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    Sell Me This Pen: How I sold $2,220 of sports training (knowing NOTHING about sports)

    Sell me this pen

    A talent of a great copywriter is the ability to sell almost anything, even if they currently know NOTHING about the product.

    There's this famous scene in Wolf Of Wall Street where the star of the movie (a scammer named Jordan Belfort) says to someone at a conference:

    "Sell me this pen."

    He hands them a pen and expects them to sell it to him.

    I personally think it's kind of stupid, and the techniques used to "sell the pen" are very high pressure sales tactics.  It's personally not how I would want to be sold.

    HOWEVER, it doesn't matter what the object you're selling is.  The point is knowing HOW to sell.  Then instead of learning just how to sell a pen, you can:

    Sell me this pen.

    Sell me this bowl of cereal.

    Sell me this life insurance policy. 

    Sell me this 400 watt industrial tract lighting system.  

    So without knowing ANYTHING about sports, I was able to extract the information needed to sell advanced football training to football coaches.

    For this experiment I had a team of radiologists scan my brain, and here's the scientific results of how much of my brain is dedicated to knowing things about sports:

    Neville Sports

    As you can see the Neville Brain knows nothing about sports.  HOWEVER, the Neville Brain knows copywriting, and therefore can figure out the exact information he needs to sell.

    I sat down with the owner of CoachTube (a site that sells training for sports coaches and their teams),  and in exactly 1 hour together we made a quick promotion and emails that generated $2,220 in sales from sports coaches.

    This is a common thing I tell people: If you learn proper copywriting, you can sell anything no matter which industry.

     

    Experiment:

    Can a copywriter who knows ZERO about football successfully sell to a group of people who are obsessive about football?  Let's find out.

    Below, with the help of the owner of coachtube logo, we will craft an offer, write an offer email, and write a Closer email.

     

     

     

    Step 1.) Figure out the offer:

    I asked the owner of CoachTube what a "hot topic" was at the moment.  He said he went to a football coaches conference recently and pretty much all the buzz was about how to do R.P.O. plays and how defend against R.P.O.'s.

    I asked him if a coach wants to fully learn about R.P.O. plays and teach his team about them, which are the MUST HAVE trainings we could bundle together on the topic.

    He named 5 different training courses:

    We took these training courses and put them in a package called the "RPO Domination Bundle."

    At this point, I still didn't even know what the hell an "R.P.O." was.....but as the copywriter, it didn't matter JUST YET.  I was going on the instincts of the owner of the company who intimately knew what sold well, and what the best courses were.

    Sidenote: I hate the name "RPO Domination Bundle", but after hearing what football coaches respond well to and how everything in their career is about competition, I agreed "domination" would fit well.

    Here's the landing page they whipped up in a few minutes.  Nothing special.  It was literally just the images of the trainings with copy/pasted descriptions of each:

    coachtubebundle

    This was an extremely simple page with essentially no design or fancy sales page stuff.....just a list of the trainings in the bundle.

     

     

    STEP 2: Write an email for the offer:

    At this point I still had no idea what an "R.P.O." in football was.  However I'm about to speak to a group of football coaches through email, so I better learn SOMETHING about it quickly!

    I proceeded to ask the owner of CoachTube some key questions which would help me fill in my email:

    Neville: "What are the main benefits for coaches to learn RPO's?"

    Loyd: "Right now all the top teams are winning because of RPO's.  It's also crazily hard to defeat an RPO, so if you are coaching a team, you DEFINITELY want to know how to pull these moves."

    Neville: "Is it dangerous for a coach to NOT know how to run RPO's?"

    Loyd: "Oh yeah....all the coaches in every district are studying up on RPO's now, and if a team doesn't know how to defend against them or run them, they'll pretty much lose."

    Neville: "So an RPO is just a single play?"

