Louey's Journal



Vanity Metrics

I realise they're totally pointless statistics but they still make me feel good so I'm sharing them here.

Yesterday, we had a new record of visits to the site - 1763. I think this has a lot to do with the fact that the new email sequence links back to pages on the site, rather than providing complete emails so we've got more people heading back to the site.

Today, we set a new record for optins. With the optins today, to total number of optins over the last 30 days is just over 1000. When I took over the SEO of the site in June, we were averaging around 120.

I realise that both of these are pretty pointless figures as they don't really represent much in the grand scheme of things but they make me feel good so I thought I'd share them.
 
I'm seeing a really strong correlation between an increase in direct traffic and an increase in organic traffic. Every time my direct traffic goes up (through newsletter broadcasts with links in them) my organic traffic rises in direct proportion.

Anyone have any comment on this? Anyone had similar experiences?
 
Just launched the second stage of my new email autoresponder and things are looking good.

Lots of engagement from people and getting reasonable click through rates.

Will be interesting to see how it effects overall performance

Interestingly, I nearly doubled the price of my book and the conversion rate is still the same (around 3% of optins). Not sure why. Might have to look into it a bit more.
 
I'm seeing a really strong correlation between an increase in direct traffic and an increase in organic traffic. Every time my direct traffic goes up (through newsletter broadcasts with links in them) my organic traffic rises in direct proportion.

Anyone have any comment on this? Anyone had similar experiences?
Click to expand...

You noticed what search phrases they are using? Maybe they read your email, dont click the link but remember it a bit later and type your sitename into google.
 
^^^ The thing is the email links have an anchor text that doesn't give away the title of the post.

I'm sure it's possible that some are doing that but it seems highly unlikely.


CONVERSION OPTIMISATION REPORT:

So I've just completed the first run of my email autoresponder sequence and the results are massively underwhelming.

Of the 296 people who opened the sales email, only 47 clicked the link and 4 purchased the book.

The sales page converted reasonably well (8.5%) but the email obviously bombed. A 15% click through rate is far less than the average of 60%

It's been a good lesson though. I've learnt a lot on this run through about what works and what doesn't.

- Whilst it's a sequence, each email is stand alone.

You can't rely on the previous emails headline / interest factor to get someone to open the next email. Each email has to stand on it's own two feet and has to deliver enough value that the person opens it, regardless of what happened in the previous email.

- Leave it for a day and come back

When you're writing an email / headline / any marketing material, it can be hard to really see whether or not it's going to work. Every time you write one, take some time away from it and come back to read it again. Ask yourself: if I woke up and found this email sitting in my inbox along with 30 others, firstly, would I open it? And secondly, would I take the action it wants me to before I checked out the other emails?

- You don't know till you try

There's only one way to get better at copy writing - give it a crack. You can read all you want and study your arse off but you're not going to get any better at it till you try and see what comes out.

That's all for now.

Opt in rates have actually dropped slightly because I'm getting much more direct traffic coming back to the site through the email autoresponder sequence these days. I'm in the process of finalising the banner design and have guys working on other optins to add to the page to see what it can do.

I've realised that I only need to increase my optin rate from 2.5% to 6.5% and maintain my current conversion rates in the other stages of the funnel to make as much money in a month as I made all last financial year.

That's rad.

Working on it now. I'll keep you posted.
 
Hav3n said:
EDIT: Or.... get them to bite earlier. Tell them it is on sale for the first 24 hours after they sign up ... then it returns to regular price after that?
Click to expand...

I'm giving this a crack. I'm setting a system where new optins get a 50% of voucher that's only valid for 72 hours after they sign up.

I'll see how it goes.
 
