Episode 89: Closed Doors
Why is it important to close enrollment in courses, and what’s the strategy and thinking around opening enrollment?
Summary
Nick is switching the A/B Testing Manual from always-on to closed enrollment, opening for roughly one week at a time, a few times a year. The episode covers his reasoning for the change, how he plans to capture leads during closed periods, and the persistent problem that customers keep treating the course as a book when the real product is a 5.5-hour video course.
Highlights
- The A/B Testing Manual has done around $25–30k in total sales, but Nick’s core complaint is that buyers at the $150 book tier get the least value and are the least likely to actually run A/B tests. His argument: if you’re operating at enough volume to need A/B testing, a $1,000 course is a rounding error in your marketing budget.
- Nick is dropping the standalone book purchase entirely. The only option going forward is the $1,000 full course, book included.
- For visitors who show up during closed periods, Nick is using live chat staffed by a human during Draft business hours. Outside those hours, a simple email opt-in tags subscribers in DRIP as A/B Testing Manual prospects.
- Two weeks before each enrollment opens, Nick plans a drip sequence and possibly a webinar mid-launch-week. Subscribers stay on the list indefinitely, and he plans to raise the price over time by adding new curriculum.
- The product name sets the wrong expectation. Kai points to his own experience renaming the Traffic Manual to Podcast Outreach: the clearer name reduced buyer confusion, even though it left dead links in old podcast interviews. Nick agrees the name is a problem but has spent a year building brand equity around it and hasn’t landed on a replacement.
- Nick’s current traffic strategy is thin: occasional links from his newsletter, no paid ads. His plan is to do guest podcast appearances in the month before each enrollment period and to mine interviews with existing students for email content.
- On enforcing the close date: Nick won’t grant exceptions after enrollment closes. His bet is that for every person who misses the deadline, two more will buy on time the next cycle.
Read the transcript
So I can’t believe I’m doing this, but I am making it so that people can’t buy one of my most valuable offerings on the internet. for most of the time. And I’m a little horrified at myself, but mostly just Scared by it. So the A-B testing manual is my big, like full-stack course about A-B testing. It’s done real well. We’ve sold. I want to say about twenty five, thirty thousand dollars worth. Like a lot, right? Like it’s been enough to be a solid contender in my product lineup. It is the thing that I’m the most known for. It’s very well connected to what it is that I do and what it is I want to be doing. And so I always looked at it as something that like I should always have available to people because, well, I do AB testing. Like, why wouldn’t I have it available? Right. It makes no sense to take the thing off sale. But then there were kind of two probably more than two. There are two that are in my head right now events that have slowly turned me around to the idea of doing closed enrollment for my biggest course. One of them is I think that having a book on sale that is only $150 is not only not helpful to my customers because they seem to get the least amount of value out of it. Which makes sense because they’re not quite as invested, but also they’re the least likely to actually take action and do A-B testing. If you can A B test on your website, a $1,000 course about A B testing should be a round off error. I’m serious. You should be operating in significant enough volume that you also are very willing to integrate that sort of Expense into your marketing budget. And if you’re not willing to do that, you shouldn’t be buying a course about A-B testing because you shouldn’t be A-B testing, right? So those things have kind of that and there’s kind of the business goal of I would like to sell more instantiations of this course, and I would like to make it more intentionally ladderable to Draft Revise and Revise Express. And I can’t do either of those things if I am just leaving it open all the time. It’s not something that I can use to build customers. I can’t build scarcity. I can’t encourage people to actually go out and take action on it.
But how does that prevent you from lattering people who do buy? I’m not following on that point.
Well, because fewer people are buying. That’s the thing. I am doing this because I think potentially more people will buy it. And as a result, I will have a wider base to sell to for my CRO services later. Does that make sense?
