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In this issue: Creating images people respond to, the importance of having customer reviews, using “Power Words” to increase conversions.
TikTok launches "Shopping Ads" for easier advertisement. Shopify launches "Collabs" for creators to earn revenue. Instagram gives users added control of their feed content.
Google Analytics is something we spend hours exploring and learning from (weird, right?). It’s the best way to manage and track web data and use it to make smarter decisions for us and our clients. There’s nothing more telling than data. It doesn’t lie and it’s always there to tell you things you might be missing. That said, Google Analytics can sometimes get a little wonky. From the integrity of your analytics to the quality of what the platform is giving you, it’s worth taking time to perform this 20-step Google Analytics Audit to ensure you’re getting the optimal performance out of this essential platform.
Every time you put an ad in front of a potential customer, you want them to do something. The ultimate goal is to get them to buy your product or subscribe to your service, but even at the earlier stages, you might just want them to give you their email address, sign-up for a free trial or subscribe to a newsletter. A lot of work goes into moving people to take these different actions. However, whether they found your content in search results, email, Facebook ads or Google ads, you need to know how to get the message across. One of the best ways to do this is to have a good CTA. If you are looking for a call to action definition, it is a short instruction that is intended to provoke action. They can appear on web pages, in apps, in social media ads, in emails and more. They can appear as a CTA button or as a call to action phrase with a link. A good CTA not only inspires action, but it lets the viewer know what you want them to do. Since a call to action is so important for so many different types of marketing efforts, you should put more than a little passing thought into finding the right one. In this post, we are going to look at a few call-to-action examples to show you what it looks like when it is done right.
Does this scenario sound familiar: Your product/market fit, copy, images, product, urgency, pricing, etc. are great...but conversions are still low.
If so, there is a big chance that it's because people don't trust you.
In this case, you need to add social proof.
Here are the top 21 ways to do just that:
1. Customer testimonials
2. Celebrity endorsements
3. Case studies
4. Media mentions
5. Who are your customers
6. Trust seals
7. Certifications and badges
8. Platform integrations
9. Social share count
10. Subscriber/user/customer count
11. Screen shots from social media
12. Public ratings and reviews
13. Test scores
14. “Best seller”
15. Results of surveying your customers
16. Number of orders
17. Real time stats
18. A list of popular posts/products
19. Customer showcase
20. Customer photos
21. Customer stories
Source: https://optinmonster.com/11-ways-to-use-social-proof-to-increase-your-conversions
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Ninja Outreach is a SaaS. When people clicked "14-Day Free Trial" they needed to input their credit card data.
A lot of people get lost at this stage.
So, the team took these 5 steps to fix the problem:
1. Instead of asking their payment details after hitting the trial button. . .
2. They asked for just their email.
3. After a user submitted their email, they was redirected to a page asking their payment details.
4. If a user abandoned the form, they received an automated email reminder.
5. These emails recovered 11.5% of abandoners.
After the team applied the magic:
1. 11.5% of abandoners finished their trial sign up
2. And are now trying out plans ranging from $29/mo to $249/mo
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Images aren't categorically bad for emails. But, the RATIO of images:text does matter.
- Don't go below 2:3
- Don't make your entire email one big image with text on it
- Include descriptive alt text that gets people to expand / view all images (and tracks your opens)
Source: 500 Startups
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A few years back, over 75% of Twitter’s users weren’t coming back. So, they set out solve the problem in the following 4 steps:
1. The team separated out the engaged users from those who dropped off.
2. Then they studied: Of those people who get it, what’s different about them?
3. They discovered patterns that indicated that if you follow at least 30 people, you’re likely to remain engaged.
4. So they redesigned the product to help everyone get to this number faster.
Source: https://medium.com/growth-hacker/reading-josh-elman-on-growth-6d379a6c153d
Neil Patel ran an interesting experiment. For 1 month, he commented on different blogs.
Here are his findings:
1. Short (1 to 4-word) comments generated 3.2 visitors per comment.
2. Long (4 to 17-sentence) comments drove 17.4 visitors per comment (5x more).
3. Mainstream, broad blogs drove visitors but no conversions.
4. When his comment was higher on the page it drove more traffic.
5. Only comments on guest posts he wrote generated real leads.
He generated 7 leads from guest posts on others' sites, which resulted in $25,000 in revenue.
Source: https://www.quicksprout.com/2014/11/10/how-i-generated-25000-by-leaving-249-comments
The most effective reciprocity is indirect, not overt (salesy). Turn this fact into action with the following, 3-step plan:
1. Give: Provide an incentive to potential customers with the following phrases: "Free offer", "free service", "surprisingly good", "no strings attached".
2. WAIT. Disassociate Give step from Ask step. Doing so makes the whole process feel less like a sale and more genuine.
3. Ask.Now that you've waited, you can make your request with the following phrases: "Sign up", "purchase", "refer your friends".
Source: 500 Startups
A few years back, over 75% of Twitter’s users weren’t coming back. So, they set out solve the problem in the following 4 steps:
1. The team separated out the engaged users from those who dropped off.
2. Then they studied: Of those people who get it, what’s different about them?
3. They discovered patterns that indicated that if you follow at least 30 people, you’re likely to remain engaged.
4. So they redesigned the product to help everyone get to this number faster.
Source: https://medium.com/growth-hacker/reading-josh-elman-on-growth-6d379a6c153d
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Neil Patel ran an interesting experiment. For 1 month, he commented on different blogs.
Here are his findings:
1. Short (1 to 4-word) comments generated 3.2 visitors per comment.
2. Long (4 to 17-sentence) comments drove 17.4 visitors per comment (5x more).
3. Mainstream, broad blogs drove visitors but no conversions.
4. When his comment was higher on the page it drove more traffic.
5. Only comments on guest posts he wrote generated real leads.
He generated 7 leads from guest posts on others' sites, which resulted in $25,000 in revenue.
Source: https://www.quicksprout.com/2014/11/10/how-i-generated-25000-by-leaving-249-comments
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The most effective reciprocity is indirect, not overt (salesy). Turn this fact into action with the following, 3-step plan:
1. Give: Provide an incentive to potential customers with the following phrases: "Free offer", "free service", "surprisingly good", "no strings attached".
2. WAIT. Disassociate Give step from Ask step. Doing so makes the whole process feel less like a sale and more genuine.
3. Ask.Now that you've waited, you can make your request with the following phrases: "Sign up", "purchase", "refer your friends".
Source: 500 Startups
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It's been PPC ad expert Savannah Sanchez's personal mission over the last year to share the best paid social advice via her Twitter, Facebook Group, and Youtube.
She just released 5 new videos that will teach you how she approaches (and wins at) Facebook ads:
1. My Advanced Facebook Account Structure For E-commerce:
You don't need anything more complicated than this structure in order to run an ad account effectively. Sanchez has used close variations of this structure to scale:
Video : https://youtu.be/sjd711834hc
2. My Simplified Facebook Account Structure For E-commerce:
Just launching a new ad account? Do not fear! Follow this super basic structure that she's used to scale many ad accounts:
Video: https://youtu.be/nmldJXI4eYM
3. Setting Up Your Default Account Columns in Facebook Ads Manager:
Here's what metrics Sanchez uses to track success on her Facebook campaigns. Follow this easy tutorial to see how to set up your own column:
Video: https://youtu.be/Tuj0Kj1keF8
4. Building Custom and Lookalike Audiences on Facebook:
Sanchez walks through the steps of audience building on Facebook ads manager:
Video: https://youtu.be/G72AztXV4-0
And lastly (but most importantly) -
5. Understanding Kill Targets & Delay Attribution Multipliers:
This is probably the most important part about media buying on Facebook. You have to understand your metrics across the full funnel and how delayed attribution will affect your end of most ROAS.
Video: https://youtu.be/2yzSmtT_KpQ
Source: https://twitter.com/social_savannah
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Unbounce analyzed 2,345,864 exit intent popup views and uncovered 2 insights:
1. The first dropped their conversions by 36%.
2. The second increased them by 96%.
First.
They A/B tested:
A: 900x700px popup.
vs
B: 800×500px popup.
Result: The 900x700px popup turned out to be too large for some browsers. As a result, it reduced load/view ratio and overall impressions by 36%. Meanwhile, the 800x500 px popup increased conversions 96% comparatively.
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Noah Kagan, founder at Sumo (AppSumo) has sent more than 100M emails. Here are the 2 biggest mistakes he learned:
#1. A couple years ago, he tested segmentation and spent tons of time and a lot of money. The result? He found that segmentation isn’t worth the effort.
Non-segmented emails generate 3.19X more revenue than segmented.
#2. So many brands only put a CTA at the end of the email. But, very few people who open that email are going to make it down the page (on average 80% read only the first screen).
It means that by placing your CTA at the top of your emails, you can see around 4 times more conversions.
Source: https://www.bigcommerce.com/blog/email-marketing-engagement-tips/
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BuzzSumo analyzed the TOP 3,000 most engaging videos on Facebook.
Here‘s what they found:
1. Heavy video interaction does not depend solely on audience size.
2. TOP 3 calls to action:
- "like our page for more"
- "get the full recipe"
- "like, share, and comment"
3. Storytelling (Setting + Characters + Conflict + Resolution) is an important element of Facebook videos that people share, like, and comment on.
4. TOP 5 most engaging topics:
- Inspiring
- Animals
- Amusing
- DIY
- Recipes
Source: https://buzzsumo.com/blog/need-know-creating-thumb-stopping-facebook-videos
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Neil Patel decided to analyze the types of images he uses in his blog posts that generate the biggest number of backlinks.
Here are the images that he compared:
1. Stock photography
2. Screenshots
3. Hand-drawn images
4. Graphs and charts
5. Infographics
6. Royalty free images
7. Animated graphics
Result:
#4. Graphs and charts received 258% more backlinks than blog posts with other types of images.
Why?
Because data and facts are the most valuable.
And while infographics also have data, graphs and charts are usually smaller and more focused.
Source: https://splitbase.com/conversion-research-ecommerce/
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When you are as huge as Pinterest, you're pretty happy when your next A/B test shows a 0.1% improvement.
Imagine how happy their growth team was when they saw a 50% increase in conversions.
So here's how they managed to do that:
1. They stopped the user from scrolling after a while (the default action of a Pinterest grid is people scrolling).
2. Instead, they pulled up a little banner that said, ‘Sign up to see more of this content.’
This experiment alone improved their conversion rate 50%.
Source: https://www.reforge.com/blog/casey-winters-pinterest-retention-seo
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Neil Patel's team wanted to compare long-form content (over 1000 words) to short-form to see what drives shares and leads.
So, they wrote short-form and long-form articles for their blog and email subscribers. Then they compared results.
Here they are:
- 3 times more Shares for long-form content generated compared to short-form.
- 8 times more Page Views received from long-form content.
- 9 times more Leads generated from long-form content.
Source: https://neilpatel.com/blog/how-to-do-content-marketing-if-youre-dead-broke-and-bad-at-writing
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The Curata team created 24 blog posts, using 3 different sources:
1. Internal resource (staff)
2. Agency/Freelancer
3. Guest blogger
Here‘s how many social shares on average each source got:
1. Internal resource (staff): ~110 shares per blog post
2. Agency/Freelancer: ~250 shares per blog post (2.27 times more)
3. Guest blogger: ~320/blog post (2.91 times more shares)
Looks like typical research until you understand that:
1. Guest posts placed on your blog cost you 0 dollars.
2. Guest posts placed on your blog cost you 0 time spent on creating them.
3. It means they drive traffic to your blog for free.
4. And as a bonus, they get 2.91 times more shares (probably because the author also promotes his/her blog post).
Source: http://www.curata.com/blog/generate-more-leads-with-data-driven-content-marketing/
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Florian Litterst had the chance to hold a training on FB & IG Ads. Something he talked about is creative testing workflow.
