Are you having a hard time getting your media buy profitable? Nothing is more frustrating than watching your cost per acquisition constantly increase no matter how many creatives, landing pages, and offers you test. One option that many affiliates (and direct response marketers) overlook is email marketing. When successfully paired with media buying, email marketing can take your campaign to a whole new level of profit, especially if your using Aweber.
In direct response marketing we all strive to get the consumer to visit our landing page, read our sales pitch, and purchase the product (or complete a lead). While this can be a very successful marketing technique, not all consumers can be easily convinced with one simple sales pitch. Let’s face it… At one point in someone’s life they’ve been ripped off. Whether they purchased something that wasn’t what they expected or they went out to eat and got a sorry cooked meal, it’s likely almost everyone out there has been ‘burned’ at one time or another. By combining email marketing into our buy we’re able to use another vehicle to garner the consumer’s trust over a series of different sales pitches.
Let me give you a real‐life example. During a recent media buy I averaged 29% CTR from our landing page to our offer page. Once the consumer hit the offer they converted at 4%. For this particular buy this was good enough to be profitable but the margin was still slim. Now let’s use some simple logic and think about this. 29% of the people that clicked our advertisement proceeded to the offer. So 71% of all of our traffic simply left. They were obviously interested in what I was pitching (because they clicked the creative) but felt that our sales pitch was too weak, we were not legitimate, or for whatever reason, didn’t convert. How can we save some of this traffic?
This is where the squeeze page comes into play. A squeeze page is a page that persuades a consumer to enter personal information to receive what they came for. Most of the time this is an email address. For example, if we were promoting a product in the weight‐loss niche, we ask the visitor: Are You Ready To Lose Weight? – Check Out The ‘Diet of 2010_ We would then tell them, ‘Simply enter your email address to see the exact diet Hollywood has been using for years’. Once the visitor enters their email address they are then directed to the landing page.
Now instead of losing that 71% of the traffic, there lies another opportunity to ‘convince’ the visitor to buy what we’re selling. Also, if the visitor goes onto convert, it’s possible you can sell them something else (maybe even a product in another niche). This can be accomplished by using a service such as aWeber to begin an automated email sequence. While this is a science in its own, here is a typical sequence:
* Followup One – Sent as soon as email address is entered As soon as the visitor enters their email address I like to send them an email (they’ve expressed initial interest by 1) clicking our ad and 2) submitting their email address). Normally I like to create a sense of urgency; ‘Hurry, You’re Special Offer Is Ready!’ Still using weight‐loss as an example, my email would go on to pitch my product once again, urging this deal is not going to last.
* Followup Two – About 24 hours after the first email With this email we want to back off the sales pitch a bit. Yes, we’re still going to try to sell the product, but we’re going to try to get personal with them and maybe talk about the benefits of losing weight. Media Buying 101 © Copyright 2010 Dual Alliance Media, Inc. Page: 16
* Followup Three – 24 hours after the second email This is now taking a somewhat aggressive approach. The biggest mistake many affiliates make (especially when starting with email marketing) is letting their list get cold. In this email I like to ask; ‘You Have Questions, Don’t You?’ I then base my email around a question and answer segment about my product.
* Followup Four – 24 hours after the third email A lot of times the user is either going to read and purchase or go ahead and unsubscribe from your list. That’s fine, we’re direct response marketing here, this offer may not be in existence a week from now. We want to be aggressive. This email we want to offer the visitor another ‘bonus’. Let them know if they order your product today they can also order another ‘extra’ with a coupon code. Make them feel like they are really getting a deal.
* Followup Five – 48 hours after the fourth email If the user didn’t unsubscribe after your forth email, you want to relax a bit and leave them thinking. The fifth followup email should be something like; ‘10 Reasons Why You Should Lose Weight’. Again, they have interest in losing weight (or they wouldn’t have clicked our ad) so let’s try to sell them.
* Followup Six – 48 hours after the fifth email If they haven’t unsubscribed by now they are obviously still considering what you’re selling. Go back to creating that sense of urgency. i.e.: Are We Raising Our Price ? Let them know in your email this deal is special and that they would be special to receive it.
If they still haven’t unsubscribed or bought by now, it’s possible they are just not interested. If you want to remain persistent you could continue with your email series, but I personally would work on optimizing my previous six emails.
Using this method we can greatly increase the number of conversions we receive. Just think, out of that 71% of the traffic that was leaving our site, if we could convert 4% of them. That’s a HUGE difference in the entire campaign (even 1% of the 71% would be good).
You’re paying for traffic so you should take full advantage of it. Remember to test, test, test and optimize, optimize, optimize and it’s likely you’ll be pleased with adding email marketing to your next media buy!