Yeah, yeah, that does make sense. Talk me through how you’re planning on capturing the attention or the interest of people who do show up. They say, oh, you know, my coworker, my colleague, my friend, my store owner. told me about the A B testing manual. I want to buy it. They show up. It says, hey, we aren’t we aren’t selling right now. We’re sold out. What are you going to be doing to capture the people who hit this page and are demonstrating some amount of interest, but they aren’t able to convert?
So I’m doing something that I never thought was even thinkable for Draft to do. And I’m testing it, and I don’t know if it will work, and it might not. I’m doing something that I harangue clients about all the time. It is live chat. And I’ve tried to make it as non-gross as humanly possible. There is no sound. There is no forced popover. It’s a tiny tab at the bottom of the screen. I have made it as small and unintrusive and neutral colored as humanly possible, but it’s there And during draft to business hours, a human will respond to you. If Kelly’s not there, I’ll respond to you. And so I get your email address by doing that, and it allows me to say, okay, well, enrollment is closed right now, but then I add you into a mailing list. If it is between enrollment periods, the other fifty weeks of the year, that that is the case, I will set up just an email form that adds you to my list and tags you in DRIP and says This person is an A B testing manual prospect. And then I will start dripping out a course probably like a once a day thing for like the Week or two beforehand, probably two weeks, because I’m shameless, and then have a launch sequence during the actual week, maybe even run a webinar in the middle of the week, something like that. So there are a lot of things that I can do, and honestly, you stay on that into perpetuity, right? Like I don’t make any distinction about you signing up in 2017 or 2019 for this thing. But I’ll keep sweetening the deal by adding new things to the curriculum, right? I can add new lessons, I can bolster the book content, I can add more templates and tools and that sort of stuff. And that way, you know, you’ll get grandfathered in if you ever get it. It allows me to hike the price if I’m offering more value. It allows me to, but wait, there’s more them about it. There are a lot of opportunities to continue selling. between enrollment periods. Does that make sense?
Yeah, yeah. Tell me more about those opportunities to sell between enrollment periods.
Well, you want to generate hype so that people buy at the beginning, and then you want to generate scarcity so that people buy at the end of an enrollment period. The talking about the cool new things that I’m adding to the A B testing manual allows me to generate hype between enrollment periods.
No, I like this. I think that there’s a value in closing off. I mean, really, like there’s two different modalities that I could see right now. There’s the evergreen launch modality where Hey, you show up. Maybe you opt in, maybe you don’t. You’re presented with the opportunity to buy. It’s evergreen. You are always able to purchase. You also have the I’m not sure what to call it other than closed enrollment or like a more scarcity focused model that you’re describing right now, where somebody shows up, they say, Hey, we aren’t accepting New customers or new students right now, but this will open up again in n months. Drop your name and your email, and the ding is here to get updates. The benefit of what you’re describing, just like you said, you’re able to increase the price over time. You’re able to add new aspects to the product. You’re able to Overall, enhance the value that you’re presenting or the value that the product delivers, and continually iterate on it based on the feedback you’re getting from the different cohorts that pass in. The early 2018 cohort gave you some feedback saying, Hey, videos two, three, and four don’t quite flow. You’re able to re-record those videos. And when you launch to that second cohort, hey, people love it now. And so you’re able to gradually incrementally improve on the product over time. And I think that’s a wonderful, wonderful approach to take. I’m curious though, do you think there’s any benefits of the evergreen model that you were leaving on the table with this switch to more of a closed enrollment period?
Yes, I mean, I’m probably leaving some money on the table. The hope is that the money I’m leaving on the table and the interest that I might be sapping away is more than made up for by having fixed enrollment periods. because you’re too busy with your job the other fifty two weeks of the of the fifty weeks of the year, right? Like that’s I don’t want to constantly annoy you about my awesome thing until you eventually roll over and buy it. Because in practice when I’m not like offering some sort of scarcity around it, I might get like two sales in the six-month period of the full course. And maybe like six or seven of the book. And people just think the A-B testing manual is a book, and it’s a fucking course. It’s a course that has a book that mostly doesn’t help you. because it doesn’t talk about operational issues. It helps you with tactics. It helps you with like exact troubleshooting issues and stuff like that. I’m not saying that’s not valuable, but it is. Not the essential thing. The essential thing is the mindset shift around conversion. And the only way to impart that that I found is a five and a half hour video course.