    Loyd: "Well there's a bunch of different types of RPO's like Inside Zone Bubble Screens, Y-Sticks, POP Concepts, Man Beaters etc). "

    I continued to ask questions as I was typing on my laptop.

    Although I (Neville Medhora, Copywriter) know zero about football....I tapped Loyd's extensive knowledge of football to write this email.  From just a few pointed questions, I ghost-wrote this email for CoachTube:

    Subject Line: RPO

    coachtubeemail

    From our quick discussion about how these football coaches act and talk, I found out they talk quite aggressivelyu.  The tone of the email almost had an "internet market-y" quality to it.

    The email took about 1 hour to write together with the owner of CoachTube, and it got sent out the next day.  Here were the results of that email:

    Email #1 Stats

    • Sent on Feb 6th, 2017 (Monday).
    • 2,545 Emails Delivered.
    • 1,136 Opened (44.64% open rate).
    • 147 Clicks (5.78% click rate).
    • 11 Sales (.43% total conversion rate), (7.5% conversion from clicks).
    • $660 Revenue.

    coachtube-stats1

    So after hastily creating an offer and quickly writing an email together, we shot out this email to 2,545 football coaches who were already signed up to CoachTube.

    CoachTube had NOT been regularly sending offers like this to the coaches, and therefore we were working at a disadvantage from a "warmed up" list of emails.

    From the 147 people who clicked on this email, 11 people bought the bundle (7.5% of the clicked).  We brought in $660 from this so far.  Not bad for such a quickly written and created bundle!  But we're not done......

     

     

    STEP 3: Write a "Closer" email:

    When you introduce a new deal or product, most of the sales will come from the CLOSING email.  By this time people have had time to mull over if they want the offer, and the "Closer" email notifies them the offer is going away.

    Already 11 people bought the bundle.  So 6 days later on a Sunday we sent the Closer email notifying the coaches the special price of the bundle (normally $125, but for now only $60) was about to end.

    Here's the "Closer" email we sent, it took about 10 minutes to write and format for sending:

    Subject Line: Last day for RPO Bundle

    coachtubeemail22

    Email #2 Stats:

    • Sent on Feb 11th, 2017 (Sunday).
    • 2,539 Emails Delivered.
    • 849 Opened (33.44% open rate).
    • 87 Clicks (3.43% click rate).
    • 26 Sales (1% total conversion rate), (29.9% conversion from clicks).
    • $1,560 Revenue.

    coachtube-stats2

     

     

     

     

    Final Results:

    So with a very limited amount of time and effort, we were able to drum up $2,200 from existing CoachTube customers

    • Total People Emailed: 2,545
    • Total Sold: 37
    • Total Revenue: $2,200

    closing email results

    Email #1: Monday, February 6th. Bundle starts.

    Email #2: Sunday, February 11th. Bundle ends.

    Economic Breakdown of Bundle Profits and Revenue Shares:

    • Sales: $2,220
    • Coach Mike Rowe: $925
    • Coach Jason Hahnstadt: $629
    • Stripe Fees: $66
    • CoachTube: $300
    • Expert Kopywriter: $300

    I told CoachTube if I was allowed to publish this experiment (including all numbers) I'd just take 50% of the after-expenses profit. This deal was put together so quickly there was no time to negotiate better rates and such.

    This was a small deal for just a single promotion.  For much larger deals a 50% split can mean A LOT of money.

    However even a newbie copywriter could arrange to write deals like this for a split of the profits.

    Instead of waiting around and hoping people buy from you....a skilled copywriter can craft an offer that brings in money.....even if they know nothing about the subject!

    Hope you enjoyed this experiment and learned something!

    Sincerely,

    Neville Medhora - Kopywriter

     

    P.S. A special thanks to CoachTube for letting us publish these numbers.  I do a lot of client work and get to see juicy numbers all the time, but very few places will allow those numbers to be released in public....so those cool experiments never meet the public eye.

    P.P.S. I still don't know what the hell a football R.P.O. play is.

