Big launches create big lessons…and a $5.7 million affiliate launch we ran was no exception. In this episode, we go behind the scenes of one of the biggest promotions we’ve ever run and share what worked, what didn’t, and what you can apply to your next campaign. You’ll learn how to deepen connections with your audience, grow your list while promoting, deliver bonuses at the perfect time, and the strategies top affiliates used to dominate the leaderboard.
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Previous Episodes of The Affiliate Guy
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How Affiliate Managers Can Beat Burnout
Lessons from a Record-Breaking Affiliate Launch
Avoid These 5 Big Mistakes When Recruiting Affiliates
$5.7 Million Affiliate Launch Secrets: The Affiliate Playbook Part 1
Big launches create big lessons. And a $5. 7 million affiliate launch that we ran was no exception to this. In this episode, we’re going to go behind the scenes of one of the biggest promotions that we’ve ever run and share what worked, what didn’t, and what you can apply to your affiliate promotions and your affiliate program. You’re going to learn how to create deeper connections with your audience, how to grow your list while promoting, how to deliver bonuses at the perfect time, and the strategies that top affiliates use to dominate the leaderboard.
We’re going to talk about some lessons that we learned from a mega promotion, a huge affiliate launch. I am so excited about what we’re going to be talking about not only in this episode, but over the next seven episodes. This is a seven part series. I think it’s the longest series I’ve ever done. And we’re looking at lessons learned while running the affiliate launch of Stu McLaren’s tribe course a few years ago. And so we’re, we’re opening the vault, so to speak. This was previously. Some of this content was previously only available to members. Some of it’s brand new that we’ve never shared anywhere and it comes from a $5. 7 million launch we did a few years ago.
The first two parts are a recap of the launch. These are our lessons that we got from the launch, both as affiliate managers. But also things that we saw affiliates doing. The last four parts are interviews with affiliates and there’s so much good stuff for affiliate managers and affiliates. So do not skip an episode.
Okay. If you’re an affiliate, you think the. First two episodes aren’t for me. They are, alright? They absolutely are. We’re going to talk about lessons for affiliates again. There’s some stuff in there for affiliate managers as well. If you’re an affiliate manager and you think, okay, well I don’t want to. Listen to the affiliate interviews like they’re not for me. They are, okay.
You will learn so much stuff you. Can share with your affiliates. Now I said the first two parts are the recap and then the last four parts are the interviews. But there’s a total of seven parts. No, I am not that bad at math. Okay. I can do math. Part three is actually a special bonus. Episode on how to use opt in. Opt in bonuses to grow your list and to get more opt ins.
Right. And so I mentioned it in episode one and I’m like, you know what? I actually did a lesson on this. It’s this kind of behind the scenes look at a training that we did for the affiliates of this launch. So I just figured, you know what, let me share the whole training and rather than try to reference it and share it in the episode, let me.
Just share the training itself. So you’re going to get access to. That in part three. The first lesson is now in this episode we’re going to talk about. This is part one of the kind of the recap that Robby and I did on the launch itself. So how to increase intimacy with your audience. How to show up for your audience. Right. How to build your email list while promoting affiliate offers. That’s something that is really cool.
Need help activating your affiliates? Use my proven email templates for getting inactive affiliates in the game and making sales! Get them here!
You can actually add people to your list while promoting the best time to deliver bonuses to lower refunds and why it’s not what you think. Like the best time to deliver bonuses is typically not. I see very few people do it right. So I talk about that. The one strategy that nearly all the affiliates in the leaderboard use to earn bonus cash.
This is a big one and a bunch more. So there are, I don’t know, we think we talked like 10 lessons in this episode probably. So this is part one, seven part series on one of the biggest launches that we’ve ever run with affiliates. So with that, let’s jump right into the first lesson with takeaways. So it was a massive launch and we learned a ton of lessons.
And I’ll share this with you, this was the cool part. This was not a launch where we had a bunch of big names up on the leaderboard and there’s nothing you can learn. The lady who won this promotion with almost 200 sales and she took home $100,000 first prize. Okay, she took home. I’m gonna do some quick math. She took home like $170,000 total in commissions and prizes in this launch last year. She made nine sales. Not even a full two hands full of sales. Okay. She’s like a friend of mine who unfortunately lost a finger.
That’s how many. Two full hands for him, but not. For most of us who’ve got all 10 of them. Oh, that was wrong. That was just wrong. I’m gonna have to send this to him anyway. She made 9 sales last year. She made over 180 this year to win the thing 20xing her sales. And so some of these lessons are from her, from the other affiliates, from things that we shared, from things that we learned that I’m really excited about as always. I’m joined by Robby Miles who is going to have some of his own takeaways.
