passion for the price and the reason why I only offer it for nine bucks.
Zach Spuckler:
Wow. I love this. And you mentioned that you have this really abundant mindset, and I think that that is something that you do have to cultivate in this space of... One of the biggest BS lines we hear in this space is, "Oh, this is no more stable than a job because you could get fired at any time." Well, realistically, I mean I know that things happen with the economy and with life, but no one's running around just randomly firing people. Generally speaking, if you're decent at your job and you show up to work, there is a level of stability that you have. And in the online space, you don't have that, even with recurring revenue or things like that, that definitely insulates you and gives you that protection, and I know we're going to talk about that, but it's, anything can happen.
And so I just love that you're speaking to this person who wants at that base level, hasn't built that muscle, for lack of a better word, of, it will come. I believe that it will come. I know it will come. And, for me, it's not the, "Oh, I'm going to manifest it. I'm just going to believe it until it exists." If you don't believe in yourself, if you don't believe that you can bring that money in, you won't take the actions to do it. And so many of us don't see that quite yet because, like you just said, we're in a position where hosting is make or break or a hundred dollars course is like, can I do that? And so you're meeting people where they are and you're introducing them to things that actually make them money, get them sales, build a relationship with their audience so that they can understand and experience this abundance mindset. And I just love that.
And I know what people are thinking. If you're anything like me, we chatted about this a little bit before we started, it's like, "Well, at $9 a month," and it's pretty encompassing. You put a lot of bonuses in there. I think you even said, and please correct me if I'm wrong because I read a bajillion emails because I'm an email junkie, but you put in your last email, "This is everything that I'm going to do for the next 12 months if you join the membership annually. You basically get almost everything that you create." And I'm sure that there's nuances to that, but can you talk to us, give us the numbers. How much is it actually generating? What are the memberships like? And I won't spoil it, you might spill the beans, but you've done some big launches of it where people can go annual and those have been pretty big numbers for what is essentially a low price point. So can you just talk to us about... I don't know, I'm a numbers person, I know my audience...
Zach Spuckler:
It's about... I don't know. I'm a numbers person. I know my audience loves the numbers, so can we just dig into those a little bit?
Liz Wilcox:
Yeah. Actually, you can't see me, but I'm pulling up my notebook where I have all my numbers.
Zach Spuckler:
I love it.
Liz Wilcox:
Hopefully I can find them. But I also love numbers, and one of my values is transparency. My personal definition of success is to be an example of what's possible, and I can't do that if I don't tell you every little itty bitty detail. That might also stem from being extremely nosy about other people, I don't know.
Zach Spuckler:
Same.
Liz Wilcox:
So at the time of this recording, the last launch I did for the annual pass is what I call it, and basically it's $9 times 12 months. So you commit for a year, I'm going to commit to you. And that's not some kind of sales strategy. For me, it is true. If you are willing to commit to email marketing for an entire year, I know something's going to pop off for you, and so I want to give you my best if you are willing to make that commitment.
And so what it is, you get in, just like if you buy an annual pass to Disney, you get to all the parks for free every single day. So when you join as an annual pass-holder with Liz Wilcox, an email marketing membership, you get access to every other product I have entirely for free. You do not have to spend another dime with me. I used to do an upsell where you could get a one-on-one hour with me, but right now I'm trying to take a summer vacation, so I've taken those away for the time being.
Zach Spuckler:
Love it.
Liz Wilcox:
Hopefully I can bring those back because I do love them. But really it is just that $108 offer. And I knew this was the offer, and I think this will speak to your audience being not so average, I knew this is the direction I needed to go. I got the idea from Costco, and y'all, this is the abundance mindset I'm talking about. I'm not looking at other memberships online. I'm looking across industries. Netflix, how much money is Netflix? Netflix, I think just turned 20 years old. Do you think they started off with 20 billion people, or... There's not 20 billion people on the planet.
Zach Spuckler:
More than on the earth, but that's okay.
Liz Wilcox:
You think they got Martians right away? No. But they started off with just one customer, two customers, and they had to build from that. And guess what their price point was? It was when Netflix started. And I know for a fact Netflix had way more startup costs than email marketing membership. Email marketing membership doesn't cost me really anything. At the time, it was on Google Drive, y'all. I was already paying for Google Drive via my hosting, so it was costing me no money. And so then I thought about Costco, and Costco, 60 bucks to get in the door, and you buy everything basically at cost. Costco's not really making a profit from what you buy inside the store. They're losing money on hotdogs, but they are a Fortune 500 company from that $60 times however many million.