No doubt, creatives are *the most important factor* for a high performing campaign in 2020. That's why you should try to test at least 5-10 new creatives each week. But when you test lots of new creatives things can get messy (really messy!) Here is how to do it better:
1️⃣ Use sandbox campaigns (always paused) to organize your creatives as you do in your Google Drive or Dropbox files, f.e. Campaign: 2020 - UK - Creatives + Ad set name: 2020 - June. The goal is to put in new creatives and prepare everything for the testings.
2️⃣ After preparing new creatives in the sandbox campaigns, dupe them to the testing campaigns where you A/B-test and prove all new creatives. This way you're not resetting learnings of your core campaigns and keep things organized.
3️⃣ In testings campaigns, use MOFU/TOFU audiences (no manual bid, PUR-optimization) and try to prove every creative before you dupe it to the "core" campaigns. MOFU = 180 days WCA + 365 ECA, TOFU = 1% or 5% general purchase LAL.
4️⃣ For the testing campaigns, use automated rules to pause creatives if performance is low (f.e. spent is 3-5x CPA and ROAS is below 1). Only when creatives have been proven to work, duplicate them to your core campaigns.
Source: https://twitter.com/litterstflorian/status/1272928815908630528
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Another way to influence buying decisions is by picking the right price.
SocialMediaToday listed 29 pricing tricks, and here are a few of them:
- Choose numbers with fewer syllables: Even though people do not say the price out loud, they actually perceive phonetically short prices as cheaper.
- Use words related to small amounts: Descriptions like “low maintenance” are more appealing than “high performance”. Another example of loss aversion in action.
- Make products seem expensive to manufacture.
- Visual contrast between sales prices is powerful.
Well, all these tricks won’t make or break a business, but they’ll definitely help you get more of that green stuff 🤑.
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According to a study by SimpleRelevance:
1. Women make 85% of all consumer purchases.
2. 91% of women feel that advertisers don’t understand them.
It means, even if you sell consumer products for men, women are the ones who actually buy them. So, it's women you need to market to and convince.
Here's more detailed data by industry:
1. Cars: 65% of purchasing decisions are made by women.
2. Computers: 66%
3. Healthcare: 80%
4. Bank accounts: 89%
5. New homes: 91%
6. Vocations: 92%
7. OTC Medicines: 93%
8. Food/Groceries: 93%
Source: https://www.chainstoreage.com/news/study-women-influence-85-all-purchases/
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Do your retargeting creatives burn out fast?
This is a common issue, simply because retargeting audiences are usually smaller than cold audiences. However, this retargeting set up shared by Josh Graham, which leverages Facebook Dynamic Creatives, might be an easy fix.
The idea is that you upload the creatives and the ad system rotates them to keep ’em fresh.
Here’s how Josh does it:
- Audience: All Website Visitors in the last 30 days, excluding purchasers.
- Two ad sets targeting the same audience but leveraging two different types of creatives: Customer reviews vs. FAQs. Both optimized for purchases on 1-day click attribution.
+ Ad set using reviews: Here you can build five different ads based on five different users’ reviews, using the review as the the copy and UGC pieces as creatives.
+ Ad set that uses FAQs and common buyer objections: Here you can go with your website FAQs section and look for comments on your ads to catch common objections. For the creatives, Josh uses product pictures and videos.
So, once you have all these ads set up you can leverage Facebook Dynamic Creatives features to make them rotate to the most appealing users.
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Our brain has glitches, too, and it’s fairly easy to leverage a few of them when it comes to purchase behavior:
Anchoring effect: Customers tend to attach more weight to the first piece of information in a sequence. After that, they subconsciously alter their perception of value.
Example: Start by introducing your most expensive item. After they see that, your cheaper items still look more competitive.
Social proof: A common one. People tend to “view a behavior as more correct” when others are engaging in the same behavior.
Loss aversion: People put greater emphasis on a loss rather than a gain of equal value.
Example: Trial of a software. Once people start using a software service and the trial period expires, the loss of that software is far more influential than the thought of acquiring something new in that first moment.
Goal gradient: The effort we put into reaching a goal grows as we get closer to that goal.
Example: A 10-space coffee card pre-stamped twice will be completed faster than an 8 with no pre-stamps. This can be useful to shorten the purchasing cycle.
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When is the right time to use a bid cap vs a cost cap in PPC advertising? "Paid Social Evangelist" David Hermann has the answer:
✔️ Bid Caps w/proven creative and a clear understanding of your target CPA.
✔️ Cost Caps for creative testing/scale and a bit open to seeing what your target CPA will be. (Bidding roughly 10-20% higher than target CPA)
Source: David Herrmann on Twitter
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Boosting Google Shopping Ad performance can come down to a few key steps. Here are four that resulted in a 192% increase in ad revenue:
1. Analyze your query data and pick out long tail (more than 3 words long) search terms that are product specific and generating the highest volume and revenue. Raise your bids on those terms.
2. Then set up remarketing ads to those who:
- Viewed basket, didn’t commit to purchase
- Viewed a high 'detail-view’ to checkout-rate product
- Viewed website for over 4 minutes in one session
- Viewed site in the past 5, 10 and 15 days
- Viewed site from high converting location
- Viewed site from high converting device
- Viewed site and in top lifetime value segment
3. Segment your data by mobile devices, gender, age, geography, and find who generates the highest ROI. Then focus your ads specifically on the most valuable segment.
4. If you find that time and day influence ROI, you can use a chart like the image above. Create scripts to automate bidding across this custom schedule.
Source: https://growthhackingidea.com/
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Scott Minker shared some hacks he used to reduce abandoned carts and boost conversions of his ecomm stores. Let’s quickly dive in to what he has to offer:
Transparency about added fees: Keep the pricing uniform across the product pages to the checkout process.
Guest checkouts: Yup, you will have to sacrifice a bit when it comes to customer data, but on the flip side you make things much easier for your customers.
Trust Logos and payment options: As per Shopify, 61% of consumers reconsider purchasing if trust logos are missing. Use transaction forms to establish trust and offer a variety of payment options.
Save my cart for later: Allow your customers to save their cart while they go back to watching cute cat videos. Use email reminders to guide them back to checkout.
Strong CTAs on checkout pages: Even if a prospective customer has added something to their cart, they still need an incentive to actually go through with the purchase. Use uniform and consistent CTAs across all pages.
Effortless navigation: It is one of the most effective ways of reducing friction during the checkout process. Constantly strive to optimize the checkout experience and make it easier for consumers to buy more stuff.
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The Taktical team usually sends cold emails at 9:00-9:30 AM. The average email open rate was 55%.
Then we thought: "What if I send emails a bit earlier so that when a person wakes up, an email is already in their inbox?"
The email's subject, body, and everything else stayed the same. Only the send time changed.
Result: Open rate dropped by 30%. So, we switched back to 9:00-9:30 AM. The average email open rate got back to 55%.
What did we learn? Just because you send an email earlier does not mean your prospect will open it.
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GIFs are the newest hotness in Facebook ads. They're easier to create than live action video but more engaging than static photos.
Autopilot decided to test this with the ad pictured above.
Result: not only did the GIF ad drive the highest volume of free trial signups, it outperformed their average cost per lead by 37%.
Check out the instructions on how to create your ads with GIFs: https://www.facebook.com/business/help/1006874066021923
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Consider it like this: You get $100 for every word you remove from your title.
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An honest line always feels warmer, don't you agree?
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We're not trying to insult you. We just mean everyone cares what you can do for them.
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Not only will the passive voice cost you in terms of readability score, but it's also just plain awkward.
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The best brands feel “real”. Be relatable, funny, cheeky, serious, loopy – the point is just to be authentic.
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You know how people joke about buzzwords like synergy? Well, the same can be said for landing page buzzwords.
Avoid these:
Unlock, unleash, exceed, empower, supercharge, etc.
Just like synergy, real people don't talk like this.
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Pleasant gets forgotten. Don't be the wallflower of content: Create interest with conflict.
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If you say it all from the get-go, what incentive do people have to keep scrolling? Instead, write titles that pull your reader down the page.
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Write scannable copy. This means:
- Use headings
- Replace commas with periods
- Get rid of flowery language (too many adjectives and adverbs are a no-no)
- Create a storyline
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Every line of copy should lead to the next. Play the ad above and you'll get it: You won't be able to stop.
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If people don't read the first line, they're not going to read your second line either. The secret to a great first line? Keep it short.
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Google is beta testing a new conversion goal for its Smart Shopping campaigns - New Customer Acquisition (NCA). This new goal type allows you to set Smart Shopping campaigns to optimize specifically towards acquiring new customers.
How does Google know whether a user is new?
There are three things taken into consideration:
- Google’s native data: It uses a 540-day lookback window based on its own data.
- Self-reported data: You can tag new customers with a combination of the Global Site Tag and new customer parameters.
- First-party list: You can upload a customer list to Google Ads.
It is recommended that, for the highest possible accuracy, all three are utilized.
In addition, Google plans to implement a tag parameter in the future that will allow you to measure lifetime value dynamically based on custom criteria. This data will be reported in a Lifetime Value column, which can be then used for bidding optimization.
If you would like to be a part of the beta test, contact your Google reps for access to be whitelisted.
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A roundup blog post can be a significant tool to boost engagement and drive traffic to your site. But, that requires getting it in front of people first.
Try these 6 steps to achieve high-quality, organic traffic to your blog post:
1. Visit “Search Twitter bios” on FollowerWonk.
2. Input your keyword (SEO, cars, etc.)
3. See the list of the most influential experts in your niche.
4. Find their emails.
5. Send a VERY short email: “I’m doing a roundup of X experts … As one of X gurus, can you please reply to my short question …”
6. At the end say thanks to every expert and send them a link to your roundup (don’t ask them to share).
Source: http://pointblankseo.com/creative-link-building
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Achieve better email campaign results by removing subscribers? Seems counter-intuitive, doesn't it?
But actually, you’ll maintain a much more engaged, focused, and valuable subscriber base if you remove people that are just the opposite.
How to do this:
Segment out subscribers that haven’t engaged with your recent emails and send them another email telling them you’re breaking up with them if they don’t respond.
Use a subject line that makes this very clear:
“This is the last time you’ll hear from me …” / “I’ll never email you again, unless …”.
Then, in the email ask them to click a link to re-confirm that they want to keep receiving your emails.
Source: https://www.drip.co/blog/tips-and-tactics/email-marketing-tips/
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BuzzFeed tested WhatsApp’s share button and found that 38% more people share via WhatsApp than via Twitter!
Aviary said that WhatsApp shares were almost the same level as Facebook and Instagram.
Maybe that's because WhatsApp has 2 billion monthly active users (vs Twitter`s 330M), plus the open rate is over 90%. Pretty impressive, right?
So how can you get a piece of the WhatsApp engagement pie? Embed the share button!
Here's how:
1. WordPress plugin.
2. AddToAny widget.
Boom. Done.
Source: http://digiday.com/media/publishers-see-big-sharing-numbers-via-whatsapp
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The problem:
If you’re spending at high budgets on social media, at a certain point you’ll hit plateaus.
What’s the solution?
Simple - open up new audiences. Easier said than done, right?
What Savannah Sanchez suggests is opening up new audiences inside the broad one you’re already targeting by hitting them with different motivators.
In other words, customers have different reasons for buying, and leveraging different angles in a single broad audience helps you unlock new customers. It’s basically like putting several fishing baits in the same lake.
