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TRANSCRIPT
by Robert W. Bly
31 Cheyenne Drive, Montville, NJ 07045
(973) 263-0562, Fax (973) 263-0613
e-mail: [email protected], web: www.bly.com
Table of Contents
Section 1 The Secret of Making Hype in Marketing Work for You ..................3
Section 2 The Easiest Way to Write Great Bullets .................................................5
Section 3 What the National Enquirer Can Teach You About Selling
Information on the Internet .....................................................................8
Section 4 Give Your Self‐Published Book the “Loose‐leaf Test” ......................11
Section 5 3 Steps to the Perfect Elevator Pitch ....................................................14
Section 6 A Non‐Obvious Way to Build Your E‐List .........................................16
Section 7 A Low‐Tech Way to Prevent Customers from Illegally Copying
Your Information Products...................................................................19
Section 8 Avoid This Common Mistake When Creating
Information Products ............................................................................22
Section 9 Selling Information Product “By the Pound” ....................................25
Section 10 What? No E‐Newsletter? .....................................................................28
Section 11 5 Steps to the Perfect Guarantee.........................................................31
Section 12 5 Steps to Building a Large and Responsive Opt‐In E‐List of
Qualified B2B Prospects ......................................................................35
Section 13 10 Tips for Increasing Landing Page Conversion Rates .................39
Section 14 Playing the Slots ...................................................................................44
Section 15 What Web Metrics Should You Measure? ........................................47
Section 16 E‐Mail Marketing: How Much Is Too Much? ..................................50
Section 17 Double or Triple Your Landing Page Conversion Rates with
Taguchi Testing ....................................................................................54
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Section 18 5 Ways to Capture E‐mail Addresses of
Landing Page Visitors .........................................................................57
About the Author ......................................................................................................61
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Section 1
The Secret of Making Hype in Marketing Work for You
I recently read an online promotion from one of the big Internet marketing
gurus.
In it, this gentleman—whom I consider a personal friend—stated that
“Anything is possible.”
He also said he had a new Website that would help you “find your super
powers.”
That’s hype to a high degree.
And frankly, I don’t believe it.
I could never write something like that for one of my own products and
still sleep at night.
Yet I don’t have a problem with this guy, what he is selling, or how he is
selling it.
Why not?
Because he believes in what he is saying and selling—even if I do not.
And that’s the key to making hype work in your copy today: believing in
what you say.
There are a lot of complaints today about the incredible level of hype in
copy, particularly online.
As an example, take a look at: www.thecopygod.com—a humorous spoof
site that pokes gentle fun at the hype style of copywriting.
A lot of copywriters and marketers see hype‐filled promotions and have
one of two reactions.
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Either they hate it and make a deliberate decision to avoid it in their own
copy…probably a good decision for them.
Or they think, “These guys wouldn’t write all this hype if it wasn’t
working”—and emulate it in their own promotions, usually with disastrous
results.
You see, a key to writing successful copy—copy that fills your mail box or
shopping cart with orders—is enthusiasm.
Enthusiasm for the ideas…enthusiasm for the product…enthusiasm for
what you are writing about…enthusiasm for the wonderful ways in which the
product will improve their lives.
The masters of hype can be genuinely sincere and enthusiastic in their
hyperbolic copy, because they absolutely believe 100% in what they are saying
and selling.
Therefore, if you too believe in something outrageous or seemingly
impossible…and are sincerely convinced it can help others…you can write hype
copy that comes across as energetic, enthusiastic, positive, and even sincere!
On the other hand, if you don’t believe the superlatives and outrageous
claims you are making in your copy, the hype will backfire on you.
Your copy will have all the sincerity of a three‐dollar bill—and readers will
be able to sense your disingenuousness and B.S. a mile away.
Result: your copy will fall flat…and your promotion will generate minimal
orders and revenues.
“How can some of these hard‐sell marketers believe the hype they write,
particularly about money making, business opportunities, investments, self help,
and alternative medicine?” I have been asked many times.
It’s simple: each of us has different experiences and belief systems.
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What sounds like baloney to you and me may be absolute gospel to our
colleagues and competitors.
A year or so ago, two well‐known direct mail copywriters, DH and PL, got
into an argument in print about the ethics of writing for nutritional supplements.
DH called dietary supplements “snake oil.” PL countered that the pill he
was promoting in his copy had worked wonders for those who had taken it.
The bottom line is: market and write about only those products, services,
and ideas you think deliver an honest and fair value to the consumer.
Another copywriting friend, TN, often said he would work on any offer
that wasn’t “illegal, immoral, or fattening.”
Good advice, but I also think you should avoid working on any product
you don’t believe in and aren’t enthusiastic about.
After all, if you aren’t enthusiastic about the product when you write your
copy, the prospect is likely to be equally unenthusiastic when he reads it.
Section 2
The Easiest Way to Write Great Bullets
Most ETR readers know that a successful copywriting technique is to use
lots of “bullets” in your copy—short sales points presented in bulleted lists.
But have you ever sat down to write copy for one of your products, only to
find it difficult to pull out of the product the salient sales points you need to write
strong bullets?
If you’re a marketer, there’s an easy way to avoid this problem…and write
kick‐butt bullets that generate more orders and sales from every promotion you
mail or e‐mail.
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And it starts way before you write a word of your copy. In fact, for
maximum results, this step should be performed during creation of the actual
product itself.
The method is to “build bullets” into your product. By that, I mean come
up with a list of features you think would really convince your prospects to buy
the product.
Or write a list of bullets you’d love to be able to use in your copy. And then,
design all those features and bullets into the product as you are developing them.
Let’s say you are hiring a writer to create a how‐to e‐book you want to sell
on the Internet on growing a vegetable garden in your back yard.
You have a section on growing bigger tomatoes. Make a list of the specific
steps you take to make your tomatoes large and juicy. If the list is five items, give
it to your writer so he can write a few paragraphs on each.
Now, when you write the sales copy for the e‐book, you know you can
write a bullet that says, “5 ways to grow tomatoes so big, you can make a dinner
out of them.”
I had a client who was an industrial manufacturer who used this technique
with great success. They manufactured “spectrophotometers,” which are
instruments used to measure color.
Their competitors had all come out with a new generation of instruments,
and my client was late to the game. But they used this to their advantage.
They carefully studied the other brands, made a list of flaws, and designed
their new spectrophotometer to provide superior performance in each area where
their competitors were weak.
In their product launch, they showed a picture of their new instrument.
Call‐outs highlighted every feature that made their device superior to their
competition.
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The launch was their most successful ever, because the “bullets” for their
sales copy had been carefully built into the product. And they clearly
distinguished the company’s products as superior in many ways to all others in
that field.
As a copywriter you rarely have any control, but as a marketer, you often
do. If you are an information marketer, it’s easy to design products with great
sales bullets built in.
Just make the list of bullets your table of contents, and write or record an
info product that covers all the points listed there. The more transparent the sales
points in the product, the happier the buyer will be.
Avoid writing bullet points that sound great but aren’t really covered in the
product. Info product buyers often compare the product to the promotion. If they
can’t find content reflecting the bullets that caused them to buy, they will
complain or ask for a refund.
My mentor, the great copywriter Milt Pierce, tells the story of when he was
hired to write a direct mail package on a book on decorating by a famous author
in that field.
He brought in his copy. The publisher and author read it. When they were
finished, the publisher said to Milt, “This is incredibly strong promotional copy.
The only problem is that it’s not what is in the book.”
Milt replied: “It should be.” And according to him, the author and
publisher agreed to rewrite the book so it reflected in the letter copy. When mailed,
the package worked like gangbusters and the book sold like hotcakes.
The old‐time mail order guru Melvin Powers did it a better way: when he
wanted to publish a new book, he would write and run the ad first.
Of course, he wrote the strongest ad possible. If it pulled, he then quickly
wrote and printed a book that delivered all the content promised in the ad copy. If
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the ad bombed, he never wrote the book and just refunded the money to those few
readers who had ordered.
Section 3
What the National Enquirer Can Teach You About Selling Information on the Internet
AWAI co‐founder Don Mahoney recently e‐mailed me an article about the
National Enquirer.
In that article, Editor‐in‐Chief David Perel revealed the secret of the
tabloid’s outrageous success:
“The big news organizations tell people what they think they should be
interested in, whereas we try to give them stories that they are interested in.”
I think Perel has hit upon a key principle that applies to all writing, not just
newspaper publishing.
And it is especially relevant to information marketing.
Namely, that your sales will be many times greater when you offer your
customers information they want to read and learn…instead of information you
think they should read.
The late Gary Halbert went even further, advising marketers to sell
exclusively to what he called a “starving crowd.”
A starving crowd not only wants what you are selling—but has an
insatiable appetite for it.
Therefore, even if there are a lot of players in that market, they can all do
well, because the market’s demand is a bottomless pit.
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In particular, there are three “starving crowd” markets that have an
especially consistent and unending demand for information:
» Hobbyists—hobbyists read about antique collecting or quilting not
because they have to, but because they want to.
Those who are heavily “into” the hobby, whether that hobby is calligraphy
or macramé, can’t get enough of it.
In these niches, a lot of competition is a good sign, not a negative sign, for
two reasons.
First, it proves the niche is viable. If others are making money selling
information online to this market, you can too.
Second, you can make joint venture deals with these other marketers to sell
your products to their lists and vice versa.
» Business opportunity seekers—there is an insatiable appetite for
information on how to make money in your spare time, start a home‐based
business, change careers, or earn a living without a job.
I believe these business opportunity seekers can be divided into two groups.
The first group is doers. These doers are serious about changing their lives,
and they actually pursue the course of action you recommend.