    P.P.P.S. Is seeing experiments like this useful?  Would you like me to try another subject I know nothing about....like maybe tennis??


    User Feedback

    Recommended Comments



    Guest Jonathan Kiilerich

    Posted

    I would love to see a B2B email, selling a physical product, wholesale.
    Link to comment
    Guest Nikki

    Posted

    Hi Neville,

    Awesome stuff - thanks! I'd like to see you try something in, say, the maternity field. (Something which I think it's safe to assume you have pretty limited knowledge about :-)

    Link to comment
    Guest Dave Honaker

    Posted

    Really good stuff, thanks for sharing!

    Quick question: Are these the final emails that actually launched, or just drafts? I noticed several typos in each. I doubt they affected click-through rates, but still, a final polish never hurts.

    Link to comment
    Love it, Neville, really helpful! Would love to see more of these kinds of case studies! Both niche subjects like this, or even commoditised subjects like "affordable web design" (I know someone in web design who is seeing ridiculously slow traction. He finds it tough to make a dent in a world where you can get a site up on Weebly yourself in an hour)
    Link to comment
    Guest Neville

    Posted

    Thanks Steve, glad you got something out of it, I'll likely do more case studies like this :)
    Link to comment
    Guest Neville

    Posted

    Oh that's a good idea, I might give that a try. Thanks for the suggestion Hoo!
    Link to comment

    How did you manage to sell the Domination bundle at $60 while the individual courses are priced higher on the owners site? You didn't cover that part of the copy process.

    1. Did you contact the owners and ask for a discount?

    2. How did you get the courses delivered? Did you have to have possession of the material to sell it and immediately deliver it via email?

    Link to comment
    Guest Jared Cauffield

    Posted

    I love these experiments! They are very helpful.

    I found it pretty cool that one of the coaches follows your blog too. I think it is very rewarding when things come full circle.

    Besides your awesome copywriting skills what other factors do you think help make this experiment a success?

    Link to comment
    Thanks Neville, definitely want more examples like this one!
    Link to comment
    Guest Eddy Baller

    Posted

    Enjoyed this post. Do you normally contract your copy services?
    Link to comment
    Guest Vahida

    Posted

    Great! I would love to see more case studies like this. Love your blog and your writing style.
    Link to comment
    Guest Djamel

    Posted

    Definitely useful, totally loved it (like always)!

    Please more of those.

    Link to comment
    Guest Neville

    Posted

    I've been asked a bunch via email what the subject line was, somehow just forgot to include it. The subject line for the first email was simply:

    RPO

    Link to comment
    Guest Neville

    Posted

    Awesome, glad you learned something and can model a campaign after this!
    Link to comment
    Guest Neville

    Posted

    Hey Peter, the first subject line was simply: RPO

    ....and I might go ahead and try a tennis email next :)

    Link to comment
    Guest Neville

    Posted

    Geez chill out people! I had early screenshots of the original email I wrote. It was modified since.
    Link to comment
    Guest Neville

    Posted

    Like the above comment response, the screenshot was from an early version. Slight differences in the finished email (like 5 trainings instead of 4).
    Link to comment
    Guest Neville

    Posted

    Thank you Carolyn, and appreciate the recommendation!
    Link to comment
    Guest Neville

    Posted

    Yup, I wanted to show people you can create money out of nothing with a little skill :)
    Link to comment
    Guest Neville

    Posted

    Nah, I screenshots from an early draft I posted. They slightly vary in time from the actual one that went out. My bad.
    Link to comment
    Guest Neville

    Posted

    That's great to hear Sam, will try to keep up the high quality for ya :)
    Link to comment
    Guest Neville

    Posted

    Bahahah.....I made less money than a half-hour consult with me costs.....the reason was:

    1.) The owner is a friend.

    -and-

    2.) I agreed only if I could publish all the numbers publicly!

    Link to comment



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