Today I’d like to talk about how a common (and very understandable) assumption is hurting people’s businesses… maybe even yours.
You see, it’s only natural to assume a higher opt rate should translate into more customers, more profits, and more dollars per web visitor. After all, you’re already paying for the visitors, why wouldn’t you want to get more of them to sign up for your lists so you can engage in a relationship with them and convert them over the long run?
And aren’t I, Glenn Livingston, the king of relationship building with follow up content online? Don’t I want the absolute highest opt in rates for my systems I can get?
No, not necessarily, and here’s why…
Increasing your opt in percentage ALWAYS has the potential to decrease not only your front end sales percentage, but your overall value per visitor on back end products and services.
In fact, there’s a natural tension between opt in and sales rates, because in order to attract more opt ins, you’ve got to convince more ambivalent people to give you their information, right? I mean, the most motivated prospects will fill out your forms if you just put up a page that says “Great Free Stuff – Email Here”. So in order to convince MORE people to trust you with their private info, you’ve gotta make bolder and more specific claims.
So when you push the envelope, you’re going after the fence sitters, and here’s the thing… you always run the risk of slanting your system too far in the direction of fence sitters, and away from your most hyper-responsive customers. So it’s entirely possible, and in fact even likely to increase your opt in rate at the expense of your business overall.
Now, I’m not saying you should keep your opt in rates low. Higher opt in rates have the potential to attract more hyper-responsive customers too.
What I AM saying is that you need VISIBILITY into two things to make sure a fanatical focus on increased opt ins and list building doesn’t harm your business as a whole:
- VISIBILITY INTO THE SALE: Put simply, you’ve gotta track your lead source all the way to the SALE, and ideally to the lifetime value of your customers. In AdWords, this means you need to know which adgroups convert to how many dollars at what percent. I KNOW it’s difficult to track this in some systems, but you’ve gotta get with your techie and figure out how to get it done because I guarantee you, whatever money and time you spend of putting the system in place is a lot less than what you’re losing by not knowing.
- KNOWLEDGE OF POINT OF DIFFERENCE BENEFITS: Point of Difference benefits are the things which distinguish you from competitors in the market place. They’re the reasons people will open up their wallets for, as compared to “price of entry” benefits which are the things every vendor has to have just to be in the running. You’ve gotta know what the point of difference benefits are in your market so you can FOCUS on these when working to improve your opt in rate. Then you’re more likely to get more people into your systems actually wiling to spend money!
If you’d like to learn more, please join the hyper-responsive club today.
Be well,
Dr. G 
{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
Nice counter-intuitive advise Glen that goes back to the width of your funnel and your conversions. This is a real killer in the offline world where individual leads absorb so much time and you need to qualify early to avoid the being busy, feeling good, achieving little problem.
This is good, thanks Glenn. I appreciate that you go a different route from making things so stupidly simple that they’re no longer actually, um, useful.
Give me a small, responsive list over a big disengaged one any day.
A client of mine recently got $75K of enquiries in 4 hours from an email list of 170 prospects – just shows that it\’s quality not quantity that counts.
Hi Glenn,
I know this is off topic and I am sure it will be moderated out, but why did you stop your affiliate program for The Hyper Club ? I already asked your support staff, but they just gave me a non-answer. I am so looking forward to marketing your products, because I know they are absolute top notch and exceedingly valuable. What will it take to get you to open it back up??
Hi Kevin… that’s a fair question which deserves a fair answer. I pulled the affiliate program because:
1) The new rules and legalities for affiliates proved hard to manage with an open program. Moreover, I just hated what some people were saying about me. I try to stand for realism and integrity online, but it seems some affiliates will say ANYTHING about you to make the sale. I didn’t want the job of policing thousands of crazy people.
2) Only a handful of affiliates were sending over worthwhile traffic. The rest were actually burdening our customer support systems .
3) The people sent to Rocket Clicks were almost entirely worthless. Rocket Clicks requires a very specific type of higher end client. What we were getting was a flood of people who thought they’d be able to be profitable in “weight loss” or “make money” markets with a shoddy ebook, if they only had Rocket Clicks magic. Then the affiliates who sent them got mad if we didn’t take these clients.
So to answer your question, if you’ve got plans which involve attracting high quality, experienced PPC marketers into our mix, I’m open minded about making exceptions on a case by case basis. But generally, it’s more trouble than it’s worth.
I hope you’ll understand!