Finally, Savannah also featured a simple frame you can use to build motivation-based creatives:
1. Capture all possible reasons that would either encourage or prevent consumers from buying. To do this, consider all the different types of people in your audience, as well as different times of the year, week, and day.
2. Pick the top three barriers or motivators.
3. Make sure these three angles do not hit the same people.
4. Build your creatives based on these three motivators/barriers.
Finito! However, the original thread comes with different examples of creatives used, so you might want to check them out!
Source: https://twitter.com/social_savannah/status/1253073408704671744
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Fast email follow-up on new leads (within 1 hour – or better yet, 1 minute) gets TWICE as high response rate and less time/fewer calls to qualify.
Get notified, then get in touch immediately!
Some ways to get fast notifications:
- email alert or Zapier to get lead notifications
- ToutApp or Sidekick by Hubspot to get 1:1 email tracking notifications
Source: https://blog.hubspot.com/sales/double-sales-connection-and-qualification-rates
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Hootsuite asked their landing page visitors 2 questions:
1. Do you have enough information to make a purchase?
2. (If No) What other information would be more helpful?
Armed with their survey results, Hootsuite had a clear path to take action and revamp their landing page.
The result?
The new version led to 16% more conversion!
Source: blog.qualaroo.com
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Datastories analyzed 4 million data points to see what makes it to the front page of Reddit. Here's what they found:
#1. 5pm - 9pm PST is the hottest upvote time.
#2. Images get much more upvotes than text posts.
#3. Very Positive or Very Negative posts perform significantly better than Neutral ones.
#4. Text posts get more comments and stay on the front page longer.
#5. These 5 Sub-Reddits completely dominate the front page of Reddit: r/funny, r/pics, r/gifs, r/TodayILearned, r/gaming
#6. Putting a number in your headline increases chances of being among the top posts.
#7. Internal self-posts LIVE SIGNIFICANTLY LONGER than external posts.
Source: https://blog.datastories.com/blog/reddit-front-page
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When selling something online, it works best when you consistently follow through on the ‘threat’ to expire the offer. The whole point is to encourage them to ACT NOW.
Try these tips:
- Decrease your free trial time period (cut it in half or more)
- Limit free trial units (only X available)
- Display a counter — time OR units are running out
Remember: A delayed conversion = a lost conversion.
Source: 500 startups
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Jordan Gutierrez from Wishpond found after a bunch of A/B tests that YouTube video ads are, by far, the most effective retargeting tool out there. But YouTube does not support remarketing pixels.
You can, however, still create a remarketing list only out of people who watched your videos.
In order to handle this, Wishpond`s team created and embedded short videos for each of their most popular articles. To do this, they used a white-screen video without sound, 1 second in length, and autoplayed it on every page with this invisible code:
<iframe width=“560” height=“315” src=“https://www.youtube.com/embed/PLACE_VIDEO_ID_HERE?rel=0&autoplay=1” frameborder=“0” style=“position: absolute; left: -500px;”></iframe>
Source: https://growthhackers.com/questions/how-does-your-team-analyze-the-effectiveness-of-retargeting-ads
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Here's a simple but effective change to make to your emails.
Campaign Monitor sent their emails with the link as a Call to Action at the bottom.
Then, they changed the link to an HTML button.
Result: their click-throughs increased by 28%.
Source: https://www.campaignmonitor.com/blog/email-marketing/2014/08/buttons-email-marketing-campaigns
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Kaya Skin Clinic tried optimizing their landing page by changing the call to action above the form.
Original CTA: “For a skin consultation register here”
NEW CTA: “I want an expert opinion. Sign me up for a free skin consult!”
Result: Conversion rate went from 4% to 9.5%! That's a nearly 137% increase!
Added bonus: They added a Facebook likes counter and conversion jumped another 70%.
Source: https://vwo.com/blog/call-to-action-increase-sales/
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It's called a content upgrade.
Normally people have to pay for premium content. You can give it away in exchange for an email address.
Take a blog post or a video that you’ve got and offer an extra bonus as a PDF. Make your users give up their emails to get the upgrade.
Brian from BackLinko added “Download PDF version of this article in exchange for your email".
The results?
Instant 785% increase in conversions!
Bonus: Other folks utilize it on their YouTube channels, offering “Download the PDF transcription of this video”.
Source: http://backlinko.com/increase-conversions?
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TheHOTH had a typical landing page with sections like: Signup Form, Featured At, Description, How it works, Support, Team, etc.
They then created a super minimalist landing with only the sign-up form, a 6-word title, and an 8-word subtitle.
Result: account signups increased from 1.39% to 13.13% (up by 844%)!
Source: https://vwo.com/blog/minimal-homepage-increased-leads-seo-service-company
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This is what they did:
They focused on helping their churned (lost) free trial users become successful in achieving their goals by using their product with deep 1-on-1s. They tweaked code, gave useful info, spent hours on Skype — whatever it took.
After a while, that un-scalable hustling turned into scalable texts, videos, tutorials, onboarding emails, FAQ section, etc.,
This boosted their conversions by 367% over 12 weeks.
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Instead of asking visitors to sign up immediately, why not ask them to first perform a task through which something of value is demonstrated?
During such initial interactions the product can show off its benefits. AND this process can lend itself to personalization.
GoodUI tried this and found a 26% increase in signups.
Once users begin to see your product’s value and see how they can make it their own, they will then be more open to sharing additional information with you.
Gradual engagement is really a way to postpone the signup process as much as possible and still allow users to use and customize your application or product.
Source: http://www.goodui.org/evidence/test025
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Marketing Experiments Blog did a test where they compared two variants of a landing page:
One with a column on the right
vs.
One with a single column.
The single column variant outperformed the two column design by a stunning 680.6%!
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3Q Digital queried their database for ads that contained rectangles that made up less than 33 percent of the canvas (buttons, basically). They ran a query on the typical color of buttons created and posed the question:
“Which button color works best?”
The answer?
It' blue.
When blue buttons are compared to others, the blue button color yields an average CTR increase of 6.19%. No other color had a common trend of increased CTR.
Source: https://3qdigital.com/featured/ab-testing-over-1m-worth-of-display-ads-5-things-we-learned/
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YouTube has 2 billion users who watch 1 billion hours of video every day. And, more than 70% of YouTube traffic come from mobile devices.
Adding annotations to a video boosts your views/retention?
But. . .and this is a big but:
Annotations don’t show up on mobile!
Here’s how to fix it:
Use YouTube Cards instead.
1. Go to your YouTube channel.
2. Click your video.
3. Click on the cards icon.
4. Press “Add card”
Source: http://www.statisticbrain.com/youtube-statistics/
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Don’t copy brand name onboarding/activation flows because they’re famous.
Copy them because THEY WORK.
Major apps with massive user bases in every field and subject matter have already trained people to follow a set activation flow.
In fact, regardless of what type of app you're launching, your new users are probably already their existing users.
Let them do what they’re used to.
Source: 500 Startups
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Research shows that most people scan email campaigns rather than reading them word-for-word. So, text links will often go overlooked. Instead, using buttons for your call to action means they will stand out to skimmers.
Campaign Monitor tested this theory, running a campaign where one version had a button to get the click, and another version had text.
The result?
127% more clicks from the version using a button CTA!
Source: https://www.campaignmonitor.com/blog/email-marketing/2014/08/buttons-email-marketing-campaigns
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The company Uber Testers offers a chance for real people to test your website or product. Then, you can get feedback on what they liked and didn’t like. Its the focus group for the 21st century.
But why stop there?
Use Uber Testers on your RIVALS.
Find out what they’re doing right and wrong, get inspired, and find opportunities.
Source: 500 Startups
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Did you know that the average amount of lost sales due to a “card declined” error is 2-5%?
Here is a simple technique that helped recoup 30% of those “Card Declined” abandonments.
Baymard, in the credit card error message, simply added a suggestion to “Pay with PayPal”.
The result?
30% of the people whose credit cards failed went ahead with PayPal.
Source: http://baymard.com/blog/credit-card-declined
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Leanplum, a mobile marketing automation tool, broke down 671 million pushes to uncover some interesting trends on time-of day targeting for push notifications.
Here's what they discovered:
- Pushes sent and opened trends upward throughout the day, with a small peak around noon, a slightly larger one around 3pm, and the largest in the evening.
The post-evening trend is interesting: after 6pm, on a relative basis, Pushes Opened starts to trend higher, relative to previous hours, and Pushes Sent is lower.
This indicates that while mobile apps are delivering a ton of pushes leading up to evening, it might be more effective to time them post-evening, when engagement seems high.
Source: http://andrewchen.co/breaking-down-671-million-push-notifications-by-hour/
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Aaron Zakowski, the Facebook ad guru, ran a test to see how he could get more people to click ‘play’ on his Facebook video ads.
His solution? Add some emojis of speakers to get people to click for sound then A/B test those against ones without emojis.
Result:
The version without the CTA and emoji only had 0.35% of people click the play button.
Meanwhile, the ad with the emojis had 1.7% of viewers click the play button for sound.
That’s an improvement of 386% for the version with the emoji CTA.
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Gr8tFires - which makes wood-burning stoves and fireplaces - discovered that one of the biggest customer pain points is the cost of installation.
So, how did they leverage this information?
1. They installed an exit popup (shows up when you are about to abandon the page).
2. In the popup they offered an installation calculator for free in exchange for an email address.
Result: a 300% increase in monthly sales leads.
Source: http://www.matthewwoodward.co.uk/
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In general, bullet points are ideal for listing out key features and benefits.
For example, compare the following:
"Bullets make your copy more readable, easier to understand, and more convincing."
vs.
"Bullets make your copy:
Which looks better to you?
During an A/B test by Swedish Company Unionen (pictured above), switching from a wall of text to bullets generated a 5.3% conversion rate. This was a 15.9% improvement over the version without bullets.
Source: http://www.abtests.com/test/38003/other-for-unionen-www-unionen-se
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When showing multiple offers, an emphasized product suggestion might be a good idea as some people need a little nudge.
There are some psychology studies out there which suggest that the more choice there is, then the lower the chances of a decision actually being made and acted upon.
In order to combat such analysis paralysis, try emphasizing and highlighting certain options above others.
When businesses tried this, they saw a 25% boost in purchases.
Source: https://goodui.org/
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Ever since the early days of SEO, H1 tags have been believed to be extremely important for ranking the content in SERPs. But are H1 tags really necessary?
Here’s how Google likes to answer it:
"You can use H1 tags as often as you want on a page. There's no limit, neither upper nor lower bound.
H1 elements are a great way to give more structure to a page. But, your site can do perfectly fine with no H1 tags or with five H1 tags."
But you don’t always have to take Google at face value.
So, Moz decided to test it out. They used H2s and H3s for headlines instead of H1s and monitored the results.
They devised a 50/50 split test of their titles using SearchPilot.
Results 8 weeks later?
Changing the H2s to H1s made no statistically significant difference.
The results of this test were inconclusive in terms of organic traffic, so they reverted it back.
PS: While this experiment doesn't definitively prove that H1s aren't a ranking factor, it does show that they couldn't find a statistically significant difference between using H1s and H2s.
That being said, there are some reasons you should still use H1:
- H1s help accessibility.
- Google sometimes uses H1s in place of title tags.
- Heading use is often correlated with better rankings.
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Stock photos are high-quality, but they look staged. They are irritatingly perfect.
Harrington Movers decided to replace their high-quality stock photo with a real crew image.
The A/B test has been running for three months.
As a result, the version with the crew image showed a conversion increase of 45.45%!
Source: https://vwo.com/blog/stock-photos-reduce-conversions
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ComScore found that 27% of people who searched for a coupon code never returned to purchase.
