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Being a generalist paid off... Georgiana is Director of Marketing at Unbounce.
Once marketing consultant, agency hired-gun, brand manager and tech community organizer, Georgiana's been cracking integrated web marketing across search, ecommerce, copy, email, social, product, analytics and usability since 2002.
To achieve something, you need a plan and not enough time.
At Montreal New Tech's Startups & Creativity event, I spoke to entrepreneurs, startups & creatives about the problem that Unbounce solves, how the company came to be, and how we reach our market.
Here's the video of the May 30th presentation.
(And here are the slides.)
Today was the first day of the longest break I will (likely) ever take from my career. And I feel fine. I do.
Sure, being nearly 37 weeks pregnant is a good reason to take 6 months off. I'm making a human after all. But, if you know me (a-type, work-obsessed) you may wonder if I'm capable… Some days, I wonder too.
For the next 3 weeks I'm on straight-up vacation in an attempt to decompress from what's been a crazy few years of work. I'm lying… It's been longer than that, but that's just because loving what I do is requisite for how I spend so much of my time. I'm granting myself 3 weeks to relax, sleep and prepare before I'm hit with the biggest challenge of my life to date.
After the baby is born at the end of July, I'll take 5 months(ish) of maternity leave that will go by, I fear now, way too quickly. In a country where paid maternity leave is a year long — taking a mere 5 months makes me career-driven, which I believe is thought to be, the opposite of motherly. My girlfriends give me a strange blank stare when I remind them that I don't plan to take the full year. Blink "Oh right. Yes. I forgot you were going back so soon…". My tongue hurts from imagining people biting theirs from telling me to get my priorities straight.
When we found out that I was pregnant in November (following the simultaneous fear/happiness/shock) the first thought that went through my head was 'will this fuck my career and the company I care so much about?'. I've worked my ass off for 12 years, I lean in. I wasn't delusional enough to wonder 'will this set me back?', I asked myself 'how far will this set me back, and how do I mitigate the damage?'. The answer, to maybe the most selfish (and unmotherly) question I've ever asked myself, was to not take the full year off that I'm entitled to, to spend with my child. A little human who, I was fully aware (though maybe only in theory until now) will promptly take priority over everything else.
I've been sitting with this decision, like a thorn in my side, for nearly 9 months. I love my job. I love my colleagues. I love my team. I love the challenges that come along with working at one of Canada's most quickly growing startups. All of this is no less true today than it was 9 months ago.
But here's the thing…
Every once in a while, I wonder to myself how I'll feel come January, when my 5 month old is developing his/her sense of humour and starting on solid foods. I wonder how on earth I'll integrate my baby into a daycare at such a young age. And how I'll re-integrate into my role as a director of a dept and team who has succeeded without me for 2 quarters. Will the guilt be unbearable? Will there be enough motivation to return to work to sustain me through how hard it'll undoubtedly be on me, my partner and baby?
Then again…
I am career-driven. To friends and family, I'm unapologetically motivated by being among the best at what I do. What kind of role-model would I be if I gave up on what gives me such a sense of accomplishment? I suspect I might go stir crazy after a few months of baby-land, too. Being needed and valued for something other than feedings and diaper changes might be just what I'll need after a few months. This baby is becoming a (yes, huge) part of my life, but not the reason for it.
Ok so remember at the start of this when I said I feel fine? I do. Because, I (let's be real, have no choice but to) take comfort in the fact that I don't have to decide my exact path today. My only job, for the next 6 months will be to take care of my family (omg). And, more immediately, in 3 weeks or less, to mentally prepare, for what will change everything forever.
This is me today. Fine. Because I know that clarity will come when I need it.
Photos from my Montreal Girl Geeks Conversion Rate Optimization talk on May 28th.
Slides for "Intro to Conversion Rate Optimization" talk given on May 28th, 2014 at (my former side project) Montreal Girl Geeks event.
via Startup Marketing – A guide to Customer Acquisition [Slides] http://www.tweaky.com/blog/startup-marketing-a-guide-to-customer-acquisition/
Subtleties Explained in Cereal
This is me. West coast.
Real dogs wear pink.
Georgiana moves to Unbounce HQ from MTL #woot
Countdown to my first day in the office :)
In February I told you that I was taking a break from freelancing and embracing a full time gig at Vancouver based startup Unbounce. Well, it's time for some more bitter-but-oh-so-sweet news; As of June, I'll be making the move from my hometown Montreal to Vancouver, for a while.
In March, I spent almost 2 weeks in the office there… Needless to say, it wasn't long before my heart started to struggle with relocating. I won't say it's Vancouver that sold me (yet, but look at that view!), but rather Unbounce itself and the people I already have a connection with (one of which is Russell's BFF). After some promises to remain a devout Habs fan and to return to Montreal, I decided this really is an opportunity I have to follow.
The Montreal Tech Community is one I will sorely miss …I can't stress that enough. It was just over 3 years ago that I joined Twitter, and sheepishly attended my first tech event (a WPMTL meetup) where knowing absolutely no one, I was welcomed by Eva Blue, Kathryn Presner, and others. Somewhere around that same time I stumbled in love with Tanya McGinnity and Montreal Girl Geeks — Which honestly, changed everything.
In only the last few years, I went from working at my family business (and a small ad agency on the side) to running Montreal Girl Geeks, speaking at events, and (sometimes overwhelmingly) successfully freelancing at what I love.
Without people like Pier-Luc, Eva, Sarah-Jane, Sandy, Liesl, Alistair, Alex, Robin, Tara, Kathryn, Brendan, Laurent, Steve, Felipe, Heri…. (I could go on but I'll spare you the gushing) my life, not only professionally, would be completely different. This is not a sobby good-bye at all, I'll be back, just taking an opportunity to express my ridiculous gratitude for such an awesome community.
This of course also means that I'll be stepping down as President of Montreal Girl Geeks. I'll be announcing there soon too. I hope to find a community in YVR that's nearly half as fantastic as this one.
Hoping to have a drink on a terrace with you before June!
much #mtllove
Those of you who know me, know I'm a strong believer in free agents and that independents are a growing bunch I'm proud to be part of. This however, is one fulltime opportunity I could not refuse; Vancouver based startup, Unbounce.
Unbounce is an awesome self-serve landing page platform, a bunch of ridiculously cool and talented people, and after receiving another round of funding they are in need of a few good women and men to grow even more. (In case you didn't catch that last link, Unbounce won Best Pitch at Grow 2011.) Of the few people I've mentioned Unbounce to over the last couple weeks, of those who weren't already users, most have signed up and all have nothing but utter praise…. Their users love them, and I see why.
I've joined the Unbounce team as Marketing Manager (part blog editor, part community manager and part co-marketing coordinator).
Follow what we're up to over on the very popular Unbounce blog, @Unbounce on Twitter and (you know I'd love a like) on Facebook. We talk about awesome things like conversion rates, usability, A/B testing, social media and content marketing.
*Swoon* …consider me converted.
Last November I told you that Sandy Sidhu and I gave a talk at Wordcamp Toronto about moving from Wordpress.com to Wordpress.org, today it made it's way to Wordpress.tv :)
Merry Christmas everyone! xx
This past Saturday I presented "Moving from Wordpress.com to Wordpress.org" with Sandy Sidhu at WordCamp Toronto. Was lots of fun to be there with fellow Montrealers Liesl Barrell, Digibomb, Kathryn Presner, Jeremy Clarke (and more) too. The organizers, volunteers and speakers did a great job and I'll likely make the trek out to TO again next year.
It's worth mentioning that this was my first time speaking at a tech event, or at any event for that matter. As an organizer of Montreal Girl Geeks, I'm obviously a pretty big advocate of women doing more speaking at conferences, but yeah, even I have managed to avoid it until now.
You can check out the slides from this weekend's talk below:
Moving from Wordpress.com to Wordpress.org
Georgiana Laudi on Slideshare
girl geek road trip @ggiiaa @lieslbarrell @sandysidhu #wcto #mtlgg #dirtygoogle (Taken with instagram)
Taken with Instagram at Belvédère du Chalet - Mont-Royal
You can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.
via OWNI
24 Hours In Montreal
Got your French on? Nice clip - less than 2 minutes long.
(Originally passed along to me by Ray Hilz of newray.com)
dubbed "street cred builder for bad-ass developers" …yeah so I'm no programmer, but I'm checking it out anyway.
I've been thinking a lot about how my experience as a female tech founder differs from my male counterparts. Almost a month into my first tech incubator, I'm learning a lot - but I'm also seeing my weaknesses brought into sharp focus. Writing this is a way to exorcise some of the demon doubts…
What a walk! #beforeandafter
Posterous made some changes to their site today that frankly, I can't be bothered with. I like updating via web (which was finicky) and I wasn't crazy about their iphone app, so not sure Posterous was really for me.
So apparently there is no export options for Posterous, but there is an import into Wordpress (by creating a new dummy wp.com) and then apparently some hack to export your posts/comments outta there onto a PHP 5 enabled server and then into Tumblr… but yeah, that's a whole lotta time that I'd rather spend working or tweeting or cuddling with my dog.
That all said, if you wanna see what I've been up to prior to today, you can just check out my now neglected Posterous.
Hey folks, thanks for following along with Lia's news here on Tumblr! I've decided to move to a Wordpress site. Not only do I have more control over my posts but I have more faith in that platform's longevity. And guess what? wemadeahuman.com was available, so I got that too.
Please join us over at http://wemadeahuman.com
Lia turns 2 months!
Appt no. 4 at the Shriner's = Another stinking 4 weeks of wearing her brace for 23hrs/day. In fact, the doctor wanted 6.
good morning!
Lia turns 1 month old today!
Likes: eating, morning naps, clean diapers, pats on the bum, the first 10 minutes of tummy time, the first 7 minutes of bath time, coconut oil massages, lamps, windows and being swaddled.
Dislikes: the 30 seconds before eating, the 2 minutes before a burp, the 5 minutes before a fart, waking up alone, getting toenails clipped, red lights and yes, getting her brace put back on after bath time.
Unsure about: peekaboo
Appointment no. 3 at the Shriners today = Another 4 weeks wearing the brace 23hrs a day. Boo-urns.
…Okay okay it's not so bad!
A Little Hip Update
On Monday we returned to the Shriners for another ultrasound (shown) and exam. The doc says she's doing great and to come back in 3 weeks for another progress report. Now, rather than 24/7, we can take the brace off for 1 hr a day for a bath.