[FONT=&quot]AUTO RESPONDER SEQUENCE PHASE 1 RESULTS

I've just finished the first 1 month test of the new auto responder sequence I wrote (first one ever) and the results are in:[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot] [/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]1000 people have gone through the sequence over the last month.[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot] [/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]Open rates start at 24% (email 2) and drop down to 13% by the end of the sequence (30 days later).[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot] [/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]Click through rates start at 18% (Email 2), then drop to 16% (Email 3 and 4) and stay below 10% going as low as 6% (email 8 and 11).[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot] [/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]It’s easy to see where the holes are in the open rates and click through rates so I know where to go form here.[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot] [/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]***I tried pasting the spread sheet data up here but the forum doesn’t hold the formatting[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]
I think it's pretty clear where the changes need to be made. Unfortunately, the sales email (#8) had the lowest click through percentage of all emails so I there's definitely room for improvement there.

The structure is stolen from Frank Kern's Mass Control if anyone cares.

There's an authority sequence (emails #1-#3), a build up sequence (emails #4-#7), sales email (#8), then build up sequence (#9-#12) and the download they get on email #12 is a 1/3 sample of the product with a sales link in it. It only went out yesterday so I don't know how many people will purchase because of that sample.

Change that I'm making:
- I'm adding another sales email in at number #9 and probably another one at #10 and pushing the second sequence back.
- Playing with the titles of the low opening emails and the content of the low click through emails

SALES

This sequence was to sell an ebook. Even though I almost double the price of the book, conversion rate from opt in to purchase remained steady at 3.51%

With the increase in traffic that's happened over hte last month, I almost doubled the revenue from book sales.

OTHER CONVERSION RATE OPTIMISATION STUFF

I'm almost finished setting up the new site and should be testing the new optin tools within a week. I'm just waiting on a few little technical changes to be made to the site and the new internal layout of my free book to be finished. Current optin rate is up on last month at 2.76%. Last month was 2.52%

The autoresopnder sequence that takes a book purchaser through to purchasing the workshop is currently running with the sales email to be sent tomorrow. Should be interesting to see what kind of sales conversion rates come through that.

I'll put the email conversion rates up soon.[/FONT]
 
Dude I've never watched mass control... But I reckon you should have way way more sales e-mails.

A rule of thumb that a very good copywriter friend of mine (wrote copy that sold $12 million) is:
1 email that gives value
1 sales email

Gives them a lot more options to buy. And it's pretty fucking simple.

I know you're of the kind that doesn't believe people need to be weird and act according to a formula so don't get too caught up in it ;)

as long as you're giving value and giving them an opportunity / reminder that there is ever BETTER content if they care to open their wallet, you're on top of it. Just my 2c.

Good stuff to read this bro.
 
At the moment, I've got it set up so that the Mass Control sequence rolls on but in the side bar of every email, there's a link to my book.

At the moment, the book sales page is the 4th most traffic site behind to of my mega KW landing pages and my home page. It seems like it's working so I think I'll keep going with it. I just need to get better at writing this shit now.

When I've got some more spare time in the future, I might put together an autoreponsder sequence that goes like what you're suggesting and split test it to see how it works. It's just that they take so much time to write out.

You know how painful I find copy writing...
 
Taken my first big hit...

The google update a few das ago kicked my arse... Traffic is down 25%.

I didn't lose any ranking for my major KW's but all the long tails I ranked using shit article marketing links fell out of the rankings completely.

But for some reason, optins are up 20%. Strange... Not sure why but I hit a record for optins yesterday.

Lets see how this plays out.
 
LESSON -- Little things make big differences.

I'd noticed a drop off in book sales over the last few days and I couldn't work out what was causing it.

I logged on and saw that the traffic to the book sales page had dropped by 60% when I changed the anchor text in the menu bar to the page.

I changed the anchor text to a different variation of the first anchor text and the traffic increased by 80% over night.

Little things make BIG difference.

Lesson learned.
 
FireWater said:
Nice progress.

What are you doing for SEO apart from the few services you bought here?
Click to expand...

I did a whole bunch of on site optimization before I kicked off things here but I'm not sure what else I could do. Is there something specific you want to know more about?
 
Off-page - I was thinking you might have done more link building to produce your current traffic levels?

All of your traffic is organic search right?
 
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