Using deadlines in marketing is nothing new.

We’ve all seen them used during holiday sales… The “SAVE 60% THIS BLACK FRIDAY” or the numerous “LABOR DAY SALES EVENTS” for car dealerships.

Creating urgency through deadlines are a great way to boost response rates and, in turn, sales.

When we launch new info-products we’ll typically see a “W”-like sales chart during the campaign…

We’ll see the biggest burst of sales on the day of the promo…

Then we’ll push out a new lead for the promotion where we see a bump of sales…

And finally we deadline the promotion completely and get another big burst.

Again, this is for new promotion or product launches. But what do we do in between those launches? How do we maximize the typical week where we don’t have a new promotion launch?

When we launch something new, we don’t just send it out, deadline it, and then send it to a farm upstate…

To maximize the promotion, we utilize what we call “rolling deadlines.”

A rolling deadline is a constantly moving deadline week-to-week that usually lasts 1-2 days.

The idea is simple… Send the promotion to your audience and let them know that the page or video will be taken down at midnight that night…

Then, at exactly midnight, have the page automatically redirect to a “this offer is closed” page.

In about a week, re-open that page (or a page with a new headline and/or lead) and tell them the same thing… “This could be your last chance to watch. We’re taking this page down at midnight tonight.”

You can take your best-performing promotions and craft a monthly deadline schedule by rotating in and out your promotions.

Here’s an example…

On Monday run one of your top promotions and deadline that page at midnight on Tuesday…

Then on Wednesday, open another top promotion and deadline it at midnight that night…

Then on Thursday open another and deadline is Friday…

And another promotion on Saturday, deadlined Sunday.

For the next week, rotate in some new promotions or strike an affiliate deal to run somebody else’s promotion to your audience.

When you have new product or promotion launches, you can fit those in as you see fit!

These rolling deadlines work for a number of reasons…

For one, there is a proven psychological effect to externally imposed deadlines leading to increased responsiveness.

The study I linked above concluded that subjects who were given a deadline were more likely to complete tasks given distractions than those who were not given any deadline.

Deadlines simply make people more motivated to act.

They also create a sense of urgency for people. If you can create a stronger sense of urgency on your landing page or websites, then you can successfully spur people to do what you want them to do on your page… In our case, convert to a customer.

Lastly… and this one really depends on your business… By constantly running your promotions every couple of weeks and deadlining them, your targeting 3 groups of people…

The first group are folks who have already seen the promotion and haven’t bought yet. A deadline creates urgency… The language you use (i.e. saying “this could be the last chance to see the page”) creates a sense of scarcity.

You create another chance for them to convert, either because they weren’t ready to pull the trigger the first time… Or because they didn’t feel motivated enough.

The second group are folks who were sent the promotion but maybe didn’t see it. After all, the average open rate is roughly 17%. That means 83% of your audience might have missed it.

The third and final group are you new readers… Folks who joined the list between the previous deadline and the new one. This might be their first opportunity to see the offer.

You can easily begin to map out your marketing schedule weekly, monthly, and even quarterly this way.