Are Waitlists Even Worth It? | Bathroom Break #63 🚽

0:01Welcome to a new special series called The Bathroom Break. That extra 10 minutes, you either have to listen to marketing tips or use the bathroom or both. But I don't recommend both, but that's your choice. This collab is going to be super fun. We have Daniel Murray from the Marketing Millennials and me, Jay Schwetelson, from the Do This Not That podcast and Subjectline.com. Each episode in the series, we are going to go over quick tips about different marketing topics. And if you want to be in the bathroom, fine, just don't tell us about it. Thanks for checking it out. We are back again for another bathroom break.

0:36And today we're crushing the power of wait lists on the business and consumer side. I'm here with Daniel Murray, who is the marketing millennial. I'm Jay Schwettlson from Do This, Not That. So Daniel, before we get into this, I'm curious about something. When you go to the supermarket, all right, are you like a self-checkout guy and you crush self-checkout? Or do you just go down the regular aisle because you don't want to have that random person come over because you have a problem with your self-checkout and you don't know how to scan it? Or is this not a problem for you? Because oddly, I don't think I've ever done a self-checkout without needing somebody's help.

1:09It depends on items. If I'm trying to go fast, I'm self-checkout. But if I have a whole cart of groceries and stuff, and it depends. Yeah, I think it definitely comes down to items for me. I like the ability to self-check out, but I hate the people who have a whole cart of like 400 things in there and self-check out. And I'm like, you could have just gone over here, please. You're just like holding up the self. I just don't know how, like if I go somewhere and I get like, you know, maybe they have a prepared food section and I get it. And then there's like all these buttons you press, you weigh it.

1:45I'm not able to use the technology to self-check out. And the other thing I read is that 15 % of people steal when they do self-checkout. Oh, yeah. That's a big problem. That's crazy. That's a big problem. That's why a lot of companies are anti-self-checkout. I think when people go and - Do you steal? I've never. Imagine you admitted that right now. I steal every time. I've known people in high school and stuff that - Terrible people. So stupid. So bad. All right. Well, we're not going to be bad today. We're going to be talking about the power of waitlist. So what are we even talking about? Is it worth doing waitlists in your marketing?

2:25Should this be a part of your arsenal or is this a bad tactic? I think number one, I would say, I'll be of a general, it depends. But I do think that like building lists are really important in marketing. Like you need to collect emails. So if you do not have any emails, like building a wait list or building a list of people is so important because algorithms, you can't like emails algorithm proof that you know, you're the email guy. So building a list also, it lets you know, like gauges, like, is my landing page copy or the offer I'm having? Is it serving the people I thought was serving or not serving?

3:12But it's always important to collect an email. I think there's reasons not to do a waitlist, and we could talk about that, and reasons not to call it a waitlist. And those are the two things I would stray away. But I think in most cases, a waitlist is good for a product launch or a big launch, like collecting email. Yeah, and I think that people get confused about waitlists, and they think, okay, I'm not a direct-to-consumer product that's going to drop a new color of a fitness outfit, and so I can't do a wait list. And so, for example, with my events, we put on these big free virtual events. Why would anybody want to get on a wait list for a free virtual event?

3:55That just sounds stupid. And it would be stupid if we say get on a wait list for that. So what we do is, and there's a reason we do it, we will say things like, okay, the first 500 people that join the waitlist for our free virtual event will be entered into win these, this wild, you know, 50 different VIP swag boxes that we're giving out. And the reason that we do that is number one, we want to build up hype. Number two, we dig into the data because let's say nobody registers to get on the waitlist. Like, oh, we have a clunker here. This thing's going to stink. Nobody wants in, or we get a boatload of people that do sign up.

