How I sold out my comedy special with email

About a month before the filming of my comedy special I had only sold like 30 tickets. I needed to sell 300 to sell out all 3 shows. At that point I would’ve been happy to sell out just two shows. Hell, I would've almost been happy to sell out one. I’m gonna share how I sold out all 3 shows because I think there’s an amazing email/money lesson in the story. About a month before the special I decided to run ads on Facebook and Instagram to see if I could get some sales going. All I did was boost a post. It didn’t do much. I also couldn’t track the sales to see if it was working or not. So I actually don’t know if I made a single sale from a few hundred dollars in adspend. Then my media buyer, Paul, had an idea. He decided to test out a type of ad on Facebook called Lead Form Ads. Here’s how it works: 1. They see your ad. 2. They click and a lead form pops up on their phone with their email address already populated. In my case, that lead form said something like “enter your email to get 50% off tickets to the special for the presale only.” Once they put in their email they got the code right there on the page. It also had a link to click to the page where they could buy tickets. I didn’t care about giving 50% off because I just wanted full rooms. The money from the special comes from the aftermath of it…not the ticket sales of the show itself. Although I still made a couple grand from it. Now I could use their presale code to track the sales that came directly from the ad. 3. Once they put in their email they received an email with the code and some other info about me so they could decide if they wanted to see me. Once I added that ONE email to the automated follow up it changed everything. Before the lead form ads I was getting a sale or two a day. Once we started the lead form ads we were at like 5 a day. Once I added the email going out automatically it went to 10 to 15 sales a day. From ONE email. Why? Well, it hit me after a few days of running the ads. Every niche is different. (That wasn’t the aha moment.) People buy comedy tickets differently than they buy ebooks, courses, or physical products. First off, they almost never buy just one ticket. People almost always buy 2 to 4 tickets at a time. Second, when people are buying tickets for multiple people they have to check with those people to make sure they can make that time. Maybe it’s a wife buying tickets for her and her husband. Or her and her friends. (I was surprised that about 70% of the ticket buyers were women.) Or a dude who needs to hit up his buddies to see if they wanna go. That means people may click on the ad right away…but they may not be ready to buy right then because they need to make sure the other people can go. That’s why email is SOOOOO important. (In all niches, not just comedy.) If they just clicked the ad and then clicked away they could forget about the show...even if they wanted to go. But now they had an email in their inbox with the discount code waiting for them. They could open up that email whenever they were ready to buy. And I could keep sending them emails everyday until the show… …which I didn’t do cuz I’m stupid. The sales were coming in consistently with just one email so I didn’t add any because I was focused on the special itself. If I had added just a few emails to the autoresponder I would’ve probably sold out five or ten days earlier and spent less on ads. But now I have a list of like 500 people in Boise who love comedy. I can email them whenever I want to do another show and sell it out. About half of my sales for the special came from the Facebook Lead Form ads and emails. I never would’ve sold out 3 shows without them. I’m also the first comic who’s ever sold out 3 shows in a weekend at the comedy club here in Boise. If I didn’t collect email addresses that never would’ve happened. Building an email list is an ASSET that can pay you for life. Being able to write emails that make money is a SKILL that can make you money for the rest of your life. I started building this email list you’re on when I was 24 years old. Now I’m 33. This email list has literally made me millions in profit…and for the first 6 years or so it wasn’t even my main business. I was mainly teaching marketing to this list while I was building other businesses…that were all focused on building email lists for different niches. I’m telling you all of this because I thought it was pretty damn cool. And because I want to celebrate the comedy special by making a crazy special offer this week that I've never made before. More info coming soon… Talk soon, Ian “I love email” Stanley P.S. In my new Facebook group I’ll be showing the exact ads I ran and the emails I sent to sell out the special. You can [join it here if you wanna see it all.]( P.P.S. I'm gonna write live on camera this Thursday so you can see how easy it is to write money-making emails. It's free to attend. You can watch over my shoulder and ask questions in real-time while I write. [ Click here to register now]( P.P.S. Thank you Paul for being a bad ass media buyer and great friend. Without you this picture below may have had way less people in it haha. (You can also see Paul's bald head in the crowd haha.) Sent to: {EMAIL} [Unsubscribe]( Almost Passive Income, 3000 Mountain Shadow Rd, Boise, ID 83702, United States