The benefits and differences between open and closed cart

Your Dream Business

English - March 28, 2022 00:00 - 20 minutes - 19 MB - ★★★★★ - 34 ratings
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Previous Episode: How to incorporate legal in your business with Nequosha Anderson

Next Episode: How quizzes can increase your email list and sales with Kylie Lang

In today’s episode of the podcast I talk about open and close cart – the difference between the two and why I have changed my own strategy recently.

KEY TAKEAWAYS COVERED IN THE PODCAST

Open/closed cart is usually for digital products/memberships/courses/coaching program
Closed cart means it is not available all year round – it is only available at certain periods of time (such as 2-3 times per year)
Open cart means you can buy at any point – it never closes
Benefits of open cart: More accessible to your audience– you can help them when they need it. You don’t have to constantly launch and put pressure on a short period of time. Don’t need to worry about mentioning your digital product but your audience not being able to buy it at that point. You can have income coming in all the time.
Benefits of closed cart: You don’t have to worry as much about selling whilst it’s closed – you do have to feed people into the funnel. Creates FOMO, scarcity and encourages people to take action. You can make a big thing about your cart opening – make it an occasion to promo. You can go really hard on your selling in a short period of time and then stop when the door closes.
Negatives of open cart: No FOMO – no closed date. Some people may stay on the fence. Doesn’t feel as exclusive – people may not buy as they get distracted or forget. Sometimes you can feel like you constantly have to sell it. It takes more work!
Negatives of closed cart: It’s hard work! You have to put in the energy for that launch. You may have a drop-off of people – retention may not be as good as people join in haste.
I want to be more inclusive and give people the opportunity to join as soon as they want to and be able to support people all the time.

THE ONE THING YOU NEED TO REMEMBER ABOVE ALL ELSE…

Having an open cart means I am always here waiting to help you, whenever you need it.

HIGHLIGHTS YOU SIMPLY CAN’T MISS

The difference between open and closed cart
Open cart vs closed cart
Why I have gone from a closed cart to a fully open cart?

RESOURCES MENTIONED

Take my quiz!

The Dream Business Club

TRANSCRIPT

Hello, and welcome to this week's episode of the podcast.

How are you doing? So this week, we're going to be talking about open and close cart. Now you may or may not know what I mean, but I'm going to explain it's all fine. But the reason I'm going to talk about it is because I've changed my strategy recently with my own membership. And I want to talk about why that might be and what that means and why you might consider one over the other.

So what do I mean by open and close cart? So the first thing, I mean is this normally is a digital product thing. You wouldn't normally have this on a physical product, although it's not unheard of. I'm sure. So Disney who used to put things in the volts. So you couldn't buy all the films all year round.

This is before the days of Disney plus, uh, when my daughter was little and you had to buy the DVDs. Um, but yeah, they used to put things in the volts, so it would make them exclusive. But anyway, so it does tend to be a digital product. So it tends to be through a course or a membership or a coaching program.

And basically closed cart means that it is not available all year round. So it's only available for certain periods of time. And it tends to be like twice a year or...

In today’s episode of the podcast I talk about open and close cart – the difference between the two and why I have changed my own strategy recently.

KEY TAKEAWAYS COVERED IN THE PODCAST

The difference between open and closed cart
Open cart vs closed cart
Why I have gone from a closed cart to a fully open cart?

RESOURCES MENTIONED

Take my quiz!

The Dream Business Club

TRANSCRIPT

Hello, and welcome to this week's episode of the podcast.

And basically closed cart means that it is not available all year round. So it's only available for certain periods of time. And it tends to be like twice a year or three times a year. Maybe sometimes even once a year. If you take B school, I'm from Marie Forleo, I'm sure that's only once a year. Um, and it opens like five days or seven days, and then it closes again.

And if you don't buy it at that point, you don't get access to it. So that's what a closed cart is. It's when it only opens for a set amount of time and it's not available all the time. And open cart, as I'm sure you can imagine means. You can buy at any point. So if it was Marie Forleo's, B-School, you'd be able to buy it any day.

You'd rock up day and buy it if you wanted to. Tomorrow the same, three weeks later the same, six months later the same. So I've recently moved from a closed cart over to a permanently open cart. What I want to do is before explaining why I've done that I wanted to kind of go through the benefits and you might kind of work out why I've done it as I'm going through the benefits, but there are some kind of more personal reasons as to why I've done it, but let me go through the benefits of one versus the other. Because if you are looking to sell it, digital products, You really do want to consider whether you're going to have an open or closed cart.

You need to know whether you're going to have an open or close cart, cause it really affects everything you do with that digital product. So let's talk about benefits of having an open cart. Well, firstly, it's open all the time, which means anybody can join at any time, which means you're not limiting your income to certain times of the year, especially if it's a course. Like the pressure of selling a course, whereas I have a membership, so I get retained amounts per month.

If it was just the course that I sold, the pressure for that time period would be immense. I don't think I could cope with that. So having an open cart means someone can buy it at any point, which for me feels much more with then in mind, because if you are trying to seriously help people and if it's not a course.