Well, you touched on one thing I just want to circle back to for a second. People come into it with the expectation that it’s a book and the more valuable part is the video course. Could it be that the product name itself is setting that incorrect expectation?
Yes, I think so.
Have you thought about changing it?
Yes.
Is that something that’s on the table in the near term, short term, long term?
It’s on the table, but it’s like halfway back on the table. It’s a thing I just haven’t because I don’t even know what to name it. Like, and if I want to rename it, it’s going to be confusing. And I’d have to change the name in a lot of places. So it’s one of those things that’s just like a lot of work for something that I’ve already spent a lot of time trying to get mind share around. So I feel you. I don’t know how much it’s hurting me, but yeah. I could just name it AB testing. Testing. The A B testing course thing. The A B testing five and a half hours of actionable video content. com.
The course. The five is spelled out, F I V E. Yes. No, and I like that. And I went through the same thing when I renamed the traffic manual to podcast outreach. And I went through some of the negatives of it with people emailing me saying, Hey, I bought the traffic manual. Is podcast outreach different? And I had to answer buyer questions or customer questions in that sense. And even now, there’s old podcast interviews I’ve done that link to The traffic manual, which is a product that doesn’t actually exist. It’s podcast outreach, my book on how to get on podcasts. And so I went through that, but I could say that By renaming the product to be more descriptive of what it was, people saw more resonance and better understood the outcome that it would generate for them. And it properly set expectations with them. And I think that if you’re experiencing some amount of dissonance between people saying, oh, A-B testing manual is a book, but wait, it’s the video course that’s actually the more valuable part. Thinking about the rename as a higher priority, it might feel like moving around the deck chairs, but it also more clearly sets the expectation in that prospect’s mind when they visit the page or when they hear about the product.
Yeah, yeah, definitely like one of the things I want to be doing with the A-B testing manual is promoting it as a premium product. And so the marketing page is going to see a lot of work on that. Front. And so, towards that end, you know, changing the name, it’s not off the table, right? Like, and it sounds easy to change the name, but I’ve spent a year building brand equity around the name, right?
And not to dive too deep on this one, but one last idea just afloat. What if the book stayed as the A-B testing manual? The complete package was renamed and the video portion had its own name. And so now The entire Kidding Caboodle has its own product name, but you’re still selling or you still have available the A-B testing manual. That’s just the book portion of the complete package.
Yeah, and that’s what I’ve always talked about. I always say it’s the book component, right? But people don’t care. They just focus on the cheapest fucking thing. That’s not. That’s not what I want. So now the cheapest and only thing is a $1,000, five and a half hour video course. There is no way to buy the book anymore. That’s it. It comes with the book. Get a very nice book.
No, I think that’s a good approach.
Proud of the book. But people keep talking about it as being a book. It’s not a book. It’s a five and a half hour video course with a book component. I cannot, I do not know how to possibly make that clearer. And then people are like, oh, so it’s a book then. I would remove the word manual from the title.
I know, I know. But the A-B testing video course. What is it? It’s an AV testing.
Well, it’s also about optimization and people skills and like there could be something more clever, right? Look at like Amy or Ramit’s courses, right? Like 30 by 500 is not the build a product course. It’s not 0 to 5K is not the start an internet business consulting course. They came up with creative and interesting and punchy names. That I did for all of my other books except for this one, apparently. So I don’t know. I don’t know why I’m hung up on it, but.
No, names are hard and we get attached to names.
