I recently used a tip on increasing my email list conversion rate, from Alex Becker, a marketer I know, and well, my opt in rates doubled. I’ll show you how.
Now I want to mention that list building is not something I’ve practiced much and I’ve also preached about how the money is not always in the list, especially for most people, because they don’t understand how difficult that process is.
In spite of my recent success with list building, I still stand by the general things I warn people about with regards to success through list building. Read that article I linked to above before you consider starting your own email campaign (but finish reading this article first ;)).
Anyway, before I explain the very specific things I did to double my opt in rates, I want to explain 2 things:
1) I’ve been preaching about hungry niches a lot and that a lot of success in marketing comes from targeting those correctly. I included a link to 5 particular ones I’d suggest you look into, but in this experiment I ran, I used a different one, which is targeting a hungry niche audience that has knee problems.
I’ve had a squeeze page up (case study) for awhile that was aiming to collect emails and before I ran the test I’ll show you, I was getting a 16% conversion rate in that out of 100 people who would visit the squeeze page, 16% would opt in to my newsletter.
A double digit conversion rate isn’t bad, but when I made a few tweaks that I’l show you shortly, that conversion rate went up way higher.
Right now, I’d say it’s about 25% to almost 60% in some cases.
2) The tips I used were from a program I have been slowly studying known as Market Hero, which was created by the very same Alex Becker, I talked about earlier.
I was watching his tutorials and the training he starts with talks about collecting email lists and how to properly structure an opt in page.
His main tips were:
- To keep the page SHORT (shouldn’t take more than 10 seconds to read).
- To keep it VERY simple (it’s got to say the right things, immediately).
- It needs to attract a hungry niche audience (that will ensure higher opt ins).
Now the other tips he talked about are post opt in stuff, but you’d need to look into Market Hero for specific instructions on that. But being that I was curious to see if this simple strategy would work, I decided to test it out:
Here’s what I did (pre double opt in results):
I’ve been preaching about using Bing Ads for a long time (and I will be releasing my own product for this network and advertising on it SOON), I decided to…
Take the very same squeeze page I had on solving knee pains, and to edit it to fit the frame Alex Becker was talking about. Here is how it look before the changes (when I was getting a 16% opt in rate):
Basically, that squeeze page is only doing one of the three things Alex preaches about and that is attracting the right, hungry niche audience. As for the other tips (keeping the squeeze page short and simple), it is not.
So I changed it up, and here is what it looks like now:
Notice how much simpler it is.
That whole squeeze page should take the average reader less than 10 seconds to read.
Further, there is a hook to get them to sign up, the hook is that their problem will get a solution ASAP if they sign up and as a bonus, they’ll get even more solutions for free.
That squeeze page literally took me about 5 minutes to set up.
I honestly didn’t expect much from this, as list building isn’t really my specialty, but I figured I could use Bing ads and get some traffic to this squeeze page to just test out Alex Becker’s training.
Now Alex doesn’t cover Bing Ads in Market Hero, but he does cover other ad networks.
But I decided to stick to Bing Ads, since it was the most familiar to me and I could very quickly get traffic from that place (here are the basics I followed with Bing ads if you’re interested).
But anyway, once I set this all up, I gave it about 2 days to see what was going to happen…
And when 2 days passed…
This is where I got the 2x sign up rates. Here’s the proof this works:
Now the numbers to look at are this (green):
I had 346 clicks on the Bing ad I ran and in total had 58 subscribers.
But I have to say that initially, I didn’t have some things set up correctly (I was running the ad, without having the squeeze page working properly, so it couldn’t collect emails), so those numbers a bit inflated.
The real numbers are more like this:
I got about 200 REAL clicks when all was set up fine and 58 subscribers out of that.
So the real conversion rate is about 30%. Now this is AVERAGE.
On bad days, I’ll have about 15% and on good days, it’ll get close to 60%, which is totally mind blowing, but consider, that in my first experiment doing this with the first squeeze page, at best, I was getting a 16% conversion rate, and now with the update, that is actually the low bar.
What I learned from this squeeze page experiment:
Alex was absolutely right in what he said encompasses a successful squeeze page and I’m glad I took his advice. That actually inspired me to take more time to study the rest of his program.
I would recommend you take a look at Market Hero if you’re doing list building, it’s a must actually. It’s also a great program for studying paid ad options for traffic.
