Why Is My Muse Not Converting?

[Last Man In Europe]

Hi Ross,

I am using the email sign ups to send a weekly newsletter about teaching techniques. I am offering at the end a chance to learn more techniques by ordering the course (my muse).

I'm thinking of changing the website away from a long sales letter. My 3 sales were all made when I had a content based approach i.e. a more traditional website with a menu bar.

I really don't understand how no one is buying (I had 39 newsletter sign ups only yesterday) - they like the concept I am offering!

Weird.

[blueline]

Steve,

You're actually doing great even though it's frustrating to be unable to monetize traffic and engagement.

I'm a fan of Dave McClure's "Pirate Metrics" (AARRR) and to crib from Dave, you're successfully gaining traction with the first two "A's": Acquisition (traffic) and Activation (sign-ups).

Now you can focus on one of the "R's", revenue.

[The other two "R's" are incredibly useful for info products as well: Retention, or how long your users/customers tend to return and engage with your site; and Referrals, or how often your users/customers refer your site to others]

BTW, I agree with Adam that your squeeze page is too long. This is probably creating some downward pressure on your activations (signups) and it would be worthwhile to A/B a much, much shorter version of the page to see if you can optimize your activations.

On to revenue.

Your situation inspired me to write a (rather long-winded) post. The gist of it that applies to you is as follows:

1) Set up an autoresponder sequence of 4-8 emails over a 2 week period. Each message should give the recipient some value - a set of tips on the most lucrative countries in which to teach ESL, a report on the trends in teaching ESL, etc.

2) In the second email and every email after (or every other email,) in addition to giving tips, reports, data, etc, also do a soft sell for your product, and make sure that the links in your emails are trackable. This is critical.

3) At the end of the two weeks, look at the performance of each of your emails. Where in the autoresponder sequence were recipients clicking on links?

4) Use the results of your analysis in (3) to generate some new hypotheses: the autoresponder should be longer, you should add a few different products to your lineup (but don't create them until you've validated demand for them,) you should go with a hard sell in email #3 instead of a soft sell, etc.

5) A/B test one of your hypotheses in an new autoresponder against the old one. Did you move the needle? Evaluate the data from your experiment and use it to create new hypotheses.

Keep me posted on how it goes, and if you need more help feel free to ask.


- Nathan

[RossLeRenard]

The generic sales template you used is not ideal. Using the tips from conversion rate experts will work, but you have to write directly to your audience instead of just filling in the blanks.

[peterkaye]

A lot of people use advertising and landing pages just to get people to sign up to their newsletters. You should excited that you are doing well. You'll just have to turn your focus to getting sales through the newsletters.

These guys have some really informative newsletters on data driven results, maybe they can help:
http://www.marketingexperiments.com/

[jackson]

What about trying a new design?