Do you run live webinars and promote them through your email marketing? Have you ever thought about switching to automated webinars? Oh, the possibilities…

You see – one of our members, Brad Brown, went from running two live webinars a week to an automated one. And here he shared the story of how he made $90k in the process. He not only increased his sales and profits but also smashed his ad spend and freed up his time to grow his business in different ways.

What's not to love here? 

Ready to hear exactly what Brad did (and what you can do in your business)? 

SOME EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS: 

(0:19) Join our FREE Facebook Group.
(4:23) When did Brad start using email marketing in his business?
(9:11) What were the biggest barriers to email marketing?
(10:24) Why did Brad join The League?
(12:55) Switching to automated webinars.
(18:16) Implementing other email campaigns.
(20:34) The ONE action with the most impact.
(22:28) What's next for Brad and email marketing? 
(23:14) Has email marketing taken over Brad's life?
(25:26) Subject line of the week.

When did Brad start using email marketing in his business?

Brad and his business partner run an online coaching business where they help people become the best runners they can be – no matter whether they're new to running or they're professional athletes. 

When they first started, Brad and his business partner would travel around South Africa helping the organisers of a famous running race, and ten years or so ago, they ended up setting up a business together. Like many, they started with one-on-one coaching, but in order to leverage their time, they eventually built a training platform that connects with all the main running apps and created a community of engaged runners around the world. 

So when did they start with email marketing? Quite early on. Brad had a lead magnet that he used to grow his email list. From selling digital training plans that would be emailed out to runners, he built an online platform in late 2018 where he's been relying on email regularly and consistently.

What were the biggest barriers to email marketing? 

Brad believes that, at first, he struggled with messaging. They were creating a lot of content (YouTube, podcast, etc.) and that felt a bit like bombarding their audience. They had no real strategy around selling through email marketing, and as a result, they dabbled with different promotions or webinars to find something that worked. 

Emails would all be live (broadcast and not automated) at that point and mainly around the YouTube videos that were published every week. The barrier was that nothing was selling on an ongoing basis. 

Why did Brad join The League?

Before Brad joined The League, their business was purely event-based, which means they helped people train for events and marathons. But when Covid hit, people stopped training, and that brought the business to a halt. So Brad and his partner started looking at what they could do to grow while people couldn’t train for events.

While focusing on the over-50s as a niche, Brad and his partner decided to run a live webinar. That became so successful that over the following two years, they delivered a staggering 60 live webinars, with the aim to accommodate the most time zones possible. And that meant they were up early in the morning and then late at night. The team was burning out. 

On top of that, they were also spending $45k a month on Facebook ads. And while the ads were generating a return on investment, their model wasn’t sustainable. So they started looking for a way to automate things.

It was around that time that Brad heard us being interviewed on a podcast and started following us. He joined our membership with the intention of setting up automated email marketing sequences, so the first thing he did after joining The League was to start building his email engine. And the first thing he did was to implement our Getting To Know You sequence, which is our version of the welcome sequence. 

Switching to automated webinars

When Brad started creating email marketing campaigns, the whole thing was messy. People were getting multiple emails a day, Brad and his business partner were still running live webinars around the clock, and their costs were climbing. In June 2022 Brad finally turned on the Evergreen Webinar sequence, which means he switched to automated webinars. And that completely changed their business. 

Because people in different time zones could now choose a suitable time to attend the automated webinars, the attendance rate increased. Brad found success in using a warm-up sequence prior to the webinar starting and also in sending out a workbook, with a view to delivering extra value to their audience. 

When running webinars, there are three distinct actions you're asking people to take. You have to get them to register, attend, and then convert (i.e. buy). While evergreen/automated webinars have a reputation for converting less than live ones, Brad didn't find this to be true.

Their webinar format of one hour and forty minutes is also unusual when it comes to widespread marketing advice. But Brad and his partner provide so much value that by simply implementing the tips in the webinar, someone could improve their running. And this builds a lot of trust in their audience, which, in turn, makes Brad's business stand out. 

When Brad turned on the sequence for automated webinars, he didn’t know how it was going to work. But the results have been amazing, and the business turned over more than $90k as a result of building this automation. Plus, because the attendance rate and the conversion rate have both increased, the business doesn't need as many leads anymore. That means that ad costs have decreased by about 75%! And that translates to more money in their pockets, which is absolutely fantastic!