And like, this is a true behind the scenes because we don’t know. We shared Robby. Like four, I think we had four of these that we kind of already talked about. And I think we’ll probably end up with like 20. So who knows? I’m pretty excited. This is going to end up being a two parter. I can already tell. So we’ll talk about a few here, we’ll share a few here, and then we’ll probably do some more next month, y’. All.
So I’m excited to jump in. Robby. Yeah, let’s do it real quick. Quick background. This promotion was Stu McLaren’s tribe promo. We promoted it. We did really well. Again, we’ve been one of his top 10 affiliates for like the last three or four years. But we also ran the launch this year. So this is totally different because not only do we get to see things from the affiliate side, we got to see what all the other affiliates are doing.
And man, did we. Not only did we get to share some cool stuff with them, we, we got to rethink some stuff of our own. As we were helping them, we learned some lessons from them. Like, so this is like three way learning, which is really, really cool. And you guys get like a front seat, backstage pass. It’s kind of weird, all of this, guys. So we’re going to, we’re just going to jump right in. I’m going to start, I’m going to start off. That’s a bad thing. I’m going to start off with a bonus tip.
Usually you do a bonus tip at the end. I’m going to start off with a bonus tip. For those of you running an affiliate program or who will be running an affiliate program, this is the only one that really fits like this, but this is it. The future of affiliate programs is not in getting the big marketers. It’s not in the reciprocal promotions, the tit for tat, the quid pro quo, however you want to word that it’s in customers who are loyal followers and true believers promoting you. I ran these numbers. Let me pull these. Robby, you haven’t even seen Some of these, but I pulled these numbers for Stu and let me just read a couple of these. These are gonna blow you guys away. Total affiliate sales.
No, no, we’ll skip that one because that’s not public yet. Okay. There’s a lot though. Affiliates with the sale. 215. 215 affiliates with the sale. Most big, these big launches, Robby, you know this. 30, maybe 50 on the high end. Occasionally you’ll get somebody who gets close to 100. 215 affiliates with the sale. 69 with 5 plus, 45 with 10 plus and so on and so forth. Affiliates with their first ever tribe sale. 107. Wow. Okay, get this stat.
Total sales from affiliates making their first Tribe sale was 44%. Almost half the all the sales. It was their first ever tribe sale. Total sales from a first time affiliate period. So not just their first tribe sale, this is the very first time they have ever promoted anything as an affiliate was 40% of all the sales. That’s. I mean these are like, that’s mind blowing that. So only 4% of them were the first timers that had already promoted something. Previous where they’re, they had already promoted something and then made their first, you know, tribe sale was 4%. Wow.
Like that’s, that’s. I mean it’s unbelievable. You know where, where those numbers were. I mean just, just truly, truly mind blowing statistics. And so that’s the future of affiliate programs, guys. It is in these small. We have been preaching this for 10 years. Robby hasn’t. I have. Robby didn’t even know this stuff 10 years ago.
But I have been preaching this for. 10 years and I always knew it to be true. And I’d always seen it true on some small levels and it’s true on a big level. And I’m telling you, like we’re starting to get. We’ve been evangelists for this for a while now. People like Stu are on board with this philosophy and they’re seeing the power of this, guys. It’s huge. First big takeaway though for affiliates, guys, is the importance of giving your audience an opt out. Those hundred and seven. Well, clearly this was the first time they’d ever done this.
But we had hundreds of affiliates who had never offered an opt out to their, to their audience before. They had never offered the opportunity for their audience to say, I don’t want to hear any more about Stu’s workshop. Let me click here and just say, but I still get all your other emails. They either they either kept them in and they got annoyed or they had the nuclear option of unsubscribe. When you do this, it allows you to promote aggressively.
It allows you to promote with confidence. It allows you to send more emails and more emails and more emails because you know, you gave them a chance to opt out. And you have to remember, most people don’t opt out or unsubscribe on the fifth email. Definitely not the 10th email or the 15th email. They do it on the first 1, 2, or 3. Like I don’t care about that. So they opt out. And what that allowed, what allows people to do is say, I don’t, I don’t, I don’t. Not interested. Maybe the timing’s not good.
I’m not interested in the subject matter, but you still get all my other emails. And so as an affiliate, that allows you on the last day, the second to last day, the last few days of a campaign to go. People that are left, they’ve had the opportunity to opt out, but they didn’t buy. They are sitting there on the fence going, which side is the greener grass? But it’s this side. But that that side costs a lot of money to get that greener grass. Am I really willing to part with that kind of money? I want greener grass. For example, in our yard, we have some brown spots. I’m not willing to pay $10,000 for the greener grass though.
