My EXACT Strategy for Crushing New Year Promotions (FULL PLAYBOOK)

The new year is your chance to make a big impact, not just for your business, but for your audience. Your customers are motivated to start fresh and you have the tools to help them succeed. I've seen how a clear, well-executed new year promotion can transform your business and the lives of your customers. Last year, this exact strategy helped creators like you double their revenue while helping their audience achieve their goals. Today, I'll share a step-by-step plan that you can implement immediately. How to position your product as the solution, build excitement, and execute a high-converting email marketing campaign. By the end of this video, you'll have everything you need to start 2025 with momentum for you and the people you serve. You may be thinking that a New Year promotion can be just like a Black Friday promotion, or it's just like any other promotion. And honestly, that's not entirely true. The energy of the New Year is the thing that you want to capitalize on the most in your promotion. You want to think about like, how can I help people improve? How can I help them achieve their goals? How can I help them build new habits? This is very much a time of year for education, for self-improvement, for challenges. For access, for community, because you want people doing things that are going to better themselves. Everything that you sell has to be about self-improvement when it comes to the new year. I talk about obviously creator businesses and newsletters a lot. Like I'm thinking about if I was going to help you earn $1,000 a month on your newsletter, that's not necessarily about self-improvement the way that like lose weight and gain muscle is for like a fitness course. But how can I think about helping you do this like big thing in your business in 2025? Or how can I help you like have a successful side hustle next year? And it all starts in the first week of the year. It all starts on New Year's first. That's kind of what you're marketing for is like, hey, you have this whole year in front of you. What if this year was different than the last year? And that's the kind of energy that I want you to think about capitalizing on. What is the 10x promise or the outcome of the course that you're going to be selling or the product that you're going to be offering to people? One other, like, common misconception about New Year's promotions is that you don't actually really have to discount your course at all. That's another big difference between, like, New Year and Black Friday. Black Friday, you won't really make any sales unless you have a discount because that's what people expect. One other thing that I think is really important to think about: you never want to, like, discount coaching, consulting, or I would even say, like, high-ticket courses or training, like things that are over $1,000. Don't discount your time. Discount your knowledge in the form of something that's a little bit more self-guided. That's most of what we're going to be talking about today. My main channel for marketing has and probably always will be email marketing. If you've been watching this channel for a while, you're going to know that I think like email marketing is the most powerful thing that you can do for your business and especially for creator content. I always think about my friend Ali Abdaal, who like has done millions of dollars on his course about becoming a part-time YouTuber. At the time of this sale, he had like 3 million YouTube subscribers and only 100,000, 120,000 email subscribers, but the vast majority, I would say like 80% of his sales came through the email marketing channel, not through this like wonderful video that he published on YouTube about the same course. And so we really want to be focusing on building our email list. This is something that if you're not doing it already, if that's something to like stick with this channel on, join the Hey Creator community, because we talk about email list growth and being consistent with your newsletter because it pays off in moments like this, in seasons like this where it's time to promote something and you've been building trust and you've been establishing your expertise creator for a number of weeks or months at this point. I want you to know that if you haven't been sending a newsletter consistently and maybe you do still have some kind of email list, what you can do over the next few weeks is start to get back, get back in front of them, do a little like pre-promotion, teach some of the concepts that are going to be present in the course or in the template that you're going to be sharing with them. But let me give you a really clear step-by-step email-by-email breakdown of the way that I would run a promotion for New Year. Something that might surprise you is I do recommend that you start promoting if you're prepared for it. And if you're watching this, you know, you still have a, you have a few weeks. Start promoting your course or service on December 26th. I would say like course specifically, but start promoting your offer on December 26th. People are off work, they're done spending money. A lot of people have just received money. And so they're looking for places to spend it. And again, like you want to hammer on this like New Year, New Me energy. Give them something that they can get excited about doing or becoming in the new year. So December 26th, announcement email to introduce the promotion, the course, the thing that you're doing. This is like, it is available for sale. Again, think about 2, 3 weeks before this, you want to be letting people know, hey, this is coming if