Now if any of this stuff is scary to you, meaning you’re not quite at the level to be spending money on online ads for traffic, don’t get involved with Market Hero, get involved with Wealthy Affiliate instead, it’s a better starting point.
Update! This stuff still works, but…
Despite this experiment working, I have to say, Alex Becker’s advice isn’t always the best. Because of a number of issues I had with some of his programs (like Market Hero), I actually left and only stick to Wealthy Affiliate now.
Hi,
I enjoyed reading your post, some nice opt-in rates you managed to obtain with some clever techniques.
I’m starting to build out my website at the moment but haven’t had any traffic yet, is it better to wait until I have some regular traffic coming to my site before I set up a squeeze page and do some paid advertising to build a list.
Dave.
Hi Dave, you can build a squeeze page without having to build an organic website. The one I displayed in this case was literally just 1 page and all I did was send paid traffic to it. You can do this too, BUT if your experience in traffic and all this other stuff is limited, I’d keep building your current site, getting the organic, free visitors and then doing the advanced, paid ad, squeeze page stuff.
Hi Vitaliy,
I’ve been so far in the belief that a good squeeze page should contain several main points about the product you promote, and in addition it should look great and captivating. Your exaggeration shows that this is not necessarily the case, but keeping the page short and very simple is the best option. You also demonstrated that it works in practice. It’s also important as to what should you offer in your squeeze page. Is an e-book or course the best way to get your conversation rate higher? Thanks for great tips.
Hi Kari, squeeze pages don’t usually promote products, their aim is to keep a long term audience and get sales later on in the process, so to catch the email, the squeeze page creator needs to make it worth signing up for.
Truth be told, I’ve tried to give away free eBooks, free courses, high value emails and more, the only thing I haven’t really tried yet is webinars, but there is no “best” option for squeeze pages, it’s about understanding the incoming audience and giving them what you believe would best catch their email and get their trust when they are signed up and this is something you may want to test, by which I mean test giving away different things and seeing which options produce more opt ins.
Hello Vitaliy,
Not long ago, I made my first list building campaign trying to promote a company specializing in SEO. The results were not as expected.
As you explain it is not easy to create a list, achieve a good subscription rate and improve it over time.
It is my intention to conduct a campaign to promote Wealthy Affiliate. What type of landing page would you advise me to carry out? Thanks for your help!
Regards!
Claudio
Hi Claudio, there’s a bunch of landing pages that work for this particular promotion. The problem is, most of them will NOT work for someone who is not experienced enough to understand niche markets, list building and traffic.
If you do not classify yourself as very experienced in online marketing, one of the better ways to start promoting Wealthy Affiliate, or any other similar program would be to start a blog and target a specific niche that is part of making money online. Here’s some examples:
Working from home, SEO, traffic generation, affiliate marketing, ect…
If any of those particular niches are in your realm of experience, start a blog in that and promote Wealthy Affiliate from that blog. That is how you will grow your experience and your popularity.
Now if you ARE experienced, I’d still target those same niche examples I just gave, but use paid advertising means to funnel people within those specific niches to a landing page similar to the example I used here, and then run the audience through a course.
For example, you can create a landing page that gives niche audiences interested in traffic generation a guide on 10 tips to multiply their site’s traffic, and in the process showcase Wealthy Affiliate as being the best place to learn about traffic generation.
The harder part of that funnel would be to find paid advertising means to attract those audiences, since you wouldn’t be able to do that through SEO.
Ideally though, your first option, the blog option would be best in my opinion, and it’s how I started and still do it for most of my promotions of Wealthy Affiliate.
I don’t mean to take away from the content but I couldn’t help noticing that you mentioned you know Alex Becker? That’s crazy, I had no idea.
How did you get to know him? Alex Becker is a big personality, but there’s no denying that some of the techniques he teaches work. There’s definitely some gems mixed into his training, and what you’re sharing here about email opt in rates is one of them.
Keeping your content super simple and focused is a big one; but you also want it to look professional too. The viewer shouldn’t have to SEARCH for the information needed, it should just be handed to them.
Hi Danny, I don’t know Becker personally, but I do hope to meet him one day, as we actually live in the same area. But I think I’d have to become a bigger personality before he’ll consider talking to me, considering he probably has a ton of other marketers always trying to get in touch with him.
With that said, yeah he does provide awesome tips and I’m glad I started exploring his tips and program in my later years in online marketing, because it can be quite advanced and overwhelming for most beginners, but I have a lot of experience already and this makes executing his tips much easier and more realistic for me personally.