So for instance, remember, I did build my list at live where I walked you through how to build your list from start to finish. And I did it live the first few. Well, obviously I had to open and close that cart because I was running it live. I couldn't have people joining at various times down the line. So you couldn't join four weeks after we'd done on a seven week thing or whatever it was.

So that makes sense. But if it's, if it's a product that is just there, then you're not being. You know, it's not really helping people. If you've got the product and you're not willing to sell it to them. So that's the other thing for me in open much, much, seems much more accessible to your audience. It just feels a bit kinder to your audience.

And the other thing with open is that you don't have to do a big song and dance once it's open, it's open. It's not like you're having to plan your diary around all these launches, or, you know, what's going to happen when. It's, it's something that you can talk generally about it all the time. You can mention your product all the time and you don't need to worry about mentioning your product.

Do you not been able to sell it or someone not being able to buy it? So that's a really nice benefit to having that open cart as well. And the fact of you can have income coming in all the time. So, you know, another benefit to an open cart is that it's automated. So once you've set up an automation, which takes time, so I'm not going to make it like that's a five minute job, cause it's not, but once you've set up automations, then you can effectively automate most of the stuff and how we'll know in real life, that's not the truth.

I'm not sat on a beach while I automate things and I make money while I sleep, if only, oh, and if it was that easy, I'd share it I promise. But once you got an automation, you have got things happening in the background that constantly sort of filtering people through.

Now, whether they filter people through to buy is another matter. And that is something that. You know, that is the tricky bit about having an open cart that you are going to have to tweak and change and move. And what might've worked for six months then might not work for next six months or whatever.

The fact is it is an automation to a degree. So let's take close, then have a look at some of the benefits of having a closed. So the benefits of having a closed is that you don't have to worry about selling. Like, now that. True or not true. Okay. So you don't have to worry as much about selling while it's closed, but you're always feeding into that funnel.

So you're always trying to feed people into the funnel, but you're not having to actively sell while your thing's closed. The great thing from a marketing point of view about having a closed cart is it creates massive FOMO. It creates that fear of missing out. It creates scarcity. It creates they take action because people do need to have something to help them take action.

Now, this is where the line gets a little bit fine. And I'll try not to deep dive too much on this next. I'll talk about it in a bit, but it's good to have some, some kind of call to action that gonna makes people think, "Yeah, I want to do it." But the last thing that you want is to have this kind of.

You know, if you don't take this now, you're never going to get it type guilt on you, or like fear of missing out type thing. But, but like I said, that's really helpful in the fact that when it's closed, it does create that, which then creates sales. Um, the other good thing about, uh, the closed cart is that you are doing it all at one point, you can make a real song and dance about it, which is really nice.

You've got an occasion that's coming up. So either it's like a challenge or it's a workshop or it's a webinar or whatever, but you are making a big thing about the cart opening. It's all very exciting. Come and get this thing today. Whereas you don't have that with an open cart when the cart's open all the time, it's just open all the time.

Whereas when it's closed and it's coming up to open, you've got a big song and dance that you can kind of like promo. And then this might not feel like a benefit, but it kind of is of a closed cart is that you could go hard on promo, but it's only for a very short amount of time. So if you don't like selling, which I don't think many of us do, then you only have to be like buy, buy, buy, buy, buy for four days or five days.

And then the doors closing thing. Whew, thank God that's finished. And I have to say I had that relief every time. So you might go crazy with all your emails and your posts and your social stuff. But once it's gone, you're like great. I can just get back to talking to my normal stuff. So let's have a look at kind of some of the negative bits of having an open cart.

Well, it kind of follows very nicely on the positives of a closed cart. So there's no FOMO with an open cart. And I've seen this in this last open I've done. And I did a very quiet, open. I didn't open it with a big, massive bang. I did do a masterclass, but if I'm honest, we were so busy doing the website and the branding and the quiz.

We changed a load of things in the club. We added new levels that actually it left a very little time to make a big launch. And I saw that in the number of sales I got, because I didn't put that time and effort. So it takes that time when you're doing a closed cart to make, you've got to put time and effort into the launch.

And if you don't, it won't do anything. So not only did it, maybe I'm not put enough time and effort in, cause we're doing so many other things, but also it didn't have that FOMO because there was no closed date. So there was no kind of, you've got to get in now because X, Y, Z is going to happen.

So having no closed date, keeping it open all the time means that you struggle to get that FOMO, which means some of these people who are on the fence might just stay on the fence. It doesn't feel as exclusive when you have an open cart, it's like, oh, well I don't need it yet. I'll go and get it later. And we know what happens if people get distracted and they forget, and they do something else and they might not come and buy it from you.

So it doesn't have exclusivity about it. It doesn't have that. "Oh my God. I got to get it now because I'm not gonna get a chance." And the other thing that is a negative is sometimes you can feel like you're overselling it. Like you're constantly selling because. And I feel, I feel a little bit like this at the moment, because we've just opened the doors, but it's like, I've got to keep mentioning it because otherwise people will forget and people won't join and it's flipping amazing.

