The Launch Email Swipe Kit
What do you actually send them in the six weeks before a launch?
Eight emails, written out, in the order they go. You change the bits in brackets to your own collection.
You have got a list. That is the hard part and most makers never manage it, so it is worth saying before anything else.
And then the new collection goes up, and you send one email on the day saying it is live.
You are doing the only launch anybody has ever shown you, because a listing going live is the only launch Etsy has a concept of, and it never once occurred to me either. I had a list of people who had already bought from me and I genuinely did not know I was allowed to ask them for anything.
What it costs is quiet and it does not show up anywhere you would look for it. You do all the making, all the photographing, all the packing. Then the one group of people in the world who already decided they like you find out at the same moment as a stranger scrolling past.
Nobody was waiting. So the collection has to go and find its buyers on the day, from cold, which is the hardest possible version of the job and the one you have been doing every time.
“I could write these myself”
You could. There is nothing clever in them and that is deliberate, they read like a person rather than like marketing.
But you have had that list for a while now and you have not, and I do not think that is about the writing. It is that you sit down on a Tuesday night with the collection half made and no idea what an email six weeks out is even supposed to say, and the honest answer is that you write nothing and get on with the making.
The running order is the thing you are buying. The words are how it gets delivered.
“There’s only a hundred of them”
This is the one I hear most and it is the one that stops people even trying.
Jess makes embroidery hoops. Before her first proper launch she had 340 people on her list, and in the first week of that launch she made just over £1,400. Her best week on Etsy before that was £210.
She built the 340 with cards in her orders and cards handed out at craft fairs. No ads, no big following, a card at a time for three months.
The bit that matters is that 340 is nothing. Every one of them had put a hand up and said they wanted to hear from her, and that is what a hundred of yours have done too.
“I don’t want to be the person who only turns up when she wants money”
I know. Neither do I, and this is the objection I take most seriously because the instinct behind it is a good one.
So count them. Of the eight emails, five sell nothing at all. They show you the box of materials that turned up, the one that did not work, the first finished piece, the date. Three of the eight ask for anything, and all three are in launch week when everybody already knows what is coming.
That is just the shape a runway comes out in when you build one, rather than anything I worked out to get round the feeling.
How it works
Six weeks, one email a week, and then three in launch week itself.
Week 6, something is coming. The one everybody skips, because it feels like it says nothing. It does not sell and it does not explain, it only plants the idea that there is something to wait for.
Week 5, what it is made of. Raw materials do better than finished photographs and almost nobody believes that until they try it. A cardboard box on a kitchen table is the shot.
Then week 4 is your hands, week 3 is the date going in their diary, and week 2 is the first finished one. Launch week takes the last three, which are the day before, the morning, and what is left.
Every email tells you when to send it and why it earns its place, which is the part I would want if I were buying this.
In the order you send them
- Something is coming. Week 6. Six weeks before launch day.
- What it's made of. Week 5. Once the materials have turned up.
- On the table today. Week 4. While you're mid-make.
- Putting a date on it. Week 3. Three weeks before launch day.
- The first one's finished. Week 2. When the first piece is properly done.
- It's tomorrow. Launch week. The day before.
- It's live. Launch week. On the morning, at the time you said.
- What's left. Launch week. A day or two in, or the evening before it closes.
The bit that makes them turn up
Every week of a runway already has a decision in it that you have to make anyway, which colourway, which packaging, what you are going to call the thing.
So there are six questions in here too, one for each week, to post while the emails are going out. You ask them out loud, and then you put the answer in that week’s email.
That second half is the one everybody drops and it is the half that does the work. A poll gets you engagement. A poll followed by an email saying “you picked the sage” gets you a few hundred people who have a stake in a collection that is not out yet, and they turn up on launch day because it is partly theirs.
Included
- What can you never find? Week 6.
- Which one goes in? Week 5.
- This one or this one? Week 4.
- How do you like it wrapped? Week 3.
- Name it Week 2.
- Who's in? Week 1.
What everyone else is selling you
Word for word, from the top of the search results:
“In 60 minutes, learn the exact 4-steps to turn your Etsy views into sales.”
“Helping handmade and digital sellers get daily sales without overcomplicating things.”
“A Scientific Approach to Etsy Success”
Every one of those is a promise to get you found.
Not one of them tells you what to say to the people who already found you
Why I think this works
Once I had started launching properly, some of the worst copy I have ever written went up on those product pages. Genuinely bad, rushed and flat, written at the end of a week of photographing when I had nothing left in me.
Nobody cared. It sold anyway.
The products had already presold themselves. The wanting got built in the weeks before, in the emails and the stories and the little fabric samples I slipped into other people’s orders, and by the time anyone landed on the page the decision had already been made.
The listing was only ever the place where the money changed hands
I have run both sides of that by accident. Careful copy, listed and hoped for, not much. Bad copy on a collection people were waiting for, and it went.
Who I am
Three years selling handmade. Feathers on eBay in my late teens, then Swarovski jewellery, then quilts and bags on Etsy from cotton I imported from America.
£2.41 an hour to £180,000, own site and Etsy together.
I am not an Etsy coach who never had a shop.
What I promise, and what I will not
You get: eight emails written out in the order they go, with a note on each one saying when to send it and why it works, plus the six questions to post alongside them. If you have used the free Launch Planner these are the same six weeks with the words filled in.
If you open it and there are not eight emails in there ready to paste, email me and I will refund you on the spot, no explaining.
I am not promising sign-ups, sales, or a sell-out. I do not know what you make or who is on your list. You will not know whether they buy. You will know they knew it was coming.
Why now, and it is not a countdown
There is no price rise on Friday. You could come back in March and it will be £19.
The only thing pushing is your own date. A runway runs forwards. If your launch is four weeks out then two of these eight are already behind you, and you can still run the other six, you just cannot run the first two late.
You are going to spend the next six weeks on this collection either way. The question is whether anybody knows about it before the morning it goes up.
£19, and two reasons not to buy
£19 once
Once. Not a subscription, and a launch is not a one-off, so use them again on the next collection and the one after that.
No account needed first. Pay here and I'll email you a link that opens it and signs you in.
This is for you if you have got a list, even a small one, and something coming that you would like people to be waiting for.
This is not for you if you have not got anybody to send these to yet. Start with the Launch Planner, which is free, and come back when there are people on the other end.
And it is not for you if you want them written for you. Every one has brackets in it and the brackets are your collection. I can give you the shape and the running order. I cannot tell you what you have made.
You have already paid for the photographs of a collection nobody was waiting for.