If you’re going to sell a product online, it’s often smart to get your visitor’s email address before sending them to the sales letter.
This gives you the benefit of emailing the visitor in the future with links to the sales letter, alternate sales letters, and maybe to someone else’s sales page through an affiliate link.
It also means more people will drop off at the squeeze page and never see the sales letter. So at times it can be more important to maximize the conversion of the squeeze page than the actual sales copy!
I’ve had squeeze pages convert at over 50% of visitors to relatively targeted visitors. (The same squeeze page will convert at around 2-5% with untargeted traffic.)
These are the 7 elements I use to get these high conversion rates.
1. Give A “Reason Why” They Should Give Their Email Address
Take a step back and look at your business from an outsider’s perspective. No one wants to give you their email address just because you exist.
There must be a reason why.
Most people use a freebie as their reason why. I’ve given away ebooks, videos and software free with great success.
But some freebies are better than others! Ryan Deiss stresses testing your freebie to see which leads to the most new customers. (And that’s CUSTOMERS, not simply subscribers.)
I suspect I’m giving away an ebook right now that’s hurting sales. Either because it’s too long, takes away from the sales process or some other reason. So I’ll be testing it against another squeeze page offer.
And that offer may not be a freebie at all!
One of my favorite squeeze pages converted at more than 50% and didn’t give anything away. It simply built curiousity and suspense in a few sentences, then asked for your name and email to discover the resolution.
PERFECT!
Curiousity is a GREAT tool for squeeze pages.
I’ll analyze this type of squeeze page on the blog in the future.
2. A Great Headline
I don’t use much copy on the squeeze page at all. For me, the headline carries the weight. I’ve added more copy only to see my testing software determine it wasn’t helping sales.
A great headline will satisfy Michael Masterson’s 4 U’s. That means writing something that’s…
Urgent
Ultra-Specific
Unique
Useful
Add a strong dose of curiousity to the 4 U’s and you’ll have a strong headline to take center stage.
3. Get An Animated Video That Starts Automatically
An animated “talking head” video (see http://www.sitepal.com/) that starts automatically can do amazing things for your conversion rate.
ESPECIALLY for low-quality traffic. I’ve seen conversion rates jump from barely recordable to 2-5% just by adding an animated “talking head” video.
Ryan Deiss found an “animated” video actually outperformed live-action videos!
SitePal is fairly easy to set up, so I highly recommed giving it a try. (They have a free trial.)
4. Keep Your Opt-In Form Above The Fold
In the past I’ve noticed that adding several blank lines before your headline can increase conversion. But I’ve noticed the exact opposite for squeeze pages.
I’m assuming the reason for that is it can push your opt-in form down the page so the visitor can’t see it without scrolling. That’s called “below the fold.”
From memory, all of my highest converting squeeze pages had the opt-in form “above the fold” so the visitor didn’t have to scroll.
5. Put A Box Around The Opt-In Form
A great way to draw attention to your opt-in form is to put it inside of a colored table. The code below won against no table at all. Just insert your opt-in form code between the two lines.
6. Use Arrows To Draw Attention To Your Opt-In Form.
Another way to draw attention to your opt-in form that has won in tests is to point at the opt-in form with red arrows.
You can usually find graphics like these at stock photography websites.
7. Ask For An Email Address Only
Yup, simply asking for an email address beats asking for name and email. My test results show this, and so do to tests by numerous other marketers.
And that’s that, 7 steps to a successful squeeze page.
From there, of course, you need a successful sales letter and email follow-up campaign.
If you’d like a stellar squeeze page, sales letter and email sequence you can fill out an application here.
Copywriting Dean
Kristi Daniels (2 comments.) 2:39 pm on February 6, 2010 Permalink
Thank you for another great post.
Bookmarking is a great idea. And if the page disappears or the ad copy changes, then they probably weren’t that profitable for the original seller.
Maybe your original method of bookmarking the pages would produce the highest quality swipe file.
Stephen Dean (26 comments.) 6:50 pm on February 6, 2010 Permalink
Yes, you’re right
For people who don’t know, and correct me if I’m wrong, the Copy Oracle software looks for paid ad copy that stays unchanged for long periods of time… in the assumption that it’s profitable.
The theory being if that copy doesn’t change over a long period of time and the someone keeps paying to promote the advertisement, it’s more likely to be profitable.
I like collecting screenshots because it’s easier to breeze through dozens of headlines quickly to get ideas. And I count on the Copy Oracle software to help verify the quality of the headlines I write based on my swipe file.
Hopefully that’s a good system.
Fox (1 comments.) 6:11 am on February 8, 2010 Permalink
There is also a plugin for Firefox called grab it (if I remember correctly, I’m reading this on my phone) that turns an entire web page into a jpg image. You can save the entire page instead of just snips, if you want.
Stephen Dean (26 comments.) 5:01 pm on February 8, 2010 Permalink
Awesome Fox, thanks for the heads up.
Ryan Healy (10 comments.) 5:53 pm on February 8, 2010 Permalink
I like to use SnagIt. I can capture any region of a web page… or capture an entire sales letter. It’s one of my favorite tools.
I also learned of a new site called PDFmyURL.com. This is a free tool that lets you PDF any web page. Works like a charm — except it will leave blank spaces in the PDF where any videos are in the sales letter. But that’s not a big deal.
Ryan
Stephen Dean (26 comments.) 6:02 pm on February 8, 2010 Permalink
PDFmyURL.com – Awesome! Thanks for the resource, Ryan. I’ve been pondering how to do this lately, as I like to send my clients updates in PDF form instead of HTML so they don’t have the temptation to start making changes before I’m finished.
Cheers!