The marketing podcast where online service providers learn how to write copy that sounds like them, but converts BETTER.
I’m Sam Burmeister, your guide on this copy adventure. As a conversion copywriter & sales psychology expert, I learned the ‘right way’ to sell in my decade-long sales career.
Now, after spending the last 6+ years writing copy for hundreds of successful launches and helping dozens of entrepreneurs write better copy every week…I know what sells and what’s working in online business right now.
And what’s working is copy AND – Copy and messaging, design, strategy, navigating AI and more...
Together, we’ll put the pieces of the marketing puzzle together - and you will write copy that both serves AND sells.
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In this episode, Samantha breaks down why waitlists are one of the most underused tools in a launch strategy and how to use one to sell more copy before your cart even opens. She shares the numbers behind why warm waitlists convert so much better than cold traffic, walks through the different types of waitlists you can run, and tells the story of a recent client (a PR coach for authors) who sold 34 spots before and within hours of her cart opening because her waitlist was nurtured the right way.
Samantha is writing the copy for these launches as they happen, which means this advice comes straight from campaigns that are converting right now.
What You'll Learn
Why a warm waitlist can convert at 5 to 15%, while cold list sales often sit at 0.5 to 2%
The four types of waitlists you can build (and how to pick the right one for your offer)
How one client sold 24 spots before her cart even opened, just by nurturing her waitlist with three emails
The two to three week window before launch that makes or breaks your waitlist's buying power
Why "set it and forget it" waitlists kill your launch results without you noticing
Hello and welcome back to Copy and the Marketing Podcast, where I teach you how to write copy that sounds like you but converts better. And today I wanna start with a statistic. Warm wait lists buy at about a five to 15% rate, in comparison to cold traffic, which just means like your full list, and they convert at anywhere between .5 to 2%. So what that means is if you were sending a sales email to a list of 100 people, if it's just your regular schmegular list, you're probably gonna sell to like two people. If you are sending to 100 people who joined through a wait list, you would likely sell to anywhere between five and 15 people. Now, most of us are growing our lists by a lot more than that leading into a launch, which means that if you have a wait list going into a launch, you are far more likely to be successful right out of the gate by having a wait list that expects to be sold to in a way that is unique to the rest of your list. So that's what we're gonna talk about today is what is working in wait lists. I specifically have a couple of examples from clients that I've worked with recently. I'm not just out here talking about marketing, I am doing it. I am writing copy for launches that are converting. And yes, copywriters are still very employable in the age of AI. So today we're talking about wait lists. Let's dive in So I see it all the time on threads, on wherever, that something is dead. Wait lists are dead. Is email marketing dead in twenty twenty-six? Literally, no, none of it is. And the reason for that is because sales psychology is a constant. Sales psychology really doesn't change a whole lot. Human behavior does. Trends do. But the way that our brains work is pretty freaking simple until you actually get into it and realize that it's really complicated, right? But I am at the beginning of the Dunning-Kruger effect, where I think that our brains work pretty freaking simply and that our brains are designed to keep us safe and then help us to self-actualize. And all that means is that we are going to preserve ourselves first and expand ourselves second. And all sales copy can lead to our expansion unless you're selling commodities, which is basically food, water, shelter, right? So here in the online business space, we are all selling potential. We are selling what people want to do. And what you likely want to do if you're launching is reach a whole heck of a lot of people and sell to as many people as possible so that you reach your financial goals. So what is a wait list and what does a wait list do? A wait list is simply a list of people who have called themselves out as being interested in the transformation that you have to offer, the potential that you help other people reach. So, typically this looks like an opt-in page. It can also be your sales page between launches can turn into a wait list page. I do this. You can look at it on my Copy On Demand sales page. It's at the link in my bio. I'll make sure that Copy On Demand is linked in the show notes as well. Copy On Demand is my core offer. It's the way that I work with people. It's about fifty percent of my business. At its core, a copy coaching program where people submit their copy to me. I tell them what to change and why so that they become better copywriters in their own businesses. I only launch it once a year. So I have it set up as a wait list the rest of the