Lia takes her paci [video]
It's official, Lia has infiltrated our lives for good. We think we'll keep her.
Mom & Dad… Hankered but happy.
Hip, Hip.
The day after Lia was born, the pediatrician at the Royal Vic told us that he felt a little pop in her hip. He promptly assured us that it's nothing too serious but that we should go to the Shriners to be sure.
Last Friday, after an exam and ultrasound it was confirmed; Lia has Hip Dysplasia. She was given a brace to wear 24/7 until her next check up, on August 11th (10 days) when we will get a progress report and find out how long she'll need to wear it (commonly 6-12 weeks).
A little background: Hip Dysplasia is present in about 1% of births, the doctor told us he treats it about once every 2 weeks. It's apparently more common in first born girls, and is hereditary (though neither DJ or I have heard of anyone in our families). Interestingly, the majority of cases resolve themselves, but since it's impossible to know which cases will, the brace is used.
…A few Google searches in after getting home and the reality of this condition, if untreated, is definitely scary. We've read stories of 5 yr olds, 11 yr olds and even older, forced to stay home with such a brace… Surgeries needed, etc.
Though it was very sad to get the news, and see her strapped up this way, we're super grateful that it was caught and we were able to start treatment so early (at only 7 days old!).
Needless to say, the cute newborn outfits can wait…
Above is Lia sporting her brace, equipped with socks with the toes cut out to soften the straps against her skin… Yup, it officially bothers us more than it bothers her :)
6 days of Lia
I was born, yeah!
Lia Joanne Trudy Vander Veen joined the outside world on Friday morning, July 25th at 8:13am weighing 7lbs 8 ounces, 20 inches long and perfect in every way, shape and form.
Mom & Dad are smitten.
still baking
Dad sleeps
The Belly — 32 weeks to 39 weeks
The baby's room is never really complete, is it? This is as close as we've come!
It's official. I'm on vacation for the rest of the month, followed by maternity leave until early 2015.
My team gave me the cutest baby send-off pack too. Themed appropriately for our name, the Unbounce Honey Badgers. So much cute stuff, with a card signed by 50+ Unbouncers across the country and baby/badger themed cupcakes from Les Glaceurs which I ate in a fury so they didn't make it in the photo. nom.
Best team ever. <3
we do what it takes.
Sunday was the perfect day for a Baby-Que on the canal.
Seriously, Kate & Saskia outdid themselves… From a beer cake (not diaper cake!), the coolest location, delicious pulled pork and wings, to the most realistic burger cupcakes… you had to close your eyes to eat them.
40 of our favourite people joined DJ and I for what was a day neither of us had ever really imagined we'd have held in our honour… Thanks everyone for making it so "cool".
Visiting the cottage. 34 week belly. :)
Prenatal Class last Saturday included a tour of the labour & delivery rooms, dolls & big bellies.
Think you know if we're having a boy or a girl? Think you know when I'm gonna pop? Prove it! » Click here to bet
Photos taken for my last (for a while) monthly 'Inside Unbounce Marketing' post. Looks like I've outgrown my UB tee.
Infant Care class. Circumcision, rectal thermometers, 'front to back'… you know, usual Monday night fodder.
On a beautiful Saturday in June, mom & dad attend day 1 of 2 full day weekend prenatal classes at the Vic… If you'd asked me a few years ago, I never would have imagined myself spending F1 weekend this way. It must be love.
The Royal Vic opened it's doors in 1893 and will retire in 2015 (when it's replaced by the new "Super Hospital"). No one quite knows yet what the future holds for it, but in its deed, the hospital's land and its buildings (donated by 2 Scotsmen) must only ever be used for healing.
The Royal Victoria Hospital in 1900:
And Today:
Read more about the Royal Vic on Wikipedia
Our super cute Baby Shower Invitations went out by email recently to friends & family in Montreal.
Being organized by my awesome friends Kate & Saskia (be sure to reach out to Saskia at the email in the invitation if you have any questions!)
We can't wait to see everyone!
…Also sad to miss many important people in Edmonton, Vancouver & Seattle. We'll take lots of pics, promise!
For those of you wondering how we could possibly wait…
The short version of this article:
Read the whole article here
Anesthesia class
We picked a doosey of a first ever prenatal class, let me tell you. Lots of talk of pain, big needles and risks… Oh my.
The Belly — 23 weeks to 31 weeks
We made this change table — Ikea Hacks
30 Weeks
Gestational Diabetes Test at the Royal Victoria Hospital — Still waiting in results!
Hero Conference in Austin
The belly — 13 weeks to 22 weeks
Mom & Dad making their move across Canada (Vancouver to Montreal)
Fetal Anatomy Scan (3rd Ultrasound)
Babymoon in Hawaii
This was the 2nd ultrasound done on Victoria Street in Vancouver, right before leaving for Hawaii. The technician was ridiculously nice and wanted to make sure to give us a "cute" photo (not 'alien like', like most)
The image I sent by text to the girls in Montreal to tell them my news (x2!)
My first ultrasound — Yes, this is really happening!
This "Dating" ultrasound confirms » Baby's due date is July 26th, 2014
As marketers, we tend to spend a disproportionate amount of time focusing on creating customers compared to retaining customers. And while the latter may sound like the job of the customer support team, smart marketers understand that the two are linked.
It isn't enough for marketers to generate leads to grow the business; marketers are responsible for attracting qualified leads – and laying a solid foundation for an ongoing relationship that continues to generate profit after the initial sale.
In other words, marketers are responsible for constantly optimizing for customer lifetime value (CLV).
This doesn't necessarily have to mean increasing your prices, reducing customer acquisition cost or offering more services. Sometimes, improving CLV is as simple as optimizing the systems you already have in place – from your marketing funnel to your customer support.
I'm talking about post-conversion strategies:
After you secure a conversion – after people have invested time, trust and money in your business – they're more likely to respond to a secondary request.
Here are five powerful post-conversion strategies for boosting your customer lifetime value that you can start applying today.
Your job as a marketer doesn't stop after the initial conversion. If you've brought in qualified leads, the next step is to ensure that you have the systems in place to keep them happy – and convert them into repeat customers.
In a study by Zendesk, consumers ranked quality (88%) and customer service (72%) as the two biggest drivers of customer loyalty.
The importance of quality shouldn't come as a surprise, but the emphasis on customer service is interesting; it's rarely recognized as something so detrimental to developing customer loyalty and CLV.
HubSpot provides a good example of the influence that customer service has on CLV. By measuring their managers on customer satisfaction metrics, they were able to almost halve their churn rate and double the lifetime value of their customers in just over a year.
Improving customer loyalty ultimately comes down to fulfilling your customers needs and while doing so, displaying that you care. The greatest product in the world still won't attract loyal customers if the company treats them poorly.
There's a virtually unlimited scope to how you could do this.
When you experience amazing service somewhere, consider whether you could replicate it in your company. Could you offer free upgrades? A quick phone call to check that the customer is happy with their purchase?
Anything that shows that you're going out of your way to improve their day will inevitably end up influencing your customer lifetime value in a positive way.
Awesome customer service makes prospects more likely to buy from you again and again.
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Before we buy something, an area in our brain called the nucleus accumbens increases neural firing. This makes us feel great because there are lots of dopamine receptors in that part of the brain, and dopamine makes us feel good in anticipation of an event.
However, as soon as we've bought something, we begin to feel various forms of cognitive dissonance – commonly in the form of buyer's remorse, where we feel our decrease in purchasing power and the opportunity cost of what we've just bought.
It's in this moment of dissonance that we can use the power of exceeding expectations to fire up our customer's endorphins and make them feel happy again.
A few years ago, I worked with a client on a deal for musicians, where we bundled hundreds of dollars worth of recording time and information products into affordable packages.
After a customer bought the package, we offered them the chance to get an extra $100 worth of free products in return for a Facebook share. This resulted in over 250 Facebook shares, which referred 34 additional sales over the five days that deal ran for.
By targeting customers with an unexpected extra at the moment they were likely to feel cognitive dissonance, we were able to reduce refund requests to zero, while increasing social shares.
It also boosted the conversion rate of our other traffic sources from 5.6% to 8.3%.
This was largely attributed to the fact that we were displaying a lot of social proof around the landing page's calls to action. The more people who shared the deal post-conversion, the more popular the deal appeared for potential customers.
How do your customers feel immediately after they've paid for your product or service? The more price sensitive your customers are, the more likely it is that they'll feel some form of cognitive dissonance.
Are the ways that you could counter this by surprising your customers with something awesome?
Even better, could you leverage this opportunity to get your customers to market your product for you – raising your CLV via a reduced customer acquisition cost?
Constantly surprise customers with added value and they'll thank you with more of their business.
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If you've ever booked flights online, then you're familiar with upsells and cross-sells.
According to a study of 176 airlines by Amadeus IT Group, airlines collect over $36 billion per year from upselling products like extra baggage, seat upgrades and onboard retail products.
Out of curiosity, I counted the number of upsells offered while booking an air ticket on the Jetstar website. I counted 19 separate upsells, cross-sells and add-on-sells just in their booking process.
But what is it that makes this favorite tactic of airlines so effective?
In his TED talk, behavioral economist Dan Ariely explains some of the psychology behind upselling. One of the key components is the power of defaults.
The graph shows the consent rates of citizens in different countries to donate their organs in the event of death.
So why don't the Danish, Dutch, Brits and Germans (the "gold countries" in the graph above) donate their organs? It comes down to this: By default, the "gold countries" opt you out of donating your organs. If you want to donate organs, you have to tick a box to opt in – and the opposite is true for the "blue countries."
You also see the power of upselling at work when you buy a domain name through a registrar; you'll find that email and whois protection is added to your basket by default. You have to make a conscious decision to remove it if you don't want it.
Pretty simple, yeah? Well this is only one piece of the upselling puzzle.
Another psychological aspect of upselling is price anchoring. If you've just paid $500 for a plane ticket, it seems relatively insignificant to pay an extra $10 for on-board entertainment.
If, however, you're already onboard and have $10 in your wallet, it may seem relatively expensive to pay $10 to watch a film for an hour.
As humans, we're pretty awful at evaluating prices by intrinsic value. Instead, we're good at evaluating price in relative terms.
To recap, if you want to upsell effectively:
What anchor do prospects use to decide if your price is fair? Can you frame your offer differently?
