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Product mockups matter?
For a while, I had a little filtering system I'd built for people coming onto my email list through Facebook ads.
Any time a low-quality email address popped up in my lead forms, I'd try to route them out.
Not because those people are bad people. But in my experience, if it’s random looking or from an old outdated inbox provider, then it’s one they probably don’t check anymore. Or possibly, it’s a sign that person just isn’t internet savvy which means they’re usually not a great fit for what I have to offer.
I can tell a lot from an email address.
And I was doing a lot of work to actively filter out the ones that weren't good fits right at the front door. I figured this was just part of the process. That if you want paid ads to work, you have to filter hard after somebody already opts-in.
Turns out I was wrong.
Because recently, I updated the product mockup for my Minimum Viable Email List training. And I’m doing a full rebrand of it plus a lot of content updates on the backend of it as well. But the first thing I did was swap out the product mockup and launch new ads.
Immediately, I started seeing a drastic change in the quality of email addresses opting in.
Real first names. People from reputable brands. Professional domains. Business owners in adjacent markets noticing the ads and thinking, “Wait, what’s this? This actually looks interesting.”
It’s the same offer, with the same targeting, but a different image.
Which was not what I expected.
I was just trying to gradually level up the offer one little step at a time. Small improvements here and there that would eventually make it more remarkable. But this one small change turned out to be a giant leap. And in the past I’ve spent all my time improving the product, optimizing the copy, tweaking the filtering, adjusting the landing page, and whatever… while completely missing the thing that does the most filtering upfront.
The first impression.
A premium product mockup signals a premium offer, and I think people notice that.
Anyway, I just dropped a short training inside the community showing exactly how I did it, using Claude and Chat GPT together to take my original mockup concept and turn it into something polished in about 30 minutes tops.
The training itself is inside the Email Sanctuary on standard tier.
If you're currently working on a lead magnets, or plan to, you can check it out here:
Talk soon,
Kevin Hood