Blog content can help drive website visitors through the funnel towards converting. Here are some ways you can turn your blog readers into customers:
1. Use retargeting ads. These ads display only for people who have visited your blog in the past.
How to do it: Place a remarketing pixel on your blog to capture your audience -> Add remarketing ads -> CTR (Click thru rate): 0.2%
2. Place Hellobar on your blog -> Average Newsletter subscribers: 3.53%
3. Place a popup on your blog -> Average Newsletter subscribers: 0.5% - 2%
4. Opt-in form at the end of each blog post -> Newsletter subscribers: 0.75% - 2%
5. Offer free webinars using Google Hangouts for your subscribers -> Free trial signups: 41%. They convert to –> Paying customers: 12.1% of the time
Source: www.quicksprout.com
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What types of offers lead to more sales? Well, this study did an A/B test of a good deal and a free offer.
Here was the offer:
1. A cupcake and 2 cookies package for $10.
2. A cupcake for $10 + 2 cookies for free.
The results showed that people buy option #2 at an 82% higher rate than #1.
Source: www.scu.edu
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Most of the time, we like to look for the most popular pages on our website. This is helpful for coming up with new blog post ideas, among other things.
But opportunity also lies in identifying your worst performing pages. This process is how you find holes in your content and SEO strategy.
Here's how that process works:
- Ideally, you want to keep prospects on your site long enough to convert them from lead or customer.
- For this reason, you need to go to the Behavior tab in the Google Analytics menu.
- Then, click Exit Pages under the Site Content menu.
This process will show you the pages where prospects most often exit your website.
With that information, you can then analyze these pages and look for ways to keep prospects engaged with your website.f
You might have to change the design or refresh/re-write the content, depending on how important the page is.
Source: https://www.searchenginejournal.com/6-ways-use-google-analytics-havent-thought/155118/
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ComScore found that 27% of people who searched for a coupon code never returned to purchase.
If you must shop on Amazon, it is possible to get plastic-free packaging.
Here is how you do it:
- Open your Amazon account
- Go to 'help/customer service'
- Go to the 'contact us' page
- Use their 'chat' option
- On chat, request to make all future orders plastic-free with minimal packaging, and where absolutely necessary, use only degradable packing materials like paper.
- This information will be saved to your account for all future orders!
It will take you 5 minutes to make all your future Amazon orders plastic free!
Here's what you should do:
1. Remove the coupon code field.
2. Use direct links, which have a coupon code attached.
Macy’s added a link to “Find one now” near “Have a promo code?”. The link shows page listings with current discount codes, keeping customers on their site.
Source: http://blog.lemonstand.com/optimize-checkout-page-conversions
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A research project analyzed 3 million visitors to a contest page. They A/B tested two versions of the page to determine which yielded more sign-ups:
“$500 giveaway” vs “October $500 giveaway”.
Notice the difference?
The results showed that, when you specify the month of the contest, conversion rates increase by an astounding 40%.
Source: http://unbounce.com/conversion-rate-optimization/hidden-power-of-giveaways/
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Totango released 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%.
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ComScore found that 27% of people who searched for a coupon code never returned to purchase.
Here's what you should do:
1. Remove the coupon code field.
2. Use direct links, which have a coupon code attached.
Macy’s added a link to “Find one now” near “Have a promo code?”. The link shows page listings with current discount codes, keeping customers on their site.
Source: http://blog.lemonstand.com/optimize-checkout-page-conversions
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Ever wonder why this weekly email goes out on Sunday?
No competition. That's why. You’re not busy on Sunday at 4pm, so you can open this email and enjoy.
Apparently, the same is true for Facebook. Quicksprout analyzed 8 BILLION (with a B) Facebook posts. They discovered that the weekend is your best bet.
Additional note: Posting between 9pm and 11pm local time is also a good option
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ContentVerve has a case study showing that adding a few clarifying words can significantly increase conversions.
Here's what they discovered:
Changing the CTA copy from, “Get Membership” to, “Find Your Gym & Get Membership” increased click through to the payment page by 213.16%.
Lesson learned: get specific in your offer without going overboard with copy.
Source: https://klientboost.com/cro/call-to-action-copy/
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Social proof can work both ways. Taloon.com removed social sharing buttons from its product pages. This one change increased ‘add to cart’ actions by 11.9%.
Why?
The number of shares on most of the product pages was zero.
While a high number of shares and likes acts as positive reinforcement, a low number of shares breeds distrust in the mind of the customer about both the company and the quality of the product.
Source: https://vwo.com/blog/removing-social-sharing-buttons-from-ecommerce-product-page-increase-conversions/
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Pipedrive’s testimonials are dynamic. Based on where you are located, they show you testimonials from local businesses in your area.
If you're in San Francisco and log into their platform, you'll notice only Californian testimonials.
It's a subtle thing to do, but people are far more likely to recognize brands and companies that are in their local area, making the testimonials far more powerful.
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Outbrain, the leading native content advertiser, compared 65,000 paid blog article advertisement titles. They contained positive (“always” or “best”) superlatives, negative (“never” or “worst”) superlatives, and no superlatives.
RESULT:
Headlines with negative superlatives performed 30% better than ones without superlatives.
And the average click-through rate on headlines with negative superlatives was a staggering 63% higher than that of their positive counterparts.
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Your growth depends on a great team, but it’s hard to compete with giants in the marketplace.
Try to include a “Who You’ll Work With” section in your job posting as a personal touch that’s rarely applied. It stands out and adds a human element in a meaningful way.
Here's how that section should look:
1. Highlight the 3-4 people they’ll work closest with.
2. Place emphasis on why it’s rewarding to work with them.
3. Include at least one person in a leadership role.
Bonus: Include articles from your peers about your company culture.
Source: http://www.helpscout.net/blog/writing-job-posting/
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Mailchimp does something a little differently when it comes to displaying their latest products or features to existing users.
Instead of taking you directly to their home site to - as many web apps usually do - they show these in the logout screen.
What they're doing is taking advantage of that user action to get a last opportunity to get your attention.
If you want to see it live, sign out of your Mailchimp account. You'll notice you're taken to a split-screen, with some type of Mailchimp promotional content on the right.
Source: PetitHacks.com
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CrazyEgg tested the following modifications to their signup process to get over twice as many people to give them credit card info:
1. Added a FAQ answering, “Why do you need my credit card for a free trial?” (Answer: To prevent multiple free trials for one person).
2. Added an explanation: “Nothing will be billed for 30 days. You can cancel at any time.”
3. Added a list of companies that use their product.
4. Order total: Changed from “$49 per month” to “$0 for 30 days” + small text “after 30 days: $49 per month".
How did Crazy egg even think to do this?
Well, they installed a survey tool on the checkout page so they could understand what objections were on the minds of visitors right there.
This helped to create an FAQ box that countered those objections.
Source: http://www.conversion-rate-experts.com/crazy-egg-case-study/
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Marketing Experiments ran a test to see which copy tone would result in a higher rate of lead inquiries?
Here are examples of each type of tone they looked at:
1: Selling tone: You are one step away from getting free access to …
2. Helping tone. We are just here to provide you with whatever assistance you need in [reaching customer`s goal] …
The result?
#2 - the helping tone - saw a 349% increase in total lead inquiries.
Source: http://www.marketingexperiments.com/blog/
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Asking your users to pay after their trial expires is a hard stop to the user’s experience. Try to do it softer.
How?
By giving them an option after their trial period has expired:
1. "Select your paid plan."
OR
2. "Request a 5 day extension." (They will be asked for their credit card information, but won’t be charged yet)
Trial extensions converted to paid customers at a rate of 66%.
Source: http://appcues.com/blog/
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More than 500 editors at top sites like BuzzFeed, TIME, Lifehacker, Scientific American, TechCrunch were asked, “What characteristic does the perfect piece of content possess?
Here's what they said:
15% said “Emotional Stories”
19% said “Relevant Content”
27% said “Breaking News”
39% said “Exclusive Research”
Offer these kinds of stories and you’ll land more press.
Source: https://growthhackers.com/slides/500-editors-journalists-reveal/
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The answer is super simple: Unexpected shipping costs. Seriously.
A survey by Visual Website Optimizer found that 28% of shoppers who abandoned their carts did so because of unexpected shipping costs. In fact, it was the greatest cause cited by respondents.
The solution: You can charge for shipping, but be super visible about it.
What do we mean? Well, include it on the product page so that your users know exactly what they’ll be paying.
People don’t mind paying for shipping, they just don’t like being surprised.
Source: http://ecommerceloyalty.com
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Adbasis created a lot of ad tests before they were acquired by AirBnB – a LOT. We’re talking over 3,000 ad tests in a year.
Some were mobile ad tests, some were not. But no matter what industry, vertical, or audience, there are three magic words that can drastically improve your mobile conversion rate.
It doesn’t matter if you’re B2B or B2C, you need mobile-specific content and these three words will help.
What are these 3 magic words?
FROM. YOUR. PHONE.
The average increase in conversion rate based on the 42 positive examples is +36.6%. Yes, this single test on average increased conversion rate by 36.6%.
12 times out of 48 this test more than doubled conversion rate (100%+ lifts).
Source: https://www.adbasis.com/blog
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Competitors or related companies might have a huge following on Twitter.
Here's the thing: that's a reason to celebrate because it represents all the more growth to hack!
How to do this:
Step 1: Visit FollowerWonk.com and download a report on your target Twitter account’s followers (a free account can get you 50,000 contacts).
Step 2: Submit the list of usernames and URLs to Amazon’s Mechanical Turk and crowdsource the email addresses.
Step 3: Pop these users into a Google mail merge (or the mailing software of your choice) with the subject line “I saw you follow xxxxxx”
Step 4: Profit
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The words you use in your subject lines impact email open rate. We know this. But, just how much of an effect can they have?
Here are the words that can impact your open rate the most:
Positive
- Free: +2%
- Freebie: +26%
- Urgent: +79%
- Thank you: +57%
Negative
- Cancelled: -40%
- Helping: -12%
- Donate: -56%
- Last chance: -45%
Source: blog.mailchimp.com
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One of these two headlines performed better than the other.
1st: “The simple test that increased our referrals”.
2nd: “The simple test that increased our referrals by 30%”.
The second looks more promising. But by how much? +40%!
Data makes your headlines stronger.
Here is a great, massive resource with all kinds of data to make your headlines stronger: statista.com
Source: blog.bufferapp.com
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Carnegie Mellon set up a free trial program that customers can sign up for and tested it between two phrases:
1. “a $5 fee”
2. “a small $5 fee”
The second phrase was able to increase sign-up rates by over 20%.
They found that the emphasis on the “small” fee made it much easier to deal with conservative spenders.
Source: http://www.copyblogger.com/scientific-copywriting/
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Looking for some quick tips that can give your brand a boost as we approach the end of Q4? Look no further:
- All discounts should be at least 20% off. Anything less isn't a holiday deal and will be outdone by competing products.
- Experiment with "dollars off" language rather than "percent off" for products over $50.
- Auto-apply your discounts site wide, rather than asking people to look for coupon codes
- Bundle your smaller products into bigger items. People often do not by overly small gifts; a bundle of different products or multiple of the same one offers the opportunity to sell it as a gift.
- Focus on urgency: Repeatedly tell your visitors that time is running out. Consider a countdown timer.
- Figure out when is your last-minute, guaranteed-by-Christmas shipping date. Then, run a special promotion/email focused on that deadline.
And here are a couple of tips for NEXT YEAR:
- Increase your prospecting traffic heavily in the days and weeks leading up to Black Friday in order to maximize retargeting pools.
- Triple the rate at which you send emails to cart abandons and past customers.
