Ep 87: I Forgot My Cart-Close Emails and Still Had a $42K Month: SOS Launch Post-Mortem
I have done a lot of launches, and I don't think I have ever straight-up forgotten to send the cart-close emails.
Forgot to write them. Forgot to schedule them. Forgot to send them.
By the time I realized what happened, I had already passed my goal.
That pretty much sums up this Sold Out Services campaign. There were things I planned carefully, a live event I decided to make public at the last minute, brand-new social accounts with fewer than 300 followers, a new team helping with sales conversations, 37 emails, and two very important emails that showed up a day late.
By August 24, seven new Sold Out Services clients had enrolled, representing $42,000 in contracted revenue. Six of those enrollments were connected to this campaign, and $9,550 in cash from new enrollments had hit the bank at the time I recorded the episode.
So, yes, we're doing a postmortem.
I Started With More Leads Than I Realized
This campaign began because I had to change the way I was looking at my list.
I use one main free resource, Authority Anchor, which is a pressure test for a service provider's positioning. It is directly connected to the work I do inside Sold Out Services, so someone who downloads it gives me useful information. I can see whether they're a service provider, what their positioning looks like, and whether a conversation about SOS makes sense.
That matters because I don't want subscribers for the sake of having subscribers. I want to know whether the people coming into my world are people I can actually help.
Once I started looking at those people as leads, I realized I had quite a few of them. My first thought was to invite a small group to an open Q&A about Sold Out Services. Then I started pulling together the information I wanted to share and realized I had enough interesting data to make the event public.
That became State of the Damn Service, a mid-year look at what I was seeing across the service businesses I'd worked with and where I thought service providers should be paying attention for the rest of 2026.
The Live Event Was Way Simpler Than My Usual Webinar
I like live calls. I like teaching, answering questions, and having people in the room with me.
I also usually make the whole thing a production. Slides, design, practice, all of it.
This time I didn't want to make slides, so I didn't.
I put my notes in a Google Doc, opened a large Zoom meeting, and treated the whole thing like a live podcast episode. It was one of my favorite parts of the campaign, and it worked well enough that I already know I want to bring State of the Damn Service back next year.
My registration goal was 170 people. We ended up with about 180, and 109 of them were new to my list.
Around 80 registrants were people we considered strong leads based on what we knew about their business and their previous interactions with my work.
That ratio gave me something far more useful than a vanity registration number. The event was reaching people who made sense for the offer.
Threads Did a Lot of the Work With a Tiny Audience
This is where the campaign gets especially interesting to me.
I had started brand-new Instagram and Threads accounts, and I intentionally did not send my old audience over to follow them. I wanted to see what would happen if I built from scratch with very specific positioning.
During the campaign, both new accounts had fewer than 300 followers.
My Threads views were hovering around 40,000 to 42,000, though, and a few posts about State of the Damn Service brought in a large number of comments from people asking for the registration link.
I would reply, tell them I was sending the link on Instagram, then move the conversation into Instagram DMs because that's where I prefer talking with people.
That led to registrations, conversations, and new people finding the event.
This is one reason I keep talking about small audiences. A follower count tells you very little about how many people are actually seeing your ideas or whether the right people are responding to them.
I nearly had as many people register for my live call as I had followers on the accounts I was using to promote it.
I Sent 37 Emails, and My List Grew
Then there were the emails.
I sent 37 during this campaign once you include the two cart-close emails I eventually remembered to write. Across the first 35, my average open rate was about 41%.
I send a lot during campaigns because I want people to have enough information to make a decision. I talk about the offer before enrollment opens. I answer questions, share examples, remind people about the live event, send the replay, and tell them when enrollment is closing.
There's always anxiety around sending this much email because people assume a campaign means watching a giant chunk of their list unsubscribe.
My list grew by 12%.
I don't spend my time tracking individual unsubscribes or trying to figure out why someone left. I care much more about whether the people joining are a strong fit for what I'm selling.
If a campaign brings in new right-fit people while I'm also selling, that tells me something useful about the message.