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In two years, marketing automation has grown from being a $500 million industry to a $1.2 billion industry. One of the key drivers behind this growth is the impact that marketing automation has on boosting CLV.
When Skullcandy switched to Adobe Marketing Cloud, they increased upsell revenue by 30%. Ben Meacham, their Analytics & Testing Manager explained:
"Switching from manually configured recommendations to Adobe Recommendations increased upsell revenues by 30%. Plus, it saves us time. Optimizing recommendations used to take about 10 hours a week. Now it takes just half an hour, which frees up staff to do other important work."
There are a handful of reasons why marketing automation is so powerful, but ultimately it comes down to the fact that it makes personalized marketing really easy.
It's a simple equation:
The more personalized a company's marketing is, the more relevant it is. The more relevant an offer is to a potential customer, the higher the likelihood of a conversion, and thus more potential revenue per customer.
One of my favorite case studies of this in action is by a wedding invitation company called PaperStyle.
By segmenting their visitors into brides and friends of brides, they were able to create email sequences that took them through the whole process of planning a wedding, upselling the right products at the right time.
This level of personalization raised their revenue per mailing by 330%.
Create a flowchart like the one above to understand what your customers will likely want and need at different phases. This immediately frames your relationship with your customers as less of an event, and more of an ongoing journey.
From here, you can plan an email sequence that upsells and recommends different products and services at different stages, based on behavioral and action-based triggers, such as visiting a specific page or clicking on a button.
How personalized is your ongoing communication with customers? Conversions aren't a 1-time event.
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For many businesses, feedback is more valuable in the short term than revenue. Yet, for some reason, too few businesses proactively collect it.
When I launched MusicLawContracts.com several years ago, I couldn't figure out why we were getting so many refund requests. After installing a chat plugin called Olark, it became clear that our customers thought they were actually buying actual (signed) contracts with record labels… for $19.99!
In reality, the website offers music contract templates. By adding that one word, we dramatically reduced refund requests. Since then, I've tried to make it standard to incentivize feedback from all customers and visitors pre and post conversion.
While this example is pretty extreme, it's not quite as amazing as a story I heard a few years ago from a friend about the Disney website.
Apparently, the team behind Disney's website couldn't figure out why kids were creating ridiculously long passwords with 40+ numbers and letters. Did they really think their flash game scores were going to be hacked by international cyber-hackers?
It turned out that the kids had misinterpreted the instruction "passwords must contain at least six characters," thinking that it had to contain the names of at least six Disney characters!
Regardless of whether this anecdote is true, the message is powerful: your customers can tell you things about your business that you hadn't realized – and the more information you proactively gather from customers, the easier it is to improve your campaigns and find new ways to satisfy their needs.
Let your customers tell you how you can improve your products for them.
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As a marketer, you're responsible for nurturing prospects at each stage of the customer lifecycle – including after the initial conversion. Being mindful of a customer's experience post-conversion will give you the information you need to dramatically improve customer lifetime value.
The first step in growing your CLV is to know what it is – so pull out a pen and paper and crunch some numbers.
As Tony Robbins says, "Where focus goes, energy flows, and results show." Unless we proactively measure it, it's unlikely we'll consistently be able to grow our CLV.
From here, it's all about experimentation. Experiment with upsells, personalized marketing and everything else in this post. Some things will work and some won't – you really just need to throw a decent amount of spaghetti at the wall.
No matter what goals you have for your content marketing, you need to be able to write headlines that get clicked. As Jessica Black, Marketing Manager at Contently, notes: "If your headline isn't good, your article is irrelevant."
And if your article is irrelevant, then you're not getting any traffic.
Beyond that, failure to draw traffic affects your ability to gather insights about what makes your customers tick (and click). As CRO expert Tommy Walker suggests in his article about why you should focus on clicks before conversions:
Clicks are the best insight we have into what drives people to action. If you're not putting click behavior under a microscope on every level, you don't stand a chance at reliably building online marketing funnels that convert.
So how do you write headlines that get clicks and draw in qualified traffic? Well, an easy way would be to write a clickbait headline; something like, "You Won't Believe the Marketing Campaign This Marketer Came Up With."
But headlines like this typically create a lot of hype and under-deliver. You put effort into your content marketing, and you want the benefits to be clear in the title, right?
So, how do you write a good headline that:
In short: how do you write clickbait alternatives that still get clicks?
Here are six tips to equip you with the tools you need to write benefits-driven headlines that rise above the clickbait noise.
What exactly is this phenomenon that entices us to click? Here's an explanation from Facebook's Khalid El-Arini and Joyce Tang:
"Clickbaiting" is when a publisher posts a link with a headline that encourages people to click to see more, without telling them much information about what they will see.
Clickbait is psychologically compelling because our brains start craving the information that is left out of the headline. As marketer Jeremy Smith at JeremySaid writes:
Our minds are not content with the imbalance of disequilibrium — the lingering sense of incompleteness that we feel after reading a successful article title. So, we click. We pursue equilibration.
However, just causing disequilibrium by leaving information out of the headline isn't ideal for readers.
Why not? Because readers want to know what to expect when they click a headline. They want to know what they're going to get from reading the article.
Want proof? Here's more data from the Facebook Newsroom:
When we asked people in an initial survey what type of content they preferred to see in their News Feeds, 80% of the time people preferred headlines that helped them decide if they wanted to read the full article before they had to click through.
So how do you create disequilibrium but still tell people what they're going to get?
Speak to the benefits.
You can create the same sense of psychological disequilibrium with a benefits-driven headline such as "10 Proven Ways to Increase Website Conversion" as you can with a clickbait headline like "You Won't Believe How This Company Changed the Game."
Both of these headlines leave out enough information to cause readers to want more, but only the benefits-driven headline tells them what to expect in the full article.
A study from MarketingProfs, featured on Ion's Best of A/B Testing series, used A/B testing to show that benefits-driven headlines increased conversion rates by 28%.
As Barry Feldman puts it:
Consider content marketing a war zone. The battle is for attention and your headline is your weapon. The reader's perpetually – but subconsciously – asking, "Why should I read this?"
Answer the question. Make it unmistakably clear what the reader gains by investing time in your content.
The pulling power of a magnetic headline traces to its promise. Simply stated, it's a benefit.
Benefits-driven headlines create the same disequilibrium that make clickbait headlines so effective.
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When I reached out to Jessica Black, Marketing Manager at Contently, she shared that one of the most effective ways of optimizing your headlines is to A/B test them via your email newsletter:
I'll usually send two different subject lines to a percentage of the list. I'll send 10 percent one version of the headline, and I'll send another 10 percent a second version of the headline.
After either a day or a couple of hours I'll see which headline performs the best, and I'll send that headline to the last 80 percent.
So you're ready to A/B test your headlines, but how can you start generating headline ideas?
If you're brainstorming headlines for your next A/B test, here's some advice from digital strategist Alexis Grant:
Often when you start writing a headline, people start writing and then they erase, and then they write some more and then erase, trying to create the perfect headline.
If you don't let yourself erase, if you just write them all out, you can see all the important keywords and all the best elements of each headline, and you can combine them into your final choice. The process of writing out a lot of headlines gets you closer to the best one.
As you're brainstorming, keep in mind that readers are most likely to resonate with headlines that convey the value of clicking – and demonstrate that they align with your readers' interests and goals. Here's what Alexis Grant recommends:
Creative and cutesy headlines perform really well for Upworthy, but for us, something like "The Marketer's Guide to Data Science" performs really well because that's what our target customer is looking for.
Jessica also noted that 31% of Contently's top 10% performing email subject lines included a number, such as this one: "8 Scary Stats for Content Marketers — and What You Can Do About Them."
Numbers tend to do particularly well in headlines, as Conductor indicates:
As the Conductor chart shows, the headline "Ways to Make Drinking Tea More Delightful" lets the reader know that he or she will learn something about drinking tea – but the headline "30 Ways to Make Drinking Tea More Delightful" promises the reader 30 unique benefits.
It also touches on the disequilibrium concept discussed earlier: when 30 potential benefits are listed, the reader begins to wonder what those 30 unique ideas might be, and part of the brain remains unsatisfied until the reader clicks and scans the list.
Including numbers in your headlines can make them 36% more likely to be clicked.
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When Alexis Grant generates headlines for her clients, she generally steers clear of using clickbait.
Why, you ask?
Because clickbait isn't good for SEO:
Clickbait doesn't work incredibly well if you're trying to get a keyword into the headline. It's more important to put the keyword in that describes the story.
Instead, Alexis relies on keyword research and her SEO knowledge to write clickable headlines that drive long-tail traffic.
"We're looking for a headline that's catchy but that also uses the keywords that we want the site to rank for," Alexis told me. "We get a lot of traffic from search, and we get that traffic for a lot of reasons, but optimizing our headlines is a big part of it.
If you want to start doing keyword research for your next headline, these are the tools that Alexis' team at Socialexis team recommends:
Here's Jessica Black's advice for content marketers: instead of focusing just on the headline, focus on the entire package:
Another thing that I think is really important, that a lot of people forget about, is the dek.
In short, the dek is the line of text that accompanies your headline, whether on your blog post page or in your email blasts. The Society of Publication Designers defines the dek as "the phrase or two that furthers the headline, explaining the story briefly and enticing the reader to keep reading."
Jessica makes the dek a big part of her marketing strategy.
The dek is a really big deal, especially for social. The way our social editor uses the combination of the header, the subject line, the image — those things all come together and tell a story.
Just remember to leave enough out so that your reader is still intrigued by what they're going to click on.
If you're not seeing the click-through rate you want, try changing the dek. It's as easy as updating it in your CMS, and you'll quickly see whether you get results.
As Slate's editorial director, John Swansburg, said in a recent article about heds and deks:
I remember [the] days when Julia and I would spend 10 minutes, maybe 15, carving in stone a beautifully crafted hed and dek that would last the entire next day on the homepage. Now, Chad bounces a headline after an hour if it's not performing!
Your article not getting clicks? Write a complementary dek that speaks to the benefits of reading.
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Here's a recap of how to write a great benefits-driven headline that is more likely to stand out from the clickbait-y imitators of the online publishing world:
- Don't try to trick or manipulate your readers into clicking
- Use online tools like Google Trends and Keyword Planner to find SEO-rich keywords for your headlines
- Write many headlines and look at common elements before choosing the best one
- A/B test your headlines via your email newsletter
- Don't forget about the dek. As Jessica shared earlier, "Tell a story, but leave enough out so that your reader is still intrigued by what they're going to click on."
