Data-Driven List Building

OK, so let's begin. I often hear people complaining about list building getting harder, that they are not getting the results they used to get, and I can totally understand their complaints. I've seen hundreds of landing pages with great results, with great conversion rates, and watched their decline throughout the years. the exact same landing pages which used to convert with more than 20% 10 years ago would convert with about 5% to 10% today. So what can we do? There are a few options we can try. We can try creating better landing pages, we can write more convincing copy, or we can offer better incentives. But these are only temporary fixes, and they don't address the real problem. So what is the real long-term solution? In the next 20 minutes, I will give you the answer to that, plus I will introduce you to the concept of data-driven list building, and I will show you how you can leverage data to supercharge your list building results. My name is Csaba Zajdo. I'm founder of several companies dealing with online marketing and e-commerce. Up to this day, we have created more than 3,000 e-commerce sites, and Optimum is our latest project specializing in lead generation, and it's already helping more than 4,000 websites. So let's begin. I like to compare the evolution of list building with the evolution of email marketing in general. Email marketing was doomed a dozen of times during the last decade. Facebook, Twitter, instant messengers were all considered as the harbinger of doom. Still, email marketing is strong, and I would say it's even stronger than ever. We can see a slow but steady rise in the key performance indicator of email marketing, like click-through rates and open rates. How is it possible? Do we as people love emails more than before? Well, that's definitely not the case. We are flooded by emails. The number of emails sent is growing each year. The secret behind the success of email marketing is that we as marketers are simply sending better emails. And when I say better, I mean that we are sending more relevant emails. We are sending messages which people are more interested in. There are quite a lot of terms associated with this growing relevance. Personalization, list segmentation, even triggered emails, lead scoring, marketing automation. These are all terms associated with increasing relevance, with sending more personalized email. So email marketing is evolving from the same email to everyone type of broadcasting to a more personalized, custom way of sending a unique email to each subscriber. And this evolution is what keeping email marketing strong and what's driving it, growing it even stronger. Now back to my original question. Can we see the same evolution, the same improvements in list building? I say we don't. We can see the same old-fashioned, boring subscription-formed list building solutions as we have seen 10 or even 20 years ago. A quick exercise. Please raise your hand if you can spot the list building section of the next screenshot, next website. Yeah, okay, take a few minutes and yes, you can find it. If somebody's actively looking for it, then yes, you can find it. But I would say it's not really attention-grabbing and definitely not desire-inducing. Do these sign-up forms still work? Well, sort of. The average conversion rate of these sign-up forms is around 0.1 to 0.5%. And even with the 0.5%, I'm being over-generous. The real truth is rather around the 0.1%. So one subscriber per every 1,000 visitors. Is that a result you would be satisfied with? I guess not, yes. Most marketers aren't. That's why they are using the good old-fashioned pop-ups. Pop-ups are getting popular again. And when I say popular, I do not mean that they are popular among visitors, but popular among marketers. Visitors, as end users, hate pop-ups as much as ever. So if they are so hated, why do we use pop-ups? Well, simply because they work. The average entry pop-ups convert with about 1 to 5%. And that's 10 times higher than the conversion rate of the simplest sign-up forms. And there's really no other tool which can even compare with the effectiveness of pop-ups. Now my question is, is there a way to use pop-ups and keep their advantages without ruining the user experience, without disrupting the users? The answer to this question is yes, indeed, there's a way, and this is where I introduce you the concept of data-driven list building. Data-driven list building, just in the case of email marketing, is about getting more relevant. To show the right people the right message at the right moment. And this can be based only on data. Only data can tell us the what, the who, and the when. Okay, so you might be wondering, what kind of data sources do we have? Which data sources can we use? There are two big groups of data sources. One is the traffic source. Where people are coming from, what keywords are they searching for, what ads are they clicking on? And the other big group is on-site behavior. How do these people behave while they are on our site? What are they interested in, what are they looking at, how much time they are spending on the site, stuff like that. So let's see how we can use these data sources to get more relevant with our list building efforts. Let's start with traffic source, it's the easier