But if I look, if somebody comes along and offers me a green lawn for four or five hundred bucks a season, sign me up that program, you know, and so it’s not the lawn care membership though, guys. But that’s the importance of that opt out. And it’s, it’s a super easy way to make sure that the people you’re mailing are the most are the people that are still at least somewhat interested. It was great to see how many people jumped on when we shared this in the group. They were like, oh my gosh, I’ve never thought of it that way before.
I never thought that if they’re still on this email list, then their interest is there. They don’t have to blast their entire list with an offer repeatedly. Instead, they get to. People get to self select. You know, I still, maybe, maybe they want to stay in because they’re watching your marketing. Maybe they want to stay in because they’re interested in the product. Like, there’s lots of different reasons people would stay in and it’s just your opportunity to help your audience self select so you can serve them best. Yeah, I mean, it’s huge. Second, don’t underestimate the importance of intimacy with your audience. And don’t underestimate the importance of one on one reach outs.
A lot of people think, oh, I want to, I want to make, you know, 25 sales of a $2,000 product. Like, that’s $50,000 worth of sales. I got to have a massive list. I’m looking at the leaderboard from this launch, guys. I mean, they’re 25, 26. I’m sorry, 26 sales. First ever affiliate promo. Tiny list, couple thousand people. How did she do that? It was one on ones.
I think we’ll probably talk about this a little bit more in depth because I’m gonna read you guys some Facebook posts in part 2 of this next month. But I mean, just don’t underestimate that. Don’t underestimate the power of a simple text of a Facebook message taking an extra 30 seconds to reach out. If you reach out personally to 100 people and five of them buy, if it takes you 30 seconds per person, that takes you 50 minutes. Five $2,000 courses, you’re going to make $4,000.
If you can make $4,000 in 50 minutes doing something else, then go do that. I mean, I feel like I’m really highly paid as a coach, and on average I make a little over a thousand dollars per hour, you know, coaching with their clients that are paying us long term, you know, so for me to make four or five thousand dollars an hour is pretty, pretty sweet. It just works because that intimacy and that one on one communication. Third, the affiliates that succeeded in this launch. I’m looking at the leaderboard again. Eight of the top ten all started. So the real big promo kickoff was April 15th. The, the workshop started on April 22nd. So you at least had the one week Runway going into the workshop. Okay, but eight of the top ten all had, roughly, looking at the percentages here on the low end, 18%.
So the lowest of the eight had 18% of their leads prior to April 1. They were all promoting and warming up their audience a month before or a little bit over a month before that Long Runway. The longer the Runway, Stu often says, the greater the success. And a lot of times it wasn’t even generating leads. Like if you look at just clicks. What they were doing was they were doing what we teach. They were posting the connection videos. These connection videos are two minute videos on Facebook. Now they’re using their affiliate link. There’s no opt in.
But then what happens when the launch is ready to kick off, Stu and his team can retarget those people. You’re already cookie and connected to them, and now they opt in and it’s credited to you. And even if they don’t, even if they don’t, they’re seeing Stu. They’re seeing this concept of recurring revenue, of memberships. Whatever it is you’re selling, whatever it is you’re promoting, they’re seeing this thing, and they’re starting to think about it, and it’s warming them up.
For when you do come out on April 15th and go, Stu has a workshop in a week. You should go sign up. Instead of it being like, the wait, Stu, who. Are you gonna date me first, or are you gonna just ask for my marriage? Steve McFarland. Is that his name? And he’s talking about memberships. What are like, net. Like membership to the zoo. What are we talking about?
You know, you’ve been talking about the problem, which is the cycle, you know, the revenue cycle versus a consistent, you know, revenue. You’ve been talking about Stu and just introducing Stu as a cool dude, as an expert. And now you’re saying on April 15th or April 10th, like, go sign up for his workshop. And they’re like, heck. Heck, yeah.
I’m kind of wondering if you were ever gonna invite me to something. You know, that. That long Runway, guys, is as long as you can make it. Within reason make it. And it doesn’t take a lot. Just to be clear, they weren’t going all in on Stu and Tribe on March 15. It was one Facebook post a week for three weeks. It was a tweet a day. It was like quoting him in a blog post. It was sending an email in late March and talking about this tribe workshop they took.