- Present your article as a full package: headline, dek and relevant featured image
Whatever you do, don't tell us that we won't believe what we're about to read.
In all likelihood, we'll believe it. Your job is to make us want to read your article because of the benefits we'll get from reading it. In return, we'll click – and maybe even convert.
The online marketing world is filled with stuff. I don't mean crap, though some of it certainly is. I mean stuff. Words, pictures, videos. That stuff takes the form of more stuff. Blog posts, webinars, ebooks, case studies, ultimate guides, how-tos, infographics. Big stuff, small stuff. Big stuff made up of small stuff.
We call this stuff content. And there's a lot of it out there. Every two days we create as much content as we did in all of human history blah blah blah…
My point is that with so much content out there it's hard to know where to start and what to trust. And this is especially true in the conversion marketing world, where everyone seems to be spouting the same buzzwords and best practices without taking a step back to think about what all this stuff really means.
So in an effort to help conversion-centered marketers separate the signal from the noise we've created…yup, more stuff!
The Conversion Marketing Glossary is a hub for all the terms, concepts, advice and resources you need to improve your conversion rates. Ever have a hard time explaining to a colleague or client why your landing pages shouldn't have a navigation bar? (duh, it's all about Attention Ratio)? Need a cheat sheet for formulating a solid Test Hypothesis for your next A/B test? There you go!
The glossary was designed as a one-stop shop for conversion marketing knowledge, featuring explanations of almost 100 marketing terms (and counting!), plus helpful links and videos from marketing experts like Brian Massey, Joanna Wiebe, Sean Ellis and Oli Gardner.
Feeling pretty confident about your conversion chops? You can test your nerdiness with the Conversion Marketing Quiz and prove just how brilliant you are or submit a new term for inclusion in the glossary.
This is just phase one of what we hope will be a constantly evolving ecosystem so let us know what you think in the comments below. In the meantime, we hope the glossary makes the conversion marketing world a little less noisy and lot more delightful. And stuff.
One of the first things you learn as a marketer is how important it is to get to know your target customer. Understanding what makes your prospects tick allows you to create targeted offers that will resonate with them.
But it doesn't stop there.
Every single landing page element has to be created with your "ideal customer" in mind.
If you fail to do that – if your headlines are borrowed or your images generic – then you'll wind up with a landing page that addresses everyone but appeals to no one.
In our latest episode of Page Fights, regular judges Oli Gardner and Peep Laja and guest judge Michael Aagaard of ContentVerve tore apart 10 user-submitted landing pages for your benefit. In the process, they identified several consequences of failing to keep your target customer top-of-mind.
You can watch the full episode here:
In the meantime, we've distilled the key takeaways so you can start applying the judges' advice to your pages today. Here are five questions you should ask yourself to ensure that every element on your landing page is created with your prospects in mind.
When you're in a pinch, buying stock images for your landing pages may seem like a good idea, but it's unlikely that they'll resonate with your target audience in a meaningful way.
Although the judges liked the overall design of iTeleCenter's landing page, Peep thought the stock image felt dated and failed to communicate any information or value.
To show give more context, Peep suggested using images of real people using your products and service. Showing context of use helps increase the clarity and persuasiveness of your offer.
Similarly, Oli found that My Pension Choices' hero shot conjured up thoughts of dry-cleaning and laundry more than customized pension planning – which hurt the page's clarity:
When you're selecting an image for your landing page, ask yourself: Does it communicate the specifics of my offer?
Bonus tip:
Michael explained that a good test for determining if you have the right images on your landing page is to remove the copy and ask yourself, "Can I still understand what my landing page is about without the text?"
If you can't, you may need to revisit your images and select one that thoroughly conveys your value proposition.
If you take away the copy, is your landing page still clear? If not, you need new images.
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Peep thought Huddlebuy Perks' landing page was clean, but Oli took issue with its headline – he awarded it the 2014 Generic Business Statement Award for being so bland:
Similarly, Colameco's headline for its high-protein pancakes doesn't exactly make you want to break out the pancake griddle.
Michael explained that your headline is often the first thing your prospect will read on your landing page – so it has to tell the visitor exactly what the product does.
There's no room for clever puns or ambiguity.
If prospects aren't clear about what your landing page is offering, then they're not going to be motivated to keep reading – and they're certainly not going to be motivated to convert.
Bonus tip:
The judges shared some quick tips about how to make your headlines more actionable:
- Peep suggests clearly defining your unique value proposition in your headline to remove ambiguity.
- In the same vein, Michael suggests being as succinct as possible about what your service does.
- If your headline can be applied to another landing page and still make sense, then it's probably not specific enough to your landing page.
Your headline should be clear about what your product does. That motivates prospects to take action.
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People judge websites and landing pages at the blink of an eye.
If your landing page's design feels outdated or haphazardly thrown together, then it's likely that it will feel less credible in the minds of your prospects.
Take Litening Software's page for example:
Peep and Oli wondered why the background of this page was of a beach when the software is for restaurant owners. They explained that having a landing page design that is is irrelevant to your audience tells them that you don't really understand them.
And it can make your page feel untrustworthy.
For Peep, the design wasn't the only aspect of this page that hurt its credibility. He also thought these elements felt inauthentic and salesy:
Bonus tip:
To ensure a trustworthy landing page, Oli recommended avoiding the word "spam" – especially in proximity to your CTA button.
As Oli explained, the word "spam" conjures up unpleasant associations and creates a negative psychological feeling for prospects that makes them less likely to convert.
Michael agreed: "I've run a lot of tests on this, and every time you put 'spam' next to an email field, it makes people think: 'Whoa, are they going to spam me?'"
Talking about the benefits of your offer on your landing page isn't enough. We all understand the importance of a powerful UVP – but you need to make sure it's clearly communicated to landing page visitors.
Take Equafy's landing page for example:
Equafy's headline spoke to some of the benefits of the product – but it didn't spell out what distinguished them from the competition.
As the judges point out, the headline focuses on the benefits of fixing broken links and saving time, but the lack of differentiation fails to help the prospect make a decision about purchasing.
But a powerful unique value proposition that explains why your product is better than your competitor's isn't enough. Michael explained that commonly, UVPs are buried in the body copy instead of being placed front and center, where they should be.
Have a look at your landing page. Does it have a clear UVP that is displayed prominently?
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No matter the goal of your landing page – whether a free trial, webinar sign-up or offer for free consultation – you need to be clear about what a prospect will get by filling out your form.
Have a look at SeniorQuote's landing page for instance:
The upper right-hand corner invites prospects to call SeniorQuote's toll-free number to speak with a "licensed agent," but as Peep pointed out, the invitation lacks context:
"If you want people to call you, you need to add more context. What are we going to be talking about? How are you going to help me?"
In other words, your landing page needs to explain exactly what people get by filling out your form.
For example, in the case of a free consultation, Michael noted you should explain:
There are so many questions your prospects could be asking when they land on your page – to manage their doubt, you need to dig as deep as you can and provide as much context as possible.
Michael put it simply:
"Opt-in forms are two-way conversations. Your prospects are giving up a lot of personal information – you've got to let them know what they're getting in return."
With clear descriptions and parameters about what your prospects can expect, it's likely your conversion rates will improve.
Opt-in forms are a two-way dialogue – always manage your prospects expectations.
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As marketers, we often do our target market research at a distance. We think we know our prospects, but we never really talk to them.
The result? Our landing page conversion rates suffer because our messaging isn't resonating with our audience.
You need to know your prospect so well that you can answer the questions that pop into their heads – before they have a chance to ask them.
And as Oli pointed out, that's where qualitative research comes in. The judges shared some quick tips about you can get to know your customers better so you can start running A/B tests to optimize your landing pages for conversion:
Alternatively, if you've got the nerve, submit your landing page for brutal critique on the next episode of Page Fights.
Good luck!
Here's a scary thought.
You spend countless hours and blow through your marketing budget driving traffic to your landing page. You write guest posts and buy PPC ads. Potential customers are coming to your site.
But they're leaving in droves.
You do what any marketer would do and run A/B tests. You change the color of the button, tweak the headline and swap out images… but nothing seems to affect your poor conversions.
Before you run another A/B test, you need to gather insights from your customers and prospects.
The data you collect from your customers is invaluable because it provides a window into the minds of your customers and tells you exactly what they want. This in turn gives you the tools you need to create educated hypotheses about what will move the needle for your business.
Ready to ditch the guesswork and optimize your landing pages like clockwork? I'm going to show you five ways to gain customer insights so you can increase conversions on your landing page.
When it comes to conversion rate optimization, there are things you know about your target audience – and there are things you don't. And because you can't optimize for what you don't yet know about, you've got to reach out and ask.
Qualaroo is a slide-up survey tool that can be used on your site to gather insights about your prospects' pain points – and what's keeping them from converting.
Here's a real-life example of someone successfully using Qualaroo to increase conversions:
Based on the conversions coming from other popular internet browsers, Steve calculated that the problem was costing them approximately $60,000.
Without Qualaroo, KingsPoint would likely still be unaware of the problem, and they'd be losing more sales from Safari users.
While it may be tempting to ask long, open-ended questions, it's best to ask short questions that are easy to answer. You want to make sure that your prospects don't have to reflect too hard on the question or they're likely to move on to something else.
Qualaroo recommends a set of questions that can provide actionable insight:
Sometimes, there are deeper-rooted problems that can't be answered with a quick multiple-choice survey.
Using a tool like SurveyMonkey, you can create longer surveys to send to customers. Understanding what pushed them to convert (and what created friction) can help you determine what you should emphasize on your landing pages.
When online travel agency Sunshine.co.uk wanted to increase conversions, they used SurveyMonkey to find out what customers liked about their company and how they'd describe it to a friend.
After analyzing the data they collected in their survey, they zeroed in on four benefits that customers found most attractive. They used these four key benefits to distill their messaging to resonate with future prospects.
The screenshot above shows how Sunshine.co.uk represented the four key benefits on their site to clearly articulate to customers why they're better than the competition. It was a relatively straightforward process, but the site alterations doubled conversions over a period of six months.
Though Sunshine.co.uk's homepage isn't a traditional landing page, the same principles apply to your landing page optimization efforts:
Understanding features that matter to customers allows you to create persuasive landing pages.
