Tag: sales letter
The Ideal Clickthru Rate for Your Squeeze Pages, Sales Letters and Blog Posts
When creating your forced optin pages or e-commerce sales letters, or even blog posts... how do you know if it's fully optimized? How do you know whether or not you are throwing away e-mail subscribers, sales, blog commenters, and fans without even realizing? I want to tell you what kind of conversion rate you should expect when testing out your pages using Google Website Optimizer or Google Analytics.
A forced e-mail optin page, or squeeze page, is a web page where the only thing a person can do is subscribe to your e-mail list or leave. I like to put these in front of my sales letters, so people need to commit to a small action (subscribing to my list for more information)... that way I can follow up with them even if they don't buy.
But Most People Overcomplicate This Process!
Your forced optin page should only contain one headline, three bullet points, and instructions about what to do next. (Opt-in to your list.) If you do this correctly, you should expect 50 percent, or half, of your targeted visitors, to subscribe... all while your competition overthinks the process and only gets a 10 to 20 percent conversion rate.
After they have opted in, even if you are mailing them a free gift in exchange for signing up, send them to an offer page (or sales letter) where they can buy something from you. Similar to the forced optin page, this should be a site where all they can do is either buy or leave. There are no other links in this long, one-page web site. Even if you don't think you are any good at convincing someone to buy from you... tell them a quick story, your argument for why your solution is best... and a set of bullet points telling them why they should get it now, and what benefits they will receive once they get their hands on it.
If I experience a 1 to 5 percent conversion rate, I'm happy. Even if you experience a little bit less than this, you can split test your web site and even get it critiqued by a professional copywriter at a fraction of the cost that it would take to get it done from scratch. The copy will actually come out better because you know your product better than anyone else.
That covers forced optin pages and sales letters, but what about other kinds of web sites such as blogs? What kind of conversion rate can you expect from alternate sources of traffic such as Twitter or article sites? The answer is that you shouldn't care. Your time is better spent optimizing your squeeze page or sales letter than worrying about your free traffic sources. They are tough to measure, and after all, it's all "extra" traffic.
Those are the results you should expect from your well-optimized web pages: 50 percent conversion on your squeeze page and 1 percent conversion on your sales letter. As for your traffic sources, worry about your own sites.
What's your conversion rate? Do you even know (it's ok if you don't) ... just post your answer in a comment below.
Is Your Photo on Every Sales Letter?
Earlier this week I realized I had been doing something very stupid... leaving my photo OFF of my sales letter!
Seriously, you already go to the trouble of adding your photo to Facebook and MySpace...
Why Aren't You Doing the Same Thing on Your Sales Letter?
I noticed this when I attended my first internet marketing luncheon. It was just a warrior lunchtime get together in New Jersey (I flew down from California to New York City for the weekend just to attend).
Immediately I recognized Mike Ambrosio and said hello to him... because his photo is on all of his sales letters! I also recognized Mike Merz, and of course when Mike Filsaime showed up, he was surrounded by so many groupies, no one could go talk to him. (So many Mikes.)
So... I knew who three people were, but the other 50-ish people were total strangers.
At the Warrior Event in Austin this April: I recognized Willie Crawford (his picture is EVERYWHERE) and Dr. Ron Capps the NicheProf, Marlon Sanders and Jason Fladlien... but again, that was about it!
Even some of the speakers were people I'd heard of... I'd read their sites, responded to them in forums, but didn't recognize them.
For that reason, I went through all of my sales letters this week and added my kisser to them.
On some sales letters I was able to do an "align=right" and place it to the right of the text, but sometimes I just gave up, centered that image, and placed it below my signature line at the bottom of the page.
Can You Please Do the Same on Your Sales Letter?
I'm not saying adding your photo will get you recognized instantly at real-world seminars. At the very least it will remind your potential customers reading that sales letter, that you're a real person.
You don't have to be wearing a suit or a hawaiian shirt... any picture will do.
- If it's a family photo, crop the image so it only shows you -- that way your kids aren't appearing on your sales letter.
- If you look like crap, crop the image even more so it only shows your head.
- If you think you're ugly, resize the photo of you down to 100x100 pixels.
- If you don't even have a digital camera, find a friend with a camera phone.
You have every reason to post your photo on a sales letter. Stop procrastinating and just do it.
Please comment below and tell me when you finally realized you needed to have your photo on your sales letters.
If you don't have your photo on there yet, add your photo to your sales page and post the URL here for all of us to look at.