Yeah, and I get attached to names. I like saying maybe testing manual. It’s something that I’ve been saying for a long time. It rolls off the tongue or my nasal tongue well. But yeah, like the A-B testing Maduel.
I’ll take your silence as yes.
No, no, yes. No. What where are you even going with this? This is weird. You made it weird, Kai.
Now, I think like all the decisions you’re talking about here in terms of the product make a lot of sense. By adding that scarcity, by only making it available at specific times, by Iterating on the product by being able to raise the price in this way, like you will be able to drive up interest. The major, sort of, the major thing I’d say is Consider how you want to keep that anticipation going. So if somebody comes in through/slash manual on an opt-in here. Do you have a separate automation sequence that they’re added to that every few weeks teases them with something exciting about the course and says, you know, the 2017 enrollment or the 2018 enrollment is da-da-da-da-da in this month? And Do you have additional marketing materials and marketing messaging going out around this in addition to whatever launch sequence or launch promotional activities? How do you keep somebody warm if they came to this page on October 1st? But the next opening isn’t until March first.
Yeah, so there will be occasional entreaties on draft letters around it. There will be a separate launch. Sequence around that during I have kind of a recently on draft section that I talk about there. I’m going to ping everybody who applied for draft revise or revise express over the past little while. I don’t know. Might yell on the internet.
Yelling’s good. Yeah. Yeah. Even just something as simple as, I mean, like, you have so much excellent content here in terms of written content and video content, having small samples of the videos dripped out to people, linking to literally every single interview you’ve given about this topic and the importance. Of A-B testing and how A-B testing should be done correctly in a drip sequence for people that come through here, just so they’re getting a consistent reminder of the value you provide in this arena. And so when it comes time that you open up the cart, it’s not, hey, I’ve been receiving Nick’s letters for the last six months and they’re solid. Oh, yes, the A-B testing manual, I remember that now. But they also have that second Second series of emails going out to them saying, Hey, this is the value for you.
Yeah, yeah. I’m habitually lousy at building courses that are like actually liable to convert. Like, I don’t I feel you that m this makes a lot of sense. And I wonder Something I need to ask Joanna at some point where I’m like, I’m running the playbook, I know how to build the system, and I don’t know how. I am very good at one-on-one convivial relationships and I’m really, really lousy at like passive drip campaign email courses, which is like the hello world of our playbook, right? I’m this is just something I’m not good at. I’m really good at writing direct emails to people and making them friends out of it. Like, that’s great. But there’s that’s not how you operate at scale, and it’s especially not how you sell $1,000 email course. Like that’s or not email, video course, computer something. Just take your money and run screaming. Endlessly screaming.
Yeah, and I think like moving to this model, it lets you skip false scarcity and have real scarcity, which is a nice thing to have when you’re able to say, like, we only have there’s only 20 seats available. And we’re only selling 20. And if you don’t buy the first 20, you have to wait until the next enrollment period. It gives you real scarcity. And you’re able to use the real fact of like, I provide support, I answer questions, there is value added through my presence that I cannot scale, and I charge a large amount for this because of the value you receive and the access you receive, and end of sentence. So I think There’s a lot of value in that scarcity and it being legitimate scarcity instead of, hey, this is, you know, only available for the next seven days.
Yeah. I don’t want to have a limit. Like if a million people want to sign up for my awesome video course, like please do that. I’m not against that. And in fact, enrollment closes this Friday, so you should probably take action on this. Um but I I I do I definitely do not want to offer forgiveness If you come in on Friday at 5. 30, I will be drinking chartreuse and celebrating some hopeful sales that week. We’re done. That’s it. You come back in January. And I’ve seen people do this all the time. Ramit actually goes so far as to openly, publicly mock people who come in begging. And I’m not going to go. I’m not that much of a jerk, but I am going to be like, no. Like, sorry, but no, thank you for your interest. It reopens on this date. Sign up for the list here to know. That’s fine to sap your attention, but it will, like, for every one, the theory here is that for every one person who fucks up like that. two more people are actually going to take action and buy the course. That’s the thing I want out of it. You want sales of the course. You want to help people. But you can’t do that when you have a it’s so paradoxical. You have a $1,000 offering. You would think somebody was like actually sober and like Clear-headed about the entire process of buying a $1,000 course, and they totally aren’t. This is something that I’ve learned about this. They are just as irrational as if they’re buying a bag of potato chips in the impulse aisle on on their grocery checkout. And it’s like a literally three order of magnitude difference in cost.