Implementing other email campaigns

Since joining our membership, Brad and his business partner have also implemented other email marketing campaigns. They have a core email engine made of ‘train carriages' (i.e. various automated campaigns), and this means their revenue is more consistent. As a business, they're not chasing their tail and starting from scratch every month. In fact, with more revenue and more time, they can focus on other things, such as writing a book or planning an online summit. And these are things that couldn't have happened when Brad and his partner were running two webinars a week! 

In other words, creating automated campaigns means Brad has more time to build the business and work on it rather than in it. And that's made a huge difference. The evergreen webinar sequence (used as a lead generation tool) has also been built into their email engine. So if someone comes to their business via the webinar but doesn't buy, they then receive other campaigns that sell the same product from different angles. Or if people come through a lead magnet, at some point they'll be presented with an offer to attend the webinar.  

All in all, doing email marketing this way means that cost per acquisition is down and profitability is up. Plus, they have the bandwidth to expand and do more. Whereas before, growing would have meant more staff and bigger premises – i.e. more costs!

The ONE action with the most impact

We ask this question to all the members we interview as case studies. Because we want to know what one action they took that made all the difference.

And what Brad recommends that people do is pick someone they trust and follow their advice. There's so much information out there that it's easy to fall into the trap of selecting bits and pieces of advice here and there and trying to piece them together yourself. Don't do that. Because that's when things end up being messy. And that's true of email marketing as well as running, Brad says!

That's why when Brad joined The League, he threw himself into the process. He decided to start from scratch with their email marketing and build everything from the ground up. He locked himself in his office for about a month and didn’t come out until he had a coherent and functional system for his email marketing. Now, his subscribers don’t receive emails that aren’t relevant, and Brad’s sales outside of webinars have also increased. They sell a lot more of their membership too, and that’s been awesome!

What’s next for Brad and email marketing?

The next thing Brad wants to focus on when it comes to email marketing is to figure out why people aren't buying online. In other words, they want to address people's objections down to the various segments of their audience. And, of course, we have a campaign that does just that, which is called The Interrogator.

Has email marketing taken over Brad’s life?

Brad admits that email marketing took a lot of his time when he first started out because, as a business, they have a lot of sub-niches within their main niche. And that means Brad had been running a lot of parallel campaigns.

But now that the engine is up and running, Brad doesn’t even need to think about it. The sales are coming in, and that feeling is something you can’t put money on, Brad says.

In other words, Brad (just like a lot of our members) invested early on in the process. And that means that email marketing has now become an asset, and the business is getting returns. Plus, they no longer have to be awake around the clock to run live webinars!

If you’re not a member of The League yet, go and check out the details here. We give you all the campaigns and systems to have the kind of results that Brad and our other members are getting in their businesses. So what are you waiting for?

Subject line of the week

This week’s subject line is “Alexa, give me a 25-minute timer”. The story from Rob here was about how he asked Alexa for a timer to do a certain task for a set period of time. And that’s a subject line that gets people to pay attention. Try it out!

Useful Episode Resources

Related episodes

How Facebook Groups and Webinars Make Matthew Harrington a Happy Man.

How A League Member Made Over $10k With Just ONE Email Campaign – Case Study With Aidan O’Sullivan.

And How Cody Burch Increased Sales by Exactly 1,000% in 1 Month with Just 10 Emails.

FREE list of the top 10 books to improve your email marketing

If you want to write better emails, come up with better content, and move your readers to click and buy, here's how. We put together this list of our Top 10 most highly recommended books that will improve all areas of your email marketing (including some underground treasures that we happened upon, which have been game-changing for us). Grab your FREE list here. 

Join our FREE Facebook group

If you want to chat about how you can maximise the value of your email list and make more money from every subscriber, we can help! We know your business is different, so come and hang out in our FREE Facebook group, the Email Marketing Show Community for Course Creators and Coaches. We share a lot of training and resources, and you can talk about what you're up to.

Try ResponseSuite for $1

This week's episode is sponsored by ResponseSuite.com, the survey quiz and application form tool that we created specifically for small businesses like you to integrate with your marketing systems to segment your subscribers and make more sales. Try it out for 14 days for just $1.

Join The League Membership

Not sick of us yet? Every day we hang out in our amazing community of Email Marketing Heroes. We share all of our training and campaigns and a whole bunch of other stuff. If you're looking to learn how to use psychology-driven marketing to level up your email campaigns, come and check out The League Membership. It's the number one place to hang out and grow your email marketing. Best news yet? You can apply everything we talk about in this show.

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