I'm not even kidding you. It's so good. And it's like $19 a month, which is insanely good value. Um, and I had someone come on the other day, actually, just as a side note, one of the new members came on and had been on a mindset call, which was really important to me that I included it for every level. And she messaged another member who she happens to know and was like, I didn't realize we'd have so much access to Teresa.

I didn't realize that. She would want to ask our opinion on things and we would stop and I would have conversations with them and, and, you know, that's ACE, I love that, you know, that's really, really good to hear from a new member. But anyway, sorry, by the way. But it feels like if you have it open all the time, you feel like you're constantly selling it all the time.

And that doesn't feel nice, but if you've got your automations right, then hopefully don't have to sell it too much. Or your automations are selling it for you. Other negatives of open is that actually it takes more work. Like I know the funny thing about the closed is you've got to have a lot of energy and it's exhausting at the time and it feels very like emotionally wearing out.

But you've constantly got to be doing things when it's open in order to ensure that you are feeding people in there all the time. So then let's look at the negatives for a closed cart scenario. It's hard work, super hard work. Like I said, you know, we did not have the time to put in the effort and energy that we should have done in this last cart open and that it reflects on that.

So if you're not putting in like a whole ton of energy and I don't know about anybody else, but it seems to be getting a bit harder. Like, I'm watching some big people in there doing very inventive things. They try new things. They're doing lives that go on for hours and all this jazz, like putting on loads of masterclasses and, and it's a lot of work it's exhausting, you know?

And you're, it's hands-on for everybody. Your team is all on. Everyone's all on. And also it's, it's full on for. The, for the people who are on your audience. So for instance, like, you know, there's all the emails you're going to be sending out. You're almost going to be like bombarding them as it were with stuff.

So it's not only exhausting for you, but it can be exhausting for your audience. The other thing that I feel is a con for as in I'm an pro or con not it's a con is. I feel like when you do an open and close cart scenario, as in like you open it and then shut the doors again, I feel like what happens is that you can often have people join and then leave because they joined because of that FOMO because they joined.

Because of the, I've got to do it or otherwise I'm not going to get chance to, I think the, the problem you've got is that people join in haste cause they don't want to miss out. And then you might find a drop off. So I know someone recently did launch and within a matter of like seven days, she had, you know, maybe almost like 20% people want to leave and that's not great.

And I think that's because of the whole FOMO thing. I think that's because of like, they're going to miss out. They don't wanna miss out. They join in and they go, or didn't really mean to do that. And I've had that happen to me as well with open and closed. So why have I gone from a closed cart where I only open it twice a year, which is all I did to a fully open, you can join me at any time.

Which quite honestly scares me to death if I'm honest, because like I said, this is not an easy route to go down. I got concerned that some of the strategies that we use in the online space are not the nicest strategies. Now I am not going to put myself up there with some of the worst, cause I am certainly not by any stretch of imagination.

There are people far, far worse than me in terms of some of the tactics they use. But I just, and I didn't think I was ever that bad, but I just didn't even want to take the risk. I didn't even want to put myself anywhere near some of those people. And I see it. Like I see all the tactics, I see all the things that all of the people do.

And I just thought there's got to be a different way. There's gotta be a different way that I can sell a product that is amazing to people who really need it and make a difference to them and their lives and not feel like I'm selling my soul to the. Or not feel like I am using over marketingy under handy ways of doing things.

And like I said, I never felt that I was that bad. And I really don't think I was. I think I'm probably being very over, not critical, but you know what I mean, I'm really kind of looking into this more than most people would. I just wanted to distance myself from that as much as possible. So for me, the way I could do that was to go to an open car, was to.

Move away from the tactics, like you’re going to miss out. If you don't join or you get this bonus, if you hurry up and join now, and Alexa, I'm not even saying that they're bad tactics. I'm just saying that some people use them to a degree that I just think an Alexa, you know, go back a year or so ago and I was doing it and I, you know, And I agreed with that and properly taught there.

And, but I just think as times moved on, I just feel a bit more like I want to be much more inclusive. I want to give you the opportunity to join when you want to join. I hope that my marketing will stand out and that I can do it in a way that is not salesy or sleazy and is not overselling, but that I'm here for when people need me.

And it feels like a nice, fair way to do it. It feels like having the car open all the time. There's a couple of like, Oh, as I had to say this very few people I look up to in this industry. And that sounds a bit mean, but one of the people I did, one of the people, two of the people I do look up to who I think are excellent, morally, ethically, product-wise other membership guys.

They are just brilliant. And they have a cart open all the time and they don't, you know, they avoid the sort of sleazy sales tactics. And like I said, I don't feel like I ever really went that far, but. I like it's like when you're so desperate, not to be something that you go to the complete other end, that's kind of how I fell.

I'm going at the moment. So that's why I have decided to do this. I've made my...