Why Virtual Bundles? Exploring the Benefits for Online Entrepreneurs

Participating in a Virtual Bundle is one of the hottest new list-growth strategies for coaches, content creators, and course creators alike. This method of networking provides a unique opportunity to expand your business’s reach and visibility within your niche in a short amount of time. By collaborating with other creators or businesses, participants can leverage the audiences and networks of their fellow contributors, exposing their products or services to a wider pool of potential customers. This increased exposure can lead to a boost in website traffic, social media followers, and email subscribers, ultimately leading to overall business growth.

Additionally, Virtual Bundles provide an opportunity for creators to cross-promote your products or services in a mutually beneficial way. By showcasing your offerings alongside complementary products or resources from other contributors, you can demonstrate the value and versatility of your offerings to a receptive audience. This can help to establish credibility and position you as an expert within your niche or industry. Overall, participating in a Virtual Bundle can be a strategic and effective way for you to generate leads, increase visibility, and grow your business in a collaborative and mutually supportive environment.

Virtual bundles are a collaborative email marketing effort that bring together creators or businesses, often within a particular niche, to offer high-quality digital products to their collective community. Each contributor provides one or more of their products to the “pool” of resources (the Bundle) which is then marketed to everyone’s community, typically through email marketing and social media either for free or a steeply discounted price.

This marketing strategy works because it leverages the collective reach and audiences of all the contributors involved. By promoting the bundle to their respective email lists, social media followers, or other channels, each contributor can attract new leads and potential customers who may be interested in the bundle offer. This creates a win-win situation where contributors benefit from increased exposure and potential sales, while customers benefit from access to a variety of valuable products or resources at a reduced price or for free.

Virtual Bundles can include a wide range of digital products or resources, such as e-books, online courses, templates, software tools, coaching sessions, or trial access to exclusive communities. Overall, Virtual Bundles can be an effective lead generation and marketing strategy for creators and businesses in the online space, allowing them to pool their resources and reach a larger audience collectively.

While this strategy has taken off in the business-to-business space online, some still struggle with finding bundles to submit to. Despite this, there are a number of ways to go about finding events to participate in.

Connecting with other coaches, content creators, and course creators within your industry or niche can lead to opportunities to join Virtual Bundles. Attending industry events, joining online communities, and engaging in social media groups related to your field can help you discover potential collaborators and bundle opportunities.

Subscribing to newsletters and email lists of fellow creators or industry influencers can be a valuable way to stay informed about Virtual Bundle opportunities. Creators often announce upcoming bundle collaborations or promotions to their email subscribers, allowing interested individuals to participate or contribute.

Following relevant hashtags and accounts on social media platforms like Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn can help you discover Virtual Bundle opportunities. Creators often promote bundle collaborations or seek collaborators through their social media channels, making it easier for interested individuals to connect and participate.

Participating in online communities and forums related to your industry or interests can provide you with insights into Virtual Bundle opportunities. Communities such as Reddit, Facebook Groups, and specialized forums often have threads or discussions where creators share bundle collaborations or seek collaborators.

If you have identified creators or businesses you would like to collaborate with, you can reach out directly to propose a Virtual Bundle collaboration. Sending a personalized email or message outlining the potential benefits of collaboration and how your offerings align can open the door to partnership opportunities.

Tip with this: Make sure to customize your pitch for the person you are sending to. As someone who has done both mass pitches and individual/custom pitches, you’ll always get a better response by customizing. You can work off of a template, but at the very least, use their name and highlight why you think their expertise is a great fit for your event.

By contributing your product or service to a virtual bundle, you can gain access to the combined audience of all participants. This exposure can significantly increase your visibility within your target market and introduce your offerings to new potential customers who may not have discovered them otherwise.

Virtual bundles are often promoted through various marketing channels, including email lists, social media, and online communities. This promotion generates leads for all contributors involved, as customers interested in the bundle opt-in to receive it. Contributors can then nurture these leads and convert them into paying customers through follow-up marketing efforts. This is one of the most effective ways to get quick, organic email list growth!