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Unfortunately, many companies receive feedback from customers and prospects that is incomplete. In fact, response rates for surveys can be as low as 15%. When was the last time you were excited to spend 20 minutes of your time answering a survey?
Probably never, right?
In order to increase your response rate and get helpful answers, use these easy tricks:
Explicitly asking for feedback is an approach that can only get you so far – sometimes, implicit feedback can tell you things that your prospects don't even know about themselves.
Our attention spans are becoming increasingly short. If a person can't figure out what you're offering in a short amount of time, they'll simply leave your site – and they might never return.
Attention tracking tools like Attensee give you valuable insights about how people are interacting with your landing page. These tools allow you to determine which elements on your landing page are grabbing your visitor's attention, and which elements are being ignored.
Have a look at this heat map of Attensee's original landing page:
The heat map shows that people were reading the headline and skimming down to the benefits, but their eyepath suggests that something was lacking – visitors were becoming disengaged by the time they got to the bottom of the page.
To counteract this, an encapsulating yellow background was added to the section in the upper right hand corner which contained a description of Attensee's unique value proposition:
Notice how the heat map on this variation has a much more balanced distribution? Simply adding emphasis to the UVP gave people a solid foundation for understanding the other elements on the page – each one adding to the compelling narrative that every landing page should have.
Adding the yellow box was a subtle change, but it brought Attensee a conversion increase of 12%.
Heat maps give you invaluable data about which parts of your landing page catch your prospects' eye, but how can you take that information and translate it to higher conversions? Ask yourself:
Cut out attention-grabbing sections of your landing page that don't contribute to the goal.
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When prospects sign up for your email list, they have self-selected as being qualified by signing up for your newsletter, ebook or webinar.
Your welcome email arrives in their inbox when your brand is top-of-mind; take the opportunity to get to know them better by asking, "What is your greatest challenge regarding (the category your product or service falls under)?"
When customer service software Groove wanted to increase conversions, they decided to collect feedback by sending the email below to new customers.
In the email, Alex, the CEO of Groove asks the following:
"If you wouldn't mind, I'd love it if you answered one quick question: Why did you sign up for Groove?
The team at Groove was able to use the responses to this email to create more targeted messaging on their landing page. For instance, they emphasize how "easy" the software is to use. Groove's current landing page reads as follows:
"Groove is the help desk that's easy for you and your customers to use. Deliver awesome, personal support without feeling overwhelmed."
Sounds pretty straightforward, right? Well, the impact was impressive. The landing page redesign, aided by their email auto-responder strategy, doubled Groove's conversions.
Once people start responding to your emails, you need to organize the responses so you begin to see patterns.
Bonus tip:
Be mindful of the appropriate time to ask each of the questions above. You should ask people about what incentivized them to sign up shortly after they sign up so it's still fresh in their mind. If you sell software, give people a chance to learn it before you ask about their favorite feature.
When in doubt, test the timing of your emails.
Be mindful of the appropriate time to ask for customer feedback.
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In-depth interviews are invaluable for peering deep into prospects' minds – the trade-off being that they don't scale very well.
Speaking with your customers and prospects allows you to get beyond surface problems and dig deep into real issues. Consider this example:
When Moz wanted to increase their landing page conversions, they turned to Conversion Rate Experts to help them out. The combined teams used in-depth interviews with a variety of different customer demographics to gain insight.
The qualitative information they gathered was used to redesign their landing page. Coupled with some old-fashioned A/B testing, the makeover resulted in an additional $1 million in revenue.
Though in-person (or over-the-phone) interviews don't scale well, they afford you the opportunity to ask open-ended questions and really dig deep. For a little inspiration, here are the questions that Moz asked in customer interviews:
Once you have a deep understanding of the pain points of your prospects, you need to effectively communicate your solution on your landing pages and sales collateral.
But the process of landing page optimization doesn't stop there. You may think you know your prospects inside and out, but it all comes down to collecting feedback, creating hypotheses and then running A/B tests to validate your assumptions.
My hope is that these five strategies for collecting data will give you the insights you need to get started on this iterative process.
Which one will you start with? Tell me in the comments.
You've optimized your blog and lead gen landing pages for conversions and your email list is filled with subscribers – prospects who have self-identified as being interested in your company and what you have to offer.
But many of them haven't yet taken the leap.
Some of them may be interested in your product or services, but they might need a little nudge or reminder. And that's okay, because after you read this post, you'll have an arsenal of tactics to help direct those leads into your sales funnel and make them into happy customers.
Here are five tried-and-true tactics you can use in your email marketing campaigns to convert qualified email subscribers into customers.
When prospects interact with your campaigns, your brand is top-of-mind – and you want to keep that momentum going.
A great way to achieve this is with a triggered email: an email sent automatically to a subscriber in the event of an abandoned cart, subscription signup or some other interaction they have with your campaign.
These emails get your subscribers' attention because they're relevant and timely. Website getAmplify explains that triggered emails have a click-through rate 152% higher than traditional emails – as well as 50% higher open rates.
They can also have a serious impact on conversions. According to this Business Week article, triggered emails are "responsible for hundreds of millions of dollars in Amazon's annual sales."
One common type of triggered email is the "abandoned cart" email sent out when you start to check out or fill out a sign-up form but don't complete the conversion. If a prospect has signed up for your list, or if you otherwise have their email on file, this is a perfect opportunity to follow up and ask what went wrong.
Here's an example of an automated email I received recently after deciding not to purchase some software:
The above email from Crazy Egg illustrates some awesome ways to get the most out of your triggered emails:
Following up with prospects who have already indicated some degree of interest can be a really low-hanging fruit. When SmileyCookie, online gourmet cookie business based in Pittsburgh, started using triggered emails, they were able to recapture 29% of the sales they would have otherwise lost from abandoned carts.
Not too shabby for an automated process that only needs to be set up once.
Triggered emails can help recapture up to 29% of users who abandon their carts. Here's how.
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Adding a personal touch to your emails is a great way to build rapport with them. In his book The Six Principles of Influence, Robert Cialdini states that:
"We're more likely to be influenced by people we like. Likability comes in many forms – people might be similar or familiar to us, they might give us compliments, or we may just simply trust them.
Companies that use sales agents from within the community employ this principle with huge success. People are more likely to buy from people like themselves, from friends, and from people they know and respect."
It's no surprise then, that according to this article from MarketingLand, personalized email campaigns were "shown to lift transaction rates and revenue per email six times higher than non-personalized emails."
One tactic I like to use with my email marketing campaigns is to try and make my subscribers feel like they're part of an exclusive club.
Consider the subject line of this email I received from Banana Republic:
Because Banana Republic had previously asked for my gender and age, they used email segmentation to send me emails advertising male products. When I received this email, it made me think, "I'm a guy who's serious! I want that 50% off!"
You can try this in different variations, but the overall idea is to make your subscribers feel like they're privy to a sneak preview or a secret sale.
People are more likely to convert if they like who they're buying from. Get personal with prospects.
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Here's another example of an email I received from ProFlowers after I sent my wife some flowers:
This email does a lot of things well. It has a clear CTA and adds extra incentive by including a special discount. It references me and my wife by name and generally makes me feel appreciated. Personal touches like this go a long way toward establishing trust with the buyer.
Make your email subscribers feel like a VIP and they'll thank you by converting.
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Every email you send to your subscribers should have a clear goal.
Visit your site? Participate in a sale? Use a promotion code? Whatever the action, it needs to be very apparent to the subscriber.
The clearer the CTA, the more likely it is that your subscriber will be propelled further down your sales funnel.
Here's an example of a powerful call to action from my own personal email:
Notice the minimalism of the design? Notice the clear, definitive call to action?
Bonus tip:
Deciding on a clear CTA and calling it a day isn't enough. You also need to A/B test.
A study done by Content Verve showed that a simple change in an email's CTA copy led to a 14.79% increase in conversions.
Do your campaign emails contain a CTA to inspire action? Are you A/B testing them?
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Having an awesome call to action is a great start, but if people click through and land on a page that has nothing to do with what made them click, then you've wasted their time (and yours).
A dedicated landing page can help you follow through and deliver what you promised.
According to this infographic from Ion Interactive, Dell has created over 1,000 landing pages for their email marketing and has seen conversion increases as high as 300% (!) when testing landing pages against website pages.
Here's an example of an email I received from Marketing Land that leads to a dedicated landing page:
As it should be, the intended goal of this email is clear. The minimal design draws attention to the image of the whitepaper and the green CTA. Additionally, the copy explains explicitly what you get and the benefits you'll receive.
When you click "Download Now," you're taken to the following dedicated landing page:
Here's what this page does right:
Creating an effective landing page is all about thinking like a prospect. If you visualize things from their perspective, then you'll create better experiences and higher-converting landing pages.
Marketing emails should create seamless experiences for prospects – before and after the click.
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No matter what your goal, you always want to over-deliver in value to your prospects.
Offering an exclusive course or webinar to new subscribers serves this purpose, but it also does so much more:
Here's an email I received from Copyblogger recently:
Although it's a "softer" sell than some of the other tactics I've mentioned, it's still a great way to lay a foundation for a long-term relationship.
This tutorial from Smashing Magazine shows you how to create an autoresponder course that will help you generate sales long-term. It shows you how to create the course from scratch, create an upsell offer for the end of the course, and even integrate a payment solution directly with MailChimp.
Bonus tip:
Create continuous design match between the aesthetic of your course and your upsell's landing page.
For example, match the color and fonts in the course material to the color and fonts on the registration page. This makes for a better, more consistent user experience and can help to increase your conversion rate.
Your email list is an invaluable asset to your marketing; it allows you to get to know your prospects intimately and allows you to qualify and nurture interested leads.
The fact that these subscribers have provided you with their email address already means that they're at least partially interested in what you have to offer. Continue to deliver value and you may find that they move organically down the sales funnel.
For maximum impact, don't forget to test your assumptions with some good, ol' fashioned A/B testing!
What are you waiting for? Which of these tactics will you start with?
Editor's note: The bigger your email list, the more people you'll be able to convert. Check out Noah Kagan's free 30-day course to doubling your email list to get off on the right foot.
Whether for lead gen or customer acquisition, landing pages allow you to create delightful experiences for your prospects that are laser-focused on the action you want them to take.
This may seem pretty straightforward, but there's a lot of conflicting advice out there about landing page optimization "best practices." And weeding through all the LPO literature can be daunting and painfully time-intensive.