I'm just Liz Wilcox. I don't need however many million members. If I could just get 1,000, that would be enough for me and my family. Sure, I would like to grow beyond that, but I don't have to think beyond that 1,000 because that's all the money I need. So knowing your numbers is really important. So going back to what Zach actually asked me, last lunch, I made 662 sales. I didn't do the math on that. I think it was 73,000, something like that. And then I had another 150 or 160 people renew. So people who had purchased March 2022 signed back up. And what I want you guys to know about this, and this is what makes me not so average, and I truly believe everyone can do this, is those are people that actually had to re-sign up. This is not on auto-renewal. They had to say, "Yes, Liz, I'm going to put in my credit card details again." So that was over 800 sales. I had a six figure month that month. And I did that in Black Friday, I had a six figure month. I had over 1,000 new annual members.
And so I knew that that was the route to go because I was looking across industries. And also when I told my people, I said, "Hey, I'm thinking about offering this," this was a couple years ago, every single person that replied said, "That's insane. You're going to lose money. No one is going to be able to purchase from you again in a year, and you're going to go broke. But if you do it, I will sign up. I will sign up before you come to your senses," basically. And that is when I knew, "Okay, these people don't have the mindset that I do." And of course, I had to work really, really hard on that mindset. But again, I also knew I only needed 1,000, and I could wait two years. Turns out I only had to wait about nine months to retire my services, and 12 months to hit that 1,000. And at the time of this recording, we're at almost 3,500, and over 2,000 are on the annual rate. So that's money in the bank for me to support my family, do that math divide it by 12, and have really comfortable months. And it took me... The membership's about 24 months old now.
Zach Spuckler:
Love this. And the thing that really sticks out to me, and something that I've talked about a little bit on this show that you're bringing up is, we don't always look at other industries. We like to think that, especially in the digital course membership space, "Oh, this is just easy money. I can just throw my course up, make lots of money, sail off into the sunset. I'm going to do it from the beach, it's going to be so great." And it takes work. And you said two really big things. You said, "I was willing to wait two years." And I think so many people want the instant gratification. We teach, grow your emails with ads, and then people message us all the time and go, "I added 1,400 people to my list and they didn't buy." And I'm like, "Well, when did you launch?" They're like, "Well, I added the 1,400 last month and I launched this month and it was super quiet." And I'm like, "Well, those people don't know. You didn't nurture them."
And the first thing that we do, especially in advertising is we go, "Well, the ads must not be working." But what you said is so key, "I was willing to wait two years. I was willing to build the relationships. I was willing to do the things. And I know that you have some really incredible referral partnerships, and you have some incredible ways that you connect with people, and you were willing to wait. But you also said, "What are other industries doing that work well?" Because we do some cool stuff too. Now, I won't lie, we have people on annual renewal, but we do something that most people don't, and this stemmed from a really terrible experience we had where we got renewed for something and I was like, "Hey, I sent an email. Totally my bad. We didn't mean to renew, can you cancel us?" And they were like, "Well, actually, we didn't have to tell you you were renewing. You had to tell us seven days before your re-bill date, in writing, that you didn't want to come back, and so we're going to charge you $1,000 for the year." And I was like, "That's gross. I don't like that."
And so what we did was we said, "We're going to email our people three times before their annual subscription, two weeks out. And if somebody emails us afterwards and says, "Hey, I didn't mean to renew. I didn't get your emails. We just give them a refund." And I just love that you're asking these questions like, what are other industries doing that we love and that we don't love? And you mentioned Costco, the funny thing we love, the marketer's space, is to be like, "They lose money on the chicken." But you're like, "They lose money on everything, or they don't make money on anything, they make money on their membership, which is ridiculously affordable." And just to call back what you said earlier, when you got that mindset of, the potential is unlimited, you can charge whatever you want to charge, knowing there's more people coming. We've now got over 6,000 customers that have worked with us over the course of our years, and everybody's got their own thing that they do, but I just love that you're like, "I can generate 1,000 customers." And it is that mindset of, "I can do this. I can generate-
Zach Spuckler:
... instead of like, I can do this, I can generate a thousand customers. And the last thing that I'll say, and then I'll turn it back to you, is you said I only need a thousand. And I can't tell you how many people I work with who are like, "I could never. I just hope I could hit a hundred people." I'm working with a client right now in our coaching program, and she was like, "Really want a hundred people, but I just don't know if I can do that." And I was like, "Why?"
I'm all about, and this is where I differ from a lot of people is I'm like, you have to be reasonable with your goals. You have to set realistic goals. But you did that. You said, "I'm willing to give it two years." But you also have to have this other side of you that's like, "And it's possible. Anything is possible. I can achieve anything I want." And I think when you have that duality, which I think just exists so beautifully in your business, so many magical things happen. And now I'm just gushing again, which I said I wasn't going to do. So I'm a liar. Big shocker.