Collaborating with other creators or businesses in a virtual bundle allows contributors to leverage each other's strengths and resources. By pooling their audiences and marketing efforts, contributors can amplify their promotional reach and achieve greater results than they could individually.

Participating in virtual bundles can lead to a surge in sales and revenue for contributors, especially if the bundle is offered at a discounted price or as a limited-time promotion. The perceived value of the bundle and the urgency created by the promotional period often encourage customers to make purchases, resulting in a boost in revenue for all contributors involved.

Virtual bundles often include products or services from multiple contributors that complement each other. This presents an opportunity for contributors to cross-promote their offerings within the bundle, exposing their customers to related products or services that they may find valuable. Cross-promotion can lead to increased sales and customer satisfaction.

Collaborating on a virtual bundle fosters relationships and partnerships among contributors. Working together on a joint project creates a sense of camaraderie and mutual support, which can lead to future collaboration opportunities and referrals. Building strong relationships within the industry can also open doors to new business opportunities and growth.

As long as you are selective about the events you choose to participate in (more on that in a minute) participating in Virtual Bundles is an excellent way to provide excellent value to your community. You are sharing with them a curated collection of valuable resources that they may not otherwise find or be exposed to.

Overall, participating in virtual bundles can be a strategic and mutually beneficial marketing tactic for contributors, offering opportunities for increased exposure, lead generation, sales, and collaboration within their industry or niche.

While participating in virtual bundles can offer various benefits, there are also potential drawbacks and challenges to consider:

Joining a virtual bundle with numerous other contributors may dilute the perceived value of a contributor's product or service. Customers may perceive the bundled offerings as less exclusive or premium, which could impact the contributor's brand reputation and pricing power. Additionally, continually offering the same 1-2 products in bundles can have the effect of diminishing the value of the information inside if your audience sees it being given away for free all of the time.

Depending on how the bundle is set up, contributors in a virtual bundle may offer products or services that compete directly with each other. This can lead to overall lower opt-ins or less quality leads, as they may be overwhelmed with similar information. It could also lead to decreased cross-promotion, impacting the total success of the event.

While increased exposure is a potential benefit of participating in virtual bundles, there is also a risk of overexposure. Suppose contributors participate in too many bundles or promotions within a short period. In that case, their audience may become fatigued or disengaged, leading to fewer signups, more unsubscribes, and a lower perceived brand value.

When contributing to a bundle, it’s a good idea to stick to events with a higher minimum value for submissions, as having a varied submission value could lead to your high-value products being featured next to items that are glorified email freebie opt-in items. This, by association, can make your item within the bundle look less valuable.

It’s understandable that nobody wants to have to do more than they absolutely NEED to, but at the same time, it should feel as though all of the contributors to an event are doing their fair share. Particularly if you are among those contributors with the larger email lists, it can feel like the payoff is smaller, and even more so if those with smaller lists are doing the same amount or less promotion than you are.

While I’m not a legal or financial expert, I can tell you that it’s important to make sure that the bundle host you’re working with has all of their bases covered in how they’re sharing data, having clear affiliate payout guidelines, intellectual property rights, marketing obligations, and who has liability in case there is any kind of dispute.

I once participated in a bundle where, two weeks in advance, the host sent out an email that they were moving the bundle dates because they couldn’t get everything ready in time. It’s not a cute look, but I didn’t have any major marketing or launch items planned, so it wasn’t a big deal. About a week later, I got really sick. And my business went on the back burner, and I didn’t think much about it (because I didn’t have any major marketing or launch items that were top of mind.)

I ended up being sick for a total of four weeks. Which also happened to be over the course of the bundle dates. After the bundle was over, I, and many of the other bundle participants, received a mass email about how the “organizer” was disappointed because only four of the approximately 25 people involved did their promotion…now mind you, we received ZERO updates, ZERO progress emails, and maybe only ONE single email after the one we received to let us know that the dates were being moved.

Receiving an email like this from a bundle host with such poor communication and organization skills, as the kids say, “really gave me the ick.” And what’s more, is that this person is supposed to have their systems and processes set up to deliver the bundle and deal with any customer service that comes up with it.