4:29We then look at the data and say, okay, cool. This isn't our target audience. This is what we're going after. Or we have to tweak our marketing or tweak this, it gives you a little peek behind the curtain before you go too far with your product, event, or service. I would add on to that. I would say that it's always better to not rely on one big moment in marketing, especially that, because if you're going to do a big launch, for example, and you don't know how social media is going to act on that day, you don't know how email is going to act on that day, you don't know how paid is going to act on that day.

5:05So having something like a rolling thunder, like launch where you're, you're dropping little like nuggets on the way where you could do with waitlist, you could do first come first serve. You could say like, get in our VIP circle to know when something happens. But I think the key here is also just like collecting, but I, I do think you have to, if you're going to do a waitlist, it has, there has to be an incentive of someone getting on the waitlist and um and depends what type of company you are so either it has to be like they enter to win something um they get a status like vip um they have to have some sort of in because i see where i see people go wrong with this is that they collect emails for a waitlist from a list that they already built and then it's like filling out 15 different spots where like they're not pre-registering for them for like an event or stuff.

6:01And then now you have to get three different conversions, which is so much harder. So promising something or giving something away or giving status like VIP is a great way to do a wait list or like for e-commerce, I've seen it a lot where like an influencer drops a product and people get on the wait list because you know that there's hype. And if you don't get on the wait list, then the product's going to sell out. So like a good way also to do this is limited quantity. Like when you launch something, like we're only going to launch a hundred something, like say it ahead of time. That's a good test too.

6:36It's like only launching a hundred, you know, you might have more in inventory, but only launching a hundred products on this drop. Yeah. And totally. And first of all, that's like the biggest hack right now in direct to consumer marketing is everybody's saying their stuff is sold out, but they sold four of them, but it's great for social proof. And on the business side, if you're like a SaaS platform and you know, you give people beta access to a new release, a new whatever, it's super valuable to build that wait list or be the first to try, be the first to have access. So if you're not doing this, it is a really great way to figure out who your super fans are, to figure out if you're hitting your target audience and to Daniel's point to build up a new list of people.

7:16Sorry, before we wrap up this one, you know, back to the supermarket. So now you're checking out. Are you, do you grab stuff? Are you grabbing like write a check oh i need the tic tacs i gotta get this uh drink over here or you laser focus and you're locked in and once you have your cart this is the most random question ever no do you do you get any extras at the end i had one thing because i i'm a marketer in this this is the og up the og upsell cross out of like this like having going through a line and seeing the magazines chocolates I think, yeah, if I need gum or if I need a water, I probably fall for the trap sometimes.

7:55You know the ones where there's like a long – Sephora does this where like the – there's like those long zigzags and there's like a thousand products there. I bet so many people – Oh, Lululemon. I've bought so many hats at Lululemon because I'm on the line, which is so long. I'm like, oh, another random one-color really weird hat that won't fit me properly. I'm definitely buying that. and I go home with a hat I never wear again. It's amazing. No, I've never seen you in a hat. Oh, my God. In the weekend, you don't see me without a hat. Oh, wow. Yeah, I'm a hat guy. You're a hat guy. I am a very big hat guy.

8:27You're a hat guy. I've never seen you in a hat. Yeah, no, it's very exciting. What's not exciting is what we're talking about. So listen, you all are awesome. Go and hook up the Marking Millennials. Follow their show. Follow Do This, Not That. Follow some other random podcast that is awesome, whatever that is for you. And we'll see you at the next one. Daniel, come on, man. I got to get back to work. Get out of there. While he's still in there, this is Jay. Check out my podcast, Do This, Not That, for marketers. Each week, we share really quick tips on stuff that can improve your marketing. And I hope you give it a try.

8:58Oh, here's Daniel. He's finally out. Back from my bathroom break. This is Daniel. Go follow the Mark and Millet podcast. But also, tune into this series. It's once a week, the bathroom break. We talk about marketing tips that we just spew out. And it could be anything from email, subject line to any marketing tips in the world. We'll talk about it. Just give us a shout on LinkedIn and tell us what you want to hear. Peace out. Later.