Day 1 of 3

I’m kicking off an affiliate offer to another list this morning—the first email should drop just as this hits your inbox.

Day 1 is always the most interesting for me, because it gives me a pretty good read on how the campaign will perform as a whole.

Day 1 is all about “hyper-responders.”

These are the people who are actively stewing over the very problem that your offer solves.

They’re primed to buy.

If you were running an Apple store, these would be the customers who camp out in front of your store 9 days before the new iPhone is due to come out.

These buyers don’t need a big song and dance. You can just kinda walk out the front door holding up an iPhone box and they’ll crush you trying to rip it from your hands.

That’s the reaction I’m looking for on Day 1.

Because of this, I typically kick off with a straightforward email.

The subject line clearly telegraphs the main benefit of the product.

The body lays out the basic pitch, spells out the features and benefits, explains the scarcity element, and links out to the sales page for a CTA.

It’s basically a mini-sales page—”mini” for a sales page, not for an email. Usually this email runs ~1000 words or more.

I send it out mid-morning on Day 1.

So what am I looking for?

For one thing, I want to see a lot of clicks.

Usually this introductory email gets the second highest click through rate of any email in the campaign—people are curious to check out the new thing.

The click rate here gives me a good sense for how hot the audience is for this particular topic.

More importantly though, is sales.

Typically 30-40% of total sales come through on the first day—that’s those hyper-responders springing into action.

This holds true regardless of price point.

Yes, there will be people who agonize over the decision and need more time to make up their minds.

However you should see SOME people ready to buy without a lot of hand wringing if the promotion is going to do well.

So that’s what I’ll have my eye on today.

More to come.