Not even giving a link to. Was sending to a PDF, you know, download. It was just little things, little tiny things that got people warmed up. Yeah. Just getting that familiarity is like I said, you know, are you going to date me first? Are you going to ask for my marriage right away? Like, you’ve got. Shop is dating Robby. This is like, are you even going to tell me about this person? I don’t know how you and your.
Your wife. This isn’t. This isn’t. You don’t want it to be a blind date. Yes. The first time I had met Tara at church, we had shaken hands. You know, I had heard my friend Hunter talking about her. I had seen her a few times. It’s. It’s the exact process, guys. And there was a slight when he said, I think you should go out with Tara. My response Was you think that too? If he had said, you should go out with my friend Tara. Like, why? I don’t.
Like, who. Who is this? And why do you think I should like. And then we go out and it’s like, oh, hi. You know, it’s, it’s awkward. But there was already, I don’t know, on a, on a scale of 1 to 10, I was already at a level like 2 when we went out on our first date. Truth is, I was like, on a level five, you know, but even if you’re at a level two, it’s better than zero, you know, So I think that’s a great example. But I would even say, yeah, it’s the, like, do you want to just even get to know me before we go out on a date? Even? All right, number four.
That was number three because we started with a bonus. It’s weird, I know, but that’s how we roll. Number four, like utilizing pop up Facebook groups. This is not new, but this launch, I’m telling you, we had dozens and Dozens, possibly over 100 affiliates who had pop up Facebook group groups. What does that mean? It means that they started a Facebook group somewhere, you know, a month or so before the launch. Again, this is all about warming up. And they’re starting to indoctrinate them into the terminology, recurring revenue, memberships, success path, the terms that you lose, founding member, launch, purple pickle, you know, things like that. They’re indoctrinating them into the language of tribe and they’re getting them to start thinking about. So then when the workshop comes, it’s like you have an easy group there to reach out to and get them to join.
And as much as we love the, you know, the tribe workshop Facebook group with its 35,000 people, people can get lost in there. But if they’re drinking like through a fire hose, you’re just like, how the heck do I even find my people within this group? Turn off notifications for that group. I mean, that’s, that’s the way it is. But they’re in your group with 200, sometimes 1,000, but 200, 350, 70, whatever the number is in your group with you, you’re answering questions.
We had people. I forget who it was. See if I can pull up off to look. But I specifically Remember she had 17 sales and she had 52 people in her Facebook group. Now, she made a few sales that were not in the Facebook group, but her guess was that 12, 13 of those sales, that’s over 20% of the people in that Facebook group, that’s not normal.
Just for record, when you get up to a thousand, you’re not going to sell 200 from the Facebook group more than likely, but you can sell 100 because of that intimate connection. Again, don’t underestimate the power of intimacy. And so do a pop up Facebook group started a few weeks before. Make it about the concept of the topic, then shifted to being specifically about the free content, then about buying and then, then you shut it down, you know, then you shut it down. And if you need to, as a bonus, you know, you can create another Facebook group specifically for your buyers, of course.
But that group shuts down when, you know, I usually, I recommend giving it like a couple of days, you know, so you can say like, thank you and things like that. And it’s just like, launch is over, bye. You’re dead to me. You know, give it a few days. But it does need to shut down.
Yeah. And I think that that’s an important point you made there, is that this group doesn’t compete with the main body group or whatever you’re promoting. It’s a group that you can use to support and. And one of the easiest ways to do that is within your group. You know, everybody shares something and then you say, now go share these wins, you know, in the main group and tag us so we can keep our group going in there too.
And that helps build traction for the launch as a whole. Yeah, that’s super important. You actually just remind me this is a fun little takeaway that I didn’t have written down, but we’ll just add it. When your students sign up, when you have buyers, go welcome them in the buyers Facebook group. There are multiple reasons for doing that, and I’m gonna share.
Kind of the number one reason is it will lower your return rate. Okay. It makes them feel awesome. It’s engagement in that group that’s great. Gets them kind of like when you welcome them, other people will come in and welcome them. So again, it just makes them feel amazing. The other kind of like side little thing that a lot of people don’t think about is it. It definitely puts you more on the radar of the course creator and, you know, in their team, which has benefits long term, you know, I’m just saying, so you can think about what those might be, but it definitely has benefits that you might not think about. All right, so that was now number five. I’m gonna have to.