The second group is dreamers. The dreamers enjoy learning about small
business, yet take no action beyond buying and reading how‐to information
products.
You can’t usually distinguish between these segments when marketing. But
you really don’t have to, because both consume an unending stream of info
products purchased online.
» Money making and investing—it is a nearly universal desire to make
more money and increase one’s wealth.
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If you sell information that helps people get greater returns from their
investments with less risk…or accumulate a seven‐figure net worth…or become
financially independent…you will never run out of eager buyers.
Of course, there are other starving‐crowd niches for information marketers,
including: self‐help…relationships…sex…health…beauty…fashion…fitness…and
weight loss.
But the three above—hobbies, business opportunities, investing—are by far
the largest and most active.
One of the biggest mistakes beginning information marketers make is
choosing, as their primary niche, a market that is not a starving crowd.
Reason: without a starving crowd of buyers, you will always be fighting an
uphill battle to peddle your info products.
And you will be forever frustrated that your prospects aren’t buying your
valuable information when you know it’s stuff they absolutely should have.
But people don’t readily do what they should do—or what you think is
good for them.
They are much more easily convinced to buy what they already
want…rather than what you think they need.
And when you select as your primary niche in information marketing a
starving crowd…like hobbyists, business opportunity seekers, or wealth
seekers…you can sell your prospects the stuff they want—over and over again.
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Section 4
Give Your Self‐Published Book the “Loose‐leaf Test”
How do you ensure that the information products you sell give fair value to
your customers?
One way is to follow Internet marketing guru Fred Gleeck’s “10 times” rule.
Fred says that the information products you sell should be worth at least 10
times the price you charge for them.
Alex Mendossian and I were discussing this in a recent ETR tele‐seminar—
and looking for a way to determine whether your product and pricing meet
Gleeck’s criterion.
The solution we came up with is something I call the “loose‐leaf test.”
Here’s how it works…
Traditional nonfiction paperback books (around 200 pages) typically sell for
around $10 to $20 or so.
To determine whether your book is worth ten times that amount—Gleeck’s
“10 times” rule—imagine printing out the book manuscript on 8 ½ by 11‐inch
sheets of paper.
Now, three‐hole‐punch those pages…and put them in a three‐ring
binder…and maybe even add tabbed dividers to separate the sections or chapters.
Information products in three‐ring binders are typically dense in
content…and consequently command much higher prices than bookstore books.
It’s not unusual for these “loose‐leaf services” to cost $100 to $200 or more
per copy.
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(One loose‐leaf service for executives on how to write and give speeches,
American Speaker, sold for $297.)
Does your $20 paperback book contain enough valuable, in‐depth content
that you could reprint the thing in a three‐ring binder—and sell it for $200—to
customers who would feel they got fair value for their investment…and not ask
for a refund?
If it does, then you can rest assured that the content you deliver in your
book is indeed worth at least 10 times more than the $20 you charged on it.
However, if you think customers who paid $200 for a loose‐leaf version of
your book (remember: same content, just different packaging) would feel gypped
and ask for their money back, then your book doesn’t pass Gleeck’s “10 times” test.
I increasingly see today nonfiction business books that are thin and light.
They present just one or two new ideas, often in a thin book of 150 pages or less.
If a reader buys such a book in a bookstore, they probably won’t complain:
expectations for trade books are modest. If it’s a good read, they’ll be satisfied
enough.
But your customers perceive information products published and sold
online as containing more specific and highly specialized content than a
“bookstore book.”
So if you are an Internet information marketer, you have to deliver far more
value to your customers for their money than a bookstore.
Gleeck’s “10 times” rule—and the Bly/Mendossian “loose leaf test”—help
you ensure that you do just that.
I have discovered that, if the customer thinks your information product was
worth the $20 you charged but no more than that, they may be dissatisfied—and
want a refund.
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One customer, JB, recently asked for a refund on one of my e‐books. He
wrote: “Your e‐book was certainly worth the $19 you charged me, but no more
than that. So please send my money back.”
At first, I thought: how odd! JB says the product is worth what he paid for it.
So his desire for a refund made no sense to me.
But in Internet information marketing, we make big promises in our copy
to grab the reader’s attention—and make a sale.
(In a bookstore, by comparison, the only “selling” is usually done by the
book and its cover.)
JB apparently felt that the book did not live up to the copy on my landing
page, and was disappointed on that basis.
The solution, of course, is either to charge less (not very desirable), write
weak copy (also not a good idea), or, preferably, to make the product stronger.
Add content until the product meets the Gleeck/Bly/Mendossian test—and
delivers content not just worth what you charged for it—but worth 10 TIMES
what you charged for it.
When you sell an item worth $200 for $20, customer satisfaction will soar,
and refunds will be minimal to nonexistent.
I can’t remember who said it or where, but a famous marketer once stated:
“It is our goal not to give the customer her money’s worth, but to give her MORE
than her money’s worth!”
Or more specifically, at least ten times her money’s worth—or even more.
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Section 5
3 Steps to the Perfect Elevator Pitch
An “elevator pitch” is a 30‐second answer to the question, “What do you do?”
You need an elevator pitch because the question “What do you do?” is
usually asked by complete strangers in casual circumstances.
In these situations, you do not have a captive audience watching you go
through your PowerPoint sales presentation.
So your answer must be pithy and to the point.
Why does it matter how you answer the question “What do you do?” when
speaking to someone you don’t know?
Because you never know when the person you’re speaking to is a potential
customer or referral source.
Most elevator pitches, unfortunately, don’t work—because they are
straightforward descriptions of job functions and titles, generating not much else
aside from disinterest and a few yawns.
For example, a fellow I met at a party told me, “I am a certified financial
planner with more than 20 years experience working.”
Yawn.
My friend sales trainer Paul Karasik has an antidote to the deadly dull
elevator pitch.
Karasik’s three‐part formula can enable you to quickly construct the perfect
elevator pitch.
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By “perfect,” I mean an elevator pitch that concisely communicates the
value your product or service offers—in a manner that engages rather than bores
the other person.
What is the formula?
The first part is to ask a question beginning with the words “Do you
know?”
The question identifies the pain or need that your product or service
addresses.
For a financial planner who, say, works mostly with middle‐aged women
who are separated, divorced, widowed, and possibly re‐entering the workplace,
this question might be:
“Do you know how when women get divorced or re‐enter the workforce
after many years of depending on a spouse, they are overwhelmed by all the
financial decisions they have to make”?
The second part of the formula is a statement that begins with the words
“What I do” or “What we do”—followed by a clear description of the service you
deliver.
Continuing with our financial planner, she might say: “What we do is help
women gain control of their finances and achieve their personal financial and
investment goals.”
The third part of the formula presents a big benefit and begins “so that.”
Here’s what the whole thing sounds like:
“Do you know how when women get divorced or re‐enter the workforce
after many years of depending on a spouse, they are overwhelmed by all the
financial decisions they have to make?
“What we do is help women gain control of their finances and achieve their
personal financial and investment goals, so that they can stay in the house they
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have lived in all their lives, have enough income to enjoy a comfortable lifestyle,
and be free of money worries.”
Action step: construct your elevator pitch today or tonight using Paul
Karasik’s three‐part formula.
» First part: ask a question beginning with the words “Do you know?” that
identifies the pain or need that your product or service addresses.
» Second part: describe your service, beginning with the words “What I do”
or “What we do.”
» Third part: explain why your service is valuable by describing the benefits
it delivers, beginning with the words “So that.”
Section 6
A Non‐Obvious Way to Build Your E‐List
Internet marketers are always looking for new ways to build their e‐lists
quickly and at an affordable cost.
Let me tell you about an under‐used, non‐obvious technique for adding
new subscribers to your opt‐in list.
Using it, I added over 500 new subscribers to my e‐list in just a few days—
and these were buyers, not just prospects.
What I did is to create an e‐book with broad appeal to my major markets,
which are copywriters and Internet marketers.
In case you are curious, the title of the e‐book is “Writing E‐Books for Fun
and Profit,” and you can see the landing page at www.myveryfirstebook.com.
I also priced it to sell. The cover price is $59. But for a limited time, it is
available from me for only $19—a discount of $40 off the regular rate.
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Then I approached my affiliate with the biggest list and asked if they
wanted to offer my new e‐book to their subscribers.
Here’s the twist: instead of offering them the usual 50% commission, I told
them they would get 100% commission.
That’s right. They’d keep all the money.
It worked like a charm.
My affiliate thought the e‐book would appeal to their list, which makes
sense, because they target some of the same markets (copywriters, Internet
marketers) I do.
And with a 100% commission, they had a bigger‐than‐usual financial
incentive to offer my e‐book to their list.
So they send a solo e‐mail blast to their subscribers on a Thursday.
The e‐mail they sent had a hyperlink that goes to my landing page for the
product.
It’s a special affiliate hyperlink so we can track the source of the orders.
So what happened?
Four days later, by Monday, we had over 500 orders.
The affiliate is happy because they made over $10,000 on the deal.
(The orders were placed on my landing page using my shopping cart, so
later this month, I will write them a check for that amount.)
Their subscribers are happy because they got a great e‐book worth $59 for
only $19.
And how do I win?
Since their subscribers bought the e‐book directly from me, I just added 500
new subscribers to my online list.
You could argue that by not collecting my usual 50% of the sale, I gave up
$5,000 in profits.
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But not really, because if I had not given 100% commission as an incentive,
this affiliate, who owns a big and profitable list, would not have sent an e‐mail
promoting my product to their readers.
My out‐of‐pocket cost to fulfill these 500 orders is virtually zero, because
the product is a downloadable PDF file.
Best of all, these are top quality subscribers I am adding to my list.
