So we did something a little different with this one. Mez and Rachel run a fitness coaching business for brides, and we set up a 3 day challenge with them, then sat back down a month later to go through the results on camera no matter how it turned out. The good, the bad and the ugly.
I’ll be honest, it was kind of good and kind of not. They spent about 5 grand on ads, sold about 7, and collected about half of that. Basically broke even. But the data they got out of it is worth way more than the money, and that’s what I want to walk through.
The funnel and the front end numbers
Ads went straight to an optin page with social proof and Rachel’s own story. My team built the funnel and ran the ads. Optin rate came in around 12 to 14%, which is higher than the 9 to 11% they usually get on their VSLs. I usually say shoot for 20%, but they were getting so much volume at about £8 an optin that it made up for it.
After the optin, a thank you page pushed people into a WhatsApp group just for the challenge, and about 25% joined. They let people talk in that one. I’m always unsure about that because some people go a little too far, but since it was all brides, everyone was excited asking each other when their wedding was, and Mez thinks it helped the show rate. Rachel also has her normal leads group where people can’t talk, and she posted in both.
Then there were bonuses for anyone who showed up live, and replays that only stayed up for 24 hours, with an automation that emailed the replay out. All of that is to get people on live.
The one thing I’d change there is the thank you page. Add a quick video at the top that says, hey, here are your next steps, here’s what the WhatsApp group is for. Just make it simpler.
Where it fell apart: the time zone
642 optins. 65 showed up on day one. In a perfect world I’m looking for about 30% to show, so closer to 180. You may not get that, but 65 is low.
And the reason was pretty obvious once Mez pulled up the geography. 53% of optins were from the US, 46% from the UK. The challenge ran at 6:30pm UK time, which is the middle of the workday in the States. So half the people they paid for were at work.
Targeting both was Rachel’s call, she wanted to see if there was a market, and the team pushed back on it. As long as it’s your fault lol. I’m kidding. They live in Dubai, so running it on US time means going live at 3 in the morning. But what I’ve seen is wherever your people are, you do it on their time. It just sucks sometimes.
Mez did the math himself. If they’d only spent the UK half, that alone was about a 3x. So effectively the US money was wasted because of the timing.
Calls and closes were fine
From 65 attendees they booked 17 calls. I usually say 10 to 20% of attendees booking is good, so 12 or 13 would’ve been solid. They beat it. Most calls came from day one, which is typical, and they had an incentive for booking, 20% off on day one and 10% on day two.
They closed about five. Only one of the 17 calls was American, and the UK market has gotten rough for them. Their usual deal is 1,800 to 2,200, and for UK clients the average dropped to like 800. Taxes, interest rates, people just have less to spend. With US clients they get a higher close rate and a much higher average spend, so Mez thinks with the right time zone they’d have closed at least double the clients.
Funny part, the bulk of the return came from people who booked before the challenge even started. They were ready anyway. Wedding coming up, wanted to do something about it.
The surprising stuff in the data
Mez built their dashboard himself, fully automated, he has an IT background. Jose saw it and was like, can you make this for all our clients?
Two things jumped out. Ads started 2 weeks out, and Mez figured the early optins would forget. Opposite. The people who opted in earliest showed up the most, close to half of all attendees. The email, text and WhatsApp reminders did their job. And optins per day stayed pretty steady the whole run, because this time they were watching the data, killing what didn’t work and putting more spend behind what did. Their past challenges were just posted on Instagram with no ads. Mez said this one was way ahead of those.
The Instagram problem
The bigger issue in the business right now is outbound. Historically 40 to 60% of their income comes from messaging people who follow them, and Instagram has blocked their outbound messages for over two months. The account looks fine in settings, it just won’t send. They tried ManyChat, didn’t work. Now they’re running ads to comments, because once people comment they can message them.
What I’d do is make a second account. It won’t work as well, but at least you can message. We had the same thing like 3 or 4 years ago and we’d flip between accounts. If you can’t send messages, that channel is worthless. And for their niche messaging beats straight to page, it’s more personal, they talk about the wedding, and a lot of their people are beginners who are pretty skeptical. That’s how I made all my money starting out too. 2017, 2018, it was crushing.
What they do next
Run it again at the end of August, all in on the US, maybe more than 5 grand. If it works better than their other stuff, it becomes the go to, and I’d run it twice a month. You could do it weekly, but twice a month gives you time to change stuff between runs.
The challenge also has a pro people forget. People just hop in and you chill. You’re not grinding outbound all day.
That’s why you test. They broke even, maybe a bit more, and now they know exactly what to fix. If they clean up the time zone and only go to the States, I could see it being more like a 5 or 6x. We’ll see.
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