How My Event Sold Out In 6 Hours From One Email

In marketing, as in life, you often only get half the story.

When I was a high school teacher, working at an alternative school in a church basement in the sort of neighborhood in Seattle where daytime shootings were not uncommon, this was what I taught in history class.

As my friend Rob Hallock from teacher school used to say, “where you sit determines where you’ll stand.”

In the case of history, I always told my students that there is more than one side to every event.

And often, it is the winners who write the history books.

Maybe this is why I took such a shine to Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States, when I first discovered it.

It was important to Zinn that other sides of the story were heard.

Like, when Columbus’ ships landed on the shores of what we now call the United States, what was it like from the perspective of the indigenous people who were already living there?

Side bar: when I was in teacher school years ago, I once boarded a city bus and sat next to a man who looked to be Native American. We got to talking, and he asked what I did. I told him I was studying to become a history teacher. He advised me: “teach them to be wary of the official story.”

So, today, as a student of history and a teacher of marketing writing, I sit at my laptop, doing now what I’ve always done – telling stories while teaching you to not to believe hype.  Run it through your BS detector.

The Marketing Sound Bite.

Last Friday, we sent out an email to the mailing list with an invitation to join the Writing Intensive in Montana in September.

The email got sent around 1pm Eastern time.

By 7pm Eastern, the event had sold out.

Headline: Stella Orange sells out her event in 6 hours – just by sending one email!

How the Marketing Sound Bite sausage is made.

I was on the phone this week with a member of the Writing Brigade, who was celebrating her own victory. She’d hosted a teleseminar last week, and for the first time ever, she was getting people on her list to take action. Not only that, half the people who registered for the call actually showed up. And then signed up for initial sessions with her, to talk about joining her program.

“I know it’s not a ton of people,” she said, “but – hey! – this is the first time that this has ever happened to me. Where people are responding. This is progress!”

She also mentioned that she’d been bragging on my “I sold out my event in 6 hours just by sending one email” talking point.

We celebrated a bit more together before I confessed, “yah, and all I had to do was write a newsletter every week for 4 and a half years.”

Smart woman, she was not surprised.

“Yep, I’ve been sending my newsletter for a year and I’m just now beginning to train my list that not everything I do is free.”

So, how did I really do it?

1)   Decide to run a people-centered business. There are so many people who treat others like THINGS on the internet. I’m fighting to change that with my business.  When you have so many good ideas, you can give them away for free. When you are a clear channel, people are going to rip you off from time to time. Don’t let it threaten you – they are thieves. And sophisticated clients don’t want to work with thieves – they want to work with grounded, secure people. They can tell the difference. Trust this. Remember, if your ideal clientele are sophisticated, sensitive souls – they’ll be attracted to your plenitude + joie de vivre, along with results.

2)   Treat your mailing list as sacred. I show up every week to write an article and share my thoughts with my subscribers. Not all of my articles are good. And yes, sometimes, I have to dig deep to find something useful to say. But when you put an opt-in box on your homepage, you make a commitment TO SHOW UP AND HELP PEOPLE REGULARLY. The people on your list are the most valuable resource your business has. So don’t squeeze them for fast cash. Blend offering good ideas and insight with asking for business.

3)   Let your failures fuel you. The last event I did had 3 people in it, instead of 12. It was a great event, and I had to pay the hotel a bunch of money because I didn’t get enough hotel rooms filled. I raged. I screamed. I tried to talk my way out of it. And then?

4)   Have friends you ask for help. I called my friend Summer, told her I had my head in my arse and asked her to help me get it out. She said, “You know what I’d like to see? You sell out these things for the rest of the time you do them.” Having friends and comrades who don’t buy into your victim.excuse.extended venting session (that last one being my pet name for “complaining”) is essential. This is why I’m all about writing in community. Conversation buoys us in a way that talking with ourselves may not.