Unlike most list‐building techniques, which add names to your list through
free offers, here all the new names added to my list are buyers, not prospects—
they’ve already spent $19 with me.
And buyers are always better than inquirers (those who join as a result of a
free offer).
The lesson is threefold.
First, if you want affiliates and other online marketers to promote you to
their lists, you have to make it financially worth their while to do so.
For a $19 product, a 50% commission means the affiliate gets only $9.50 per
order.
That’s just too little to compensate them for the slot in their e‐mail schedule
you are asking them to give up to promote your product.
However, a 100% commission on a $19 product is equivalent to the
standard 50% commission on a $38 product.
That’s still a relatively modest profit per order. But apparently, it was
sufficient to get my affiliate to go forward with the promotion.
Second, price the product low. If you attempt this technique with a high‐
end product, you’ll get few orders—and add few new names to your e‐list.
Third, create a product with broad appeal for this 100% commission
affiliate deal.
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That way, you capture the maximum number of new names from each
affiliate’s mailing list.
Why is this technique of offering affiliates 100% of the sale used so
infrequently by Internet marketers?
It’s psychological: even though you know it makes sense, writing that big
commission check to your affiliate is painful.
But it really shouldn’t be. It costs you nothing out of pocket—revenues
from product sales cover it 100%. And you added all those new subscribers
without paying a dime for online advertising.
One other tip: on the landing page for the product, state clearly that $19 is a
special time‐limited offer, and that once it expires, the price will go up.
This gives visitors an incentive to buy now and not put it off, maximizing
your conversion rates.
Section 7
A Low‐Tech Way to Prevent Customers from Illegally Copying Your Information Products
There are all kinds of high‐tech systems and devices for foiling consumers
who attempt to create bootleg copies of content—from music and movies to
software and information products.
And eventually, all of them are defeated by hackers.
But an easier way to prevent your customers from illegally copying your e‐
books, audio CDs, and DVD information products is to ask what motivates them
to steal your content in the first place.
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Answer: aside from the Internet making it easy to duplicate and distribute
content freely, the main reason a consumer illegally copies any information
product has to do with price and value of that product.
By that, I mean that consumers are less motivated to pirate content that is (a)
reasonably priced and (b) gives a fair value for its cost.
For instance, if your 50‐page e‐book on starting a small business is only $29,
your customers—if they like it—will just recommend it to their friends. “You
should buy it here,” they’ll say, pointing others to your Website.
However, had you priced the same e‐book at $299, your customers might
feel that your pricing is too expensive.
So after they print out your e‐book, they pass on the PDF to a few friends—
illegally, of course.
Even when the price is high, you can still reduce illegal copying by giving
great value for that price.
Say that 50‐page e‐book contained dozens of forms needed to start a
business…forms a lawyer might charge thousands of dollars to create or review.
In that case, $299 would be a reasonable price to pay. The customer would
feel he is getting a fair value, and therefore would not want to rip you off.
On the other hand, if your 50‐page e‐book was just general advice on small
business, $299 would be an excessive price for that kind of content.
In this instance, the customer could think you are ripping him off. He might
choose to get back at you by freely—and yes, illegally—sharing the e‐book with
many other people.
So really, the best way to prevent customers from illegally copying and
sharing your content is to create information products that are reasonably
priced—and give the buyer more than his money’s worth.
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To further discourage bootleggers, my e‐books now carry this warning on
the title page:
‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐
This is NOT a free e-book!
Purchase of this e-book entitles the buyer to keep one copy on his or her
computer and to print out one copy only.
Printing out more than one copy—or distributing it electronically—is
prohibited by international and U.S.A. copyright laws and treaties, and would
subject the purchased to penalties of up to $100,000 PER COPY distributed.
‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐
However, don’t be too much of a hard case enforcing this policy.
If a customer calls and wants to print an extra copy for his business partner,
brother, or friend, let him.
The main reason to put the warning on the e‐book is not to frustrate the
buyer who wants to print out a few extra copies. I say let him.
The warning is designed to discourage unscrupulous online operators from
taking your e‐book and selling it—or giving it away—to his customers.
An even better idea is to make sure you profit from your e‐book or other
information product even if pirated copies do make the rounds.
How do you do this?
In your information product, put plenty of links to the micro‐sites for your
other products.
That way, the more your e‐book is passed around, the more clicks you get
on those links—and the more additional sales you make.
One other idea…
My colleague FG puts a boxed notice in his e‐books.
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It says that the reader can go to a special URL and claim a valuable FREE
bonus gift.
The only catch is: he has to be a registered owner of the e‐book to do it.
FG says that people are so intrigued by the free bonus, those who already
have a pirated copy of his e‐book will go online and buy it—just to qualify for the
free bonus.
Section 8
Avoid This Common Mistake When Creating Information Products
As we discussed in my last ETR article, the best way to prevent customers
from illegally copying and sharing your content is to create information products
that give the buyer more than his money’s worth.
Creating great information products gives you several other advantages.
For one thing, it minimizes refund requests.
It also creates loyal fans. These fans keep buying other information
products from you and recommending your products to others.
However, many information product marketers make a serious mistake
that results in less quality—and lower customer satisfaction. Let me explain…
What your customers want is solid how‐to information that tells them how
to do something, whether it’s saving money on a new car or becoming a freelance
copywriter.
The mistake many info marketers make is that they have written a “what
to” product instead of the “how‐to” information product the buyer wants.
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To live up to the customer’s expectation of getting great how‐to information,
your product really has to tell the customer how to do the thing you are writing
about.
That means specific step‐by‐step instructions…recommended tools and
resources…and strategies, tips, and techniques for doing the thing better and
faster.
But too many info products I see tell the reader what to do—but not how to
do it.
For instance, one small business advertising guide recommended
advertising on billboards.
That’s advice on what to do, which is fine as it goes, but not enough.
When a reader buys your specialized information product, he also wants
you to tell him HOW to advertise on billboards.
What are the dimensions of a typical billboard? What’s the most effective
word length for billboard copy? The recommended size of the letters painted on
the board to for maximum readability?
How can I find the billboards in my area where I can advertise? Who do I
contact about renting them? What’s a reasonable cost I can expect to pay? Can that
be negotiated?
Why do so many information product writers produce “what to do”
instead of “how to do it” e‐books and reports?
It’s because “what‐to‐do” is easy to write, because you present only the big
picture (what to do), and not the niggling details (how to do it).
But it cheats the reader. In most instances, the reader already has some idea
of what to do.
He is buying your specialized information product on the Internet—often at
a premium price compared to books available in bookstores on similar topics.
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Why is he willing to pay you more? Because he expects you to go into
depth he doesn’t get from “bookstore books.”
I hire a lot of freelance writers to write e‐books and reports for my small
online publishing business, CTC Publishing.
One of my pet peeves—and a classic example of what‐to instead of how‐
to—is when I read in a first draft a sentence that says, “For more information on X,
just search the keyword X on Google.”
I tell the writer: the reason the reader is paying for our e‐book is because he
expects us to have done the research and present the results.
Telling your reader “look it up on Google” is the sign of a lazy writer who
has not done his homework—and a sin I will always ask my writers to correct.
One more point…
Even though information products buyers want “how to” instead of “what
to do,” you can often take the quality of your content to an even higher level.
You do this when, instead (or in addition to) telling the reader what to do,
you actually DO IT FOR HIM.
For instance, instead of saying “here are some points to keep in mind when
writing a collection letter to a customer who owes you money,” you actually
include sample collection letters in your product.
Listen: everyone is lazy. Me. You. Your customers. And your writers,
editors, and authors.
But the information product buyer has paid us to provide him with
shortcuts. As the customer, he has the right to be lazy.
As the seller in this transaction of information publishing, we—the
information product marketers—give up the right to be lazy.
Our customer expects us to do the work, so he doesn’t have to.
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If we don’t, we are of little value to him. And he will let us know this by
asking for his money back.
Action step: read the latest information product you wrote or
published…or even better, the one you are working on right now.
Ask yourself on every page: “Is this text telling the reader merely what to
do, or am I actually showing him HOW to do it?”
If you are merely saying what to do instead of how to do it, rewrite to
correct the oversight.
The result: top quality information products worth the premium price you
charge.
Section 9
Selling Information Product “By the Pound”
I frequently hire freelance writers to write e‐books and other information
products for my small online publishing business.
Recently RH, a potential author, was taken aback when I told him I wanted
a 15,000‐word e‐book from him.
“How did you come up with 15,000 words as the desired length?” he asked
me, hinting that it was unwise of me to demand such a huge number of words.
“In this age of hyper‐information overloading, shouldn’t a document be
more like the lady’s skirt—short enough to be interesting and just long enough to
cover the subject?” he suggested.
RH’s question seems sensible enough on the surface.
But his conclusion that when it comes to writing and reading shorter is
universally preferable to longer is not true.
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May I explain why?
To begin with, RH is theoretically correct when he suggests that readers are
busy, have too much to read, and not enough time to read it.
Despite this, however, people who buy information products—especially
online—have a slightly different perspective than ordinary readers.
Info products buyers do, to some extent, buy their information “buy the
pound.”
If they pay a high price, they expect a lot for their money. Not just great
content, but plenty of it.
We call this demand for quantity the “thud” factor. When a customer
orders a $50 info product, the material should make a nice “thud” when he drops
it on his desk.
For e‐books selling in the $19 to $79 range, I find that the customer is
satisfied with a thicker, heftier e‐book—at least 50 pages—when he prints it out
and holds it in his hands.
With approximately 300 words per page, a 50‐page e‐book is 15,000 words,
which is the word count requirement I gave RH.
RH, in turn, suggested that we could make a more valuable product by
covering the topic in a single page, which he said he could do.
