Got a cautionary tale for you today:
I wrote a new product launch sequence for a client recently. My client told me my series was “brilliant” before we scheduled to send it. And while it didn’t bomb—it’s gonna clear $20k in new revenue as I write this.
But it didn’t do nearly as well as we’d imagine.
Why?
We launched this new product at the absolute worst time possible.
Here’s what happened:
My client has been working with an agency (who shall remain nameless) to create a new website. Our website is old — and it’s slow as molasses on mobile devices. That’s not as big of a problem as your neighborhood guru would tell you. Our audience skews on the older side, and prefer ordering over desktop vs a phone or tablet.
But our slow mobile page speed sabotages some of our sales. And so, we wanted to rectify that.
Well, this agency he’s been working with is the absolute worst.
We were supposed to launch this new website months ago. And I’m not talking a couple months, I’m talking 6+ months.
Maybe you can guess what happened:
The agency finally launched our new website smackdab in the middle of our launch. And it sabotaged our results.
The first email I sent—which happened before our new website—made over $9,000 in revenue. But the rest of the emails barely made that much revenue combined.
Here’s why:
Our new website was slower than the old one. It was exponentially slower on desktop. And it was even slower on mobile devices.
I ran a basic page speed test and we scored a D.
Not good.
The result?
This product launch didn’t clear the revenue we thought it would.
My copy banged too. Some of the best copy I’ve written for this particular client. But it didn’t matter. Because even if it inspired our audience to take action, which it did, they literally couldn’t take action without waiting 3+ minutes (which is like an eternity in 2022) for the site to load.
Which brings me to another important lesson:
I’ve almost never had a good experience with any kind of website design agency. They don’t hit deadlines until 6 months later. When they launch their new and improved version of a site, it’s almost always worse. And it crucified a conservative 50% of our sales. Mayhap more.
Yeeeeesh.
Luckily, we’ve switched back to our old website. And I’ll promote this offer again so we can recoup some of the money this website design agency siphoned away from us. In fact, I’m going to send even more emails and apologize if folks tried to order but couldn’t. I expect to double what our first run did in terms of revenue.
But people wonder why it’s so hard to trust agencies, freelancers, or anyone in business.
Half of the people you talk to are lying. The other half don’t give a rat’s arse about you.
There’s a few exceptions, like your humble narrator for example.
So if you want to launch new products, generate more revenue, and free up more of your time by working with one of the few professional email marketers that won’t screw you over once you pay my “outrageous” fees…
John