Happy holidays! 🎁⛄
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Researchers handed out loyalty cards at a car wash. The cards offered a stamp for every car wash the customer bought.
Half of the cards had spots for eight stamps, with a free car wash offered for collecting all eight.
The other half had spots for ten stamps, but two of the spots came pre-stamped.
(oooooooo vs ooooooooXX)
The result?
The pre-stamped cards resulted in 178% more repeat business than the unstamped ones.
Source: Shopify
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We all know that urgency increases conversion rates. People are more inclined to make a purchase if they see a limited stock level, or something that says “Buy now – the offer will expire soon!”
The Limited Availablity JSON-LD Code will help inform the search engines that you are running a time-limited sale. This way, they can include this info in your rich snippets.
Here’s the code: http://schema.org/LimitedAvailability
Also, this code will let you specify the number of items on sale, a short campaign description, and location.
Source: Mageworx.com
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The MECLABS Institute was exploring how color affects sign-up conversions on a landing page. So, they A/B tested a simple change for their special VIP landing page.
A. Dark background and white text.
B. White background and dark text.
Which do you think won for their VIP landing page?
Here's the result: The white background and dark text generated +10.66% more signups.
Source: https://marketingexperiments.com/conversion-marketing/color-change-test-recap
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YouTube has 1.3 billion users who watch 5 billion videos every day. More than half of those YouTube views come from mobile devices.
Adding annotations to a video boosts your views/retention. But: Annotations don’t show up on mobile!
Here’s how to fix it: Use YouTube Cards instead.
How to set these up:
1. Go to your YouTube channel.
2, Click your video.
3. Click on the cards icon.
4. Press “Add card”
Source: http://www.statisticbrain.com/youtube-statistics/
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Headlines are 90% of the battle when it comes to getting clicks and shares for blogs. The next 10% is engaging the audience.
Here's how to deal with both sides of the equation to get your blog post in front of as many eyes as possible:
1. Jump on Buzzsumo.com
2. Examine highly shared blog posts and copy their title styles.
3. Write a blog post that mentions popular people on Twitter.
4. Publish the blog post and tweet at the popular people you mention.
5. Get retweeted.
6. Repeat.
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Optimizely created a webinar and then A/B tested two CTAs to convert readers into viewers:
CTA #1. Watch Webinar
CTA #2. View Presentations & Slides
Which one do you think has increased the CTR by +49.6%?
#2: View Presentations & Slides
Source: https://www.quicksprout.com/email-ab-testing/
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We all know headlines matter. But sometimes coming up with compelling ones again and again can be tricky.
Save yourself some time; here are 10 proven headline formulas that work:
1. Who Else Wants [blank]?
2. The Secret of [blank]
3. Here is a Method That is Helping [blank] to [blank]
4. Little-Known Ways to [blank]
5. Get Rid of [problem] Once and For All
6. Here’s a Quick Way to [solve a problem]
7. Now You Can Have [something desirable] [great circumstance]
8. [Do something] like [world-class example]
9. Have a [or] Build a [blank] You Can Be Proud Of
10. What Everybody Ought to Know About [blank]
Source: https://www.copyblogger.com/10-sure-fire-headline-formulas-that-work/
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Spearmint LOVE sells baby clothes and goods. They started out doing well but eventually their ROI disappeared.
For 6 months they tested different solutions. Then they uncovered 2 tricks that yielded 5x-10x ROI.
Trick #1:
They started to put up a photo – not just of a shirt or shoes – but of an entire outfit that appeals to a particular emotion. As a result, Moms started to buy everything in that picture.
Example pictured above.
Trick #2.
They realized an obvious thing: children grow. And so, they need to readjust their Facebook ads according to age.
1. They started to advertise only to pregnant moms.
2. Then they added the visitors to a retargeting audience.
3. Based on how long the visitors are in that audience, they know the approximate age of the baby.
4. For different ages, they show different suitable clothes and goods.
Voila: 5x-10x ROI.
Source: https://www.bigcommerce.com/blog/facebook-advertising-success-story
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Winnie – an app for parents – had a Share button on every post, but not too many people used it.
Then they made one change and saw a 300% boost in shares.
What did they do?
1. They removed the Share button from every post.
2. Instead, they replaced it with a Save button, so that users could create their own collection of interesting posts.
3. Then they added the Share button on the collection of bookmarked posts.
Boom! +300% more shares.
Source: https://winnie.com/blog/how-to-get-first-100k-active-users?
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People are still way too hesitant to move their IGTV preview into the feed.
True: It is not that great looking. But, Instagram favors IGTV in the feed.
So, when you tick the box for preview, your video will earn maximum traction.
We have lately seen up to 48% more views on videos that were posted to IGTV than similar videos posted to the feed.
We have also seen more engagement from these videos that are on IGTV.
Pro tip: You should use IGTV and the preview function no matter what. But, if you don't want it to mess up the look of your feed, then you do have the option to only keep it there for the first 12h.
Source: This growth hack was sent by fellow subscriber, Cordula Pflügl, from @africanbushcamps. Thanks, Cordula! Don't forget to send in your own growth hack for the chance to be featured in a future issue.
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Would you like to decrease your cost per conversion by 2.58 times? Of course you do!
This is exactly what AdEspresso managed to achieve with just 2 words while A/B testing tons of ads.
What are these 2 words?
Have a look at the 2 A/B tests in the image above.
Did you notice those 2 powerful words?
They are: "Free ebook".
Creating less distraction and maximizing focus on these 2 words always generated huge improvements for them.
Source: https://adespresso.com/blog/facebook-ads-split-testing-101/
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On Instagram, if you haven't reached the 10K follower mark, the only place to insert a link until recently was your bio. By adding another step to the process of users clicking through, this can be a big problem when it comes to driving traffic to your site.
But, here's the good news:
You can add a fully clickable link into your IGTV video description!
You can even place more than one link, and tag it with a UTM to see if it's coming specifically from IGTV.
Too few people are using this feature yet. So, it's the perfect time for you to take advantage of it.
Source: This growth hack was sent by fellow subscriber, Cordula Pflügl, from @africanbushcamps. Thanks, Cordula! Don't forget to send in your own growth hack for the chance to be featured in a future issue.
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77% of customers say this is the most important thing a company can do to provide good customer service:
According to a recent Forrester Consulting study, 77% of customers say that valuing their time is the most important thing a company can do to provide good customer service.
Source: https://www.genesys.com/resources/the-case-for-omnichannel-self-service?
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Researchers handed out loyalty cards at a car wash. The cards offered a stamp for every car wash the customer bought.
Half of the cards had spots for eight stamps, with a free car wash offered for collecting all eight. The other half had spots for ten stamps, but two of the spots came pre-stamped (oooooooo vs ooooooooXX).
The result?
The pre-stamped cards resulted in 178% more repeat business than the unstamped ones.
Source: https://www.shopify.com/blog/customer-service
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Buttons that are written in the first person experience a 90 percent increase in clicks.
Just use the word “my” instead of “your”.
Here's it in action:
"Start my free 30 day trial" instead of "Start your free 30 day trial".
Source: https://unbounce.com/a-b-testing/failed-ab-test-results/
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Anyone who’s ever built a landing page knows how hard it is to convert mobile traffic –especially from Facebook Ads.
Dimitry Kagan managed to double his conversions by switching from landing pages to a chatbot.
Here’s how:
1. First he tested out a “Messages to Page” campaign and it went pretty well! A Customer Service Rep chatted with people and converted them.
2. Then he turned the highest converting flow into a script to automate the process.
3. He created a Facebook Chatbot, and now it chats with leads even while he sleeps.
The 4 tools you’ll need to create your Facebook Chatbot campaign:
1. A regular “Clicks to Website” Facebook Ads Campaign. Instead of a website URL, you’ll pick “Messenger” as the destination.
2. Chatfuel: a free chatbot builder
3. Zapier: to extract leads from chats
4. Google Sheets: to store lead info
Example by Dimitry - In the ad leading to the chatbot he writes:
“Want me to create a great landing page for your business?
Click this link and type: 'landing' in the chat”
That way, when people chat with your bot, they’ll know they can use this keyword. And you can program the bot to respond to it with an appropriate answer.
Result: A 35% conversion rate from clicks to leads (double the performance of his landing pages) + cheaper clicks to the bot.
Source: https://businesspineapple.com/lead-generation-facebook-chatbot
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Track users on their journey through your product/service, rather than focusing on simple aggregate metrics commonly talked about
Why? You can optimize the experience, and know where you are 'losing' the user with the former, but not with the latter.
Knowing and tracking how many users went from homepage, to search, to product, to cart, how long they spent on each stage, and did they go back and forth between pages is more insightful than the default unique active users, or total number of page views.
How can you do this?
Implement the 'event' functionality of your tracking tool (or use one is designed around event tracking - like Mixpanel and Amplitude, rather than just the 'default' setup of Google Analytics)
Source: https://500.co/
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Broken and dead links of your competitors are a huge opportunity for link building. But first you need to find them.
Here's how:
1. Visit AlternativeTo.net to find a huge list of your competitors.
2. Check dead links using browser plugins (Check My Links, Domain Hunter) OR upload a list of URLs to Xenu or Screaming Frog.
3. Google "link: deadcompetitor.com".
4. Contact every website owner to alert them of a broken link and offer a relevant link of yours to replace it.
Source: http://webris.org/broken-link-building/
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If you don't have an existing customer base and you're creating a Facebook ad target audience using interests, avoid using generic or broad interests. For example, don't just use "Running".
Instead, pick specific interests, like The Boston Marathon.
How do you ensure you're targeting the hardcore runner and not just the generic fan?
Pick the interests ONLY hardcore running enthusiasts know, like Runkeeper or Runtastic or Endomondo.
The same rule applies for other interests, too.
Source: https://500.co/
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Midas Media managed to boost their revenue from Google Shopping by +192%, and profits by around 300%!
How did they do it?
1. They analyzed data and found that 8-9-word long search queries (product specific) generate on average +300% more revenue.
So they started to bid high against these terms.
2. Then they remarketed ads to those who:
Viewed basket, didn’t commit to purchase
Viewed a high 'detail-view’ to checkout-rate product
Stayed on website for over 4 minutes in one session
Viewed site in the past 5, 10, and 15 days
Visited site from high converting location
Visited site from high converting device
Viewed site and in top lifetime value segment
3. Then they segmented their data by mobile devices, gender, age, and geography and found who generates the highest ROI. They focused their ads specifically on the most valuable segment.
4. They found that time and day of the week when their ad was displayed heavily influenced their ROI. So they regularly calculated data and get something like the chart image above.
Then they created scripts that automated bidding across this custom schedule.
Boom: 3 times more profit!
Source: https://midasmedia.co.uk/google-shopping-case-study
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Have you ever seen "Invite a friend - get X amount of money", or "X%/$X discount for your next purchase"?
These offers are everywhere.
But do they work?
A study found that simply shifting from a cash reward to a bottle of wine (1/10th the cost of the cash reward) increased the number of referral sales by 3,600%!
The takeaway: Real gifts work much better than cash incentives.
Maybe this is a reason why Uber positions its referral message as "Get a free ride worth up to $5 when you refer a friend to try Uber" and not just "Get $5 …".
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Stitch analysts found that retailers who sell on 2 marketplaces see 190% more in revenue than those who sell only on a single marketplace.
In this case, boosting your sales is as easy as putting your products in front of the eyes of the new ready-to-buy audiences.
Where else can you sell your products?
Check out these 5 marketplaces.
Source: https://empireflippers.com/multichannel-ecommerce-selling
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This simple Facebook hack can transform your business.