you're sending a newsletter, but if you're on Social media. This is something you'd be talking about on social as well. So this would be Thursday, December 26th, announcement email to introduce the promotion. On December 27th, you're going to do a little bit bigger email, say just a few hundred, few hundred words. The first announcement email could probably be like 200 or 300 words. The second email on December 27th, this would be on a Friday, is going to highlight the opportunity and like the problem solution of, of your, of your product, of your offer. So this would be on Friday, December 27th. Send a little bit longer email, 300 to 500 words. December 28th, Saturday, share a case study or testimonial that shows results. And if you're watching this thinking, I don't have a case study, I don't have testimonials, there are two ways to kind of work around this. The first, and I hope most obvious way, is by telling people, hey, I've done this before. You are your own testimony. You are your own case study. The other way to think about it, and this is a little tricky, so may not be able to do this for everything, but look for other case studies or even research studies of people who have maybe done the sort of thing that you're teaching other people to do and just show them examples. Like, for example, I have a course that's about pen and paper productivity, so it's a non-digital system for getting things done. And in that, I do have a couple of case studies from people who have done this before. But another thing that I do as a case study is that I found research studies that show writing down your notes and ideas and tasks make them more real, more memorable. You're more likely to do them if you write them down versus if you tap them out. So that's an example. Like, that's a real research study, and I can like share that as a case study to support my argument, even though it's not something that I did personally. You know, cite your sources and all of that. So that is the third email, December 30th. What I would do, this would be like a Sunday or Monday email, overcome objections that people might have. So think about like, why would people have trouble signing up for your thing? Or like you think about the 10x promise or the big outcome that you have for this, for the course or the service or like the offer that you have. What are common objections that you hear for this thing that you want to help people do? So address all of those. We call this the objection buster, you know, kind of email or common, common myths and misconceptions that you want to help people overcome. December 31st, you could do this. Like, and you can move some of these days around a little bit. Another email that I would send, and this is a really, this is a really important one, is helping people understand the risk of an action of inaction. Not action, inaction. What's at stake if they don't do anything? What happens if nothing happens? If this is a problem and you don't take care of that problem, what's going to happen? And your course, your service, your offer is the solution. And so throughout all the emails, we're weaving that in. I would do this on January 1st. This is something that you can only do in KIT, their Resend to Unopens feature. And you don't— again, like, you don't have to do this specifically on January 1st, but this is what I'm doing with my clients. This is what I'm doing personally. On January 1st, New Year's Day, you're going to use the Resend to Unopens feature, which basically does what it says. Like, you take an email, a popular email that you've already seen, like you got a lot of responses to it, it led to some sales or it has a higher open or click rate, you're going to resend that email to the people that didn't open it before. That way you're getting another email in, but to people who maybe feel like, oh, Matt's sending a lot of emails right now, they won't see it because they already opened it. And you can see on the screen where, like, how to do this in KITT. It's really simple. You just click Resend. The only tip that I want to give you is when you use this feature in KITT, actually puts resending into the subject line. Definitely take that word out, and I would just change the subject line entirely. You can see on the screen how I did that for my Black Friday promotion. I had a 96 distractions subject line, and then I changed— I resent it and changed the subject line to the biggest lie in productivity, and that led to an extra 10% increase in open rates. The final 2 emails that you're going to send on January 2nd— so this is Thursday, January 2nd. Don't close it on New Year's because not enough people are going to be paying attention. And I wouldn't close it on the 3rd. I don't like closing things on Friday because Friday night going into a weekend, people aren't going to be like, oh man, I hope Matt sends that final call email. I'm definitely glued to my email to check it out. So close on Thursday, January 2nd. You're going to send a final, like, really urgent last chance email in the morning and then send a final hours countdown style email in the evening, say like I was saying, like 6, 7 AM Eastern and then 6, 7 PM, about 12, 12 hours difference for those emails. That's, that's the way that I think about the timing for those. And you may be thinking to yourself, Matt, that's a lot of emails. If I count these out, even if you count the recent, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, that's 8 emails. I might, heck, I might end up sending 9. I would send at least 5. If 8 makes you uncomfortable, send at least 5 of these emails, including the 2 on the final day. And I would feel