Here's an interesting true story...

I just acquired an expensive, time-wasting hobby...I have spent over $1300 on it this past week alone on it.

Ok so where does copywriting come into the picture? I said whoa this is getting out of hand... $30 here, $60 there, and bam I'd spent over a grand in just days. Which isn't a big deal, but surprising how addictive this hobby is, and the money one can spend on it.

There's a great marketing lesson there. I'm going to monetize it at my tradingtelevision dot com site, re rapid brief video lesson downloads, buy it now, micro-transactions that are lead gens.. but i digress..

So, I said to myself, let me quickly recoup that modest amount, the 1-2K, by running a brief 72-hour "Star Spangled Special" July 4th sale on my online trading course. And I'm happy to report I've made over $3K in unexpected new sales from that spur-of-the-moment decision, in less than 72 hours. Orders are still rolling in as I write this.

And it wasn't even part of my marketing plan nor sequence of emails in queue, it was just a "Quick Cash Flow"-boosting decision.

That's the power of copywriting: Making a conscious decision to quickly, easily make thousands of dollars with a single email, in this case, to finance a newly-acquired hobby. Of course this is just a tiny dollar figure, the 3k, but the Lesson, can be leveraged... and it's a refreshing example of how to turn words into dollars.. a real case study, which I hope can inspire you all.

Have a great 7/7/07...

Ken

p.s. and yes I've used copywriting to generate millions, and multi-hundred thousand dollar launches for my products... but this is an example of a quick decision to turn words into dollars, with no effort.. which was fun.

Anyone have any ideas or other examples of "quick and dirty" type email blast promos that have generated solid sales, for existing products?

I like the "scratch and dent" ones, for example, that Kennedy and Yanik have done in years past...

thx,

ken

Hi Ken,

Here's one I did last year. It wasn't a 72 hour promotion, but I'm still pretty happy with the outcome.

I have a marketing book I wrote that I sell as a physical product to massage therapists. Borrowing an idea from Dan Kennedy, I offer a standard and an order page upsell for a deluxe version. Most buyers go for the more expensive deluxe version.

About 2 weeks before Christmas, I ran an email promotion where if they bought the standard version, I'd upgrade them to the deluxe version, free of charge. I made the sale good until 12 midnight Christmas Eve.

I did a follow-up email 24 hours before the sale ended.

Final result? An 800% increase over my normal monthly sales for that product.

It was a very, very Merry Christmas in my household.

Mike

Good to hear it, Mike. And another idea of course is a 2-7 day post-sale email with a "bump" to a previously unheard of platinum version, at a special insiders page they get sent to, with a time limited offer/OTO, sent to the initial basic/deluxe buyers... which can add another 20-30% in revenue..

UPDATE: Final sales count is 14 sales at $347 per = $4858
Which is a really nice, unexpected bonus for 45 minutes' work, crafting the email and landing page. Plus it was a nice bonus for my customers, who got a terrific deal. And it paid for my hobby for the next 6 months, which is what this whole shabang was all about in the first place.

Point being, it's wonderful to be able to realize that dream of "with a single email, make instant sales - using your copywriting to sell services that your customers value"...almost all the sales were to people who'd bought from me beofre, and found value in my other products, fwiw. this was a time-limited OTO cross sell.

it's not a lot of money, granted... but it's hopefully an inspirational example about how you can "turn on sales" with one quick email to a list that trusts you, to help add revenue to cover an expense..

here's to copywriting, and my teachers who got me here...

-ken

Ken thats great! I remember when I made 5K in around 3 hours. The way I did it was I sent an email to my list stating that I'm giving a %30 discount bonus for a friends product who was in my niche. The catch was there were only a limited amount of discount bonuses so if you didn't act fast you wouldn't get the bonus.

The thing is I didn't launch the bonus until the day AFTER the email. So when they all went to my site for the bonus it said "Sorry no more bonuses at this time."

The next day I blasted another email stating that I was giving bonuses away again.

This time the since of urgency was there and I got a 110 sales in around 5 hours on a $67 product.

That is my most successful email blast to date.

Nice, that's really clever marketing from you, talk about a urge to buy!

Best one I know of is about the discount someone gave away. Gold, Silver and Platinum membership. 5 got the platinum membership free of charge and then the rest "won" the Gold discount and had to add $47 to get platinum. NO ONE ever got the Silver Discount in reality. Because he switched names back and forth to make it look like there were plenty of people who got "Silver" on the list of emails and names, but it were just a marketing ploy.

Think I read this one on some stupid MLM program back in the days (early 2000). Still a good lesson.

Keep talking guys... I'm making mental notes of who NOT to ever do business with.

BTW: I'm not talking about Ken & Mike.