Well, let me warn you now. If you sell a $29 e‐book, and deliver to your
customers a one‐page PDF document on the topic, your refund rate will be huge.
Those customers will feel ripped off and not buy from you again.
Even if that one page has great content, it is not enough. It does not meet
the “thud factor” requirement.
The reason for RH’s erroneous assumptions on word length is that he is
applying the same rule of modern writing—that brevity is the chief virtue of good
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writing—equally to information the reader wants as well as information he
doesn’t want.
I agree with RH that in correspondence and other documents the prospect
doesn’t really want or care about, you want to get to the point as quickly as
possible—and keep it short and simple.
But when you sell a customer an e‐book or special report, you are sending
him writing that he actually wants to read.
Remember, he ordered it. He even paid you for it. He didn’t have to buy.
But he did.
That means your customer is sufficiently interested in the topic to educate
himself on it at his own expense.
He is reading your e‐book for his own benefit and perhaps for his own
enjoyment. It is not a chore. Or if it is a chore, it is one he has volunteered for.
Strangely, RH didn’t complain to me that books he buys on Amazon.com or
in Barnes & Noble have “too many words.”
Yet the average 200‐page nonfiction trade paperback book contains 80,000
words—5 times the length of my average e‐book!
Are you, like RH, afraid your copy—whether you are writing a sales letter,
a landing page, an article, a special report, or a print or electronic book—is too
long?
If so, the reason might be any of the following defects…all of which can and
should be corrected:
» Too much fluff—to meet the required word length, you have padded
your copy, making it dull and flabby. You are wasting the reader’s time saying the
same thing over and over in different ways.
» Lack of content—you haven’t done your homework, so you don’t have a
rich body of facts to illustrate your points and support your claims. Given the
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existence of the Internet and Google, there is no excuse for such inadequate
research.
» Lack of authority—you sound like you don’t really understand your
subject in depth, and the reason is you probably don’t. You need to either become
an expert or interview an expert (or two).
» Boring copy—you don’t really care about the topic or the project, and it
comes across in your copy. Solution: write only on subjects you are interested in
and care about.
Section 10
What? No E‐Newsletter?
There are a number of different business models for making money on the
Internet.
Of these, my favorite—and the one I recommend to those who want to sell
information products, dietary supplements, or just about any other product online
today—is the “Agora Model.”
The Agora Model is an online marketing methodology pioneered by Agora
Publishing.
In a nutshell, the Agora Model says you should offer a free e‐newsletter and
build up a large subscriber base.
Then, you make money by e‐mailing promotions to your online subscriber
list.
Agora and others are making hundreds of millions of dollars in sales online
with the Agora Model.
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Yet when I recommend it to marketers—both experienced and novice
alike—they are immediately and strongly resistant to the idea.
Why?
One reason for their reluctance is that they have read an article by some so‐
called Internet marketing guru telling them that e‐mail marketing is dead, passé,
old hat.
And that they should be focusing instead on blogging, Twitter, Facebook,
LinkedIn, online video, mobile marketing, or whatever the fad flavor of the month is.
The other reason marketers are reluctant to launch a new e‐newsletter is a
fear—reasonable but not true—that the e‐zine “space” is too overcrowded.
“There are so many e‐zines out there, and everyone I know says they
already get too many,” an attendee at the ETR Internet Marketing Conference told
me. “It seems impossible that I could be successful by publishing yet another.”
If you believe this to be true, slap yourself—and listen to me as I tell you
what really works in Internet marketing today….
The Agora Model really works. I use it myself to earn a mid‐six‐figure
income online—“working” on my Internet business only a couple of hours a day.
All the components of the Agora Model—e‐newsletters, e‐mail marketing,
online ads—also still work. Like gangbusters.
As an article in DM News (11/10/08, p. 2) reports: “While social media and
mobile marketing continue to be hot topics, marketers are still finding e‐mail
newsletters relevant.”
One of the neatest things about the Agora Model is that e‐newsletter
subscribers are more loyal readers—because they choose to opt into your list—
instead of you gathering their names and compiling your own e‐list.
And despite the glut of e‐mail in your prospect’s in‐box, sending an e‐mail
is still an effective way to gain the reader’s attention:
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» A study at Loughorough University found that users take action, on
average, in less than two minutes upon being notified that a new e‐mail is waiting
for them.
» According to a report by Forrester Research, opt‐in lists (such as e‐
newsletter subscriber lists) retain 49% of their subscribers over time—nearly
double the retention rate of compiled e‐lists.
» A study from ClearContext, an e‐mail management tools vendor, found that
over half of users surveyed spend more than 2 hours a day in their e‐mail in‐box.
Another reason why marketers hesitate to launch an e‐newsletter is the
mistaken belief that it is time and labor‐intensive to produce.
That’s not true either.
In fact, your e‐newsletter doesn’t have to be elaborate, lengthy, complex, or
fancy.
But it does have to deliver useful content to your subscribers—and do so on
a consistent basis.
Publishing your own e‐newsletter gives you three essential advantages
when it comes to making money online….
First, the best way to get people to opt into your e‐list is by offering them
free content.
When you publish an e‐newsletter, you always have new free content (your
e‐newsletter) to offer.
Second, a monthly e‐newsletter ensures that your prospects hear from
you—on a regular basis—at least 12 times a year.
Assuming they find your content valuable, this consistent communications
helps build a relationship with your online readers.
Third, when people subscriber to an online newsletter, they give you
permission to e‐mail them.
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That means you can send them e‐mail marketing messages—with product
offers—whenever you wish, at minimal cost.
Repeated exposure to your e‐newsletter and solo e‐mail promotions gets
subscribers to trust you enough to start buying products you sell or recommend.
And before you know it, you’re making money selling information or
merchandise on the Internet!
In my next column, I’ll show you a quick and easy formula for writing,
designing, and distributing your e‐newsletter in about an hour a month.
Section 11
5 Steps to the Perfect Guarantee
“Use a strong guarantee” is standard advice in direct marketing.
Without a strong guarantee, your sales will slow to a trickle—since buyers
are loathe to buy products over the Internet, phone, or by mail sight unseen.
But what exactly makes for a “strong” guarantee?
A strong guarantee has 5 defining characteristics—and your guarantee
should possess these qualities, too.
» First, length: as a rule of thumb, the longer the guarantee, the better.
Typical guarantee periods are 10, 14, 30, 60, 90, 180, and 365 days.
Of these, 10 days is the weakest, because it requires the prospect to act too
quickly for comfort.
The buyer is afraid that, if he puts the product aside, the guarantee
coverage will expire, and he’ll be stuck with a product he can’t return.
And so he doesn’t order in the first place.
Thirty days is a standard guarantee period, and certainly adequate.
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Sixty and 90 days are better—all the information products I publish and sell
online are guaranteed for 90 days.
I don’t like lifetime guarantees, because it creates a financial liability on the
books that may be problematic when it’s time to sell your business.
Six‐month and 12‐month guarantees may be worth testing, but won’t work
for some products—for instance, a one‐year guarantee doesn’t make sense for an
annual directory.
» The second consideration is the conditionality of the guarantee.
Meaning: are there strings attached? Or is it unconditional?
A conditional guarantee might say: return the product in saleable condition
for your money back.
The buyer is concerned that you will quibble with him over “saleable
condition.”
That is, you will refuse to issue a refund for a book he returned because, say,
the dust jacket has a smudge on it.
Another conditional guarantee is the one used by many sellers of small
business and investment home study programs.
The say: if you are not satisfied, send back the course for a refund; just
“prove to us that you made some effort to follow our system.”
When you ask for a refund, they ask for more and more proof—and
whatever you send, the sellers counters that “you didn’t do what we said” (or do
enough of it)—and denies your refund on that basis.
Much better is to offer an unconditional guarantee. Tell the customer all he
has to do is return the product for a full refund—no ifs, ands, or buts—without
question or quibble.
» The third quality of a strong guarantee is that everything is clearly stated
and spelled out.
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Be careful about wording that the consumer can misinterpret.
For instance, a performance‐based guarantee—“If you do not earn extra
money trading options with our program, return it for a refund”—sounds good
but contains a potential concern…
Does it mean that if I DO make some extra money with the product, I can’t
return it? Even if I only made ten bucks?
Rewrite the guarantee so there is no condition or ambiguity stated or
implied:
“If you do not make extra money trading options with our program, or you
are not 100% satisfied for any other reason—or for no reason—just return the
program within 90 days for a full refund.”
» Fourth, the guarantee should be graphically emphasized within the
promotion.
Don’t bury it in body copy or put it in an asterisked footnote in 8‐point type.
Print the guarantee in 12‐point copy with a large, bold headline. Put a box
or even a certificate‐style border around it to make the guarantee stand out.
» Fifth, how generous is the guarantee?
The best guarantees are unfair—but unfair in favor of the buyer, not the
seller.
That means if the customer takes advantage of the guarantee, the seller is,
in a sense, getting ripped off.
Example: for regular books sold via mail order, the guarantee is simple:
return the book and we will send you your money back.
But think about the same guarantee for e‐books…
Can the customer really send you the e‐book back?
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Do you expect them to send back the copy they printed out…or sign an
affidavit that they erased the e‐book from their hard drive…or shredded the print‐
out? (Some online marketers have done just that!)
Most information marketers skirt the issue of returning e‐books in their
guarantees.
They say: if you are not 100% satisfied, let us know within 90 days for a full
refund.
No discussion about returning or erasing or not using the e‐book takes place.
In the landing pages I write to sell the e‐books I publish (see for example
www.myveryfirstebook.com), I go a step further:
I turn the fact that the customer does not have to return the e‐book to me
into a benefit.