comfortable sending up to 10. Let me tell you why. I'll give you 2 examples. One is from Black Friday, just, just a couple of weeks ago, and one is from last year's, uh, end-of-year promotion. Both of these, uh, did for a client. The Black Friday one that we just finished, so they did $27,000 last year on Black Friday. They sent 2 emails. Which is 2 emails and a reminder. So let's say 3 emails. They sent 3 emails last year and did $27,000. Pretty good, pretty good. I'm sure a lot of you watching this would be like, heck, I wish I could send 3 emails and make $27,000. But let me tell you, let me tell you what happened this year. Just a couple of weeks ago, we sent 8 emails. So 2.5 times the number of emails, they made $85,000. Okay. So are you telling me now, you know, their numbers are their numbers, but are you telling me that you would rather send fewer emails because it might make some people uncomfortable versus doubling or tripling your revenue? Put it in that perspective. Okay, you send more emails, you will make money. And this is a promotional season. We had a similar scenario last year working with a creator who hadn't done a whole lot of promotion for his course and had made really in the entire year leading up to this holiday promotion, this New Year promotion, had made about $30,000-$35,000 on his course up to that point and had only sent a hand— literally a handful of emails the year before. This would have been in 2022. They did like $10,000 that week. They did $185,000 in 7 days and 8 days, and we sent 9 emails. I'm telling you, you follow this schedule, have a good offer— we're going to talk more about like what makes a good offer— you will have a successful, for you relative, promotion for your course, for your service, for your offer. So let's talk about this a little bit more. The way that I think about writing these that's changed a little bit is I want you to think about like the first way that you write them, remembering these these frames and these themes that I've given you is write these like you're sharing with a friend who needs help. So kind of get the marketing speak out of your head. I mean, like, well, you know, you're supposed to follow this kind of like Mad Libs style template. Just say like, hey Tim, I've got this, I've got this course for you that's going to help you be more productive and be less stressed. You'll be able to get more done in less time and you don't have to worry about like using new apps or learning a new system. All you need is a pen and paper. You can start right now. And then I just like walked him through that. The course, the product. And let me tell you something, the productivity course that I just released over Black Friday, I'm about to like do, do more sales for in the new year. I wrote this course like I was explaining to my sons, hey, here's how your dad works. Whatever apps are like in 10 years when you need, when you need this information, you can still use these systems because they're principles. We're still going to have pen and paper, pencil and paper in 10 years, I think. I guess. But these are things that you can do. And I just like explained to my sons how to get the most use out of these like ideas that I put together. And I think that is an often underused system or strategy, I would say. And the clients that we work with and the newsletters that I've been writing over the past couple of years, I see it more and more like just use normal everyday language, like you're explaining to your friend, hey, here's how this can help you and just, just go from there. Okay. There are a couple of really key elements of this process that you have to keep in mind. You do want to have a deadline for this. That's why I say January 2nd, midnight Pacific time, have a deadline so that you can create some urgency. It doesn't mean that this won't be for sale after that. It could be for sale right away. This is where, like, if you want to do like a 10 to 20% discount, it closes on, like, that coupon goes away. And if you're doing that, like, I use Podia, a lot of my clients use Kajabi. Whatever it is, you can create a coupon and just like set the time and date so that it ends at midnight. Way to like use this though is to create the urgency that people want to take action. Okay. Another way to do this that I think is really effective, if you have the time and energy and like kind of constitution for it, is to run some of live challenge or call or just like involvement for new customers, new members, where you can kind of go alongside with them, or even they could work on something together. And so that's why, like, it's not just the urgency of, like, you're going to, you know, the price is going to go up a little bit. It's like, hey, we're going to start doing this together starting on Monday, so you got to get in here. Two big benefits. One, it creates even more urgency. It creates more community. So I guess I'm saying three. The third thing is that if you're doing any kind of, like, live element of this, you can often increase the price. If you already have a newsletter and you email people regularly, then something that I would definitely start doing right away, as soon as you watch this video, is start to preview and promote the launch that's coming. So if it's starting on December 26th, tell people, like, tell people in your next newsletter that, hey, on December 26th, I'm going to launch a new course. The thing that I would, like, be careful with though— let me take a step back from this— if you're already sending a newsletter, then you're ahead of the game on this. And I want you to think about how you're going to start to promote and subconsciously