Chips are expensive in Chicago, Jesus.
Chips, there’s probably a tax. Like. Let’s be honest.
Back in 1922. Back in 2016. We had to fund the raising the city somehow. And that’s why Chicago is the great potato chip tax.
Oh God, I can get into Chicago stuff so hard right now. Oh my God. Google Tony Preckwinkle pop tax. If you want to get into some like real some real Chicago government shit after this, after you listen to this podcast, you listener, like just do it. Just thank yourself later.
Here’s a question. So the ultimate goal is sell more copies to more motivated people to help them achieve better outcomes in their business. Am I right in that?
Yeah, I want to help people optimize their stores and make more money on the internet. So it’s October 1st.
Slash manual has a waiting holding page up, whatever. People will come to it. Talk to me through how you’re planning on promoting and driving interest, driving traffic, driving eyeballs to this page to convert into subscribers.
You know, I’m horrible at this. I occasionally link to it on my newsletter. That’s it. Maybe sometimes revised weekly. I don’t have advertising. I don’t have Facebook or Google. Like, and if you, dear listener, do use Facebook or Google ads, drive traffic there using a strategy far more nuanced. Than the one that I would possibly be able to actually describe here. Yeah.
Yeah, I mean, I think traffic at the end of the day comes down to traffic and either participating in communities, building your own community. Advertising, which is off the table, or podcast interviews, using other people’s audiences. But answering that question of how do we get more eyeballs on the page itself and then move them into the funnel, nurture them, educate them, move them towards the launch event. I think you’re right in that it will generate more sales. But I think the key ingredient is: okay, in the other 50 weeks where you aren’t launching this, how are you driving traffic? How are you creating awareness and interest in this? To generate more and more subscribers.
So, one thing I want to do is talk to existing students and get their thoughts and use that as grist for future mailing lists, for future installments of revised weekly lessons as well as drafts letters. and then use that to constantly allude to the fact that they are enrolled in A-B testing manual or whatever it is I’m calling it. Yeah, that’s a huge, huge goal of mine.
No, I like that a ton.
And it’s a way, it’s basically doing design research or talking to paying customers. which you should be doing on your products no matter what, anyway. And then you are taking that and feeding it back into your email strategy because all I have is an email strategy. And occasionally yelling on the internet on podcasts such as this one. I also, during enrollment periods, for the like month prior, I want to spin up doing podcasts like guest podcasts again. I got on so many for ABTM and DraftRevise over the past like six months. And I’d just email everybody I guess. I was like, I have a new topic. Insert topic here. It’s something a lot of my students have been talking about. And they’re like, oh, wow, yeah. And then I get on another round of podcasts. I do it during a time when I’m slow on the business. That will almost certainly happen in February. Like very few people stay through the winter because it’s like post-Christmas slump. So yeah, I get it. Yeah.
Yeah, that makes sense. No, I like it. I mean, I guess the last thing I’d ask is, if a listener right now wants to run, not walk, and buy their copy of the A B testing manual, where should they go?
Well, they should go to abtestingmanual. com until I change the name and then I don’t know what domain you’ll go to. I’ll probably redirect it, but I’ll probably forget. Draft.
nu/slash something.
Well, it is draft. nu/slash manual, also, but I’m going to change it. I’m just going to keep you on your toes. It’s going to be a new URL every time. I’m going to rename it. Every time