The benefits and differences between open and closed cart

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 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