I say: “If you are not 100% satisfied, let us know within 90 days for a full
refund.
“And keep the e‐book free, with my compliments. That way, you risk
nothing.”
I always suspected that this overly generous offer boosted my sales, but
never split tested it.
In a recent Internet marketing seminar, DP, who heard me talk about this
point in my presentation, said that he too tells his customers to keep the e‐book
even if they ask for a refund.
But DP has split‐tested it. And he swears that “keep the e‐book free”
increased his conversion rates on average by 21%.
The bottom line: when writing copy, make sure your guarantee is:
» Long—90 days is ideal for most offers.
» Unconditional—no strings attached.
» Clearly stated with no ambiguity or possibility of misunderstanding.
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» Highlighted with bold typography, color, and graphics so it really stands
out on the screen or page.
» Overly generous—so that if the consumer exercises the guarantee, he is
essentially taking almost unfair advantage of you, the seller.
The overriding principle of a strong guarantee is to take all the risk off the
buyer’s shoulders and place it on the seller’s shoulders—as it should be.
Section 12
5 Steps to Building a Large and Responsive Opt‐In E‐List of Qualified B2B Prospects
Many B2B marketers want to cut marketing costs by shifting more of their
marcom budgets from traditional direct mail and paper newsletters to e‐mail
marketing and e‐newsletters. But if you want to ramp up your online marketing
program, you should start building a large opt‐in e‐list of customers and prospects
now.
Why? Because without a significant online “house file” (list of opt‐in
subscribers), you can only reach prospects in your niche by renting other
marketers’ opt‐in e‐lists, which is hardly cost‐effective: each time you want to send
another message to your industry, you have to rent the list again—at a cost that
can easily reach into the hundreds of dollars per thousand names.
Some marketers buy databases containing e‐mail addresses of business
prospects in their niche market. This can work if you are sending highly targeted
e‐mails on extremely relevant topics and offers to narrow vertical e‐lists.
But when you send e‐mail messages to non opt‐in lists, you are mostly
asking for trouble. CAN/SPAM does not prohibit e‐mailing to people who have
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not opted in. But people on non‐ opt‐in e‐lists are much more likely to register
SPAM complaints than those on legitimate opt‐in e‐lists—and far less likely to buy
from you.
So the best online strategy for B2B marketers is to build your own opt‐in e‐
list of subscribers. Doing so eliminates the cost of renting opt‐in lists while
preventing the spam complaints and lower response rates typical of non opt‐in
purchased or rented lists.
When you own an opt‐in e‐list covering a sizeable percentage of your target
market, you can communicate with your prospects and customers as often as you
desire or think is appropriate at minimal cost. Being able to send an e‐mail to your
target market with a few mouse clicks makes you less dependent on costly direct
mail, print newsletters, and other paper promotions.
By using a double opt‐in process that requires new subscribers to verify
their identity before being added to your e‐list, you help minimize SPAM
complaints and bounce‐backs. Owning a large opt‐in e‐list of target prospects also
decreases marketing costs and improves lead flow and revenues.
So how do you build a large and profitable opt‐in e‐list of qualified B2B
prospects in your field? Here are 5 ideas:
1—Dedicate a portion of your online marketing budget exclusively to list building.
Most B2B marketers drive traffic either to their Website home page or landing
pages relating to specific offers (e.g., free webinar registration, free white paper
download, purchase a product). And a lot of the traffic they drive to these pages is
existing customers and prospects who are already on their e‐list.
You should spend a minimum of 20% of your online marketing budget on
building your house opt‐in e‐list. That means getting qualified prospects in your
industry that have not yet opted into your online subscriber list to do so.
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There are many online marketing options that work well for e‐list building
programs. These include pay‐per‐click advertising, postcard marketing, banner
advertising, online ads in other marketer’s e‐newsletters, B2B co‐registration deals,
video marketing, viral marketing, editorial mentions in trade publications, online
article marketing, affiliate marketing, and social media—to name just a few.
2—Calculate your maximum acceptable cost per new subscriber. When
evaluating marketing methods for e‐list building, you have to weigh the cost of
acquiring the new name vs. the value that new name has for your business.
To determine value, divide total annual revenues generated by your online
subscriber list by the number of names on that list. Example: If your 20,000 online
subscribers account for $600,000 in annual sales, your subscriber value is $30 per
name per year.
You decide how much you are willing to spend to acquire a subscriber
worth $30 per year. If uncertain, use this rule of thumb: list building campaigns
should ideally pay back their cost within three to six months. Therefore, if your
names are worth $30 per year each, you can afford to spend up to $15 per
subscriber to acquire new names.
Say you drive traffic to a landing page where people can sign up to your e‐
list. The conversion rate is 50%, so for every two unique visitors you drive to your
registration page, you get one new opt‐in subscriber.
Using Google AdWords, you can drive traffic at a cost of $7 per click. Can
you afford that? Yes, because that means you get one new subscriber for every two
clicks you buy, which works out to $14 per subscriber—within your $15 per new
name limit.
Would it make more sense to base the allowable acquisition cost per new
name on the lifetime customer value (LCV) of online subscribers rather than just the
average one‐year revenue per name? Theoretically, yes. But you can only do that if
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you’ve been marketing online long enough to have reliable numbers on which to
base LCV estimates. Until you do, stick with the revenue per year per name figure
as the baseline.
3—Publish a free e‐newsletter. The best way to build and regularly
communicate with an opt‐in list of B2B prospects is to publish and distribute a free
e‐newsletter on a specialized topic related to your product line and of interest to
your target prospects.
Publishing a free e‐zine gives you two important benefits for your online
marketing efforts. First, it gives you a standing free offer—a free subscription to
your e‐letter—you can use in your e‐list building efforts. Second, having the e‐
newsletter ensures that you communicate with your opt‐in subscribers on a
regular basis. This regular communication builds your relationship with your
online prospects while increasing the frequency of branding messages and online
marketing opportunities.
4—Build a “free‐on‐free name squeeze page.” With a staggering number of free
e‐newsletters on the Internet competing for attention, it’s not enough to have a
simple sign‐up box on your home page for your free e‐newsletter. You should
offer a bribe as an incentive for visitors to subscribe. The best bribe is a free special
report the visitor can download as a PDF file in exchange for opting in to your e‐
list.
For instance, if you sell supply chain management software, and publish an
e‐zine called “The Strategic SCM Partner,” offer a short bonus report “7 Steps to
Improving Supply Chain Management in Your Enterprise” as a premium for new
subscribers.
Drive traffic not to your home page or standard subscription form, but to a
special “free‐on‐free name squeeze page”—a landing page highlighting this offer.
We call it a “name squeeze page” because it extracts or “squeezes” new names for
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your list from Web traffic. “Free‐on‐free” means you are offering free content (the
report) as a bribe to get the visitor to accept your primary free offer (the e‐
newsletter subscription). For an example of a free‐on‐free squeeze page see:
www.bly.com/reports.
5—Capture the e‐mail addresses of site visitors who do not buy, subscribe, or
register. Put in place one or more mechanisms for capturing the e‐mail addresses of
site visitors who do not buy a product, download a demo, subscribe to your free
online newsletter, or take other actions that opt them into your e‐list.
Going back to our example for supply chain management, when the visitor
attempts to leave the site without purchasing or registering, have a window pop‐
up to capture his e‐mail address. The headline says, “Wait! Don’t leave without
claiming your free special SCM report!”
Short copy explains they can get a free copy of your special report “7 Steps
to Improving Supply Chain Management in Your Enterprise” by typing in their e‐
mail address in the blank space and clicking submit. If you are not proactively
making an effort to capture e‐mail addresses of site visitors who do not otherwise
register, you are leaving money on the table.
For more ideas on building your e‐list and capturing the e‐mail addresses
of site visitors, go to www.thelandingpageguru.com.
Section 13
10 Tips for Increasing Landing Page Conversion Rates
There’s lots of buzz about blogging, viral marketing, social networking, and
other new methods of generating eyeballs and traffic online. But all that traffic
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won’t make you any money unless you can convert those unique visitors to leads
or customers.
Depending on whether you are selling a product directly from your landing
page, asking visitors to download a free white paper, or promoting a Webinar or
demonstration, conversion rates can range from as low as 1% or less to as much as
50% or more. Here are 10 keys to writing landing pages that maximize online
conversion rates:
1—Build credibility early. People have always been skeptical of advertising,
and with the proliferation of SPAM and shady operators, they are even more
skeptical of what they read online. Therefore, your landing page copy must
immediately overcome that skepticism.
One way to do that is to make sure one or more “credibility builders” is
clearly displayed on the first screen the visitor sees. In the banner at the top of the
page, use your logo and company name if you are well known; universities,
associations, and other institutions can place their official seal in the upper left of
the screen.
Within or immediately under the banner, put a strong testimonial or three
above the headline on the first screen. Consider adding a pre‐head or subhead
which summarizes the company’s mission statement or credentials. At
www.bnasoftware.com, the positioning statement is: “The nation’s definitive
income tax management solution.”
2—Capture the e‐mail addresses of non‐buyers. There are a number of
mechanisms available for capturing the e‐mail address of visitors who click on
your landing page but do not buy the product. One is to use a window with copy
offering a free report or e‐course in exchange for submitting e‐mail address. This
window can be served to the visitor as a pop‐up (it appears when the visitor
arrives at the landing page) or a pop‐under (a window that appears when the
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visitor attempts to leave the landing page without making an inquiry or purchase).
These are both blocked by pop‐up blockers. A “floater” is a window that slides
onto the screen from the side or top. Unlike the pop‐up and pop‐under, the floater
is part of the Website HTML code, so it is not stopped by the pop‐up blocker.
