EP 492 | How to Launch Without Living in Launch Mode featuring Jordyn Bailey [Empire exclusive]
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The Next 500:
Bundle Challenge
Design a Bundle that brings hundreds
of right-fit people onto your email list —
so you have the audience before it’s time to sell.
How to Launch an Offer With Email Without Living in Launch Mode
There’s a version of launching an offer that we’ve somehow accepted as normal.
Clear your calendar. Post constantly. Record the Stories. Go live. Send the emails. Watch the numbers.
And cross every finger and toe that nobody gets sick, school doesn’t close, your childcare doesn’t fall through, and life generally agrees to leave you alone until cart close.
Except…life is not particularly concerned with your launch calendar.
And if your sales strategy only works when you have the capacity to be everywhere, that’s worth looking at.
Because what if your next launch happened almost entirely inside your email list?
What Is an Email-Only Launch?
In this episode of the Email Empire Podcast, I sat down with Jordyn Bailey to talk about exactly that.
Jordyn is a mom of six who has spent years working behind the scenes on funnels and launches. After helping clients sell offers primarily through email — including one client who generated $100K from an email-only launch — she started applying the strategy to her own business.
Because she loves launching. She loves the momentum.
What she did not love was trying to manufacture that momentum while dealing with sick kids, school closures, bedtime, babies, and all the other things that do not disappear because an offer is open.
So she started launching behind the scenes to her email list. No giant public production required.
The offer gets sold primarily through email, which allows her to create the excitement and momentum of a launch without needing to constantly show up everywhere else at the same time.
Your Email List Can Be More Than the Place You Sell
One thing Jordyn said during our conversation really stood out to me:
If she wants to test something new, her email list is where she tests it.
We tend to create a new offer and immediately start thinking about how we’re going to get it in front of more people.
What are we posting?
What content are we making?
Should we run ads?
Should we do a live event?
But your email subscribers already know you. They’re already paying attention.
And some of them may be exactly the people who can tell you whether this new idea has legs.
Your email list isn’t only the place you promote something after you’ve figured everything out. It can help you figure the thing out.
That doesn’t mean randomly dropping an offer into their inbox one Tuesday and yelling, SURPRISE! BUY THIS!
Jordyn typically spends around 10 to 14 days warming up her audience first. She lets them know something is coming. She talks about the offer. People start replying and asking questions.
And those conversations give her even more information she can use when she actually sells.
Sometimes the problem isn’t that your sales email needs better copy. Sometimes your audience just needed more runway.
Stop Calling Every Disappointing Launch a Failure
Jordyn recently ran one of these launches and made some changes to the way she normally does things.
And it flopped. (Her words, not mine.)
She still sold spots, but it didn’t perform the way she hoped it would. So instead of deleting everything and deciding the whole idea was terrible, she debriefed it.
What changed?
What happened?
What did people respond to?
Where did they stop responding?
What would she do differently next time?
Because there’s a HUGE difference between:
“That didn't work, so I suck at launching.” and “That didn't work the way I expected. What did the data tell me?”
The first one makes the result personal. The second one makes the result useful.
Look at the opens, the clicks, the replies, the sales. Then let that information help you decide what happens next. Your launch can give you valuable data even when it doesn’t give you the result you wanted.
Start With the Goal and Work Backward
If you want to try an email-only launch, Jordyn says the first step isn’t deciding how many emails you’ll send or picking a cart-close date.
Decide what you actually want to happen.
Do you want three people to beta test something?
Ten sales?
A handful of applications?
A waitlist for something you haven’t created yet?
Once you know the outcome, work backward.
If you want 10 sales, what needs to happen to create those sales?
Do you already have enough warm people on your list?
Do you need a waitlist?
Do you need to grow the audience first?
Do you need more conversations happening before you make the offer?
Those questions should create the launch strategy, not an arbitrary launch template.
And because the launch is happening behind the scenes, you have room to adjust.
Change the messaging. Try another angle. Send another email. Pay attention to what your subscribers are actually doing and respond accordingly.
That’s not failing to follow the plan. That’s letting the data make the plan better.
The Big Takeaway
I don’t think the lesson here is that every entrepreneur should stop launching publicly and only sell through email. It’s that your sales strategy should actually work for your business and your life.
You don’t get bonus points because your launch required 38 Instagram Stories, three webinars, two livestreams, and your entire family being instructed not to speak to you until Friday.
Start with the result you want and work backward. Make sure to warm up the people already paying attention. Pay attention to what they do.
And give yourself room to change the plan when the data tells you something.
Your launch does not have to follow someone else’s rules to work.
In this Empire Exclusive episode of the Email Empire Podcast, Jordyn and I dig into exactly what her email-only launches look like, how she tests offers with her subscribers, what she learned from a recent launch that didn’t go according to plan, and how she uses the data to decide what happens next.
Want More Right-Fit People on Your List Before You Launch?
One of the biggest things Jordyn and I talked about in this episode is how powerful your email list can be when you’re ready to test, launch, or sell something new. But that strategy gets a whole lot stronger when the people you actually want to sell to are already there.
That’s exactly what we’re working on inside The Next 500: The Bundle Challenge.
Join me live on October 6, 7, and 8 at 12:00 pm ET for this free three-day Challenge where we’ll design a Bundle that can help you attract your next 500 right-fit email subscribers before you need them to become buyers.
Not 500 random email addresses, but the people who make sense for the offer you want to sell next.
We’ll look at who your Bundle needs to attract, what it needs to be about, who should contribute to it, and where it fits into your larger sales strategy.
Because if your goal is to eventually launch to your email list, audience growth shouldn’t be something you scramble to fix once the offer is already open.
Build the audience first. Then give your launch more people to work with.
You don’t need 500 more pieces of content
to find your next 500 email subscribers.
The Next 500:
Bundle Challenge
Design a Bundle that brings hundreds
of right-fit people onto your email list —
so you have the audience before it’s time to sell.
Frequently Asked Questions:
Q1: What is an email-only launch?
A1: An email-only launch is a launch where the primary promotion and sales activity happens through your email list instead of relying heavily on social media, live events, or other public-facing marketing.
Q2: How long should I warm up my email list before launching?
A2: There isn’t one required timeline, but Jordyn typically gives her audience around 10 to 14 days of advance notice and warm-up before launching an offer.
Q3: Can I test a new offer with my email list?
A3: Yes. Your existing subscribers may be some of your warmest potential buyers, which makes your email list a useful place to test an offer, messaging, or positioning before expanding the promotion.
Q4: What if my email launch doesn't meet my sales goal?
A4: Look at the data before deciding the launch failed. Opens, clicks, replies, conversions, and subscriber behavior can help you identify what worked, where people dropped off, and what you may want to change next time.
Q5: Do I need social media to launch an offer?
A5: Not necessarily. Social media can support a launch, but it doesn’t have to be the center of your sales strategy. An engaged email audience can give you another way to promote and test offers without requiring constant public visibility.
🤔 Want to work together?
Here’s how to get started!
Join the email marketing membership for coaches and experts, who want to sell their offer on autopilot.
Host a bundle that builds your email list, your visibility, and your sales.