First gain “social proof” (~1000 Likes) from low-demand countries (e.g. India, Philippines) for $0.005 per post engagement.
Then, switch target to the high demand, high competition countries.
Get 64% less cost per engagement, 920% increase in click-through rate.
Source: https://www.businessol.com/resources/blog/
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A company tested two checkboxes for an email signup box.
Version A: just said "Terms and Conditions"
Version B: Said "100% privacy – We will never spam you”.
The treatment with the privacy policy reduced conversions by 18.70%. The result was completely counter-intuitive, but it teaches an important lesson: simply adding a privacy policy doesn’t guarantee more sing-ups. In fact, it can seriously reduce your conversion rate.
Tests indicated that the word "spam" had an undesirable effect – even when used to assure visitors that they would not receive any spam. The hypothesis is that by placing the word spam in close proximity of the form, you actually plant an idea in the minds of the prospects:
“Oh wait, could they actually end up spamming me?”
Source: https://unbounce.com/a-b-testing/failed-ab-test-results/?
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You set up your next Facebook ad A/B test and you get stuck. Sound familiar?
Here‘s how you can break a creativity wall in seconds.
Have a look at this catalog of over 60K Facebook Ad examples from every industry: https://adespresso.com/ads-examples/
You can filter them by Ad placement, Industry, Metric, Etc.
Browse the list and find ads with the highest engagement rates. If businesses invested a lot of money in them, it must be for a reason.
They're worth paying attention to – and copying a few insights from – for your next A/B test.
Source: https://adespresso.com/ads-examples/
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Have you ever wanted to be promoted by influencers and everybody who promotes influencers?
Besides promotion, you'll be able to get very powerful backlinks, which are so vital for SEO.
So here's the hack:
1. Use Ahrefs to see which of your competition gets the most traffic.
2. Look at their most popular pages / highest traffic.
3. See who links to those posts.
4. Take the juiciest, data-driven pieces of content from those posts.
5. Use 99 designs, Fiverr or Dribble to pay a designer to create an infographic, then cite the post.
6. Go to all the people who linked and tell them you created an infographic. Ask them to embed the image and host the infographic on your site.
Boom! It's a Win-win-win for all the sides.
Source: https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/eric-siu/marketing-school-with-neil-patel-eric-siu/e/54933880
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If you just post on your Facebook page, on average, less than 1% of fans will see it.
You can increase your organic reach through paid promotion. This works because the more people who engage with your post, the higher your organic reach will be.
But: It can cost you a bunch of money.
Here’s how to promote more efficiently and get more engagement for less money:
Re-market only to people who like/comment/share your Facebook posts. This audience will deliver the highest engagement per $1 invested.
How can you do this?
1. Go to Facebook Ads Manager - Audiences.
2. Click “Create Audience” in the top left corner.
3. Select “Custom Audience.”
4. Click on the option “Engagement”.
5. Select “Facebook Page” from the menu.
6. Click the “Page” dropdown and select the Page whose engagement you want to retarget.
7. Click the “Everyone who engaged with your Page” dropdown.
8. Choose “People who engaged with any post or ad.”
9. In the “In The past” field, enter 30 days past the engagement.
10. Name your audience.
11. Hit “Create audience.”
12. Target your Facebook ads to this audience.
Source: https://klientboost.com/retargeting/facebook-retargeting
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Lots of people forget that a big part of your Google rankings are based on how quickly your website loads. Google even offers a “Pagespeed Insights” tool.
The most common problem for websites is unoptimized images. Designers aren’t keen on crappy image quality.
SEO ninja Jacob Hagberg suggests this quick hack to fix this:
Optimize images with the “LOSSY” Filter from https://kraken.io to reduce 50% of the image size without loss of quality.
Source: Jacob Hagberg
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Does your product have a free trial?
If so, somewhere in the middle of that free trial, offer users a one time chance to end their free trial early in exchange for a big discount, like a free month.
Send an email, text, or push notification (if you have an app) that reads something like:
“End Trial Now - Get 1 Month Free. This special offer expires in 59:59 minutes”.
And then make sure to have the clock count down to inspire even more urgency.
Source: GrowthHacks
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If your designer insists on creating one giant image for your email, tell them you risk antagonizing readers.
Image-only emails are slower to load, harder to search for, and are often blocked by firewalls, spam filters, and privacy blockers. They're also completely inaccessible for voice assistants, and non-native speakers can't translate text when it's embedded in images.
Remember: Being accessible is not just socially good; it also means a bigger audience for your business!
Source: 500 startups
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Boomerang analyzed 250K emails and found these TOP 4 insights:
1. Emails with spelling errors in the subject line received a 14% lower reply rate.
2. Emails between 50 and 125 words have the best response rate: 50%
3. Emails written at a 3rd grade reading level get the highest response rate: 53%
4. Three or four words are ideal for email subject lines.
Source: https://buzzsumo.com/blog/7-effective-techniques-better-email-marketing
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We read left to right. Therefore, it makes sense to put relevant content on the left and less relevant content on the right – or below the fold.
As you can see in this heatmap, most visitors focus their attention on the upper left of the page. So, use this information to your advantage: That’s where your most important messaging should go.
Source: https://www.crazyegg.com/blog/friction-39-tips/
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Boosting conversions is a goal for every marketer. But what can you do to the actual CTA to improve results by 2X?
Let the surrounding area around your CTA to be free from all clutter.
Social media buttons, any unrelated videos, content, should be nowhere near the CTA.
Instead, only elements that can push the offer better should be near CTA.
You can check out in the source link below how Open Mile saw a 232% increase from their homepage by reducing clutter around their CTA and placing it over whitespace in the center of the page.
Source: https://vwo.com/resources/case-studies/open-mile-tested-page-elements-increased-conversions/
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Here they are:
1. Get Visitors To Make A Small Commitment
2. Increase Conversions With The Decoy Effect (One offer that is clearly better than all the rest)
3. Use Exit-Intent Popups To Increase Conversions
4. Use Logic Branching Surveys To Learn How Your Audience Thinks
5. Improve Your Site’s Speed.
6. Match Your Message To Your Target Audience’s Vocabulary
7. Personalize Your Content To Increase Conversions
8. Use Positive Framing To Persuade And Convert More People
9. Increase Conversions With Dynamic Text Replacement
Source: https://klientboost.com/cro/conversion-tricks/
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Content optimization is very important when it comes to your Google rankings. But, it's very hard to do it manually.
Cognitive SEO managed to increase their rankings by 41% just 10 weeks after they did content optimization.
What they used is a tool that helps automate the process.
Here is how to use it:
1. Go to https://cognitiveseo.com/keyword-tool/
2. Input a keyword of your article that you want to rank higher on Google. And hit Enter.
3. Switch to the "Content Assistant" tab.
4. At the bottom, hit "Start optimizing your content".
5. At the top right hit "Import URL" and paste a link to your article.
6. At the bottom hit "Check Score".
7. Voila - here is your current rank and suggestions to improve it.
Source: https://cognitiveseo.com/blog/16542/improve-website-rankings/
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Spending too much time talking to wrong leads?
As counterintuitive as this sounds, the easiest way to qualify leads and remove the bad ones is to add friction in the lead generation process. This way, only truly motivated prospects will move on to the next step!
BUT add smart friction.
What does this mean?
Ask additional questions a motivated customer wants to answer, but an unmotivated one doesn't or can't yet!
How?
- A longer, two-part form to fill in (make the second part optional with secondary questions. Then, prioritize contacting those who fill in the second part well ).
- Send them an email that asks a pertinent question before you call them.
- Ask a question that requires an open text answer rather than drop downs or multiple choices.
Source: 500 Startups
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Your business can be losing sales opportunities every second if your site is slow.
1. A study at Amazon showed a 1% decrease in sales for every 0.1 second decrease in response times. (Kohavi and Longbotham, 2007)
2. According to studies by the Aberdeen Research Group, the average impact of a 1-second delay meant a 7% reduction in conversions.
So what can you do?
Use the free tool from GTMetrix.com to check your site speed and get tips on how to fix it.
Source: https://www.crazyegg.com/blog/friction-39-tips/
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33% of email recipients decide whether or not to open an email based on the subject line alone. Make sure you're using the words that compel people to open and read your messages.
Best Subject Line Words:
Apply
Cancellation
Conference
Connect
Demo
Opportunity
Payments
Worst Subject Line Words:
Assistance
Confirm
Invite
Join
Press
Social
Speaker
Source: https://buzzsumo.com/blog/7-effective-techniques-better-email-marketing
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How to get email addresses for all of the Twitter followers of any company or person:
1.Use FollowerWonk.com (free trial) to download a file of up to 50K people who follow your competitor or a related product on Twitter.
2. Upload the file to Anymail finder, which will give you back email addresses for those followers (20 on their free trial).
3. Email them with the subject that includes your competitor's name: "I saw that you follow [X] on Twitter".
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It's not necessarily true that the longer the free trial, the higher the conversions to paid subscriptions.
When Neil Patel tested a 14-day free trial versus an original 30-day free trial, the same number of people signed up for each trial length.
But 102% more people used the product when they signed up for the 14-day trial versus the 30-day trial.
He quickly learned that with the 30-day trial, people felt that they had a lot of time, and they forgot about using the product even when sent email reminders.
Source: https://www.quicksprout.com/ab-testing-ideas/
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DON'T send mass email newsletters or product transaction emails from a "no-reply" send address!
When you do this, you're missing out on a chance to get user replies to train inbox prioritization & opens.
DO send from a branded domain and/or a named email (e.g. "[email protected]").
A reply helps with customer insights, can be a potential conversion gateway, and is arguably the ultimate activation/engagement metric!
Source: 500 Startups
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Did you know that Neil Patel gets 238,195 visitors each month from long tail phrases? The longer the keyword, the easier it is to rank well on Google.
This is how:
1. Log into your Google Analytics -> “Acquisition” -> “Keywords” -> “Organic”.
2. Google limits your info, but simply take each short keyword phrase (<4 words)="" one="" by="" and="" type="" it="" into="" google="" to="" see what other long-tail phrases (>/= 4 words) it might suggest in the suggestion box.
3. Edit your page, utilizing these long tail phrases.
Note: Make sure your keyword density is below 3%.
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The answer? 5 seconds.
When you're ready to apply this timing trick to your website, check out SumoMe.com. It's a great tool for setting up full screen email popups.
The entry pop-up is exactly what it sounds like: A pop-up form is activated when a visitor first enters your site. Often these forms block the view of the majority of the screen, forcing engagement.
Source: https://sumo.com/sites
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There is a way to download all of your LinkedIn contacts – including their names, email addresses, job titles, and companies – right to a spreadsheet.
Just visit this link: https://www.linkedin.com/psettings/member-data
Yeah, it's really that simple.
Source: Linkedin
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We gathered some intel on what makes a great headline. Here's what we found:
- Headlines with numbers are 2x more likely to generate clicks vs. "how to" headlines, according to research by Conductor.
- And a study of 150 000 headlines revealed that odd-numbered headlines have a 20% better CTR than headlines with even numbers.
- In an analysis of over 3 million headlines, Outbrain found using [brackets] in a headline bumped up CTR by 38%.
Source: https://www.conductor.com/blog/2016/06/if-marketing-headlines-were-honest/
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You know the Dollar Shave Club. Before they were acquired for $1B in 2016, they generated $240M/year in revenue.
How is it possible to generate this amount of revenue with just a $1 product? With the power of UPSELLS.
1. "$1-dollar razor". Think about it: This is a compelling, disruptive statement to attract attention.
2. When you went to their site, you could see 3 options to choose from: $1/month, $6/month and $9/month. Important: Additional products are included in the higher plans.
3. 73% of their sales were coming from their $6 and $9 models.