3—Use lots of testimonials. Testimonials build credibility and overcome
skepticism, as do case studies and white papers posted on the Website. If you
invite customers to a live event, ask if they would be willing to give you a brief
testimonial recorded on video. Have a professional videographer tape it, get a
signed release from the customer, and post the testimonial on your Website as
streaming video. Require the customer to click a button to hear the testimonial,
rather than have the video play automatically when the visitor clicks on the page.
For written testimonials, customers may suggest that you write what you
want them to say and just run it by them for approval. Politely ask that they give
you their opinion of your product in their own words instead of having you do it.
Reason: what they come up with will likely be more specific, believable, and
detailed than your version, which might smack of puffery and promotion.
4—Use lots of bullets. Highlight key features and benefits in a list of short,
easy‐to‐read bulleted items. I often use a format where the first part of the bullet is
the feature, and after a dash comes the benefit; e.g., “Quick‐release adhesive
system—your graphics stay clean and don’t stick together.” Online buyers like to
think they are getting a lot for their money, so when selling a product directly
from your landing page, be sure all major features and important benefits are
covered in a comprehensive bullet list appearing on your landing page.
When generating leads by giving away white papers, you don’t need a
huge list of bulleted features and benefits. But using bullets to describe the
contents of the paper and the benefits that information delivers can raise
conversion rates for download requests.
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5—Arouse curiosity in the headline. The headline should arouse curiosity,
make a powerful promise, or otherwise grab the reader’s attention so he has no
choice but to keep reading. The headline for a landing page selling a training
program on how to become a professional property locator makes a big promise:
“Become a Property Locator Today—and Make $100,000 a Year in the Greatest
Real Estate Career That Only a Few Insiders Know About.”
6—Use a conversational copy style. Most corporate Websites are unemotional
and sterile: just “information.” But a landing page is a letter from one human
being to another. Make it sound that way. Even if your product is highly technical
and you are selling it to techies, remember that they are still human beings, and
you cannot sell something by boring people to death.
7—Incorporate an emotional hook in the headline and lead paragraph. Logical
selling can work, but tapping into the prospect’s emotions is much stronger—
especially when you correctly assess how the prospect is feeling about your
product or the problem is solves right now.
Another effective tactic for lead‐generation landing pages is to stress your
free offer in the headline and lead. Example: Kaydon’s landing page shows a
picture of its catalog with the bold heading above it reading, “FREE Ceramic
Bearings Product Selection Guide.”
8—Solve the reader’s problem. Once you hook the reader with emotional copy
dramatizing her problem or a powerful free offer, show how your product—or
your free information—can help solve their problem. For example: “Now there is
a better, easier, and more effective solution to wobbly restaurant tables that can
irritate customers and ruin their dining experience: Table Shox, the world’s
smallest shock absorber.”
To maximize landing page conversion rates, you have to convince the
visitor that the quickest route to solving his problem is taking the action indicated
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on the landing page, and not—as you might be tempted to let him do—surfing
your site. That’s why I prefer landing pages to appear with no navigation, so the
reader’s only choice is to respond or not respond; there’s no menu of click buttons
and hyperlinks to other interesting pages to distract him.
9—Make it timely and current. The more your online copy ties in with current
events and news, the higher your response rates. This is especially critical when
selling financial and investment information as well as regulatory compliance
products in fields where laws and rules change frequently. Periodically update
your landing page copy to reflect current business and economic conditions,
challenges, and trends. This shows your visitor that your company is current with
and on top of what’s happening in your industry today.
10—Stress the money‐back guarantee or lack of commitment on the part of the user.
If you allow customers to order products directly from the landing page, make
sure you have a money‐back guarantee clearly stated on that page. All your
competitors give strong money‐back guarantees. So you can’t get away without
doing the same. If your product is good and your copy truthful, your refund rates
can be as low as 1% or even less.
If you are generating leads, stress that your offer—which might be a white
paper, online demonstration, or Webinar—is free. Say there is no obligation to buy
and that no salesperson will visit.
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Section 14
Playing the Slots
If you build an Internet marketing business, you will start to get frequent
requests from people asking you to promote something of theirs by sending an e‐
mail to their list.
Or perhaps you are on the other end of that transaction, asking successful
Internet marketers to promote your book or event.
When they say no or ignore you, as most probably do, you become
dismayed or even angry.
In this article, I want to increase your chances of convincing other online
marketers to promote you or joint venture with you.
To begin with, you have to understand slots—and their monetary value.
A “slot” in Internet marketing is one of the finite number of opportunities
during the year which the Internet marketer can send an e‐mail to his list.
I say “limited,” because you can’t send too many e‐mails to your
subscribers.
If you do, you’ll annoy them. They’ll unsubscribe, and your valuable e‐list
will grow smaller.
For those of us who publish our free e‐zines monthly, twice a week is about
the maximum e‐mail frequency our subscribers tolerate from us.
With two slots a week, that means we have approximately 100 slots a year.
Let’s say I gross $400,000 a year in my online marketing business.
That means each slot is worth $4,000 in revenue.
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If I take up one of those slots sending an e‐mail promoting something of
yours for which I make no money (e.g., a free tele‐seminar), it costs me $4,000 in
lost revenue.
Even if you offer me an affiliate commission to sell one of your paid
products to my list, I have to ask myself whether it’s going to make the $4,000 I
need.
Often, the products people ask me to promote are priced too low…and the
commission is too small…for me to give up a slot.
And when I turn them down, they are disappointed or even offended.
TC sent me a review copy of his new book with a letter asking me to
promote it to my list.
It’s a paperback book with a $19.95 cover price…and TC was offering me a
20% commission.
That means my commission on each book sold is about four bucks.
So I’d have to sell 1,000 for it to be worth taking up a slot for. And the
chances of me selling a thousand copies of someone else’s book are slim to
nonexistent.
OK. Let’s say you want to convince me…or another Internet marketer with
a list you want to reach…to promote you to his subscribers.
Here are the questions I would ask you…and the answers that would get
me to consider.
First, who are you? How do I know you?
If you subscribe to my online newsletter…or read my books…or we met at
a seminar…or have a mutual acquaintance…say so.
This is important, as I generally promote products only from people I know
or have some connection with.
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Second, tell me how your product would benefit my subscribers—how they
would profit from its content.
This requires a familiarity with my list, which you can easily get by
subscribing to my free e‐zine at www.bly.com/reports.
Third, assuming I agree the product might interest my readers, I will ask
for a review copy.
This is mandatory. When I promote your product to my subscribers, I am
recommending it to my readers. And I can’t recommend something I haven’t seen.
Fourth, what is the product price and the affiliate commission?
If the price is too low—less than $20—my commission will be too low to
make any money from it.
I give a 50% affiliate commission on all my products—and I look for a 50%
affiliate commission on products others ask me to promote.
The rule of thumb for pricing products sold via direct response—online and
offline—is that the sales price should be at least eight times the cost of goods.
This formula allows you to give up 50% of the purchase price to an
affiliate…and still collect 4X your cost of goods on each unit sold.
On extremely high‐priced products…say a thousand dollars or more…an
affiliate commission of 25% is acceptable to most potential joint venture partners,
because it gives them $250 for each $1,000 unit sold.
As an entrepreneur looking for joint venture partners online, you need to
understand that for most Internet marketers, their e‐mails are the primary way
they make money and put food on the table.
And the number of opportunities they have to make money by sending e‐
mail offers to their list is limited.
For an Internet marketer with 100 slots a year, each slot represents 1% of his
gross annual income.
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Unless these online marketers are your best buddy, why would they give
up 1% of their total income for the year to promote your book, event, or news just
because you think their subscribers should know about it?
Internet marketing is a serious game…and to get the players to joint
venture with you, you have to propose a deal that’s profitable and beneficial to
you both.
Section 15
What Web Metrics Should You Measure?
I may be wrong. I frequently am. But there are three Web metrics people
seem overly concerned with that I just don’t worry about.
The first is open rates. Since both my e‐zine and e‐mail marketing messages
are text, I can’t measure open rates.
I could convert my text e‐mails to text in an HTML shell, which would
enable me to track open rates. But why? As long as an e‐mail is profitable,
generating a lot of sales, what do I care how many people opened it? After all, in
direct mail, we only know how many people responded by returning the order
form with payment. We have no idea how many people opened the envelope or
whether they read the contents.
The second metric I don’t care about is page views: what pages of my
Website are visited most, how many minutes the average visitor spent on each
page, which pages people returned to, and so on.
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Again, my concern is whether the Web page can convince visitors to order
the product…or if they don’t order, at least get them to give me their e‐mail
address and opt into my list.
The third thing I don’t care about is complaints. A reader recently asked me,
“How many complaints do you get from AOL users?” Why would I track AOL
users separately from the rest of my list?
Look. I don’t like complaints. If someone doesn’t like an e‐mail I sent them,
I take it seriously and respond thoughtfully and politely. But it doesn’t keep me
up at night. Just as they can change the channel if they don’t like what they hear
on the radio, they can opt out of my list if they don’t like my content—and they
should.
Okay. So what Web metrics do I, as a small‐time operator and Internet
entrepreneur, really care about?
There are five I watch like a hawk. More than that, I live and die by them. If
the numbers are good, I have a smile on my face all week. If they plummet, it’s
like a black cloud over my head.
Here are the metrics I monitor:
1. Click‐through rates (CTR). When I send an e‐mail to my subscriber list,
how many of the people on the list click on the URL link to the landing page? We
measure total clicks, unique visits to the landing page, and the CTR, which is a
percentage: if 800 people on my list of 40,000 click‐through, that’s a 2% CTR.