That's why I spent hours searching the web to bring you a hand-curated list of the best easy-to-digest resources: five SlideShares and six infographics to help you master landing page optimization. I've even pulled an awesome takeaway from each so you can leave with a checklist of LPO tactics you can try today.
That way, instead of falling down rabbit holes, you can focus on what counts: increasing your conversions and maximizing ROI.
Let's dive in.
This SlideShare by Three Deep Marketing includes seven actionable tips for creating more effective landing pages.
Rather than simply repeating standard-fare advice, they explore advanced optimization tactics, such as optimizing your landing pages for mobile users.
For example, did you know that up to 70% of all advertising-generated conversions occur over the phone? If you're designing for mobile, they suggest testing a click-to-call button rather than an email opt-in form.
Awesome takeaway:
Humans follow information like a dog follows a scent. Make sure your ads have a scent trail – in other words, make sure there is a clear link between each step of the user's journey, from the moment they search for a particular keyword to their arrival on your landing page.
Humans follow info like a dog follows scent. Make each step of your user's journey consistent.
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This SlideShare by Ion Interactive is a comprehensive toolkit for creating landing pages that convert. It includes templates to help you track key metrics, evaluate your design and score your "message match."
It also takes a deep dive into how to chose between A/B testing and multivariate testing as well as how to select the right statistical confidence for your tests.
Awesome takeaway:
Message match is achieved when the words from your ad are echoed on your landing page. Motivation match is about ensuring that you're matching your offer to the intent of your prospects. Are you offering an ebook to someone who just searched for "download software"?
Are you offering an ebook to someone who searched for a free trial? You need motivation match.
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This HubSpot ebook-turned-SlideShare takes you from a basic overview of landing pages to the specifics of their anatomy. What I love about this ebook is that it's easy to implement; it's got checklists and pop quizzes that can help you perform quick, high-level optimization.
Also, this resource is packed with interesting stats – did you know that the brain processes visuals 60,000 times faster than text?
Awesome takeaway:
Because our brain processes visuals faster than text, it's imperative that you select a landing page image that communicates what your offer is – and what benefits it brings. If you're offering an ebook, show the cover of the ebook. If you're selling a physical product, show that product in context: show a happy customer using it.
We process visuals 60,000x faster than text. Your landing page should show your product in context.
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Given how many resources about optimizing landing pages you can find online, it's surprising that so many companies continue to, well, suck at it.
In this SlideShare, Unbounce's Oli Gardner shows how to not suck at it by using conversion-centered design: a set of design and usability principles proven to increase conversions.
According to Oli, there are seven design principles that increase conversions: attention, coupling, context, congruence, clarity, credibility and continuance. In this SlideShare, he reveals how each one can improve your conversion rates.
Awesome takeaway:
The first aspect of conversion-centered design, attention, is a simple but powerful principle that 98% of people get wrong on their landing page.
Minding your attention ratio – the ratio of links on a page to the number of campaign conversion goals – can help you rise above the majority (as you'll see on page 43, even companies like Google get it wrong!).
As Oli explains, your landing page's attention ratio should always be 1:1 or you're disrespecting your prospect's click.
98% of landing page experiences suck. Are you minding your attention ratio?
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This SlideShare by conversion copywriter and Copy Hackers co-founder Joanna Wiebe includes four actionable tips for writing copy that converts – plus a guide for writing a killer value proposition.
Joanna shares some copy testing ideas that can bring big conversion lifts. For example:
Awesome takeaway:
Implementing Joanna's quick tips for creating better-performing copy is important, but as she points out, if you don't start by creating messaging that is based on deep customer research, your copy will inevitably fail. Always research your customer before you put pen to paper (or finger to keyboard)!
The key to writing landing page copy that converts is to start with deep customer research.
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According to this infographic by Marketing Mojo, you only have about four seconds to impress visitors – so you better make sure that your landing page is in top shape.
If you're reading this, you already know about the importance of LPO – but what exactly should you be testing? This infographic explains the various tests most likely to impact your conversion rate, including headline copy, form layout, page length, visual media and calls to action.
Awesome takeaway:
Always remember that the landing page is the stage within a sales funnel that is most vulnerable to abandonment. Give it the attention it deserves!
Your landing page is the part of your sales funnel that is most vulnerable to abandonment.
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According to this infographic by Pardot, a typical landing page loses over half of its visitors immediately. Ouch.
Don't fret. This infographic gives you tips for ensuring that your landing page is far from typical.
It provides a cheat sheet for ensuring that you're providing delightful design, friction-free forms and irresistible value. It takes things a step further by providing a framework for analyzing and revising your landing page optimization efforts by making sure you're paying attention to key metrics and continuously adapting.
Awesome takeaway:
Providing value for your visitors isn't enough – you need to provide timely value. Your landing page's tone and offer need to match the prospect's stage in the buying cycle and move them closer to making a purchase.
Providing value for your visitors isn't enough – you need to provide timely value.
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This infographic by KISSmetrics isn't specifically about landing pages, but the information it provides about how color affects conversion is valuable to anyone who wants to improve their conversion rate.
Case in point: Performable changed the color of a CTA button and saw a 21% increase in conversions.
Disclaimer: This isn't a color bible – every audience responds to color differently. These are good tips to get started with, but you have to test for yourself!
Awesome takeaway:
Red and green are the colors most frequently imperceptible to people with color blindness, but most people can see the color blue. If a shade of blue contrasts well with the rest of your page, it may be a safe bet for getting your CTA button noticed by the majority of your users – even those with color deficiencies. :)
Blue buttons are color blind-friendly, but make sure they contrast with the rest of your page.
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This stat might make you want to bang your head on your desk: 70% of small B2B companies don't have a clear call to action on their landing page.
Hanapin Marketing created this infographic in order to help companies avoid such silly mistakes and give marketers a cheat sheet for creating high-converting landing pages. It covers best practices for layout, copy and imagery, with stats to back up their advice.
You'll learn what type of imagery is most effective for landing pages, how to format your text to make it more reader-friendly and where to put your CTAs in order to facilitate conversions.
Awesome takeaway:
No matter how compelling your copy is, if you're showing visitors a wall of text, you're going to make their eyes glaze over. Always avoid large block paragraphs in favor of skimmable bullet points, bolded benefits and clear (not clever) language.
Even if your copy is compelling, walls of text make your prospects' eyes glaze over.
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Sometimes it's nice to have someone remind us of the simple things that we can lose sight of when we're in the thick of it, like what it actually means to have an "optimized" landing page. Quick Sprout kicks off this infographic by defining "optimized" as the "max number of conversions at minimal cost".
Great, so how do we get there? Quick Sprout lays out a three-step process for optimizing your landing page, including the infrequently discussed LPO practice of editing to maximize SEO and usability.
Awesome takeaway:
Even the behind-the-scenes elements of your landing page should be optimized for performance. You need:
- A compelling, keyword-focused title tag
- An enticing (but concise) meta description
- A keyword-focused headline
- Clean HTML tags
- Compressed images for maximum site performance
Optimize your landing page for things prospects can't see, like title tags and meta descriptions.
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Understanding how psychology affects conversions is essential to creating high-converting landing pages. This infographic by Pardot explains important psychological principles that you can apply to your campaigns – both before and after the click – in order to increase the chance of conversion.
Remember those basic psychological principles you learned in high school? They can make you a better landing page optimizer. Learn how to leverage:
Awesome takeaway:
The human brain has a tendency to compare different options, scenarios and outcomes in an attempt to make the right decision. You can leverage this tendency by using the psychological technique of anchoring. A good example of this is listing your original price alongside a discounted price so prospects have a tangible idea of what they'll save.
Anchoring is a #LPO technique that leverages the human brain's tendency to compare options.
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There you have it. The best bite-sized SlideShares and infographics I vetted from across the web to help guide your landing page optimization.
One word of warning before you get to work: Don't fall down the LPO resource rabbit hole, consuming information but never taking action. Pick one or two of your favorite resources from above, print them out and use them to inspire an A/B test this week.
Now get to work!
P.S.: Know of any great landing page optimization infographics or SlideShares that I didn't include? Post them in the comments!
Here's a pretty crazy stat: Pinterest users pin more than 3,400 pins a minute.
That's good news for marketers using it in their campaigns – the more time people spend interacting with pins, the more exposure they have to your brand and the more likely they are to convert.
And I've got the numbers to prove it:
With all this opportunity to convert leads, people are finding original and effective ways to use Pinterest to achieve their KPIs.
Here's how successful marketers use Pinterest to drive conversions – and how you can steal their strategies for your own marketing campaigns.
When C. Wonder, a luxury retail store for women, wanted to promote a new product line, they created a Mother's Day contest to create awareness and drive conversions.
The terms of the contest were simple: participants were asked to pin their favorite C. Wonder monogrammed products to their boards along with their email address.
The contest gained momentum because it leveraged the power of user-generated content and social proof: participants' submissions were shared with their followers and helped spread the word.
This snowballing effect brought C. Wonder impressive, measurable results from their Pinterest contest: In addition to a 23% increase in repins, pinning activity doubled and they saw a 44% increase in revenue per click.
C. Wonder isn't the only retailer to get a conversion lift from a Pinterest contest. Contests like this have helped bring cosmetic company Beauty Bridge more traffic, more engagement and more conversions; they now describe Pinterest as their "number one revenue-generating social channel."
If you're ready to launch your own Pinterest contest to drive conversions, DIYThemes has some great tips for success, including:
Pinterest contests create buzz – and can help make it your #1 revenue-generating social channel.
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Like Beauty Bridge and C. Wonder, more and more companies are leveraging user-generated content (UGC) in their social media campaigns. UCG allows customers to share what they love about your brand, and is a great way to provide social proof, which is widely known to influence conversions.
Urban Outfitters has used this trend to become one of the fastest growing retail brands on Pinterest.
One of their Pinterest boards gathers photos of people wearing their brand from around the web, while they encourage other users to post pictures of themselves wearing UO clothes.
Then they showcase the user-submitted pictures on their site with a call to action to "shop it," allowing people to purchase the items with only a few clicks.
The stats they report show that 20% of users click that "shop it" button.
If you want to spread the word about your next marketing campaign, user-generated content can help you acquire new leads and create buzz. This article by Jason Boies has some great suggestions to get you started:
Whatever you do, make it fun. Ask yourself, "Would I be willing to share this on my personal account?"
User-generated content helps with credibility, social proof, referrals – and more conversions.
