Want High Quality Email Subscribers? Then You Need a Higher-Quality Opt-in Experience
Listen on the go by downloading the audio of today’s video here.
- In today’s video, I offer an in-depth look into the errors and mistakes in some of our products that may have prevented us from getting high-quality email subscribers in the past.
- I also include research that supports that a higher-quality opt-in experience leads to more higher-quality subscribers.
Hey, this is Matt from AutoGrow.co. In these Matt Hack videos, I give you actionable tips in 10 minutes or less on how to be more awesome at marketing and otherwise accelerate your creativity and entrepreneurial spirit.
I just want to tell you that the idea for this video comes from a personal need. As you guys know, I'm working hard on our own funnel and sharing the journey with you, as well as providing monthly growth reports and little anecdotes about what we're learning and how our own funnel is performing as we go about the process. Thank you for following along. I hope you continue to do so.
Onto the topic of today’s video. What is a high-quality email subscriber? When I say high-quality email subscriber, I mean someone who is engaged.
Well, I wish there was a better word. That word is so tired and so drawn out: “engaged.”
Anyway, someone who is reading your content and opening your emails is considered a high-quality email subscriber. This is also someone who does those things on a consistent basis over time. They feel that you're giving them value and your content is worth their time.
Now, if you want high-quality email subscribers, you're going to need a better opt-in email experience. We’re going to tell you why and prove it in this video.
Building and Strengthening the AutoGrow/Customer Relationship
I noticed recently from looking at data in our own email funnel, and our funnel as a whole, that email is the biggest bottleneck right now. We get so many email subscribers on a daily basis, but we're doing a mediocre job of selling to them.
I don't think that's for a lack of them hearing about our products. I think it's more about the relationship, and we want to do a better job of building that relationship with you guys who are watching, and with our other subscribers who are considering our products that we're putting out.
This way, before we even make an offer, people will think, "Hey, Matt and the AutoGrow team really know what they're talking about. If I invest in them, I'm going to get money, results and, yeah, money."
As we invest more in our relationship with them, like starting out with a small purchase of $7 to kind of try us at a low-dollar risk, then if they get results, maybe they will buy our full course for a $1,000 and get more value proportional to that.
So that's what we want to accomplish. To do that, we really have to raise the standards for ourselves and level up across the board, and that's what we're doing here every week. We're focusing on a different part of the funnel every week. This week is effective email list-building.
So we got the quantity, fine. You know, we're adding about 40 to 50 new email subscribers per day to our email list, which is great. We're growing quickly and consistently on that front.
I don't think we need more email subscribers, though. What we need — and maybe what you need for your own business — is that when you send those automated emails, you need to build relationships on autopilot that are real.
Getting High-Quality Email Subscribers: What We’ve Learned
In this video, we want to show you that if you want higher-quality email subscribers, especially in that first month when they immediately join your email list, this is how you do it.
This is backed up by research that shows there's generally a drop-off after about 30 days in terms of engagement. You know, people get busy.
People might have opted into your email automation and only paid attention for the first four newsletters, or the first 10 emails that you might send, if it's an automation.
The first thing we’re looking to improve to form better, higher-quality relationships with our subscribers, is fixing obvious errors like typos, obvious design flaws and otherwise just boosting the overall professionalism of the design.
Now, when it comes to professional design and creating a great design frame, if you will, I'm all about it, but at the same time, it's important to us to keep it humanized and a fun, friendly and approachable aspect of our brand.
We want to balance that with more professionalism, but I don't want it to be too professional where people don't feel like we're approachable, because that's an important branding goal for us.
Yours might be different, but I think the authenticity part of our brand is what helps sell for us.
So, for example, when I was talking about typos, obvious flaws and design errors, just take a look at one of our popular lead magnets, The Ultimate Email List-Building Checklist.
You can see right off the bat that we haven't updated it since we moved to the new brand name of AutoGrow.co.
I kind of consider us a new startup this year, because we have this brand new focus on info products. As mentioned, we're sharing the journey with you.
Something like this though, where someone comes to a website called AutoGrow.com, downloads this and sees, "Oh, Petovera.com. Like, what is that?" and it has a similar logo, it sends the wrong signal and may give a bad impression.
In addition, there may be some typos in there. Also, although I haven't looked at this in awhile, I noticed when people downloaded it, we have all the strategies in here, but they're just links that go over to our blog posts and back to the website.
I think that what people want and expect when they downloaded it was a PDF, so we need to do a better job of just keeping our promise, of not just giving customers links back to the actual blog posts.