With e‐mail marketing messages sent to your house e‐list, CTR can range
from 1% or 2% on the low end, to 10% or even 15% on the high end. These CTRs
are for e‐mails selling a product, not e‐mails inviting the reader to get a free white
paper or other free offer.
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2. Conversion rates. Conversion means converting people who visit your
landing page into buyers. If you generate 1,000 clicks to your landing page, and
100 of those people place an order, your conversion rate is 10%.
Conversion rates can range from 1% or 2% on the low end, to 10% or more
on the high end. Inexpensive products generally have higher conversion rates,
while an e‐mail promoting a big‐ticket item can be profitable even with a
conversion rate below 1%.
Combined, the click‐through and conversion rates determine how many
units you sell. For instance, if you get a 3% CTR on a list of 40,000, you get 1,200
clicks to your landing page. If your conversion rate is 5%, the e‐mail generates 60
orders.
3. Gross sales. This is the number of orders generated by the e‐mail
multiplied by the selling price of the product. On the above example, 60 orders for
a $29 e‐book generate gross revenues of only $1,740. But for a $249 product, 60
orders produce total sales of $14,940. In my little Internet business, the former
would send me into a deep funk, while the latter would have me popping the
champagne cork.
4. Opt‐out rates. Every time you e‐mail to your list, a certain small number
of subscribers decide to opt‐out or “unsubscribe” from your e‐list. That’s a bad
thing, because unless you do something to generate new subscribers, your list will
gradually dwindle to nothing.
What is an acceptable opt‐out rate? My average e‐mail to my list of 40,000
causes about 20 people to unsubscribe, which translates into an opt‐out rate of
0.05%—half of one‐tenth of a percent. I think you can live with an opt‐out rate of
0.1% per e‐mail, but more than that, and your list will shrink too rapidly.
5. Dollars per name. Dollars per name is the dollar value of each name on
your list—the amount of revenue per name. If you make $200,000 a year in online
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sales from your subscriber list, and you have 40,000 subscribers, your dollar value
is $5 per name per year.
Why is this important? Because the various methods of building your e‐
list—pay‐per‐click advertising, co‐registration, banner advertising—all cost money.
So your dollars per name tells you how much money you can afford to spend to
acquire new names for your e‐list.
For example, if your dollars per name is $5, you certainly can afford to pay
$1 to add new names to your e‐list: on average, you’ll earn five times your
investment within one year.
Say you use pay‐per‐click advertising to drive people to a landing page
where you offer a free report as an enticement to opt into your e‐list, and half of
the people who visit the page accept the free offer and subscribe. You can
therefore afford to bid up to 50 cents a click, since it takes two clicks—costing a
dollar—to get one sign‐up.
Now, general advertisers, brand marketers, and B2B marketers generating
leads rather than direct sales may care about many other metrics, including open
rates and page views. But for the direct marketer selling a product online, the five
metrics listed above—click‐through rate, conversion rate, sales, opt‐out rate, and
dollars per name—are the most important metrics you can track.
Section 16
E‐Mail Marketing: How Much Is Too Much?
A couple of months ago, I joined the opt‐in e‐list of a semi‐obscure
entertainer whose CDs I enjoy.
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By mid‐afternoon of that day, I had received three e‐mail marketing
messages from him.
When a fourth e‐mail arrived around 5pm, I hollered “enough!”—and
promptly unsubscribed from his list.
That got me thinking about a question: how much e‐mail is too much?
Say you publish a free monthly e‐newsletter for your prospects and
customers.
In addition to the monthly e‐zine, which they requested, will they
welcome—or even tolerate—additional e‐mail messages from you?
If so, how many?
One e‐mail a week …one a day …somewhere in between?
To find out, I asked several Internet marketers and users.
“Three e‐mails a day seems just pathetic and desperate to me no matter
how relevant the message,” says Sheri Cyprus.
“As an e‐mail consumer, three to five e‐mails a day is definitely too many,”
says Jodi Kaplan. Ms. Kaplan worked for a marketing association with several
different departments, each promoting a full schedule of events. “No matter how
much we tried to coordinate our mailings and segment our list, we still got
complaints that we were sending too many e‐mails.”
“I’m fine with weekly e‐newsletters that also send me one weekly promo
message,” says marketing consultant Tom Varjan. “Some Internet ‘experts’ are the
greatest sinners by sending out multiple daily messages; I’ve finally unsubscribed
many of them.”
Consultant Joel Heffner says that his tolerance for e‐mail marketing
messages depends on the quality of the content in the e‐newsletter itself: “If I
really want to continue with the main message, I have great tolerance.” If the e‐
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newsletter content isn’t that important to Joel, even one extra e‐mail marketing
message a month can cause him to unsubscribe.
A useful tool for determining the frequency of e‐mail marketing messages
to your list is to monitor the opt‐out rate—the number of readers who unsubscribe
each time you send an e‐mail marketing message to your list.
Ideally, the opt‐out rate per e‐blast should be 0.1% or lower. So if your list
has 10,000 subscribers, no more than 10 should unsubscribe after each e‐mail
distribution.
Amy Africa, president of Eight By Eight, says that the maximum
unsubscribe rate per e‐mail marketing blast should be 2%.
Let’s say you publish a monthly e‐newsletter with 10,000 subscribers. In
addition to the e‐zine, which you distribute on the first of the month, you send an
e‐mail marketing message in the middle of the month.
When you send your e‐mail marketing message, enough subscribers buy
the product you are promoting to make it fairly profitable—and 25 unsubscribe
from your list. You’d like to make more money from your subscriber list. So you
decide to go from twice a month to weekly.
When you do, you notice that your opt‐out rate spikes: instead of losing 25
subscribers, you lose 100. Your subscribers are telling you that you’re e‐mailing
them too frequently, and to prevent your list from evaporating, you cut back to
twice a month.
Sarah Stambler, president of E‐Tactics, an online media buying agency, says
the solution is to segment your e‐list.
“On the sign‐up page, they have to check one box to get just the e‐
newsletter, and a second box indicating they are willing to accept your e‐mail
marketing messages,” says Stambler. She notes that a major publisher who did
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this found that only 50% of subscribers agreed to take the promotional messages
along with the free newsletter.
“We follow the 80/20 rule,” says Kim Mateus, publisher, Mequoda Group.
“For every four editorial e‐mails we send, we also send one promotional e‐mail.”
Another way to e‐mail more frequently to your house list without irritating
subscribers or increasing opt‐outs is to write your marketing e‐mails in an
editorial style rather than a promotional style.
You can do this either by entertaining—telling an amusing story, one with a
lesson embedded within it. Or, you can be educational: presenting to the reader a
useful tip or new idea within the body of the e‐mail marketing message itself.
“I prefer marketing offers at the end of relevant information,” says
marketing consultant Jim Logan, “I don’t like getting a pure pitch. The exception
is an offer arriving alone that’s tied to a theme the author has been addressing in a
series of e‐mails.”
“I think if e‐mail marketers would just follow basic communication
etiquette, we would have much less e‐mail,” says Sean Woodruff. “Why is it that
someone wouldn’t phone a person three times a day with an offer but will not
think twice about e‐mail?”
“There is no magic rule as to how often you can e‐mail,” says Amy Africa.
“Once a week is considered average. There are people who mail several times a
day. It really depends on our target market, product, and offer.
“I tell people to mail as long as they can afford it in terms of break‐even. If I
had to bet my house on it, I’d say 98% of people don’t e‐mail often enough.”
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Section 17
Double or Triple Your Landing Page Conversion Rates with Taguchi Testing
Direct marketers are forever saying, “Test, test, test.”
But in actuality, many direct marketers do little or no testing at all.
Sure, the big‐volume consumer direct marketers—like Publisher’s
Clearinghouse and Phillips Publishing—test all the time.
But many small and mid‐size companies say they don’t have the budget,
time, or a large enough universe to make testing worthwhile.
Even among big direct marketers, testing is often limited to simple A/B split
tests—headline “A” vs. headline “B,” or a price test between $99, $199, and $299.
And that’s in direct mail. In space ads, A/B split testing is increasingly rare,
as the majority of publications neither offer nor encourage it.
But thanks to technology…specifically the Internet…testing is undergoing a
revival using a technique called “Taguchi testing.”
If you’re already familiar with and using Taguchi testing, you may get a
few useful ideas out of this article.
But if you are not, then listening to what I am about to tell you could be the
most important development in your Internet marketing this decade.
Since I am not a Taguchi expert, I won’t attempt to go into the technical or
statistical details, which I don’t really understand anyway.
Instead, let’s discuss Taguchi testing on a high level.
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Specifically, Taguchi testing is a system where, with a landing page or other
online direct response promotion, you test not one but many variables—
economically and in a relatively short time frame.
David Bullock, President of Results Squared, a consultancy offering
Taguchi testing services to direct marketers, says that his program typically
involves testing the following promotion elements: three pre‐heads, six headlines,
three subheads, three salutations (e.g., “Dear Home Builder” vs. “Dear Lumber
Buyer” vs. “Dear Wood Trader”), three lead paragraphs, three visuals (e.g., a
product photo vs. a photo of the inventor vs. a photo of a happy customer), three
guarantees, and three calls to action.
But you can choose to test other elements—bonuses, prices, even different
lists of bullets in the copy—really, anything you want. Other factors Bullock often
tests include traffic source (e.g., organic search traffic vs. Google AdWords vs. e‐
mail) and what he calls “predisposition to purchase.”
“Predisposition to purchase” is a measure of how convinced the prospect is
of the offer’s value before he even clicks onto the landing page. For instance, a
visitor responding to an e‐mail sent by a joint venture partner to his list of loyal
readers has a greater predisposition to believe the message than a visitor who
finds the page from a keyword search.