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Bourbon & Boots worked with Hello Society to identify influencers to take part in a sponsored pinning campaign. The end goal was to collect leads for nurturing – any click on an influencer's pin took the user to the Bourbon & Boots site with a pop-up email capture form.
The influencers they selected were well known by their prospects and had followings between 200,000 and 10 million. All they were asked to do was to pin on the behalf of Bourbon & Boots to lend their credibility and generate a bit of buzz.
The campaign ran twice for three days and brought the company an 1000% increase in site traffic, 30,000 captured email addresses, and a 1300% increase in Pinterest-led revenue.
According to another Bourbon & Boots case study, using Pinterest gave the company better ROI than both Facebook ads and paid search. The study says that shoppers referred from Pinterest tend to spend more and buy more often, making those leads 20% more valuable than those coming from other channels.
Want to leverage influencer social proof in your next marketing campaign? It's as simple as this:
Can you guess what Gardener's Supply Company sells? (Hint: it's not UFOs.)
The company had been using Pinterest for a while and although they were getting lots of traffic, they just weren't getting the conversions they expected. So they did something different, creating a campaign that targeted visitors sent to their homepage from Pinterest.
They added a popup that collected emails and offered free shipping on orders of $75 or more – a nice element of surprise to delight visitors.
A simple change to their site, but implementing it brought Gardener's Supply a 3x increase in purchases from Pinterest referral traffic.
Though Gardener's Supply targeted traffic to their homepage, the same tactic could work awesomely on the landing page for your next campaign:
Neiman Marcus took its Pinterest strategy one step further by leveraging the power of exclusivity and scarcity.
When launching the Rebecca Minkoff Elle handbag in 2013, the retailer made a limited-time offer to its 65,000 Pinterest followers; for a two-week period, they were given exclusive access to pre-sale page for the red handbag.
The experiment resulted in tons of organic referrals, the addition of 3,000 followers and a 35% increase in repins.
Though Neiman Marcus hasn't published the specific number of bags they sold through this campaign, they created a lot of buzz and desire for their new product – which is sure to have translated to sales.
Exclusivity goes a long way in creating desire for your offers. For your next marketing campaign, consider an exclusive pre-launch for Pinterest followers.
Scarcity is sexy. For more conversions on Pinterest, provide an exclusive, limited-time offer.
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Whoever said that Pinterest is just for browsing and wedding planning?
If you want to leverage the power of Pinterest in your next marketing campaign, make sure you're doing what matters (and what will get you more conversions):
Bonus tip:
If you want to measure the success of your social media marketing efforts, create a dedicated landing page for Pinterest referral traffic. That way, you can keep tabs on conversions and optimize for what's working (and let go of what's not).
Have you had any conversion success with any of these Pinterest strategies?
Pairing your PPC campaigns with a landing page is one of the best ways to secure a high conversion rate, but only if they're working together toward the same goal.
It all boils down to this: If you're sending poor quality traffic to your landing page, then your conversion rates will suffer. Just as you can't take back the fact that you just mistook your new girlfriend's mom for her grandma, it's pretty critical to get it right on the first impression. (Yeah, that's a PPC nerd joke.)
Here are four common PPC mistakes that prevent you from running successful campaigns – and how you might go about solving them.
Especially on larger accounts where you have less visibility, it's easy to fall into the habit of adding new keywords to test but neglecting to clean out poor-performing keywords periodically.
Most often, this results in a lose-lose situation:
To avoid this, you have to stop and set some hard rules for yourself around what experience your keywords should be providing and how they connect with the landing pages in terms of the offer, call to action and intent.
Keywords, like Tinder profiles, need to be reviewed and segmented into buckets that you'll either reject, wink at or contact – and you must do it regularly.
Do yourself a favor and don't let freeloading keywords take over your budget. Run a simple keyword report at the ad group or campaign level and set rules for yourself around CTR and CPA. The rules you set for yourself will be unique to your account and keyword list, but should all serve the same purpose of achieving your revenue or lead generation goals.
Here are some guidelines to start evaluating your keywords:
- Click-through rate (CTR) is huge indicator of relevance and if it's low, you're most likely also shouldering a low Quality Score (QS), which means you're paying a higher cost per click (CPC) than you need to.
- You should have an ideal cost per acquisition (CPA) in mind. How much is too much for that conversion? If you don't know, you need to do some homework around the cost of doing business in general.
- If you have a keyword with a CTR of less than 1% and a CPA that's twice the cost of the product that the keyword matches to, that's an "expensive" keyword.
Downloading your keywords by ad group or campaign and then filtering by basic rules such as these can help "bubble" up any problem keywords quickly and allow you to either pause or delete them.
Don't let freeloading #AdWords keywords take over your #PPC budget. Kill what's not converting.
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Is traffic to your landing page getting cut off in the middle of the day? AdWords budget running out before you even get to 10am?
That's a PPC issue around volume and cost.
You could have the most wonderful landing page in the universe, but if your first date budget is for McDonald's, don't expect a Nobu restaurant-like response. You have to pay to play.
If you don't have the bucks to go all out, then get creative like a picnic in the park.
To be more responsible with your daily budget, use ad scheduling to make your ads available during peak times:
By adjusting your bids to be less or even turned off completely during certain times of the day based on performance or peak traffic times, you can stretch a budget much further.
A real world example of using ad scheduling for better ROI
I used to have a wedding invitation client, and I found that her prospects would browse during their lunch hours but never purchase. Because the process required lots of thought (and the opinion of their significant other), people rarely had enough time to purchase during their lunch hour – they'd go home at night and complete the conversion.
Realizing that, I turned the budget up during lunchtime on the east and west coasts (when people liked to browse) then turned it down for the afternoon. I'd turn it back up again after dinnertime (when many people were likely to complete the conversion) and then back down again at bedtime.
In short, the key to saving money was turning down the budget between lunch and dinner – since no one was converting.
If you'd like to perform your own stalker-like level of hour-by-hour and day of the week bidding, I highly recommend checking out this Econsultancy case study, where they saw a 69% lift in CPA after implementing ad scheduling. If you're looking for a solid how to guide, hit up this Wordstream 5 Step Tutorial and you're off to the races.
Have a tight #PPC budget? Ad scheduling helps target prospects when they're likely to convert.
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Additional ways to extend your daily budget:
- Divide campaigns and ad groups into tighter groups with short keyword lists.
- Apply a liberal use of negative keywords.
- Dump any keywords that are expensive (and not converting) to save your pennies for those that do.
Or…. get more money. ;)
When I met my husband on Match.com, his profile picture showed a clean-shaven young man who didn't look a day over 25. Then we met in person, and a bearded guy that looked closer to his actual age showed up, much to my surprise and honestly, the feeling of a message mismatch.
Target, Amazon and eBay used to be notorious for creating message mismatch because they would use dynamic keyword insertion in their ads and bid on every keyword in the universe, attempting to drive traffic to search results pages for items they may or may not have.
No one likes a less-than-accurate ad and landing page combination and if your CTR is on the higher, healthier side – say north of 5% – but your conversion rate is less than 5%, there is something disconnected between the two.
If your ads get clicked but your landing pages don't convert, something's disconnected between them.
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It's really quite simple. Your ad text needs to reflect the ad copy on your landing page.
Check out this successful message match example from Oli Gardner:
He searched for "packaging design" and saw the following ad:
Clicking through takes you to a landing page headlined with with the same keyword from the ad: "custom packaging design." As an added bonus, both ad and landing page appeal to a sense of urgency by using terminology like "today" and "in just hours."
Pretty sweet.
Perfect message match like that earn us points in PPC towards a lower CPC, higher conversion rate and better Quality Scores. Best of all, it creates a great experience for your visitors and reassures them that they've made a "good click."
Perfect message match between #PPC ad and landing page brings you better ROI and happy prospects.
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P.S.: If your ad and landing page *do* have proper message match but your conversions rates are still low, then it's safe to assume that your landing page is scaring away all the nice people who came from your ad. Time to look into some good ol' landing page optimization.
I love creating personas. I like researching, writing and being imaginative with them, but if you haven't stopped to smell those roses, you're going to have a bad time.
PPC keyword lists should be bucketed not just by a type or theme but also thought of in context of the buying cycle (awareness, information gathering or ready to buy). In other words, when selecting keywords, you need to be mindful of user intent.
At the end of the day, you want to make sure that you've answered the question that someone searched for.
If you're not paying attention to user intent and start buying terms accordingly, you'll see a low CTR because of the mismatch in what appeals to them versus what you're proposing to them.
And then no one will get to see your beautiful landing page.
I had a client that sold ready-to-eat dinners made by chefs on a reality TV cooking show. These were not drive-through type meals, but more complex (meals like chicken saltimbocca). My client had been bidding on keywords related to fast food, chain restaurants and frozen foods.
This was problematic for two reasons:
When we sat down to talk about their buyer persona, we found that their demographic was primarily women over 30 who work, have children, a dual income and are looking to feed themselves and their families in a healthier, planned ahead way.
These were not "right now" buyers; these were planners who are willing to spend a little extra, and were likely in the consideration/awareness phase of the buying cycle.
Once we cut all the "right now" keywords and added keywords, ad text and landing page copy to speak directly to these ladies, we started seeing good results. Overall traffic volume went down (there is a lot of search volume around the keyword "Pizza Hut") but the quality of the traffic went up significantly.
Do your #PPC keywords address buyer intent? Here's why they should.
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Quick! Perform a persona check on your PPC campaigns:
- Are your ads and landing page talking to awareness, consideration or purchase? Is that matching up with appropriate keywords? For example, "can you buy a wife" is a keyword people search for when they're in the awareness phase, while "where to buy a wife" is for prospects in the purchase phase.
- Do a Google search for your keywords – do the ads and articles that appear match up with your goals of your PPC campaign?
- Ask someone. If you know someone in your desired persona range, show them the ad or landing page and see if it appeals to them.
When it comes to PPC, there are rarely any one-size-fits-all solutions, but my hope is that these examples will provide you with a checklist so you can assess the current state of your campaigns.
Checking for these mistakes should help you determine whether your PPC is sending poor quality traffic to your landing pages… or whether you should hit the landing page optimization books.
Are there any other common PPC blunders that you've seen? Let's nerd out in the comments.
Is your content marketing strategy working for your business, or would you like to generate more leads? Where do you start? How do you find the best ideas?
