Karen Grace said
Thanks for this John.

I don't 100% understand though. Are you saying that when opt-in is turned off, and people use secondary emails, they are more likely to open the email but not bother to actually click the download link ? I understand why the open rates may be lower (which they actually haven't been for me with it turned off) but I don't totally understand why people not bothering to get the download once they've opened the email.

What I'm saying is that when you have confirmed opt in off you get lower quality subscribers. This happens because the people most likely to sign up are people who have less anxiety about giving you their email (often people that use secondary email addresses). FB then clones accounts that match this profile and you attract a lower quality lead. As such when confirmed opt in is off everything tends to go down except the price you pay per subscriber. Opens go down because many people don't bother to check their secondary email as much and clicks go down because there is a generally lower level of commitment. 

If you are saying that your open rate was higher when you had it turned off then you should obviously turn it back on. 

Another thing to keep in mind is that stats are not stable until yo have true statistical significance, which is somewhere around 1500 people if memory serves. We usually can't wait that long and need to make calls on how things are performing much sooner. But if you are stating your assumptions based on fairly small sample sizes, then what is likely is just that things were not stable yet in your earlier sample, or the one you are looking at now. 

But performance almost always goes up when confirmed opt in goes on, all things being equal.

The reason I turned it off was that at a very early stage, about half the subscribers weren't confirming. Perhaps I should have given them a few days to confirm? I wasn't sure what to do other than turned confirmed opt in off.

50% not confirming is ridiculously high and something needs to be looked at in the language, page load times, etc. I would also call Aweber if that happens again and see if they can see anything. 20% or so is more normal. 30% in extreme cases. At east that has been my experience. But I just ignore those numbers. All that matters to me is the number that confirms, and I have my conversion pixel on the confirmation page, not the first step thank yo page.

I seem to remember in the visemenn tutorial, you turned it off. Is this something you generally experiment with to see which gets you the most open/click rates?

Thanks for any further thoughts.

Karen  

I turned it off with viseMenn because it was a fairly knew campaign and I was struggling to get my 5 subs per ad set per day, so that the algorithm had the data it needed. Once I turned it off, the subs totals went up and the algorithm and pixel learned from the increase of data and the things performed better once I turned it back on, which I ultimately did.

Hope that helps 🙂

Hi Karen,

It wasn't necessarily a temporary thing, but it was done for the reason I mentioned (to get more daily subs so the algorithm could perform better). But I did mention that I would need to monitor it and see how it impacted campaign performance and if engagement went down I would turn it back on. That is what happened. But when the campaigns went back on, performance picked up because there was more pixel and conversion goal history, so future campaigns performed better.

Your understanding of why I turned on 7 day click is correct, but that wasn't a temporary thing. I do see that a small percentage of people take a day or two to confirm, for whatever reason.

Yes, 20 subs is not statistically significant. However, it's a case by case thing depending on how bad something is doing. Sometimes things are s off that we just know they will never correct and turning off early is fine.

I haven't seen major changes, however I would say that streaming is not making things easier. For some demographics it is driving average sales conversion rates down a bit. But not dramatically. And again, it depends a lot on the demographic.

Re: "It’s disappointing that my lookalike audience isn’t performing on these fronts but I’m assuming it’s entirely down to the confirmed opt in thing..." It may be, it may not be. There are no one size fits all answers. You may need to tweak copy, you may need to tweak your offer, you may just need to turn confirmed opt in on. That said, I don't necessarily know why you are coming to the conclusion that it's not working. I thought you had mentioned getting subs down to about $1.20? I still think you may be looking at the immediate when this is a long game. Stay focused on subscriber value, and in your case... your potential subscriber value over the course of the year ahead. How many promos do you anticipate running? Make a few projections based on your sales rate thus far and extrapolate to see better assess what this audience is worth and whether or not it has the potential to be profitable or not. You always seem to feel that you are much further away from success than I do.

Karen Grace said
Hi John,

Thanks for this.

So yes subs were coming in at a good price of around $1.20. But email open rates were pretty bad (email 1 was 69% opened and 53% clicked, and the last email was 12 % opened and 1% clicked) and I got zero sales from 160 subs.

69% is a little low, but it's not that bad. I'm usually seeing around 75% - 80%, so you are really only a few points off. Clicks are a tad low. 12% is too low and zero sales is no good obviously. You just want to make sure that is 160 people through the entire funnel before making decisions. Not just 160 people to sign up.

This is why I think it was the confirmed opt-in thing.

But yeah, I would go with confirmed opt in on. I just always do that these days unless I'm trouble shooting. I also dont do it on customer lists usually.

But I am also thinking of tweaking my offer so that people get 'bonus tracks' instead of the 25% off, partly as it's better financially for me, and partly because I wonder whether it might be more appealing.

That's a perfectly fine way to go. In my experience discounts work a little better but both are fine and it's case by case.

One woman unsubscribed saying she didn't like the 'hard sell' thing- I know it's just one woman but I wonder whether the 'discount' thing feels like a pushy 'hard sell' thing to some people (even though I think I've done it quite playfully), that a bonus thing might not ...

You REALLY can't take that on board. That is absolutely going to happen with any direct response marketing. If 10 out of 100 people said that then maybe you would need to look at it. But 1... That's absolutely nothing to be concerned about. Direct response marketing always gets a response. That's it's job. Sometimes it's not the one we want. It's just part of it.

I also don't know whether this made a difference to people not confirming in the early stages, but on my squeeze page I put some text under the opt-in box, saying 'You will also receive updates and promotions about Karen's music. You can unsubscribe at any time. :)' You can see it here: https://www.karengracemusic.ne...../freemusic. I felt more comfortable being more overt about this as it feels more respectful and also from what I've read about GDPR, it's what's required. Have you experimented with being more overt in this way before ? What are your thoughts?

I'm not going to get in a debate about GDPR because there are many differing opinions on it. I have done it that way and, while it's only anecdotal, in that I haven't tested it, I think it hurts. It just causes a person to pause and think about what they are doing, even if you are being noble. It's like saying, "can I borrow your some money, I promise I won't steal it". It's when you qualify it that I start worrying.

Re: the pixel thing, I've never quite understood that- so fb is always getting information from the pixel on my website/conversion goal history as well as how a particular campaign is doing ?

Yes, and it factors into how the algorithm performs on your campaigns. Or at least this seems to be the consensus opinion.

And thanks re: the encouragement of success around the corner. I do feel it will work out well. I suppose I haven't yet seen all the elements I need coming together (low subs price, sales etc) but I'll be running ads again soon, and looking forward to hitting on something. I've done some sums on various possible outcomes of people signing up to my membership thing which is the main promotion I'm thinking about for the moment. 

Thanks as always,

Karen  

Sounds good. Good luck with everything!

\m/