With specialized Taguchi testing software, each unique visitor to the site
sees the landing page with a different combination of the elements being tested.
The results are measured, tabulated, and analyzed. Reports are generated
to show which headline pulled the best, which lead paragraph pulled best, which
visual pulled best, and so on.
The advantage is that you are testing multiple versions of many key
variables in landing page performance, and not just two versions of one variable
as is usually the case with traditional A/B split tests.
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Therefore, conversion is increased incrementally for each variable, e.g., a
20% lift in orders for the best headline, a 17% increase in conversion for the best
lead, and so on.
By incorporating the winning versions of all variables tested in the final
landing page, Taguchi testing can double, triple, even quadruple or more the
conversion rate of your landing pages.
To do Taguchi testing, you need to write complete copy for your landing
page along with the needed elements listed above: the six headlines, three
subheads, and so on.
Then, you give the copy to your Taguchi testing service and you are ready
to roll. You can find several Taguchi testing vendors listed under “Taguchi
Testing” on the Vendors page of my Website www.bly.com.
In the “good old days,” it would take many weeks, or even a couple of
months, to get a valid reading on a direct mail test—and even then, it was usually
just an A/B split of two different packages, prices, or headlines.
But because Taguchi testing is done online, you get the results much faster.
Depending on the amount of traffic being driven to the URL and the conversion
rates, says Bullock, a complete test can be completed and verified in three to five
weeks.
The amount of traffic required also depends on conversion rate, since
statistical validity of testing is based not on “number of pieces mailed”—or online,
on amount of traffic—but on number of responses—or in the case of a landing
page, number of sales made.
Typically you want to get at least 1,000 unique visits per test cell.
Depending on the number of test cells, you need anywhere from 12,000 to 20,000
visits for a complete test.
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Section 18
5 Ways to Capture E‐mail Addresses of Landing Page Visitors
Most Internet marketers I know who use landing pages to make direct sales
online focus on conversion: getting the maximum number of visitors to the
landing page to place an order for the product being advertised.
Other Internet marketers, when writing landing page copy, focus not only
on conversion, but also on search engine optimization: key word selection and
meta tag creation that can increase traffic by raising the site’s search engine
rankings.
But in addition to conversions and unique visits, savvy Internet marketers
are also concerned with a third performance metric: e‐mail address capture.
If you have a 2% conversion rate, then for every 100 visitors to the landing
page, only two buy—and of course, during these transactions, you capture the e‐
mail addresses of those buyers.
What happens to the other 98 visitors—those who do not buy? You will not
be able to add their e‐mail address to your list unless you incorporate a deliberate
methodology into your landing page to capture it.
Here are four different methodologies for capturing the e‐mail addresses of
landing page visitors who do not purchase. Every landing page you operate
should use at least one of these methods:
1. E‐zine sign‐up box. This is a box where the visitor can get a free e‐
newsletter subscription just by entering his name and e‐mail address. You can see
an example of a simple e‐zine sign‐up box at www.bly.com and countless other
Websites.
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The e‐zine sign‐up box placed prominently on the first screen is a widely
used method of e‐mail capture for Websites. But it is less commonly used for
micro‐sites and landing pages.
The reason is that, if your headline and lead properly engage the reader’s
attention, he won’t bother to sign up for the e‐newsletter—instead, he’ll start
reading.
Then, if he loses interest or reaches the end but does not order, and instead
clicks away, you haven’t captured his e‐mail address.
2. Squeeze pages. Also known as preview pages, these are short landing
pages that require the visitor to register—by giving his name and e‐mail address—
before he is allowed to go on and read the long‐copy landing page. To see a
squeeze page at work, visit: www.squeezepagegenerator.com.
In some cases, the long‐copy landing page itself is positioned as a “report”
which the visitor can read only if he submits his name and e‐mail address first. For
this to work, your landing page should be written in an informative, educational
style.
Many squeeze pages offer a content premium, such as a free report, just for
submitting your e‐mail address. Those seeking to capture snail mail as well as e‐
mail addresses make the premium a physical object that must be shipped, such as
a free CD.
Squeeze pages work well when your primary source of traffic is organic
and paid search. Reason: search visitors clicking to your site are only mildly
qualified, because they are making a decision to visit based on only a few words in
a search engine description or paid Google ad.
Therefore, they may not be inclined to read long copy from a source they
are not familiar with. A squeeze page lets them absorb the gist of your proposition
in a few concise paragraphs. The main advantage of the squeeze page is that it
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ensures capture of an e‐mail address from every visitor who reads the full landing
page. In addition, these prospects have been pre‐qualified, in terms of their
interest in the subject, and so are more likely to stick with long copy.
3. E‐mail capture sidebars. These are forms built into the main landing page
as sidebars, again making a free offer. In a long‐copy landing page, the e‐mail
capture sidebar usually appears early, typically in the second or third screen, and
may be repeated one or more times throughout the page. Example:
www.rocketfrench.com.
The drawback of the e‐mail capture sidebar is that the prospect sees it
before he gets too far in the sales letter, and therefore before you’ve sold him and
ask for the order.
Therefore, the risk is that if your product teaches, say, how to speak French,
and the e‐mail capture sidebar offers free French lessons, the visitor will just take
the free offer and feel no need to spend money on the paid offer.
4. Pop‐under. When you attempt to click away from the landing page
without making a purchase, a window appears that says something like, “Wait!
Don’t leave yet!”—and makes a free offer. To see how this works, go to one of my
sites, www.becomeaninstantguru.com.
The big advantage of the pop‐under is that the visitor sees it only after he
has read to the point where he is leaving without ordering. Therefore, the free
content offer doesn’t compete with or distract visitors from the paid product offer.
The disadvantage is that about half of Internet users run pop‐up blockers
on their PCs, and these blockers will prevent your pop‐under from showing.
5. Floaters. A floater looks and functions much like a pop‐up window, but
it’s actually part of the landing page’s HTML code, and therefore, won’t be
blocked by a pop‐up blocker. You can see a floater at bhg.com.
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The floater blocks a portion of the landing page when you click onto the site.
You can enter your e‐mail or click it away without doing so. Either action removes
the floater and allows you to see the complete landing page.
As you can see, all of these e‐mail capture methods offer some sort of free
content—typically a downloadable PDF report, e‐course delivered via auto‐
responder, or e‐zine subscription—in exchange for your e‐mail address.
Why bother to maximize capture of visitor e‐mail addresses on your
landing pages and other Websites?
There are two primary benefits. First, by sending an online conversion
series—a sequence of e‐mails delivered by auto‐responder—to these visitors, you
have another opportunity to convince them to buy and increase your overall
conversion rate.
Second, the best names for your e‐mail marketing efforts, far better than
rented opt‐in lists, are in your house e‐list. So the faster you can build a large e‐list,
the more profitable your Internet marketing ventures will become.
How much more profitable? Internet marketing expert Fred Gleeck
estimates that, for information product marketers, each name on your e‐list is
worth between ten cents and a dollar or more per name per month.
Therefore, a 50,000‐name e‐list could generate annual online revenues of
$600,000 a year or higher. In other businesses, the sales could be significantly
higher. Hewlett‐Packard has 4.5 million e‐zine subscribers, from whom they
generate $60 million in monthly sales.*
• B-to-B, 4/4/05.
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About the Author
BOB BLY is an independent copywriter and consultant with more than 20
years of experience in business‐to‐business, high tech, industrial, and direct
marketing.
Bob has written copy for over 100 clients including: Network Solutions, ITT
Fluid Technology, Medical Economics, Intuit, Business & Legal Reports and
Brooklyn Union Gas. Awards include a Gold Echo from the Direct Marketing
Association, an IMMY from the Information Industry Association, two Southstar
Awards, an American Corporate Identity Award of Excellence, and the Standard
of Excellence award from the Web Marketing Association.
He is the author of more than 50 books including The Complete Idiotʹs
Guide To Direct Marketing (Alpha Books) and The Copywriterʹs Handbook
(Henry Holt & Co.). His articles have appeared in numerous publications such as
DM News, Writerʹs Digest, Amtrak Express, Cosmopolitan, Inside Direct Mail, and Bits
& Pieces for Salespeople.
Bob has presented marketing, sales, and writing seminars for such groups
as the U.S. Army, Independent Laboratory Distributors Association,
American Institute of Chemical Engineers and the American Marketing
Association. He also taught business‐to‐business copywriting and technical
writing at New York University.
Bob writes sales letters, direct mail packages, ads, e‐mail marketing
campaigns, brochures, articles, press releases, white papers, Websites, newsletters,
scripts, and other marketing materials clients need to sell their products and
services to businesses. He also consults with clients on marketing strategy, mail
order selling, and lead generation programs.
Prior to becoming an independent copywriter and consultant, Bob was
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advertising manager for Koch Engineering, a manufacturer of process equipment.
He has also worked as a marketing communications writer for
Westinghouse Defense. Bob Bly holds a B.S. in chemical engineering from the
University of Rochester and has been trained as a Certified Novell Administrator
(CNA). He is a member of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers and the
Business Marketing Association.
Bob has appeared as a guest on dozens of TV and radio shows including
MoneyTalk 1350, The Advertising Show, Bernard Meltzer, Bill Bresnan, CNBC,
Winning in Business, The Small Business Advocate and CBS Hard Copy.
He has been featured in major media ranging from the LA Times and Nation’s
Business to the New York Post and the National Enquirer.
For a FREE Copywriting Information Kit, or a free, no‐obligation cost
estimate on copywriting for your next project, contact:
Bob Bly, Copywriter 31 Cheyenne Drive, Montville, NJ 07045 Phone (973) 263-0562, Fax (973) 263-0613 e‐mail: [email protected] Web: www.bly.com