Hey Sam,

I have seen some weirdness like that before but for the most part things are pretty accurate. The biggest thing I see is where someone will click on my link, then sign up somewhere else (like on the home page) or sign up a few days later. Then Facebook reports the conversion but your web form does not. But I usually see more sign ups in Aweber than in Facebook rather than the other way around. It could also be someone revisiting the page. For example, if you are redirecting to the page and also sending that link in an email, it could be counting the person twice, possibly? Long story short, I'm not really sure. Keep an eye on it and see if it persists.

Let us know how the one click sale works.

Bummer about the lack of sales, but good luck on the promo. 

Those open rates are just really low. I would start by calling Aweber (they have 24 hour phone support) and seeing if they can spot anything out of whack.

Could be, but didn't you say that the first email had a very low open rate as well?

Did you try turning confirmed opt in on and resetting stats?

Ok, sounds good. Keep us posted. Good luck with the promo.

I usually start by trying things as they were. but if suddenly costs shoot up then I start a new ad set, for the reasons you bring up.

I have been seeing a lot of issues with leaving confirmed opt in off lately. I'm running a campaign for a client who had just a 52% open rate on the welcome email. i turned the confirmed opt in on, and refresh the email stats and it's now up to 82% and the squeeze page conversions actually went up. However, it seems to vary a lot from audience to audience.

Great to hear Sam. I have sen the increase in sales as well. It's interesting because a year or so ago when I started turning off the confirmed opt in I saw things improve. That does not seem to be the case on average now. It's really interesting. 

I really see it with other projects like MMM. When I had confirmed opt in turned off I was getting a ton of throw away subscribers that just wanted to see what was on the other side. That caused FB to learn to target these kinds of people, which led to even worse results. My open rates fell down to about 50% and sales started slowing. I turned it back on and all stats went up.

Sam Russell said
That's interesting to hear! It's going to take a week for the rest of the funnel to test out, but I'm looking forwards to seeing the results!

 

I finished my first real time promotion. It ran Mon-Thurs. I had an email every day and FB ads to my page running to support it. Made 2 sales of my classical CD - no upsell sales (although maybe the sales numbers are too low to judge the upsell??). This was going to a list of 200 people I've grown since starting MMM4. Learned how to use my email software and create the appropriate automation to send the emails, and exclude those who bought from receiving further emails in the promotion.

That makes for a 1% list conversion, which is not great, but still within expectations (I think).

Question1: Is 1% list conversion for a real time promotion reasonable? (Crap, but reasonable?)

On the one hand, so long as something is working then I feel good, and conversions means it is fundamentally working. But it is also really low. I would have expected more. What was your conversion rate on the primary funnel? How recently did most of those subscribers sign up? My guess is that it's a combo of being too few subs for statistical significance, too soon for many of them, and the fact that the classical music angle is a bit of a divergence from the genre they signed up to listen to. Just to make sure though... You did send this to the people who bought from the funnel, correct? Those people would be your most likely to buy.

 What should I be prioritising next? I've nearly finished the copywriting workshop in the Inner Circle Members, I was thinking of doing the Survey Your List lesson next, followed by the How to Use FB (I think that one is something to do with getting likes to create cheap leads?) and working on getting the funnel to profit, by:

1. 1. Continuing to work on the squeeze page and lead generation

1. 1. Testing new blog posts 

surveying the list might get you some interesting info. My biggest priority would be to get the squeeze page and funnel to convert as well as possible. Then get your metrics down. Figure out what your current subscriber value is and what your current subscriber acquisition costs are, and then ask your self what you can do to flip the numbers.

Question 2: Should I be continuing to work on the funnel, to get it to reach break even, or is there something else you recommend?

I was thinking of testing the blog posts, by sending a post to my list each week and seeing if any of them trigger a sale or two, and if a blog post does give me a sale or two, swap it into my funnel. I'm making the assumption that the content of the blog post is a big factor (or could be a big factor) in getting people to pull the "sales trigger".

That's no a bad idea at all. The survey will also tell you a lot.

Question 3: How important is a single blog post to the effectiveness of a funnel, and is this a valid way to test them?

 

Thanks John!  

I think they are really important. It's the content within your funnel that is going to lead to the sale. Hopefully the survey highlights the different points of resistance. You can then attempt to overcome that resistance with your blog posts.

I see. If the funnel only converted 4 people then 2 on the follow up sale is not so crazy, especially if it was only a few weeks ago that people finished going through the funnel.

Glad to hear that confirmed opt in is making that much of a difference.

That is cool. Congrats.

I haven't so much seen the links to interesting tidbits approach with musicians, but I have seen the email every day approach. It actually works really well. But it also gets an extremely high negative reaction. You piss off the people who are less likely to buy while influencing those that are likely to buy to take action. So it's more an approach for an experienced marketer or someone who has really thick skin. 

But as they say, your sales will be in direct proportion to the number of times you ask for the sale.

The blog post every day sounds good. I would just advise a bit of caution with mixing in affiliate offers. It makes sense if they are extremely on target. But if you miss with your offers it will start to feel really commercial which music fans won't like (in my opinion). It's one thing for a musician to be pushing their own music hard, it's another to have them push you on supplements (or whatever). 

I went through the same phase many years ago in which I tried to promote a lot of different products. I eventually settled on promoting only my own with rare exceptions. That's just my two cents. Having said that, I'm sure someone cold pull in affiliate products with just the right touch.

When I say "experienced marketers" I am not suggesting that it takes a specific volume of experience so much as a real knack for making promotional things not appear promotional. A link to an affiliate product sounds like advice from a traditional internet marketer. Incorporating things like that in my music related blog posts would not be an approach I would personally take. But I am not saying it can't be done. You may vary well pull it off. It's just a "do it an your own risk" kind of thing. I'd be curious to hear how it goes.

Wow, that's crazy cheap for those opt ins. Good luck.