Oh, my numbers are all messed up here. That was a bonus extra one I just threw in. I don’t even know what number on. I think we’re on number seven. Number five. Five ish. Show up in. This was the big thing we saw like the guy, the people who outperform their lists and they’re like those first time affiliates ended up making 2030. One first time affiliate made like 50. Oh man, let me. What was it? I mean, one first time affiliate made 60 something sales. Let me pull that up because this was just, I accidentally. This is wild. Just blew me away. Final leaderboard. Here we go. Let’s. Okay, so I was, I was a little bit off. One first time affiliate made 47.
Another first time affiliate 43. Going down. Another one 34. But then I’m looking here, 29, 27, 23, 20, 20. I mean, like, wow, 16, 16. First time 14. 14. I mean, guys, one of them in particular, I’m thinking of like showing up in the workshop, showing up in the Facebook group, you know, the free Facebook group for the workshop for your people. But also, you know, just in general, meaning you’re showing up there. So they’re attending the workshop and there’s a chat going on and they’re the ones saying hey to any of their people that they see.
Now if the person, if one of your people is John Smith and you see a John Smith and they don’t have an avatar, you know, their picture, it’s kind of hard to tell if it’s that John Smith. But again, it’s like they see their people and they’d say, hey, so? And so they were answering questions in there. Their people saw that they were active in this free workshop and that meant they even got more excited. And when I look at like, you know, manual, I’m just, I mean, look, she closed, I mean, good grief, she closed 7, 8% of her leads. Michelle was like, I mean, she close like 10% of her leads. How do you do that? By showing up. Yeah, being active. And you can say, well, I got to be.
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You don’t have to be there for the whole two and a half hour of each workshop. Show up in the middle for a little bit when things die down. Because initially that chats like. And then it dies down and you can interact, you can, you can do it while doing other work. You know, I’ll do this sometimes.
I’ll show up and I’ll be there to support my people and I’ll show up for like an hour in the middle while I’m checking email and I’ll just glance over, oh, there’s, you know, so. And so left a comment and I’ll, you know, I’ll respond to them. So it doesn’t take a lot of time. I probably actively spent personally one hour. I think most of them probably actively spend an hour or two. And again, if you spend an hour, let’s just say two hours. Actively two hours is not that much time. And it helps you close 10 sales. That’s a thousand dollars for two hours. Again, there’s not a whole lot any of us can do.
You are making more than the average American makes in a month of work for two hours. I mean that’s a pretty cool deal. And something to think about with this and you talk about this all the time isn’t how. It’s not about, you know, you’re not closing sales on the second workshop training or anything like that. You’re just moving that, that potential customer closer to a purchase. And, and the more you show up, the more you build that relationship, the more you, you know, you’re serving them as they’re going through whatever free material is available, the more that they’re seeing like, wow, this really is a community. This is something that, you know, I want to be a part of. And that’s moving them closer, closer to a purchase decision. Yeah. So number six or seven, however, we’re counting these six B.
We’re not going to go into detail on this. Robby, I’m going to ask you if you can, if you can provide a link to a video under. Or we’ll put a video under here. Guys, let me explain this. It’s opt in bonuses. The affiliates that did well and I’m looking down the list. I mean the affiliates that did amazing. You haven’t heard of any. I mean, I seriously doubt I’m gonna use out of 20 affiliates, you guys, the average person in here has probably heard of two. Two of the top 20.
Thing is they offered a bonus for coming to the workshop and they offered a bonus for coming to the webinar. So what we’re going to do is we’re going to put a video under here. We did a strategy call with the affiliates where we talked about strategies to get them to come to the workshop and we talked about opt in bonuses. So I’m not going to go in. That’s a, it’s a 20, 25 minute discussion that we could talk about that you’re going to have access to that so you guys can watch.
There’s other discussions we had in there, but we talk about promoting the free workshop and one of the keys that Almost all. In fact, I think literally all of the affiliates used, practically the ones who made more than a few sales, was an opt in bonus. Number seven is something we talked about in our recap. We talked about Pedro’s launch, the Crush it with challenges launch, and that’s creating a bridge page to collect leads. Again, that’s something we talk about in this video as well.
I just wanted to reiterate that when I look at the top affiliates, more than half of them created a bridge page to collect leads of their own, so then they can follow up with those leads. This is specifically for your social media. So just to be clear, if you’re emailing your list, you don’t need a bridge page. You know who, you know, clicked and opted in. But if you’re promoting on social media, we send them to a bridge page that ties into that opt in bonus.
Because you’re entering your email to, to gather or to claim this bonus. And then you go to the opt in page for the affiliate promotion. This is a very simple way of, rather than sending say 500 leads from your Instagram profile, your Facebook ads, sending them to the affiliate program and be like, hey, here’s all these leads, and now I got none of them. You can capture those. It’s a little bit.
