Prompt · Product launch
Waitlist or pre-order opening email
Get them onto the list. The sale is a later email.
- Email type
- Product launch
- Business
- Creator
- Tone
- Friendly
- Length
- 90-130 words
The product launch email prompt
Write a plain-text email opening the waitlist for [THE THING]. Words only — no HTML, no layout notes. The single action this email drives: joining the list. Rules: - 90 to 130 words. - Say what [THE THING] is in the first two sentences, concretely. A waitlist for something the reader cannot picture collects addresses and nothing else. - Name [WHO IT IS FOR] in one sentence, and be willing to exclude people. A waitlist that suits everyone suits nobody, and the ones who opt out now would have refunded later. - State [WHAT JOINING MEANS] explicitly — whether it costs anything, commits them to anything, or just puts them first. This is the sentence that decides the sign-up rate. - Give [WHEN]. A month is enough. Do not promise a date I have not given you. - One ask, written as an ordinary sentence with the link inside it. - Do not hype. No "something big", no "I have been working on something". Say what it is. - Never invent a number, statistic, price, seat count or waitlist size. Where a figure belongs and I have not supplied it, leave [XX]. - No exclamation marks. No emoji. Sentence case. Write a subject line under 45 characters naming the thing rather than teasing it. Return subject, preheader, body, sign-off.
What to fill in first
[THE THING]- What is opening. A course, a book, a product, a cohort.
[WHO IT IS FOR]- The person it suits. Naming them lets everyone else opt out without feeling sold to.
[WHAT JOINING MEANS]- What the reader is actually committing to. Nothing? A deposit? First refusal? Say it exactly.
[WHEN]- When the real thing happens. A month is fine, silence is not.
[XX]- Leave as written. The placeholder for a figure you supply, never one the model supplies.
When to send it
When the thing is real enough to describe in two sentences. A waitlist opened around a vague intention collects addresses that go cold before launch, and a cold waitlist converts worse than no waitlist at all because you now believe you have demand.
What to change first
[WHAT JOINING MEANS]. Readers hesitate on waitlists because they cannot tell what they are agreeing
to — whether a card is involved, whether they are committing, whether they will be pestered. One
explicit sentence removes the hesitation, and it is almost always missing.
What good output looks like
Subject: The cohort opens in March
Preheader: Six weeks, twelve people, and the list is open now.
I am running the writing cohort again in March. Six weeks, twelve people, one live session a week and one piece of your own work critiqued properly each time.
It suits people who already write and have stopped improving. It does not suit anyone looking for a place to start.
Joining the list costs nothing and commits you to nothing. It means you hear first, and last time the list filled it before it went public.
Here is the list.
The prompt writes the words. Bring them here and the studio builds the campaign — branded, dark-mode safe, and ready to import.
Generate your ownIn the studio
A model writes copy. It does not write email.
Production HTML that survives Outlook, dark mode and a Gmail clip is a different job from writing the words. Describe the send once and export it to Mailchimp, Klaviyo, ActiveCampaign or MailerLite.