Elliot Shmukler, former product manager of LinkedIn, pioneered the idea that all optimization tactics stem from one of three basic levers:
This theory is the driving force behind all popular growth hacks, and it provides a solid framework for coming up with tactics to apply to any area of your business – including your content marketing.
Here's how optimizing for Shmukler's three levers can help you craft a solid content marketing strategy that generates more leads.
You can't convert blog visitors into leads if no one is visiting your blog.
And if you're not strategic about the way that you attract your visitors, you may wind up with unqualified leads who don't care about what you do.
When Jayson Gaignard first started promoting his entrepreneur mastermind events, he drove thousands of visitors to his site, but they didn't register for his event. Why? They weren't the right audience.
Here are some tactics that will drive (and convert) the right type of visitors: targeted visitors.
When Maneesh Sethi wanted to build the email list on his productivity blog, he turned to guest posting to reach new readers.
Hoping to drive 200 new subscribers, he wrote a guest post on Scott H Young's blog. At the end, he added a link to a custom landing page where readers could download exclusive material… after they subscribed.
After the post went live, Maneesh was blown away by the results. That 200 subscriber goal? He passed it the first day.
Within a couple of weeks, that single guest post drove 1070 new subscribers.
Want more subscribers? Create a customized landing page for every guest post you write.
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Blog audiences are generally highly targeted, so guest posts on the right blogs can make big impacts – if you're making it easy for people to subscribe.
Pro tip:
Alex Turnbull recommends optimizing dedicated guest posting landing pages by making them hyper-targeted to the reader:
- Share content that is similar to the post they just read
- Acknowledge where they came from
- Offer an exclusive incentive to sweeten the pot
Being an active member of communities such as GrowthHackers allows you to learn, share ideas and get to know others in your niche.
And after developing relationships there, these communities are perfect for sharing your articles, driving traffic and collecting leads.
Armed with an idea for a new product, Perrin Carrell needed to prove that people would be interested in buying it. To do this, he decided to ask the League of Legends community on Reddit.
His post gained significant traction (over 1.9k upvotes!), and over 6,300 people from the community joined Perrin's email list.
With results like that, you may be tempted to start posting to Reddit today, but it's important to lurk before you start talking about yourself:
And above all? As Social Media Examiner article explains in depth, you need to contribute to the community:
"Submit appropriate content, provide insightful answers, ask questions related to your industry and respond to people who engage with you."
Scott Britton knew that many people prefer podcasts over blogs, so he decided to start his own podcast: The Competitive Edge.
Over just eight weeks, Scott built his podcast to over 50,000 downloads and climbed to the #1 spot on iTunes' "New and Noteworthy" business podcasts.
His podcast popularity also translated into email leads: during those 8 weeks he saw 2.5k new subscribers.
So how did Scott launch his podcast into such "instant" success? Long before he even published his first episode, Scott carefully planned his growth strategy and laid the groundwork for an explosive launch.
Pro tip:
Get as many downloads as you can in the first 8 weeks to be featured on iTunes' "New and Noteworthy" chart. That'll put your podcast in front of thousands of new prospects.
Ready to get started? Grab a microphone, Skype a friend, and record your first podcast today!
When I first started my blog, I got maybe one new subscriber for every 100 visitors. It was pretty terrible. Now, I'm getting about six. I've still got a long way to go, but it's a lot better than before – in part because I have removed a lot of points of friction for visitors.
The really exciting thing about reducing friction on your blog is that each gain you achieve will affect all your posts – even the ones you haven't written yet!
When writing CTA copy, you shouldn't be relying on your intuition and praying that your brain is better than average at predicting user behavior.
Instead, use A/B testing to measure exactly how subscribers react to different button copy or headlines.
During the 2008 presidential campaign, Obama's team wanted to build a large email list because they figured subscribers were more likely to volunteer, donate, vote and otherwise support the campaign.
To get more email leads, they used A/B testing to measure the effects of 24 different landing page designs. Using multivariate tests (meaning they changed multiple elements), the Obama For America team tested variants of both the sign-up button and the media hero shot.
The winning variation (pictured above) increased email sign-ups by 40.6%. Sounds like an impressive number, but what does that actually mean for Obama's campaign?
Over the course of the campaign, that optimized sign-up form resulted in 2.9 million extra email subscribers and $60 million of extra donations.
Want more leads? A/B test your opt-in forms. It worked for Obama.
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Your opt-in form may have attractive design, but you'll never know what works best until you test for yourself.
Go crazy. Test your calls to action, headlines, imagery and placement. If you need some inspiration, Michael Zipursky has some for you in this post.
As humans, we want things that we can understand; the simpler something is, the more comfortable it makes us. Gestalt psychology describes this phenomenon in the Law of Prägnanz.
So how can you leverage our love of simplicity to increase email sign-ups?
Derek Halpern experimented with this law by testing three different variations of his sign-up form.
Variation 1 (right) used the principle of social proof by encouraging people to "Join 14,752 others." Variation 2 (middle) applied Prägnanz by simply cutting the social proof and keeping the form short and to the point. The control (left) added slight variations in the headline.
Knowing the power of social proof, I originally guessed that variation 1 would win – after all, who wouldn't want to join 14,000 others! But the Law of Prägnanz (or simplicity) carried the day in this case.
Simply eliminating the social proof completely let potential subscribers focus on the form. The simplest variation of this form drove a 2% conversion rate – 102.2% better than the variation with social proof!
When designing email sign-up forms and landing pages, reduce friction by simplifying.
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The key is to find that sweet spot between communicating the benefits of signing up and not creating too much friction for potential subscribers.
When in doubt, test it out.
Your visitors can't subscribe if they don't see your sign-up form.
Sounds like common sense, right? But how many visitors notice that little subscribe box stuck between popular posts and sponsors on your sidebar? Or that little "I want more" button at the bottom of your post?
Right now, many of your visitors could be missing your sign-up form.
When I realized this, I decided to try an email pop-up plugin that would make my email form more noticeable.
This variation of the pop-up converts about 6.4% of my new visitors to excited email subscribers waiting for my next post.
Installing a pop-up plugin on your blog doesn't take long, and they don't have to be invasive. To make them a little less annoying for your prospects, you could consider:
Is it easy for prospects to sign up for your blog? Your pop-up doesn't have to be annoying.
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Once you've built exposure and removed friction, you must also have sufficient incentive.
What's the incentive for your website visitors to join your email list? And how can you make it stronger?
When you ask people to subscribe "to get more articles like this" what's the incentive? You're asking them to join for some amorphous reward in the unknown future. It's not a horrible incentive, but it could be a lot better.
When you ask people to subscribe "to download Four Things They Won't Teach You in College" what's the incentive? You're asking them to join to immediately download a massively valuable ebook.
See the difference? Using an ebook as an incentive promises immediate value and provides a more concrete call to action.
Writing an ebook might seem like a daunting task, but it doesn't have to be.
Not if you pace yourself.
Just break the process down into little parts and tackle it one day at a time. Remember, even elephants can be eaten one bite at a time.
When done right, running a webinar can give a major boost to the size of your email list. And it doesn't need to be that hard.
The urgency and value of a webinar pack a powerful one-two punch that will convert many of your website visitors to attendees (and get them on your email list). After the event, you can share the recorded video and perhaps even turn the audio into a podcast.
Frustrated by the performance of his initial incentives, Derek Halpern used a webinar to drive email sign-ups on his website. He planned the event, created a landing page, and in just 28 days he drove 1054 new email leads.
Bonus tip:
Even beyond just building raw subscriber numbers, webinars give you an opportunity to build a relationship with new leads – resulting in a highly responsive email list.
Engage them before, during and after the event. Create a feedback loop and ask them what they'd like to learn about next.
Check out this post for a great crash course to creating a webinar of your own.
You can provide massive value with an ebook, but what if your ebook is about landing page design and your visitor came to read an article about Facebook ads?
Your visitor might not see the value unless it's relevant to what they're looking for.
And that is the power of post-specific incentives.
If you're a reader of Noah Kagan's blog, you might have noticed this before. In some of the posts on his website, he uses post-specific bonus content that's directly aligned with the topic of that post.
In the above example, from a post about marketing books on Amazon, he included a massive pack of bonus content. When you click the download button, it asks you to subscribe and get the bonus material.
Bonus tip:
Unlike ebooks, bonus material shouldn't take too long to put together.
Think about resources you already have at your disposal. Email scripts, spreadsheet models, cheat sheets, recordings, and resource lists all make great incentives.
Optimizing for these three levers (increased exposure, reduced friction and increased incentive) will help you collect more leads, but long-term subscriber growth boils down to just one thing: keep creating great content.
No matter how well optimized your content marketing strategy is for growth, success won't come overnight.
Success comes after years of hard, thankless work pouring your heart out in every article you write, guest post you pitch and podcast you create. It's not easy, but your leads will thank you for it. And when is anything easy ever worth it?
I've been in a love affair with the web for well over a decade. Professionally, it started with an obsession for ecommerce which propelled me into usability, copy, SEO, internet marketing, community management and all forms of inbound and integrated marketing. While completing my degree in Communications at Concordia University in Montreal, I started working with web agencies, small and medium sized businesses and tech startups of all flavours. Lover of the tech scene, I also coordinate monthly events and head a popular community for women in tech.
A perfectionist with a passion for websites and how people interact with them.
Product Marketing, Content Marketing, Social Strategy & Community Management, Campaign Management and Strategic Partnerships & Business Development.
Independent integrated web marketing for small and medium business; Including SEO, social media, content marketing, usability, copywriting, email marketing, analytics, pay-per-click and project management.
Organizer of a popular community of 500+ active women in tech; Including monthly event planning, sponsorships, biz dev, community management, web design and development.
Author of an industry tech column geared toward retail SMB web marketing and new technology. Topics include social media, search engine optimization, web analytics, and mobile marketing.
Working with internal resources to optimize social campaigns, establish brand continuity between social accounts and website, manage contests, optimize sharing, analytics, and attain goal of 100k Facebook fans and 50k Twitter followers.
Social Media Marketing for a non-profit event in Montreal which raised $36k for children's charities in 4 hours, and hosted 2000 attendees in 2010.
Retail marketing and communications in highly competitive online floral industry. Oversaw all marketing including brand, product and resource management, web design and development, ecommerce strategy, SEO, community management, point of purchase materials and much more.
Performed account coordination, content marketing, search engine optimization, pay-per-click management, copywriting, usability, social media, email marketing, project management and training.