Hey, my pleasure John.

It's funny how many musicians are resistant to the squeeze page. But as you stated, the results speak for themselves. Glad you're getting such great results.

As always, great having you here Steve.

For anyone who is new here, check out Steve's sig link. He knows his stuff.

Jap Jap said:

I am wondering, should the squeeze-page be my frontpage?

What I mean is: do I put the squeeze-page at japjap.net to be my main website or in a folder japjap.net/free-download and direct traffic to this page for the squeeze-purpose...

 

If people already opted-in and want to visit your website you don't want them to see the squeeze-page again right?

 

Shouldn't there be a "Continue to the site" button to get around the page?

 

Would love some advice on this.

 

Cheers, Jasper

Hey Jasper,

Steve's advice is spot on. Only thing I personally do different is that I use two different domains. I send my cold traffic to a squeeze page and once they are on my list they never see the squeeze again. From there I send them to my blog where I build the relationship. This is the "official" site with all the bells and whistles. The reason I use two domains is because a certain number of people will always just remove the domain extension and just go to the top level domain, which will cut into the conversion rate. For $10 a year I think it's worth it. But you can definitely do it the way Steve suggested as well. That's how I do it for Music Marketing Manifesto. But for my music site I use the two domains.

Any time, Jasper

If you are using wordpress for your top level blog, here's a post I made to help you get the opt-in form onto your sidebar.

/insider-circle/forum/web-design/simple-way-to-stuff-an-opt-in-box-on-your-blog

Just to clarify what I said that I do on my website ( I love John's suggestion btw):

You can put the optin form on the side bar with a call to action above it, but let's say for instance someone found your site on the search engine from the keyword "ambient electronica".  What you would do to help both with SEO and with subscribers is have have an article on your blog that is targeting that same keyword (if they found it in the search engine, you have already done that) but inside of the post, you would take an ocurrance of the keyword 'ambient electronica', and turn it into a link to your squeeze page.

This will help your squeeze page rank higher for that keyword, but also the two pages working in unison will help the site overall to rank for that keyword.

So if you get someone who finds your site from that keyword and they are really interested in ambient electronica, they wil likely see your link sticking out like a sore thumb in the middle of your article and click it to land on your squeeze page.

If they hit the back button for any reason, well they will still have the opportunity to sign up from the blog side bar.  Chances are though, if they have made it that far, they will sign up on your squeeze page.

Is that a little more cut n dry for you?

Also, you can still use this strategy with John's approach, however you will be linking the keyword to the other domain, where your squeeze page lives.

-Steve

My personal feeling is that plain text email is much more 'deliverable' so I use that instead of an image header.

I would think this is your call though.  With GetResponse (and probably Aweber) if you want a graphic header you have to create the message in both HTML and plain text anyway, just in case someone doesn't have html turned on in their email account.  In which case the plain text version will be served.

I'm anxious to hear John's thoughts on this too.

From my understanding, email sent from a 3rd party service (auto responder) is more likely to trip spam filters if there is HTML, Graphics, large MB count or all of the above than if it's just plain text.

Of course there are other spam filter trips like certain words in you subject line or message body.

Test it.  If your open rates drop, then it may be that your messages are tripping the spam filter.

Of course, if you have the foresight to tell your subscribers to "whitelist" your email address (on your confirm please page), you may not experience any of these problems, even with an image header.

Great question.

-Steve

Oh no, I totally agree... IF you have a good reliable autoresponder.  Aweber is top notch.  Getresponse and few others as well.  They all have high deliverability (mostly because they don't allow you to add contacts through the panel without a confirmation email being sent).

If the spam score is 'green', by all means, show off your style.

I don't think it takes away from the personal aspect of it.  Branding is not necessarily a bad thing.  My interpretation of when John says "Major Label Branding Approach" is that he means vs. Personal Branding Approach.

If you are connecting with subscribers on a personal level, you are taking a personal branding approach.  They are subscribing to Jasper's list (not so much Jasper's unapproachable, larger than life, band's list).

Be yourself, but don't be afraid to have style while you do it.

I'm sure John will chime in with some clarity on this for us.

Hey guys,

Before I chime in, keep in mind, there are no wrong ways, only bad results. But I'll tell you what I know...

1. Yes, I definitely create my emails the way I do on purpose. Simply because the plain text emails perform better. While graphics may be appealing, they often create display problems and they also take the focus off of the important elements. Namely, the words. It is your copy that is going to get the conversion. Not usually the pictures... with some exceptions.

Many email providers, such as gmail, do not display the graphics until the user clicks a "show images" button (by the way, this doesn't happen when you send a test email to yourself). Many people never bother hitting that button (I'm one of them), and the graphic displays as white space, pushing down the text and killing the first few seconds of attention.

It's also a commonly accepted truth that images do hurt deliverability. I question this to an extent, but I stay away from it per the conventional wisdom.

I've also worked with a lot of affiliates and typically the people with the fancy news letters send me the least amount of visitors. The people who send personal looking emails with good copy send me the most. Even with direct response marketing in magazines. It is the ads that blend in to the articles that get the best response. A text email blends in to the typical email experience. Newsletter format typically equals an ad.

I'll bet that if you surveyed people and asked them what they liked better they would all say the fancy email with all the graphics. But if you tested the results, typically it would not pan out that way. At least in my experience.

A few exceptions are putting images within the copy of the email like a picture of a video. Tricks like this can get a lot of clicks. But formatting with headers and navigation typically does not perform as well as plain text. But do keep in mind that everyone's audience is different and sometimes you see flukes in the stats. You'll never really know until you split test (which you can do within Aweber).

2. I think there was some confusion going on there with the 3rd party server issue but I believe we are all saying the same thing. Sending out emails on your own server will get you TERRIBLE results. At least after you get a few spam complaints. Going with a big, whit listed company like Aweber, Get Response, and now Mail Chimp, will protect you as much as you can be protected.

I use Aweber and when I send out emails to my customer lists I get open rates of over 100% typically. So I know the emails are getting in the inboxes. By comparison, I worked with one affiliate who claimed to have hundreds of thousands of addresses managed on his own server. I got about 70 clicks. I have see this kind of thing a lot. The people who use one of those 3 that I mentioned send me traffic. the people who use the cheaper companies, never send me any traffic. Not to mention all the extra features the big companies have.

3. When I was talking about branding strategies, I meant something a bit different. A branding strategy is based on creating brand awareness to the point of affecting purchasing decisions. Meaning, i am in the record store and when I think to myself, what new music is out there that I want to buy, I suddenly remember your music video, radio single, or magazine review, and then choose to buy your album as a result.

I am teaching what is called "direct response marketing". No branding is necessary. Instead you are trying to manufacture the conditions necessary to get people to make a purchase. In other words you create a set of circumstances which get a direct and measurable response.

This is not to confuse branding with a "branding strategy". Creating a brand that people can lock into for yourself as an artist is also important. I view this more as developing your tribe and having all the elements in place so that your tribe can identify you as one of their own... but that is something different from what I was talking about.

Let me know if you guys need any further clarification on anything.

Thanks Steve, and not at all.