Hey Marc,

It's a little hard to know exactly what is going on without digging around in there. If I am understanding you correctly you are saying that you are using your best performing ad with your best performing target audience but getting different results, correct?

Is the only variable that has changed the fact that you went from traffic to conversions?

Are you certain you didn't accidentally do something different like choose different placements or demographic?

Also, how long have you run each of the ads? 1000 impressions is not much. How many describers did you initially bring in for 2 euros each? You mention "a sub" above. Are you meaning that you only got one sub at that price?

Let me know and we can keep trouble shooting from there.

Thanks for the info. Typically it takes about 3 - 5 days for an ad to settle out. FB's algorithm needs time to figure things out. It could be that the first ad would have started to do worse or it could be that given more time the new ad would have done well.

The other issue is the budget. FB needs a minimum of about 25 subs per week in order for the algorithm to optimize for conversions. If you have a small budget you may never get there. At any rate, it doesn't sound like you got anywhere near that with the new ad.

Another thing to realize is that there are a lot of variables that determine how an ad performs. FB ascribes a sort of quality score to each new ad. If an ad starts off well it tends to keep doing well. If it starts off bad it rarely turns around. I've had situations where I start a new campaign on a Sunday only to have it tank. Then  start a new, duplicate campaign mid week and it does well. There are many little variables like that. Each time you start a campaign you are largely starting from scratch.

Finally, I'd take a look at the relevancy score of each ad for clues. The relevancy score is just an indicator, but if the relevancy score is lower on the new ad (which I suspect it is) then you know there was a problem.

All you can really do is take everything into account and jump back on the horse and try again with a fresh campaign.

7 sounds about right for the price you were getting. On most of my winning ads I have I start out with a relevance score of about 9. Then it drops to about 7 or 8. A campaign with a score of 7 is usually one where things are working but are a bit too expensive, which lines up with your experience.

Let me know how you go.

Hey Marc,

Really glad to hear you've got your conversion costs down.

Your click through rates are definitely lower than usual from your third email down. Normally I'd like to see a click through rate that was around half of the open rate. A little less is pretty common.

With such a drop off like that it would appear that either something in your email copy (or blog posts) is turning the list off, or you've targeted the wrong people. I suspect it's more of a copy issue.

Feel free to post elements here (one piece of content at a time please, so it's not too overwhelming).

But the long and short of it is, take a look at whatever people experienced right before the drop off. IE, the "this involves you" email and blog post.

Judging by the title it sounds like you are sticking pretty close to the templates. That can definitly work, but it can also miss if your demographic is different. You may need to insert more of yourself into the content. But maybe post a link to the blog post so we can check it out.

Hi Marc, 

To be honest, I though the post was pretty good. There might be some things I would do a little different and maybe a grammatical edge or two that could be smoothed out, but I wouldn't think that this post would cause a massive drop off.

Looking at your stats again, the email open rates are pretty decent. It's just the CTR that is terrible.

What does the body of your music video email look like?

At the end of the day though, regardless of my opinions, all we can do is look at the stats. Something is breaking down with those CTRs. It could be the emails, it could be the content. All you can do is try changing things and getting those numbers up. If the music video angle isn't working, perhaps try something else. Tweak until the stats move in the right direction.

You could also try going for the sale a bit earlier. I don't mean that I would change the funnel. More than I would add a sales pitch to the thank you page after someone signs up, and make a bolder pitch in the content itself. This is something I will be exploring more in the coming months.

Thanks, there is nothing terribly wrong the email but it's also not necessarily that interesting to someone who is not totally invested in you guys yet. People don't care about the inter workings of a band, so much as they care about a band that is just authentically awesome and entertaining. 

For example, if I got an email that said something like... Our guitar player almost died on stage last night, watch the video here... I would need to click to see what the story was. The idea being that once I did, the music would make an impression.

That's just one sensational example that would only work if you had a story to back it up (like an electric shock or fire while shooting a video) but you get the idea. 

As it stands right now it makes me roll my eyes and think, another band thinks they are amazing. No offense of course. I think that every time an indy band directly talks about their craft.

And it's a very little thing, but the missing capital letter (while you use them at the beginning of other sentences, throws me a little too.

What's the subject line?

Hi Marc,

I think the new blog post has a funny premise, but I found it confusing in the beginning and a bit hard to follow. There were some simple grammar things that needed cleaning up, but mostly I was just confused as to what the post was about until it was almost over. The headline didn't elude to the towels, so the towels in the sage confused me until I got to the end of the post. There were also a lot of names and business details that I couldn't track with in the beginning.

But I think with a new headline and a bit of cleaning up this direction could work. 

Just my two cents. 

Anyone else feel like sharing their opinion?

Hi Marc,

Steve here.  I think they're both fun stories.  As long as you are in the mindset of being engaging and entertaining, I think you'll be able to get things ironed out with email follow up.  I'm also curious to know which subject lines you are using.