promote the course before you even get to the date. You will get more interaction and more excitement around the promotion that you're doing if you start to talk about it ahead of time. If you get people on board and you let them know, you can kind of help them mentally prepare for what you're going to be sharing with them. And the thing that a lot of people mess up here, and something that I screwed up a lot in the past, is that you just say like, hey, I've got, I've got a new course coming out on December 26th, save the date. Because what you're saying, the way that a lot of people will, will translate that is like, hey, I'm going to have a new way for you to give me money in a couple of weeks. So go ahead and set aside an unknown amount of dollars so that, you know, you can just be prepared to pay me in a few weeks. Some people will kind of shut that down. Your super fans won't care. The note that I'm giving you on don't, like, say that it's a sale is something that isn't going to really hurt you, but it could be something that is, like, you could do a little bit more elegantly and discreetly and make people excited about it. One of the things that you can do for this is to say, like, hey, One of the common problems and challenges that I've seen with a lot of readers of this newsletter, listeners of this podcast, viewers of this channel, is like insert problem and challenges associated with that problem. So just describe the problem and the challenges that people have with it and then say, I've been working on a solution that helps you insert solution 1, insert solution 2, insert solution 3, whatever. And if you're interested in learning more about that, just click reply to this email and let me know if that sounds interesting to you. If you're using a tool like KIT, then you can create this thing called a link trigger where you just say like, hey, if this is interesting to you and you want to learn more, click here. Then it will assign a tag to anyone who clicks, and that way you kind of have your waitlist. So this is giving them a little bit of a preview, and just over the next few weeks you say like, hey, there's a big opportunity coming. This is a common problem that I've seen. I've been working on a solution for it, leading with What's the problem that you're seeing with your customers and potential customers that you're helping them solve? That's what you want to highlight. That's what you want to preview. That's what you want to like get them excited about. Ah, I've had this problem. I haven't been able to start my newsletter. I haven't been able to monetize my YouTube channel. Matt's been thinking of a solution for me. The nature of conversions, most of those people won't buy, and that's okay because they're still going to get excited. And you're still validating that this problem that you're trying to solve is interesting enough that people are interested in it. Now, if you're thinking, Matt, you've been talking about email marketing specifically almost in its entirety, and that is true. We haven't talked about the offer. We haven't talked about like what you're building. If you don't have an offer built out at all, and honestly, it's too late right now. But if you already have an offer, you already have a course, you already have a thing to sell, this is how you promote it. Okay. If you are interested in building offers that people want to buy from you, then you should join the Hey Creator community because we have courses, we have workshops, we have lots of content around helping you build and promote and sell your first offer. So check that out. But the other thing that you're probably wondering about that I know I'm going to see some in the comments like, hey, what about social media? How do I promote this outside of my email list, or especially if I don't have an email list? Well, you can follow all of these same principles and the themes and the topics and the timing for social media. Share the same things with people. Like, just start talking about like, hey, here are the problems that I see with this. Like, here's a— here's something that I'm working on. Share a screenshot of the program that you're building. Share like a video clip. Share a worksheet. Like, just work in public, build in public, show the things that you're doing. Don't show so much that people don't feel like they have to sign up anymore. This is just like— think of it like a puzzle. Like, your final product or course is like a fully assembled puzzle that you're going to like show people how to put together. These are like build-in public types of strategies that help raise awareness of the thing that you're doing and just get you in front of more people like, hey, Matt's working on a solution to a problem that I have in my own life and work. And so I'm going to stay interested in what he's doing because I can see that it has a direct application to something that I'm struggling with in my life and Matt's going to help me solve it. Here's the bottom line: your audience is ready to change their lives, and you have the tools and expertise that can help them do that. This New Year promotion isn't just about selling products, it's about giving people the chance to succeed. I want you to take a moment and imagine this time next year where you've done all the things that we've talked about in this video. You've done a lot of things that we've talked about on this Hey Creator channel, and the change and the impact that that can have on your business. Because it starts right now. It starts with the things that we've talked about in this video. It starts with promoting a clear solution that you have to someone else's problems.