year. So that's people who I talk to, people who hear me on this podcast, and they say, "Damn, Sam, that sounds really freaking valuable. Let me know when it's open next, and I will likely join." So they go to my sales page. They read through it. They think, "Yep, this is for me." They click join the wait list, and now they are on a special segment of my list where I know that these are people who are interested in buying from me later recently I had a client do this. She is a PR coach. She specifically helps authors make sales on LinkedIn, so they're self-promoting their book to right fit buyers, and she helps them, I guess in a way, kind of build their wait lists and build hype around their book launches. So she came to me, and she was launching her program, which is simply a coaching program to help authors publicize, their own books. She came to me and she said, "Great, I've got a list of several thousand people, and there are one hundred and seventy-five people on the wait list that have all joined in the last three weeks since I started talking about this offer." So a couple things that she was doing really well before she came to me are that she was talking about her offer before it was available and that she was building her wait list. So when I say that you're pre-launch, you should be seeding your offer, you should be talking about what you do, she is a prime example because she had one hundred and seventy-five people who were banging down her door ready to buy this thing. Another thing that she did really well before we started working together is she was nurturing that wait list. So she had sent, I think it really wasn't even that much 'cause it was only a couple of weeks, but she sent them a welcome to the wait list email so that they knew what to expect when cart was opening. She was keeping that hype alive, and then I think she sent one other email giving them a week's heads-up. So that's the concept of a wait list, is simply getting people onto a mailing list who have committed to being interested in your offer. They probably wanna know a little bit more, make sure the time is right, but it's a soft commitment to purchase from you. So there's a couple different types of waitlists that we can think about. The first is a validation waitlist. A validation waitlist is simply to help you validate your offer. So you can say, "Hey, if this is something that you'd be interested in, sign up here. I wanna make sure that there's interest before I go create it." So that's a validation waitlist. It's just how you're communicating your waitlist is really the difference here. But you're simply testing demand. That's a validation waitlist. Second type of waitlist is a capacity waitlist. So if you are a service provider and have a limited capacity for spots, you could have a waitlist that has people ready to buy, not in a launch, but when you are ready for them. A common example of this is, I see accountants do this. If they have a full client roster, they will likely send out an email maybe in January, February and say, "Hey, let me know if you're still ready to work with me. If not, I will give up your spot to somebody on the waitlist." So it's a really effective way to create urgency, is to have a capacity waitlist. The one that I mentioned that my client was doing was to have a cohort or a rolling waitlist. This is also similar to what I do in my business with Copy on Demand. This is where it's just a waitlist. The sales page is always active, but you can't always buy from it. You just turn it into a waitlist. So I would call that a cohort waitlist or a rolling waitlist. And then there's also an early access or VIP waitlist. This is where you communicate that, "Hey, I'm opening something up soon, and you'll get first dibs or another bonus or early bird pricing, before the general public sees the offer." And you can kinda combine these, like for example, the rolling waitlist or the cohort waitlist, you could combine that with an early access or VIP waitlist. Those are just kind of some different ideas for you to use if you're thinking about putting a waitlist in place in your business. So let's go back to this client of mine. She had this cohort waitlist that she had communicated as a cohort waitlist, but she had a bonus because she was anticipating bringing dozens and dozens and dozens of people into her program. But she only really had the capacity to work with about twenty people one-on-one as the VIP upgrade. So her time is worth tens of thousands of dollars. She is a very high-ticket, high-impact service provider. So what she did was she said, "Listen, this is worth thousands of dollars. I am offering one-on-one spots, but only to the first twenty people who sign up, and the waitlist will get access before everyone else. So if this is something you're interested in, join the waitlist here." That's how she built her waitlist to a hundred and seventy-five people. So then when it came time for her to open the cart, she opened the cart for the waitlist the day before the rest of the public got access to her offer, and she sold out all twenty of those spots immediately In her past launches, she has never sold more than 20 spots, so she hadn't really anticipated this. It was a fun experiment that I got to be a part of as she