If you don't believe us, McDonald's does the same thing with their $1-menu cheeseburger: They offer, additionally, the fries and soda at a $1.14 margin.
In the end, 86% of the profit is made from fries and soda.
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Show, don't tell. If people love your product, use their quotes and words to advocate, rather than superlatives that describe your product.
Here's an example of two ways to write a testimonial:
" 'The Snack' app is the latest and best way to get growth snacks on the go. Our users learn so much."
vs.
"@TwitterUser1234 - 'I love "The Snack" app. I've learned so many new cool ways of growing my startup – it's super helpful!' "
Clearly, the one that uses a customer quote is more convincing.
Embed positive tweets/social posts about experiences with your product, share short testimonials, app store reviews, etc.
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In January 2013, Gentry Underwood launched an email app called Mailbox. They focused on solving one massive problem – tons of unread messages in email inboxes. 37 days later Dropbox acquired it for a reported $100 million.
Why? Well, In 37 days, Mailbox accumulated over 500,000 users.
How did they do it?
They created a smart automated “referral reservation scheme”:
1: You sign up to get notified when the app will become available to you.
2:. You see how many people are in front of you in the queue.
3: The system notifies you: the more friends you'll invite, the higher you'll be in the queue, the faster you'll get access to the app.
4:. You invite your friends like a crazy person trying to get to the top of the list.
To help this along, they even created a simple video: https://vimeo.com/groups/159435/videos/54553882
It instantly went viral because the problem was hot/unsolved and the solution was elegant.
They notified tech media that were more than happy to write about the app (again, because the problem was hot/unsolved and the solution was elegant).
The viral nature of the video met media coverage, got multiplied by the “referral reservation scheme” and in 37 days resulted in 538,000 users waiting in a line to get access to the app.
It's no surprise, then, that Dropbox swooped in and acquired them at this 37-day mark for $100 million.
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Do you like to hear "NO" or experience 0 responses when you survey your audience, ask them anything to do, or offer to acquire anything?
Yeah, we didn't think so.
How about increasing your chances to hear "YES" by 2 times?
Here's an easy trick to do just that:
42 studies showed that the likelihood of a positive response was doubled when researchers added a simple phrase “you are free not to”.
When you tell people they don’t have to do something, they’re more inclined to follow along.
Source: https://neilpatel.com/blog/content-conversion-psychological-hacks/
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Reaching out to press and getting what you want published isn't easy. Make sure you're warming them up appropriately instead of just sending a cold e-mail and requesting their help.
Here are 5 steps to warm up journalists before you pitch them an idea:
1. Do a customized audience campaign on Twitter. You will need at least 400 Twitter handles. Get their attention before contact them via email.
2. Send a personalized and short one-liner email. For example: “Hey: Do you like Chipotle?”. Track email opens with Mixmax for Gmail or Yesware.
3. When the software indicates the journalist has opened the email, send a tweet linking to your article.
4. Send a follow up email.
5. When a user answers that they are interested, send them the press kit.
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Udemy found that revenue generated in the first week correlated with an increased customer lifetime value. So, they ran a welcome email A/B test:
A. The control email welcomed new users with 50% off any course.
B. The variable email leveraged behavioral data to serve up a course that the user had already expressed interest in. They included that course in the email header, along with the same 50% off coupon for a certain course.
Results:
Version B earned +150% more revenue.
Source: https://www.getvero.com/resources/udemy
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Most sites get 2 times more traffic from mobile than from desktop. This number of mobile users is growing rapidly, but a ton of people still make this huge mistake:
They don't optimize their landing pages for mobile devices.
String Automotive (now Experian) optimized just a single button for mobile devicesand as a result they increased leads by 200%.
What did they do?
They added a single click-to-call CTA above the fold.
Example of a click-to-call CTA: +1 (234) 567-8910
Why it worked so well?
Probably because, according to a study, 61% of people find it extremely important to be able to call the business before making a purchase.
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You know how hard it is to convince owners of the high-authority websites to place a link to your website.
How about an easier way: Buy a high-authority 10-50 DA (domain authority) website for $100!
How?
1. Buy an expired, dropped domain with 10-50 DA. It turns out there are a lot of them expiring every day!
Here's a cool free online tool to show you powerful domains that expire soon: domcop.com
2. Once you buy it, have it hosted in a Data Center different from what you use now.
3. Then there 2 ways to build links:
3.1: Restore content from archive.org (you may have copyrighting issues) and then place a bunch of links to your website.
3.2. Place an article of yours with a link to your target website.
Boom! You've got a link from a 10-50 DA website and it really was that easy.
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Software marketing blogger Alwin ran an interesting experiment. He wanted to A/B test what photo of him on his landing pages would generate more profits.
He tested the following two versions:
#A: Serious Alwin 😐
#B: Smiling Alwin 🙂
Here were the results:
Smiling Alwin won! 🙂
Compared to serious Alwin, here's how the smiling version performed:
+1.3% more sign ups
+9.9% more sales
+10.7% more total profits
Source: http://www.alwinhoogerdijk.com/2012/10/23/abc-split-test-the-power-of-a-smile/
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Do you send mass marketing emails?
If yes:
1. Take the SAME email you sent and CHANGE the subject line to something new.
2. Email it out a week later JUST TO YOUR NON-OPENS.
The result?
30%+ more opens.
Source: okdork.com
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Ever wanted to find out the targeting settings of your competitors on Facebook?
Here‘s how to do it:
1. Find an ad in your news feed.
2. Click on the top right arrow and select "Why am I seeing this".
The image above shows you what you'll see.
Put these findings to use and test these targeting settings in your ads.
Source: Taktical Digital
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Did you know that one of the factors that affects your Google rank is "Time Spent on Page".
The longer the duration, the higher your rank.
Here's an interesting research report on how to boost "Time Spent on Page" by 2.6 times.
Wistia divided high-trafficked pages into 2 categories:
1. With video on the page.
2. Without video on the page.
They then compared each version's average "Time Spent on Page".
Results:
People spent, on average, 2.6x more time on pages with video than without.
Just one of many examples pointing to the increasing importance of video content.
Source: https://wistia.com/learn/marketing/video-time-on-page
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KISSmetrics was trying to boost their conversions.
After they changed their headline (short description of their service), conversions went up by 40%.
What was the original headline?
"KISSmetrics helps you get actionable metrics for your business."
Here‘s the one that boosted conversions by 40%:
"Google Analytics tells you what happened, KISSmetrics tells you who did it."
Comparing themselves to the Google Analytics tool established more authority and got them more subscribers.
Source: https://www.quicksprout.com/headline-tips
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BuzzSumo analyzed 25 million Facebook posts and found something interesting.
Average total shares:
1. Per Link Post: ~30
2. Per Facebook Video: ~500
That's 16 times more shares! Wow.
May be worth thinking about Facebook Live videos with a link above them (in the text section)...
P.S. Take into consideration that 85% of videos are viewed with the volume off (add subtitles).
Source: https://buzzsumo.com/blog/facebook-share-data-every-publisher-needs-know/?
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Facebook ad design is crucial for success. But what are the best practices to keep in mind?
According to recent studies, the TOP 3 data-driven facts around ad design are:
1. Ads with a white background had a 60% higher CTR and attracted 40% more conversions compared to a colorful background.
2. Emotional content performed about 2X better than ads with only rational content.
3. Ad designs that closely match with a landing page increase conversions by 20-35%.
Source: https://karolakarlson.com/facebook-ad-design/
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Unroll.me was an email inbox cleaning service that skyrocketed in popularity to reach over 1 million users in 3 years. How did they do it?
1. First, they discovered a really popular, massive problem: cluttered email inboxes.
2. They offered a simple solution for free: you can unsubscribe from all newsletters you are no longer interested in.
3. After the launch, tech blogs were happy to write about an app that solves a common problem of their readers. This helped them get the first few thousand users.
4. Right after you start using the app and choose 5 newsletters to unsubscribe from, Unroll.me shows a pop-up : "In order to unsubscribe from more than 5 subscriptions, help out by sharing on Facebook, Twitter or via email."
Result: 1.3 million users virally in 3 years (+ Unroll.me was acquired).
Source: https://zapier.com/blog/unrollme-josh-rosenwald-interview
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Did you know that...
If you follow up with web leads within 5 minutes, you're 9 times more likely to convert them?
How fast do you follow up?
Source: https://www.slideshare.net/JakeAtwood1/20-shocking-sales-stats
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Have you ever seen "Schedule a Demo" CTAs on different websites?
It is exactly the same CTA that Directive had.
They didn’t want to just show a demo video, because they believed that "Scheduling a Demo" generates more leads for them.
One day, they decided to test their CTA "Schedule a Demo Today!" against "FREE 5-min Demo Video".
Adding the time parameter lowered people's concerns about sitting through a long demo.
Results:
+738% increase in CTR
+245% increase in leads
Source: https://moz.com/blog/cta-case-studies
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In case you are thinking of how to boost your sales (who isn‘t), here are 3 facts on how to achieve that:
1. 64% of website visitors are more likely to buy a product on an online retail site after watching a video.
2. Real estate listings with videos receive 403% more inquiries than those without videos.
3. When video was included in an email marketing campaign subscriber-to-lead conversion rates increased by 51%.
Source: https://www.videobrewery.com/blog/18-video-marketing-statistics
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Noah Kagan, founder at Sumo (AppSumo) has sent more than 100M emails.
Here are the 2 biggest mistakes he learned:
#1. A couple of years ago, he tested segmentation, spending tons of time and a lot of money. He found that segmentation isn’t worth the effort.
Another source tested this and found that non-segmented emails generate 3.19 times more revenue than segmented.
#2. So many brands only put a CTA at the end of their email. However, very few people who open that email are going to make it down the page (on average, 80% read only the first screen).
This means that by placing your CTA at the top of your emails, you can see around 4 times more conversions.
Source: https://www.bigcommerce.com/blog/email-marketing-engagement-tips
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Pop-ups are a great lead-gen tool, especially on mobile. But, 99% of people don`t know it can kill organic traffic if not done correctly. What do we mean?
1. You know that more than 50% of visitors access your website through their mobile devices. And Google ranks mobile-friendly websites higher.
2. Also you know that full-sized pop-ups generate the highest conversions (1.76% - 6.9%).
Here's a bummer.
Did you know that you can kill your Google traffic if you don't follow their guidelines?
Especially this short one.
What Google considers as an acceptable pop-up is when it covers no more than 20% of the screen.
Source: https://www.bigcommerce.com/blog/mobile-ecommerce-seo/
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Klientboost boosted their conversions by +8.8% super easily. In a study, they A/B tested the same customer reviews on their landing page.
The only difference was:
A. variant had the star ratings: ★★★★★
B. control - didn't.
Result:
The star ratings outperformed ""no stars"" by +8.8%.
Bonus:
By mentioning the company size with exact numbers in the customer reviews, their conversion rate increased by 22%.
Source: https://klientboost.com/cro/landing-page-social-proof
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Did you know that...
When followers are specifically asked ""Please Retweet"", the Retweet rate is 2.5 times higher than average?
P.S. Please share this with your friends ;)
Source: https://neilpatel.com/blog/generate-social-shares/?
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Did you know that 70% of customers` brand perception is determined by experiences with people?
Here are 2 more facts you should know about your customers:
1. 68% of customers leave because of poor employee attitude.
2. 41% of customers are loyal because of good employee attitude.