It’s especially relevant for ads because you might be running ads like a lookalike audience that has no association with you whatsoever. So they are most definitely not on your email list. A lot of people who follow you on social also might be on your email list. But still, you’ll get some new subscribers and you’ll have a way of identifying who these people are to follow up with them. Number 8. ISH, 8. 5. As Jeffrey Gittermer would do. This was a new one that I think is a game changer. I don’t know if you know where I’m going with this, Robby.
I think I know. Hot prospects, baby. Yeah, this was so. This is. We saw the needle move so quickly on this. This is something we did as the affiliate managers. We sent out a list of their hot prospects. And I’m going to explain what that is in a moment. But if they, if they don’t send it to you, you should be asking for that. That is the takeaway for you guys.
Okay, so here’s, here’s how this works. We ran a report on our back end and we identified who were the like 1 to 2%. Okay. Without mentioning names. Like, the average top 10 affiliate had 2,500 leads, probably, probably a little bit less probably 2,000 leads. The average number of people we sent them was like 40. So whatever the math is on that, I know the top affiliate. We would have sent them less than, give me a second, 10%. We just sent them about 1. 3% of their total leads.
On this hot prospects list. We identified that there could be any number of metrics you could use. But the only two groups that we sent them were people who had opted into the sneak peek form. So this was people who sat on before the cart open, they clicked over to the sneak peek page and said, I want to know when Tribe opens. Knowing the cost and everything, they wanted to do this, right?
Or they had watched all three of the videos or the lessons and visited the sales page. It might be that you say people who visited the sales pages a certain number of times. It might be people who attended the webinar and went to all whatever variables that you think are best ask for those leads. And so for us, it was super easy. I mean, it’s time consuming to send these out to like 50 people.
You know, Kevin spent like, I don’t know, three hours doing it. It’s not easy in the sense of like, you know, press a button and you’re done. I mean, it’s very time consuming. But you literally go into whatever system, ours is infusionsoft at the time with tribe and you click on, you say, show me all the leads for Robby Miles who fit these criteria. And then, you know, like I said, about 1%, sometimes upwards of 2% of your leads.
These are the people that you can then apply all the stuff we’ve been talking about, the individual reach outs, you know, that you could, you know, specifically like pick up the phone and call them or send an email inviting them to call you. We’ve shared how to do that before. You could specifically find a way to communicate them maybe with them more. Because if you think about this, if they watched all three videos, they opted in, watched all three lessons and visited the sales page or did the sneak peek, how likely are they to unsubscribe? Like 0%.
So if you’re really like, oh, I don’t know if I want to send a lot of emails, well then just segment these people and send them 50 emails. You know, that might be a little overboard. 50 would be much. But send them, send them like, you know, send them like eight or nine emails in the last three days. Because, I mean, that’s what, that’s, that’s how you do this. So if they don’t offer this and I’m telling you, this will get out that we did this because we’re sharing it right now. People will start doing this proactively. But in the meantime, ask, say, I need a list of my hot prospects. How can we define hot prospects? Maybe it’s not a maybe.
They don’t have three live lessons. Maybe it’s okay. I just need to know who, you know, who’s clicked the sales page twice. You know, people who open, you know, who have an open rate of 70% or more of the, of the launch emails and have visited the sales page. Oh, well, that generates, you know, 6%. Well, then let’s make it smaller. You want it to be pretty small. You want it to be, you know, like I said, I mean, over 5,000 leads from the top affiliate. And I think we sent 84. Like you want this to be a very refined list so that you can legitimately talk to 30 of them, you know, or 40 of them in a 48 hour period. We sent that at about 2pm on the very last day.
Because I just thought of it at 1pm on the very last day. I would ask for it. I would ask for it in advance. I would ask for it, hey, on the day before cart close, I would like this list. And then I would start working that list in the afternoon of the day before. Yeah, I think that last point is key. Just from the affiliate management side of it, your affiliate manager is going to be much more likely to get those to you if you give them the Runway to do. So if you throw something at them last minute, they’re gonna be like, I’ll get to it if I can find time today. It’s part close.
I got a lot of things going on. So please give them the Runway to know that you’re going to be asking for something specific. That’s a good point. I mean, you’re doing me a favor as well as an affiliate manager, if you know there are things, and you can never predict everything, but if you know there are things you are going to need, especially in the last 72 hours of a launch, you know, or a big promo, ask for them in advance. Tell them that this is what you’re gonna need. And if they’re just by themselves, then they can at least put it on their to do. Like I would put it on my to do list Wednesday morning, send Joe, you know, hot prospects list. Or in my case, I would say, hey, Kevin, on Wednesday morning, run this report and he’ll put it on, you know, his list and send it to Joe. Yeah. Lesson nine, when to deliver your bonuses.
