In this issue: Why you should wait to ask for credit card info, what reading level garners the highest response rates, and refreshing old blog posts to increase conversions.

What’s in The News This Week

Facebook to shut down live shopping. Google announces 4 new Discovery ad features. TikTok surpasses Instagram on ad spend.

Growth Hack #1: Good things come to those who wait

This company dramatically increased signups with this one simple change to their website…

Totango, a software company, ran an interesting study that showed the difference between asking for credit card info upfront versus asking for it later.

The results?

By dropping the credit card requirement, they were able to increase front-end signups by 500% and overall paid customers by 50%.

Bottom line: It’s all about the timing.

Source: Quicksprout

Growth Hack #2: Write at the right level

Boomerang took a look at over 40 million emails. Their goal was to determine what reading level earns the most responses.

Here are their results:

  1. Emails written at a kindergarten reading level: 46%
  2. Those written at a 3rd-grade reading level: 53%
  3. High school: 45%
  4. A college reading level: 39%

In short: don’t get too technical! Use shorter words and shorter sentences to hold your readers’ attention.

Source: Fast Company

Growth Hack #3: Refresh those old blog posts

This company increased their conversions by +240% just by optimizing old blog posts…

The team from Hubspot noticed that most of their old blog posts convert into email leads very poorly.

Here is what they did (you can do the same on Google Analytics):

  1. Ordered their most popular blog posts (URLs) by the conversion rate (into emails).
  2. For each URL they looked through specific keywords people were using to find a post.
  3. Optimized CTAs to fit the most popular keyword.

For example, for their article “How to Write a Press Release” the most popular Google keyword was “press release template“. They created a CTA “Download press release templates”.

After the change, their conversions into emails increased by 240%!

Source: Hubspot