Source: https://amitavac.com/musings/singapore-first-world-infrastructure-third-world-brand-building-mindset
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After A/B testing, Upworthy (8.8 million monthly visitors) found:
1. If the buttons have a hover effect when your mouse is over them, they can get 395% more shares.
2. The best time to wait after landing on a page that the “like us” icon appeared was with a 16 second delay.
Source: https://leeyenrogers.com/growth-hacking-strategies-for-startups-d294252cfafb
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Did you know that:
1. 81% of the people trust the information they read on blogs.
2. 61% of those people have made a purchase based on a blogger’s recommendation.
3. 63% of people are more likely to be influenced by a blog than a magazine to make a purchase.
Looks like there's a pretty good argument to be made for blogger outreach. . .
Source: https://www.quicksprout.com/outreach-for-bloggers/
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One simple trick to boost your YT video views: add captions.
Closed captions are indexed by YouTube search and boost your traffic.
How can you do it?
1. Go to the Video Manager tab in your YouTube account.
2. Find the video to caption and select the Edit button.
3. Using the top navigation bar, click the Subtitles/CC tab. Source:
Source: https://www.3playmedia.com/customers/case-studies/discovery-digital-networks___
These abandoned cart email frameworks show 43%-65% open rates and generate up to $23 per email sent.
THMotorsports‘ framework:
Users who saw a personalized welcome from their friend signed up at a 71% higher rate.
1st email [10 minutes after abandonment]: Open rate = 69%; CTR = 14%; Revenue = $42,362
2nd [1 day]: Open rate = 65%; CTR = 15%; Revenue = $11,802
3rd [3 days]: Open rate = 43%; CTR = 6%; Revenue = $18,530
4th [1 month]: Open rate = 46%; CTR = 3%; Revenue = $4,714
Legion Athletics‘ framework (offer no discount in the first email and ‘10% off’ in emails two and three):
1st [30 minutes]: Open rate = 63%; CTR = 10%; Revenue = $26,495
2nd [1 day]: Open rate = 58%; CTR = 16%; Revenue = $26,978
3rd [3 days]: Open rate = 55%; CTR = 17%; Revenue = $29,589
Peak Design‘s framework (the first email asks if they had any issues with checking out, the second offers 5% off + free shipping):
1st [2 hours]: Open rate = 65%; CTR = 12%; Revenue = $57,751
2nd [30 hours]: Open rate = 57%; CTR = 18%; Revenue = $87,680 ($23 per email sent)
Source: https://conversionxl.com/blog/cart-abandonment
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A company added one simple element to their signup box. It increased conversions into leads by 11%.
An online mortgage application took up to 20 minutes. Because of all the data that was required.
The process consisted of 2 parts:
1. Signup box: Enter your first name and email address.
2. Fill out the full application.
The company added one simple element to their signup box.
It increased the number of fully completed applications (= leads) by 11%.
What element did they add?
They added to their signup box a simple checkbox: ""YES! I am ready for a better rate today!""
By asking users for a small, positive action up front and a reminder about the outcome, they've reinforced their commitment to the process.
Result: +11% more leads.
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Getting people to link to your content is hard. But it’s easier if you mention them in it first.
Here's how:
1. Tell them that you create content for XX,XXX subscribers/followers/readers.
2. Ask for their opinion or advice.
3. Your question has to be specific, so they can answer it in under 50 words (the less, the better).
4. After they contribute, don’t ask them to promote your content. Just thank them for helping you out and send them a link an hour or so before you publish it.
5. Repeat with multiple people.
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Former Gogobot app (now Trip.com) decided to personalize each download that came from an invite. In each message that went out to other users, they inserted a Branch link embedded with their referring friend’s name, profile pic, and user ID.
The result:
Users who saw a personalized welcome from their friend signed up at a 71% higher rate.
Source: http://500.co/mobile-growth-engine-branch/
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If you're not using YouTube yet, you should be. This channel is excellent for getting your brand message out to its over 1.3 billion users.
But how can you attract subscribers to your channel and start gaining some traction?
Simply add “?sub_confirmation=1” at the end of your YouTube channel URL.
For example: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCRHQnN47mcRG7fFr-srUPbQ/feed?sub_confirmation=1
Link all users from all your videos, website, tweets, blog to this URL. Everybody will see a popup “Confirm Channel Subscription”, which has been shown to increase YouTube subscribers by 400%.
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The right words can turbo-charge the authority of your headlines, product names, buttons, and email subject lines.
Here are 33 surefire words, starting with the top 10:
- Iron clad,
- Proven
- Validate
- Authentic
- Genuine
- Bona fide
- Legitimate
- Reliable
- Official
- Final
More: Backed, Guaranteed, Research, Studies, Results, Solution, Honest, Complete, Psychological, Comprehensive, All-Inclusive, Absolute, Definitive, Authoritative, Conclusive, Authority, Surefire, Formula, Strategy, Expert, Report, Document, Literally, Powerful.
Source: https://sumo.com/stories/power-words
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Every marketer should strive for decreasing cost-per-conversion. Here's one tip for doing just that by choosing the right ad format.
Facebook ads pro Aaron Zakowski found that right-side ads are the best choice for a small budget.
Though you can’t get the same volume as Newsfeed ads, cost per signup from right side ads is about 41% lower than from desktop Newsfeed ads.
Source: http://aaronzakowski.com/how-reduced-invision-cost-per-signup-facebook-ads/
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When selecting the background or main images to use in your display ads, using images that contain people is the most reliable bet.
Researchers examined 60 brands and as a whole to determine if there was a common thread that led to greater success.
What they discovered:
Ads that contain images of people have a 12% higher CTR than those which do not.
The takeaway: people like people!
Source: https://3qdigital.com/featured/ab-testing-over-1m-worth-of-display-ads-5-things-we-learned/
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We noticed some of our client’s blog posts slipping in their Google ranks.
Knowing that Google loves fresh content, we simply went into the post and updated the date.
On WordPress, backdating posts like this is super easy: Here's how.
PRESTO! The Google rank jumped and on average over 30% more traffic poured in!
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Customer support software company Groove HQ wanted to know how to convert more trial customers to paying ones.
As their team started to track everything more closely, they began to notice a trend: free trial users who emailed them for support were 800% more likely to become paying customers by the end of their trial than those who never reached out.
So what did they do to get more people to contact them?
1) They made the contact links more prominent
2) They began to send calls to action encouraging users to reach out to them if they needed help.
Source: https://www.groovehq.com/blog/first-year
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Formstack analyzed over 650,000 form users. Here are the most interesting conclusions gained:
When you need to survey your users and have a lot of fields for them to fill, this trick is for you.
Formstack found that conversion rates more than TRIPLE when:
1. Fields are spread out over multiple web pages.
2. They have bigger fonts.
3. They have “Save and resume” options.
4. They include progress bars.
Source: https://www.formstack.com/blog/2015/industries-increase-conversion-rates/
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Follow these quick steps to get better email performance:
Step 1. Take the SAME email you sent and CHANGE the subject line to something new.
Step 2. Email it out a week later JUST TO YOUR NON-OPENS.
Get 30%+ more opens.
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Organically boost your newsletter performance by making it even easier to share.
Here's how:
1. In your emails (not on your website) add a simple link "mailto:?subject=paste encoded subject here&body=paste encoded body here".
Now, your newsletter readers can easily click and it will make a new templated email for them to send to a friend.
2. Take the text you want for your subject and your body and separately drop them into Eric Meyer`s handy free URL Encoder.
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Wishpond managed to boost their revenue by 54.3% just by changing their pricing page.
Here’s what they changed:
1. Changed headline.
Old: Wishpond Pricing Plans
New: Choose your Pricing Plan (Try Wishpond for 14 days)
2. Changed plan names.
Old: Basic, Pro (best value), Growth.
New: Starting Out, Everything You Need, Rapid Growth.
3. Changed CTA.
Old: Start Free Trial
New: Start Free For 14 Days
4. Changed features
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LinkedIn allows you to search inside your network, up to 3rd connections. This can end up limiting you when you are entering a new market and have a lack of connections.
Here is a hack to overcome this barrier and boost your sales in a new market:
Go to Google and search:site:linkedin.com/in/ AND [job title]site:linkedin.com/in/ AND [company]site:linkedin.com/in/ AND [skill/category]site:linkedin.com/in/ AND [company] AND [job title]site:linkedin.com/in/ AND VP OR SVP OR EVP OR Director OR Manager OR SalesOps
Source: growthhackingidea.com
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Matthew Woodward ran a funny experiment through Facebook ads.
He set 3 advertising campaigns. Everything was identical except for the image:
- Blonde woman
- Brunette woman
- Red-headed woman
Can you guess the result?
The ad with the image of the red-headed woman achieved a 40.4% higher CTR than the image of the brunette woman and a 66.6% higher CTR than the ad with the blonde woman. Weird.
Source: MatthewWoodward.com
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Researchers sent cold emails to a thousand of the busiest business people in America: C- and VP-level executives from the Fortune 500 and the Inc 500.
They A/B-tested 2 different subjects and the same body:
1. “Quick Question”
2. “15 Second Question for Research on Annoying Emails”
Results:
The open rate was almost the same: ~50%.
But!
By over-promising on the time commitment with the “15 Second” subject line, they turned some recipients off. As a result, reply rates were very different:
1. “Quick Question” — 66.7% of total replies
2. “15 Second Question …” — 33.3%
That’s a difference in response rate of over TWO TIMES.
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Periscopix used a smart targeting option that boosted their opt-in rate by 181%.
How?
Have you heard of Gmail Ads? The Gmail ad looks like a regular email at the top of your inbox. It means your ad targets people actively using email now - this is why it converts better into opt-ins.
How to activate this secret targeting?
1. When choosing how to target your ads,,click on “Use a different targeting method”.
2. Choose "Placements".
3. Search for Gmail and you’ll see it in the list.
4. Add “mail.google.com” from the list that populates.
5. Once you confirm the campaign, you’ll need to hit Ads -> + AD -> Ad gallery.
6. Choose Gmail Ads and fill in all fields.
P.S. Remember to confirm that your ad is formatted for the smaller screen and loads quickly, because 75% of Gmail users access their accounts from their mobile device.
Source: https://neilpatel.com/blog/the-beginners-guide-to-gmail-ads
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Imagine you have a product/service and you want to boost its sales as fast as possible with no budget. Dan Ariely shared an interesting method called "the ugly brother effect" that is able to boost your sales by 15%.
How does it work?
It‘s as simple as to add a slightly "uglier" (less valuable, less beautiful for the same price) version of your main product/service. Bart Schutz from Online Dialogue ran a lot of experiments on it, and they regularly found growth effect averaging around 15%.
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Nowadays, over 50% of people access your website from mobile devices (you know it). Imagine your customer inputs their credit card number on their mobile device. It's very easy to make a typo using that small keyboard.
But for you, every typo results in lost profits. What if you could make the keyboard 521% larger?
It's possible for numeric inputs such as credit card numbers. Have a look at the difference in the picture above.
We've noticed that some websites show this big keyboard. It's 5 times easier to input confirmation codes or credit card numbers using this larger keyboard.
Here's how to make it happen: All you need to do is make just one small change in your HTML: <input type="number">
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Both ads focus on loss-aversion tactics to get users fearful and hooked into clicking.
These ads make users think that they are going to lose their entire budget if they don’t.
Next time you run ads, try using a loss-aversion approach to drive click-through and boost sales.
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Growth Hack #1 - Get 5x Click Thru Rates By Using Better Headlines:
Growth Hack #1 - 100% Opt-In Rate Without a Landing Page:
The Magic Rule of 7
A popup that gets in a user’s face at the time of trying to exit your website is a perfect way to grab an email before it’s too late.
Exit Popups can outperform other Calls to Action by as much as 1000%!
Source: https://blog.loginradius.com/2015/02/dangerously-anti-social-website-slideshare/
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