This is something that came up a lot in the Facebook group for our partners and something we’ve advocated for a long time. Most of your bonuses, you don’t want to deliver until after the refund period. Especially if it’s access to a course or templates or swipe files or anything tangible like that where they can take it and be like, haha, got it. Refund, thanks. Peace out. You know, if it’s anything you sell, you definitely do not deliver it until after the refund period. You will have. Some people are just dumb, you know, they’re kind of jerks and they’re, they’ll take advantage of you. So that said though, if it’s a Facebook group or coaching calls, start them right away. That’s a retention, that’s a retention thing.
So if you’re doing Q and A calls or coaching calls, you got a group specifically for your buyers, give them access right away. That’ll help retain them. Everything else comes after the refund period. 11. No, 10. If they do training, take advantage of them. I’m blown away. I’m looking at our leaderboard here and when I think about who showed up at these trainings. One person out of the. Nope.
Two people. Three people out of the top four people out of the top 32, as far as I went down, didn’t come to the affiliate trainings. 28 of the top 32 came to at least one, more than likely a half a dozen of them. You know, I mean, I’m looking at like number, number one, number three, five, eight. Tied for ninth. The final two were tied for ninth. I mean they came to probably close to every one of them. One of them missed the last one. I was like, I’m so sorry because I changed the time. She was like, I had a Facebook Live already scheduled, like for the launch.
I couldn’t come. I’m watching the replay now, like, okay, cool. You know, do the trainings. We over train our affiliates. Like we do more training than any other affiliate program. So that’s easy for me to say. But if they offer any type of training, even to be honest, even if it’s not even that great, you don’t even learn. You don’t, you don’t learn what you wouldn’t learn in five minutes watching an AIM video. Okay, but you’re learning the calendar and you’re internalizing it and there’s something about like, you know, here’s, here’s the tribe calendar and I can, I can look at this Tribe calendar be like, yeah, PLC1. But then because I’m an auditory learner, I go to the training and I hear Stu talking about, okay, workshop number one.
It’s going to be about this. We’re going to do this. And like, I’ll remember it all. I don’t even tell you right now, okay, 26. I don’t even know when the second PLC was in the launch we just ran, you know, but if I’m there, here, I’m joking. But I wouldn’t remember if all I did was that. And so, like, if that’s all you get is like the launch theme and some principles and maybe you pick up on, like, he’ll share a story. This was the thing I love about with Stu is he was sharing stories of tribers like, yeah, you know, Brenda did this. And I’m like, oh, that Brenda did. That’d be really good for me to talk about Brenda because she’s similar to my audience.
If that’s all you get out of being at one of these trainings for 45 minutes, you just got marketing material. If you didn’t learn a single tactic or strategy. Like, we teach, like, we’ll teach you all kinds of stuff. Like, you can watch the video that we’re going to put below here and you’ll learn, like, what we teach when we run launches. But even if you learn nothing like that, but you just get a couple of ideas for your promo or, you know, something like that that works. If not, you’ll also get more than that, though. You will, you’ll get that. You’ll, you’ll learn from. Like, even if the training itself is terrible, this goes back to what you were talking about in what number five? And anything that you said show up.
Yeah, anything where you said show up. Right when you show up, those affiliate managers see you, the product creators see you. They know, they know that you’re there, that you’re trying to serve their audience by serving yours. And when you show up, people respect that there’s a certain understanding between them and you that you’re in this not just to like, you know, drop a couple links and run off. You’re in it to serve. And I mean, maybe I shouldn’t admit this, but I’m going to because it’s. I’m a human being. When we got to the last day and we had a few. Stu had a few spots open for some lives. I think he had about three 15 minute spots open.
We pretty much already done like the top 20. And I’m scrolling through this list. And these are people who are outside the top 20 who were all. I mean, I’m looking right here between, you know, 24th and, you know, 50th, they’re separated by 9, you know, 26 to 50th, they’re separated by nine sales. Okay. Roughly. And I’m looking at this list going, who should I send these emails to? Who do you think I sent them to? The ones who were on most of the calls. Why is that?
Well, for one, I mean, like, I know that they’ve been busting it. The fact that they were willing to spend four, five, six hours coming to these calls, I knew they were busting it. Second of all, I knew they were going to do them right, you know, and so, I mean, I went through the list and I’m like, you know, who’s getting these? Michelle Courtney. And that’s who got. Was Michelle Courtney and I remember who got the last one. I think it was just, oh, and Christie. Why? Because they were at all the things.