5)   Cultivate relationships with clients, colleagues, comrades and friends. Everyone who got a ticket to my event has worked with me before. They can’t get me to shut up about how much I love Montana (or whiskey), so they were already on the lookout, long before any official campaign.  Talk about what you love with the people you work with. Keep inviting them back for more and better stuff.

6)   Sell behind the scenes BEFORE you launch online. I teach production labs and am part of several groups (hint: you meet people who become clients, colleagues, comrades and friends in paid programs… because they KNOW you) so I went to people in those circles first, the week before I sent the email. We sold 4 tickets before the email went out.

The lesson here: it’s all about the CONTEXT of that one email.

It’s not really about how awesome of a writer I am.

For the data nerds among us: by the time we sold out, we had an 11% open rate on the promo email. I don’t have a huge list, so that’s a couple hundred people. What I find most interesting about all this is that many businesspeople are focused on open rates – when to me, the focus should be on resonance. I don’t need thousands of people to read that email – I just need enough to put 12 people in a room in a mountain resort town this fall. Not all businesses are in this position, but if you are, relax the white knuckle death grip on your open rates and aim for meaningful connection.

The other thing is that I have invested heavily in myself and my business. I hustle. I speak. I shoot video. I travel. I hire coaches, massage therapists, energy workers. At any given time, there are between 5-8 people on my team. This isn’t the first event I’ve done – it’s the fifth. So before you start comparing yourself to me, remember: you know how the sausage is made.

And I sold out my event in 6 hours by sending one email.

Want to learn how to write so that YOU sell your stuff online? Check out our 9-week Writing That Sells production lab here. You won’t make money online without knowing how to write to sell.

Mighty thanks to Julia Wright flickr photostream for the megaphone.

Stella Orange is a copywriter who helps people put their work into words. For eight years, she wrote email campaigns that resulted in more than a million dollars in sales for her clients. In that time, Stella also taught popular marketing writing workshops to business owners on both sides of the Atlantic -- and a few in Australia and New Zealand. In 2017, Stella cofounded a creative and consulting shop offering a complete and slightly unorthodox line of business advising and marketing services. She continues to write copy and advise clients on customer delight, how to resonate with more sophisticated, discerning clientele in your marketing, and just who, exactly, your ideal clients are. Stella is the founder of Show Up And Write, a weekly writing group and writes a letter every two weeks or so (here’s the sign-up). She lives with the Philosopher and their two kiddos in Buffalo, New York, a fifteen-minute bike ride to the Canadian border.

8 Comments


  1. Hannah

    Thank you so much for the honesty in this post. We all need to learn to discern the larger truth within the sound bites, as well as write our own truth (sound bite or not). Thanks for helping heart centered business owners do both!

  2. Lisa Manyon

    LOVE this. The only thing missing is whiskey! Well done!
    Write on!~
    Lisa Manyon

  3. Pamela

    Well done Stella! Thanks for sharing the “back story” with us. I really resonated with caring about your clients. Thanks for your transparency and positive energy! Pam

  4. Kristin

    Way to go Stella, congrats… and great article too! 🙂

  5. Helaine Harris

    Wow! That’s a powerful blog! Considering how difficult it is for me to write a regular newsletter, I really get the importance of it from what you wrote! It will definitely keep me thinking, and maybe, even writing more. Thanks.

  6. Cheri

    Love your writing, your inspiration, your tips and you!! I am thrilled to be one of the 4 who said yes before the email went out – so looking forward to writing with other amazing women! Thanks for your honestly and for reminding me to show up every Monday to write. I have so much to share with my subscribers and it can’t help them if I keep it in my head!

  7. Makeda

    Thank you for sharing this process. I’m just getting started and this was good for me to read.

  8. Michelle Thiel

    Way to go sista!!! Look at you now. What an inspiration and the back story is so vital, thank you and well done. Love love love that you are not only selling out fast and able to share with us… but that you are touching so many lives and businesses. Cheers Chica!!! Love and Light, Michelle

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