Instead, we need to give them a resource so that they can have it on their computer and they can own it, which is what I believe most people want anyway.
Other obvious errors are like, this: we have a call to action at the end of it, the checklist. As far as our now-deactivated done-for-you funnel service, we no longer offer that, so that needs to be updated as well. When people click on that and then go over to that page, you know, it's just giving them the wrong expectation.
Now, compare that to the Sales Funnel Checklist lead magnet that we offer people, which performs really well and has the updated logo on it. The design is much more professional. It looks cleaner and more organized, and it looks like it wasn't just built in Microsoft Word, which in all honesty, the other one was.
It also has a call to action for one of our products called The Sales Funnel Blueprint, and the logo is right on it. There's a clear call to action for it.
We may change that to our more core offer, which is the Six-Figure Sales Funnel, but that remains to be seen.
Still, you can see the difference in terms of professionalism. I think that even with this we can still improve upon the design to get across those branding goals that I mentioned.
Further, you know, just look at the welcome email that people get when they download a lead magnet. It's fairly generic, it's not so inspired, and we want to keep it conversational, because we want people to know that if they reply to an email, that we will read it, and we will reply most of the time.
Overall, I just feel like there's more that we can do. We can even ask people, "Let me know what you think about this, or if you have an idea for how to improve it or if it doesn't meet your expectations, let us know."
Research That Supports a Higher-Quality Opt-In Experience
To give you some research to support the fact that fixing obvious errors will actually have an effect, just look at what we shared in another recent Matt Hacks video.
In that video, I showed you how user feedback matters. When we did user testing, we used a tool called input.io for that and some other tools like Fiverr.
Just by fixing those obvious errors and moving a testimonial up on the page, our sales month to month grew by 71%.
Here's some additional research. This comes from the blog ConversionXL, a very credible source. They cite three different studies. Although some of them aren't statistically relevant, there are other studies here that are a bit more credible and trustworthy, like the London-based digital communications agency.
They surveyed over 1,000 people, and 42% said they would be influenced by spelling and grammar blunders. Here's how ConversionXL puts it:
Typos and other grammatical errors are an example of earned credibility. They are either immediately recognized and turn off readers, or they are subtle and slowly damage credibility throughout the copy."
So that covers the front end of working to generate higher-quality subscriber relationships. But what about the back end, when we actually do the meat and potatoes and deliver follow-up emails that deliver additional value to our subscribers?
Well, for that, there's some anecdotal research that shorter emails get better open rates. Also, this case study from AWeber is actually compelling. It’s about a husband and wife, and the husband is an employee of AWeber.
He decided to send an email newsletter three times per week for an entire year filled with shareworthy advice they had learned.
They did this experiment for a year, and the email length was only 100 words per email, and for an entire year they sent these emails. Their open rate was substantially higher.
Now, according to stats I saw the other day from MailChimp, the average across all industries is about a 20% open rate. I know many people who hear that, who have large email lists, are saying, "I would kill for 20%."
The husband and wife team said in this case study for their industry it was 20% to 40% on average, and they saw a 57% on average open rate. That just blows your mind. The emails were only 100 words each.
They also saw fewer people unsubscribe, and they got lots of positive feedback. So what that tells me is actually shortening the length of the emails we're sending to our subscribers is going to be a good thing.
Also, incorporating the Matt Hack lesson I gave earlier in the week called "My Messages to the Edges Technique," we're also going to be doing that, so go check that out if you didn't already see that one.
One Action to Take Right Now
So here's the one action to take based on what you learned in this video. Read through your existing email automation and/or your existing lead magnet, preferably both, find any typos that you see and any obvious design flaws and fix them.
Fixing the typos is going to increase your perceived credibility. If it's a particularly involved design flaw that you need to delegate to someone else on your team or to a designer that you work with regularly, then make a note of it, and when you're done, send off an email to him or her with the changes you want to make to it.
This is only going to take 45 minutes. So that's the one action to take if you're looking to grow the quality of the relationship that you have with your email subscribers. Trust me, it's going to be worth the time.
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So tune in next week, because today's Friday. Go enjoy the weekend, go have some fun, and next week we're going to be tackling the deeper next level of your funnel, which is sales and conversion rates. Lots more useful tips coming up next week. Stay tuned for that. As always, my name is Matt Ack in the Matt hat, delivering your daily dose of Matt Hacks. Keep hustling. Stay focused. I'll see you in the next video.