So I’m like, you know, they go. They. Technically, if I went in order of the leaderboard, there were a few others that should have gotten them before them. But I, like, I. Not only was rewarding them, that was part of it. Second of all, it was like, I just. I knew they were going to be just so excited, you know, and like, they were gonna make the best of this. So that’s why I did that. So take advantage of the trainings. It’ll help you strategically also, just getting ideas.
But, you know, like Robby said, you’ll be on their radar and you’ll get. Here’s the thing, you’ll get special treatment. Simply put, you’re gonna get special treatment. Don’t tell anybody. All right, this is something we’ll talk a little bit more about in part two next month. But use the Facebook group. And then again, we’re going to talk. A lot of what we’re going to share in the next one is just stuff from the Facebook group. Lessons from the Facebook group. Utilize the Facebook group, Connect with other affiliates.
There were relationships made and relationships solidified in this launch like nothing I’ve ever seen before in an affiliate launch. There was one particular post. Like, guys, this. I mean, this was just unreal. You know, Stu and I did a Facebook Live at the end, and I went back and looked around. I don’t know if you saw that post, but there were like a thousand comments on this 30 minute Facebook Live. That’s just indicative. They were interacting with each other. They were helping Each other. But the post that Sarah posted when, you know, she.
She posted afterward that Heidi called her and a few of the other. They got together and they FaceTimed. And, you know, she took a screenshot of that. Like, that’s that community that you just. It’s irreplaceable. It’s absolutely irreplaceable. And like, use it, ask questions, support each other, cheer people on. And here’s the thing. Sometimes you’ll be in these Facebook groups and there will be some people who are at a level above you, and you answer their question or you encourage them, or you. You give them a tip that you, you know, you like.
Just because they’re at a level above you doesn’t mean that you’re not better at something than them. You know, maybe they’re. They have a bigger email list and they’re doing better than you, but you’re an expert at Facebook pages, and that’s your thing. And they ask a question about that, and you’re the one who comes in and helps them with it. They will remember that you are now on their radar. You know, you’re now like somebody to them. And so participate in the group. Don’t just go through liking posts. That’s who’s liked my post recently. I have no idea who’s commented on my posts.
I have a vague idea of the people who’ve commented on my posts. Again, you’ll show up to the affiliate manager, too. That played a role. Not only was it the people who, you know who came to the trains, but it was the people who were active in the group. That’s human psychology. You know, the reticular activating system. You know, when you buy a blue truck, what do you suddenly see? A bunch of blue trucks. Right? So who are the people that.
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When I go through this list, the names that stand out to me are not the names of the people that weren’t emailing me, that weren’t in the Facebook group and weren’t coming to the trainings. I know all of the names when I think about them long enough, but the ones that stand out to me are the ones that I kept seeing, like, every day in my notifications, they were commenting on the post. And so just participate, help cheer, offer tips, share a success story, share a strategy. We had. So this is what we’ll talk about in the next one, guys. You know, we had so many affiliates posting in there. Okay, I just did this, and here’s what happened. I just did this. And it worked. I just did this, and it didn’t work.
I just did this and I split test something and this is the one that like that’s, that’s what you want to be doing. Yeah. And that rising tide rises all ships. Right? Everybody did better because they were able to find that, that one thing that somebody they may have never even heard of two weeks ago.\ But now they learn something and that community continues to grow. It’s just, it was incredible to watch. So awesome. All right. I hope you got so much out of this episode.
I cannot wait for part two. We’ve got more lessons like how to identify and serve your hottest prospects. The secrets for closing sales on the final day. I’m going to share an email in that that it works. It works.
How to use story like how your story connects in ways that no other affiliate can and a bunch more. And then remember in episode three there’s going to be that bonus lesson on how to use opt in bonuses to grow your list. So make sure you hit subscribe. We got six more amazing episodes that you don’t want to miss in this series and really, you do not want to miss a single one of them. So make sure if you haven’t yet, you hit subscribe.
And as always, if you’ve got questions about this or anything else, you can hit me up, text me anytime at 260-217-4619. If you’re in the U. S. right? That only works if you’re in the US. so 260-217-4619 if you’re outside the U. S. hit me up on social media. Just go to mattmcwaims.com and you can find all my content contact information there. And reach out anytime. I’ll see you in the next episode. Thank you so much for listening today. If you know someone who would benefit from hearing this episode, make sure to.
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