It’s SO important to know the type of person who you are signing on to participate in events with and whether they have the capacity to host an organized event, because, ultimately, you are exposing your audience to these people and it’s very important that your audience has a good experience, because this is also a reflection of you.

Most, if not all, Virtual Bundles require a certain amount of marketing of the event. And, if a person wants to be a good contributor who is welcomed back, they will make sure to do a thorough job of marketing the event. Depending on the promotional requirements of the event, it could lead to a messy or unclear marketing calendar. Make sure to always keep a calendar and include promotion windows when applying to Virtual Bundles so as not to over-crowd your marketing efforts.

Overall, while virtual bundles can be a valuable networking and marketing strategy, contributors should carefully weigh the potential risks and challenges to ensure that participation aligns with their business goals and values. Effective communication, clear expectations, and proactive management are essential for mitigating these cons and maximizing the benefits of virtual bundle collaborations.

While this is something that will eventually get its own post, a great way to start securing invitations to bundle events is by hosting your own. I share my full process in my course, Bundle Baddie Academy, and even offer hands-on services for bundle hosts.

If you’re more of a DIY type of person, here are some things to consider when starting your own virtual bundle:

Your capacity is the single most important factor when you are in the early stages of planning and recruiting for your bundle, and overestimating your capacity can lead to disastrous results (see my story above) and a LOT of wasted time and effort. My general rule is no less than 10-12 weeks, however, if you want your bundle to be very large, or if you are doing things completely on your own, you may want to add more cushion to your timeline. It’s better to have more time than you need than to get stressed out about a cramped schedule.

There are a LOT of decisions to be made when you are considering the details of your event.

These are just a few of the questions that you need to decide on when you are in the early stages of your bundle planning. I go into many of these and more inside Bundle Baddie Academy.

The timeline you choose should outline important milestones in the planning and execution process for your virtual bundle. And, as previously mentioned, this will depend heavily on your capacity and that of your team. Suppose you don’t have the skills or capacity to do the entire event on your own. In that case, you can seek out a [collaboration manager] or hire out specific parts of the event, such as graphics creation, copywriting, or building the tech.

Some important milestones you will want to have:

Quality contributors and excellent communication are the two things that can make or break your event. When recruiting, you can have an application process and share in appropriate places (suggestions above) or you can reach out to contributors personally, or a combination of both.

Especially once you have started hosting and participating in lots of events, a combination of the two methods is really important so you’re not always being exposed to the same collective audience. If you’re always collaborating with the same people, the collaborations could become less valuable, as there will be a larger overlap in audiences.

Make sure that when you are doing outreach to:

Vetting and approving submissions can take a lot more than you realize. For this reason, I recommend having a set of landing page guidelines for people to review ahead of time. Make sure to email people as you approve them and let them know what the next steps are, even if the next steps are “I will be in touch by [DATE] with all of your promotional materials. Make sure to mark your calendar and we will talk soon!”

Depending on the road you take for your event, you could need a number of different pages. The biggest and most important thing when it comes to your landing pages is to TEST, TEST, TEST. Make sure that all of your tech is working, all of your autoresponders are turned on, and all of your redirects are set correctly.

If you want people to promote, you MUST give them the tools to accurately and successfully do this. Marketing materials will depend on what you are requiring for promotion, but at the very least, I would generally recommend:

Some things that are nice to have are: Short-form video templates, ad copy for podcast or YouTube, recorded ads people could play as part of their Podcast or YouTube.

Participating in virtual bundles offers creators and businesses the opportunity to expand their reach, generate leads, and increase sales through collaborative marketing efforts. By joining forces with other contributors, participants can leverage each other's audiences and resources to promote a bundle of products or services to a wider audience.

While virtual bundles provide several benefits, including increased exposure and revenue potential, there are also potential drawbacks to consider, such as brand dilution, competitive conflicts, and dependency on bundle organizers.

Successfully navigating these challenges requires effective communication, clear expectations, and proactive management to ensure that participation aligns with business goals and values. Overall, virtual bundles can be a strategic networking and marketing tactic for creators and businesses, offering opportunities for collaboration, growth, and mutual support within their industry or niche.