What a bummer... I wrote a 20 minute response to this the other day and thought I had sent it. I must have failed to hit send and navigated away without realizing it. Will do my best to reply again.

My first thought is that you can't assume that your targeting is not the issue just because you have a strong quality ranking. It's very easy to create a solid ad/squeeze page combo that ultimately loses people because either the music, or the content in the funnel is not ideal for that audience. I see this kind of thing all the time. That said, your targeting may very well not be the problem.

The next thought I have is that while 38% is low, it's not shockingly low. If it was 45% we'd be thinking it was relatively ok. And that's just a few points off. There are times where funnels convert pretty well, but alienate their audience. Sometimes there is a strong, those who love it love it, and those who hate it hate it, factor.

The fact that most people are buying before they get to the LTO is definitely different. I don't normally see that. That makes me wonder if possibly people love the music but don't like the funnel content much. So those that love it buy quickly, and then the funnel drives people away. If that was the case you could almost do better just sending sales pitch emails over and over again than you could building relationships. I'm not recommending that, but it's interesting. You can either test this theory by creating alternative funnels to try and boost conversions, or just go in with a more heavier pitch to buy and see what happens. If they love the music but hate the funnel content then you should see sales go up. If they don't, then I think you need to continue testing new content and subject line/headline/email copy.

Hope that helps a bit.

Hey Nicholas,

If you're profitable, or even close to profitable, then I wouldn't do anything but try and scale. It's incredibly hard to be profitable with a $7 album, and you often are. That's a huge win. At the end of the day, you are just buying customers. From there, the real profiting begins with future promos. I didn't realize you were profiting, or even close. This is a win. Now scale up and run more promos. That would be my outlook because it will be infinitely easier to just sell something else and push into the black, than it will to labor over a few percentage points when you've already tried so much. Sounds like you're doing great to me. 

In terms of survey results. I get the "I'm broke response" as well, and I just dismiss it. If someone can't afford $7 they will never buy anything from you. I tend to dismiss those comments and look for other, more valuable, comments. But based on what you're saying it sounds like maybe those that like it, buy it. And those that don't, stop engaging and don't bother answering the survey. 

Hope that helps.

Sounds good. You;re not wrong that the email open rate drop off is a bit steep, and it is odd that the LTO is not bringing in sales (I'd say about 80% of mine come from the LTO on average), but sometimes things just go the way they go. You can always revisit it. But yeah, I think focusing on additional sales and scaling would be the fastest path to greater profitability.