was launching this offer for the first time. She's launched her offers before, but in this capacity, in this format, this was the first time. So she was blown away that by sending two additional emails, and that's where I came in, as I said, "We need to focus not on your general launch exclusively, but we need to put some extra focus towards these 175 people who have raised their hands." So we sent, I think it was three emails to her wait list before the cart opened for the rest of the public, and she sold 24 spots before the cart opened and an additional 10 spots within the first three hours of her cart opening. So she had sold 34 spots when she had a capacity for 75, but only 20 could get into the VIP one-on-ones with her Within the first couple hours of her open cart because she leveraged her wait list. So a lot of times you'll hear me talking about launching, and that you make the most sales on day one and the final day of your launch or of an open cart. Oftentimes, this is because people are leveraging their wait lists really effectively, or they understand who their hot leads are. So if you're getting close to a launch and you're thinking about having a wait list, here are a couple things that I would do. Is first, build that wait list as intently as you can close to your launch. I typically recommend really starting to publicize your wait list about two to three weeks out. That's because the problems that they have within three weeks of your open cart are probably not that different from what they have on the day of your open cart. So it allows them to also get ready to make that investment. If you are launching something that's a few thousand dollars and they have it on their checklist of things that they plan to buy, it's gonna be a lot easier for them to make that purchase decision than in your five to seven days of open cart during your launch. It gives them time to warm up to the idea of investing with you and make a more educated decision. It also gives you plenty of time to continue nurturing them and start answering questions, and you could even ask them for feedback on what they would like as the wait list bonus. So it becomes a more collaborative, more personal launch, which in a world where people are just really craving human interaction, this is a great way to do it. Wait lists also exude exclusivity, so people feel like you're talking directly to them, and you have the micro buy-in because they have already said, "Hey, this is something that I'm interested in." So what are we doing with the wait list? We're building it as close to your launch as you can. We are nurturing the whole time they're on it. So reach out to them. You can do things like ask for feedback, what do they wanna see. You could give sneak peeks. And really in those final days before you open the cart to them, let them know why they are special, what it is that they're getting that is, really valuable for them, and let them know when the cart is opening, what to expect, kind of those sneak peeks. And of course, we wanna give the waitlist something that the general public doesn't get. Early access is great, but if there is a bonus or early bird pricing or a short flash sale window just for them, they could effectively sell out your launch or sell out your VIP offer before the public gets access, and you can always communicate that back to the public. It's never too late to join your waitlist. So a waitlist works when you treat it like it is a warm room, a room that you nurture. Simply having a waitlist and then forgetting about them for 10 months between your launches is not effective. I've done that before, to admit it very candidly. I've done that in my business. It doesn't work out very well when you let people forget about you over the course of several months. Ultimately, pick the simplest, most aligned way for you to run a waitlist and run with it. I gave a lot of ideas in this podcast, and not all of them are gonna be for you. So think about it. Think about how my client was able to sell half of her spots in her launch in the first few hours of being an open cart. Think about how it's going to be most effective for your audience and what their buying patterns are If you wanna get on the wait list for Copy on Demand, we're still a few months out, but I'll make sure that the link to that is in my show notes. You can also go to nomadcopyagency.com/copyondemand. Copy on Demand will open up in December for the only time for the rest of the year. So my final thought here is that my last episode, and if you haven't listened to it, go listen, is all about flash sales. But really, launching to your wait list is a flash sale that just precedes your big launch. And honestly, a flash sale is kind of a launch in its own way in that you're pushing a product. So when you get more used to sending more sales emails to more groups of people, you collect a lot of data, and you get a lot of experience in selling. You get more comfortable with it in your business, and being comfortable with making sales is never a bad thing. So those are my thoughts on wait lists this week. If you have additional thoughts, be sure to reach out. You can find me on Instagram. I'm at nomad.copy. And you can find me online at nomadcopyagency.com. I'll see you next week