I want to start to wrap up. For those who are listening to this who are like, "This sounds great, but..." Or "This sounds amazing, but I don't know if it's going to be the same for me" or "Liz, you're the exception." Or what advice would you give to somebody who's like, "I love this model, this is so great, but I don't know if I could do it." And maybe not specifically the model, but just really more, I think beyond the model is the mindset of I don't have to do what everyone else is doing to make a really great living.
Liz Wilcox:
Yeah, so I think what Zach said is really poignant, and maybe to put it all together, the potential is unlimited. You only need a piece of that pie. You don't need the potential, you only need x. And as much as your brain might say, "Oh, that's cool for you, Liz," there's probably a part of you that sees me or someone, and it's like, "Oh, I know I'm smarter than that chick. What's going on?"
So just pair those together and you're going to be able to get going. We're all guilty of that. I know I am, especially when I'm in that closed off mind. I'm like, "Oh, I know I'm smarter than them. Why are they doing better than me" or whatever. But it's when, like Zach said, when you realize the potential is unlimited, and then couple that with my mindset of I only need a piece of that. You've done really hard things before.
And that's what helps me is when I think something's impossible, I really go back to all the things that I used to think about myself and I just put myself in perspective. I was born in Detroit. I had a single mom. We grew up really poor. I didn't know my dad. My mom didn't get past eighth grade. I started paying rent to my mother when I was 16. Nobody believed that anything could come from our family. I've been homeless before. I've slept on a park bench.
Somehow I still survived that. And not to tell you to pick out trauma points or something, but I know that there are things in your life that have seemed impossible and you're still here listening to this podcast today. And so keeping that in perspective and reminding yourself, actually, this might not be as hard as I think it is, my brain is just making it hard, I think will really help.
And that actually was my newsletter today. I said, "Hey, check out these two questions when you're thinking email or your marketing is too difficult." Number one, what would this look like if it was easy? And number two, what would this look like if it was fun? Sometimes it's not easy, sometimes it's not fun. But when you couple those questions together, you're bound to find a solution that will allow you to get going. And that's just what you need. Because action breeds confidence. Confidence doesn't come first.
Zach Spuckler:
Oh, so, so good. Well, we'll wrap up here. I just cannot stress this enough, if you want to check out Liz's membership, you can go to heartsoulhustle.com/emm. Again, it's heartsoulhustle.com/emm. Full transparency, I am an affiliate. I don't recommend things I don't like, love and truly think will make a difference in your business. And at nine bucks, I mean, come on, how are you not going to let someone write emails for you?
We love email. You guys know on this show we're all about email. So we will have that linked up for you as you listen to this episode. And if you want to recap, of course, we always have the show notes at heartsoulhustle.com/nyap059. Again, that's heartsoulhustle.com/nyap059 for Now Your Average Podcast, episode 59 show notes, full transcript, links mentioned in the show.
And before we wrap up, I always love to give my guests the last word. I say always, we've only had three guests. But I do like my guests to get the last word because this is about showcasing and showing incredible people doing incredible things. So Liz, no pressure, but I'll let you see us out. Any parting words of wisdom? Not that you didn't just give amazing ones, but I'll let you-
Liz Wilcox:
I think I already did this part, but yeah, if you don't believe in yourself honestly or you don't believe in the possibility, let me and Zach believe in it for you and just get going and let's see what happens together.
Zach Spuckler:
I love it. Well, Liz, thank you so much for being here. This was an incredible episode, one of the best, I think, and I just cannot wait for this to go live.
And y'all, real quick, Liz, where can we find you on Instagram? That probably should have been how I saw you out. But where can we find you on Instagram, the internet, all that good stuff so that my audience can just shower you with love?
Liz Wilcox:
Sure. On Instagram, you can follow me at The Liz Wilcox, T-H-E Liz Wilcox. Spoiler alert, I will be posting about boy bands and the '90s. But if you're more into email marketing and you're not ready to sign up for the membership, you can of course go to lizwilcox.com. In the top right-hand corner, there's a hot pink button. You're going to get an entire welcome sequence already written for you, three newsletter samples directly from the membership. If you're like, "I got to see it before I believe it," and 52 subject lines all for free, lizwilcox.com, hot pink button.
Zach Spuckler:
So good. Y'all, if you don't join the membership, go get the free stuff. Seriously, it's so good.
So Liz, thank you again for being here. Y'all, thank you for listening. Have an incredible rest of your week, and until next time, stay not so average.