The Actual Launch Numbers
Here are the numbers as they stood when I recorded the episode on August 24.
Seven new Sold Out Services clients had enrolled in August. One enrolled before the formal campaign window, five enrolled during the August 13 through August 20 enrollment period, and another enrolled right after a sales call that happened during the campaign.
That put August at $42,000 in contracted revenue from new SOS clients, with $9,550 collected in cash from those new enrollments at the time of recording.
The majority chose the quarterly payment option, which was useful information for me because quarterly payments were a newer choice inside the offer. I had also offered an extra 30-minute call as a pay-in-full bonus, and nobody took it.
I don't see that as a problem I need to immediately fix. It is information. Maybe that bonus wasn't compelling. Maybe the people I'm talking to prefer keeping more cash available. I can watch what happens the next time I sell.
The campaign also gave me two conversion rates to look at. About 4% of the people who registered for the live event enrolled, while roughly 2.5% of the larger hot segment enrolled.
Those numbers help me work backward from my capacity.
Right now I have room for about eight new SOS clients per month based on the number of kickoff calls I want to hold. If my conversion rate stays around 2.5%, I know roughly how many strong leads I need to be talking to. If that conversion rate changes as we get better at identifying those leads, the math changes too.
I Also Paid for More Sales Support
The campaign wasn't free.
Based on the time my VA spent specifically supporting the campaign, scheduling content and emails and handling event logistics, I estimated about $210 in VA costs.
I also brought on Alyssa's team to help with DM sales conversations. That first month cost $1,500 plus commission on sales they were responsible for.
I gave them a goal of four new clients.
At the time I recorded this, they had been involved in five.
I'm still figuring out exactly how I want that support to work inside my business, and there are already pieces I want to adjust. The reason I hired help is very simple: I had more leads and conversations than I personally had the capacity to follow up with well.
I want my time going toward the parts of selling where I am strongest, while making sure people who raise their hand actually get a response and a clear next step.
What I'm Taking Into the Next Campaign
For the rest of 2026, my goal is eight new Sold Out Services clients per month. I don't have a desire to race past that number as soon as I hit it.
I want to stay there long enough to see what happens to delivery and where I need more support before I add more capacity.
This campaign gave me plenty to work with: a public live event I want to repeat, evidence that brand-new social accounts can bring in right-fit leads, better information about my payment options, and a much clearer picture of how much sales support I need when attention picks up.
And, apparently, evidence that forgetting your cart-close emails does not automatically destroy a launch.
Listen to episode 87 of Sell the Damn Service for the full postmortem and all the numbers behind the campaign.
Chapters
00:01 The Sold Out Services launch postmortem
02:28 Sold Out Services pricing and how the offer works
04:54 Turning an opt-in into an actual lead source
07:11 Why I changed the campaign into a public live event
09:38 Running State of the Damn Service with no slides
11:58 180 registrations and how I identified strong leads
14:25 Why Threads brought in so many right-fit people
18:38 The live attendance bonus and 60% show-up rate
20:57 Starting over with fewer than 300 followers
23:18 Sending 37 emails and forgetting cart close
25:38 Growing my email list by 12% during a launch
28:01 Seven new clients and $42K in contracted revenue
30:20 Cash collected and what people chose for payment plans
32:45 The pay-in-full bonus nobody took
35:11 My 4% and 2.5% conversion rates
38:28 What I spent on campaign support
40:53 Bringing in help with DM sales conversations
47:38 Capacity, eight clients per month, and what's next
Ready to Restructure and Productize Your Service?
Inside Sold Out Services, I help service providers examine who each offer serves, what happens after someone buys, and where qualified clients are being left without a clear next step.
You do not need to create an entirely new business every time you reach capacity.
There may be more revenue, impact, and long-term client value hiding inside the client relationships you have already built.
If you’d like to see a library of all published episodes in a gallery with easy-to-find links to all listening platforms be sure to check out the Sell The Damn Service Episode Library.