one. In fact, it's kind of obvious. Instead of sending each traffic source, each visitor to the same landing page, you have to segment your traffic sources and visitors and send each segment to a more relevant, specialized landing page. You will need at least two different groups of landing pages. You need a hot traffic source and a cold traffic source. Separate. Hot traffic sources are better sent to product pages, category pages, pages with the primary goal of selling, while cold traffic sources are better sent to list building landing pages, landing pages with the primary goal of subscribing. How can you decide if a traffic source is a cold traffic source? By rule of thumb, I would recommend that if a traffic, if the conversion rate of the visitors from a traffic source is less than one third of your average conversion rate, then you can safely classify it as a cold traffic source. So for example, yeah, I will, okay, repeat it. So if you have an e-commerce site and your average conversion rate is like 3%, and people coming from, say, Facebook, are converting with only less than 1%, then you can classify Facebook as a cold traffic source and send people from Facebook to list building landing pages. Of course, this is a quite oversimplified variation. In reality, you will need more segments, and you can and you should subsegment these traffic sources and create as much separate landing pages as possible. There's really no limit to the number of segments and to the number of landing pages you can create, but of course you have to find the right balance and not overcreate these landing pages. So this is how you can use traffic source as data source to get more relevant. Now let's see the trickier part, the on-site behavior. Using on-site behavior to personalize the user experience of your website is called on-site retargeting. On-site retargeting is about monitoring the behavior of the users of your website, and whenever that behavior indicates that they are ready for some additional message, then you can show it to them in a form of overlay, often in a form of pop-up. And we all love pop-ups, don't we? Well, we don't, of course, but if you show only the right people the right message at the right moment, then you can maximize the effectiveness of these pop-ups and minimize the damaging effect on user experience. So, oh yeah, so let's see how you can use on-site behavior to determine the right moment and the right message. So what's the right moment, first of all? The right moment, in general, is the moment when you already know as much data, as much information about the user as possible, so you can determine the right message, and it is a moment when you disturb the user the less. Showing a pop-up on entry when the user just arrives on your site is definitely not the right moment. So what other events do we have which you can use to trigger your secondary messages? Well, there are quite a lot of options. One of the most popular one is exit intent. Exit intent is when the user is moving their mouse out of the window towards the X closing button with the right speed and right velocity. Or scroll down. If they scroll down at least 80 or 90% down the page, showing deep interest in the content. Or scroll back. When they scroll down the page, like 100%, and now they are scrolling back. Or re-entry, when they change steps and now they are coming back again to our site. Or hover, when they are hovering the mouse over some cultivation or some images. Inactivity, when they are staying inactive, they're not doing anything for 30 seconds or a minute or something like that. Or using the history back event, when they are using the browser's back button. It's especially useful on mobile devices. You can use any of these or even any combination of these events to get the right moment. Finding the right moment can get often tricky and you might need some experimenting with it. But, bless you, but you will find the right moment and you will know that you found it because the conversion rates will skyrocket. Oh yeah, so let's assume that you found the right moment. Now let's see the right message. How can you find the right message? It's easier if I show it to you through an example. Digital Marketer is a US based online marketing agency. And they are using heavy content marketing and they are also using pop-ups to build their list. But they are not showing the same pop-up to each visitor. Rather, if someone is reading about Facebook and Facebook marketing, they will show a Facebook ad template library as an incentive. If someone is reading about social media, then they will show them the ultimate social media swipe file. And if they are reading about blogging, for example, they will get the ultimate list of blog post ideas. And only if there's no data about the users. For example, the user tries to leave from the homepage. Only in that case will they display them the generic message, which is the get the ultimate digital marketing toolbox. Okay, now let's see another, an e-commerce example. BOOM by Cindy Joseph is again a US based retailer selling beauty products for women over 40. And they created only two groups of online on-site retagging messages. One for hot prospects and one for cold prospects. If someone is reading the category pages, browsing product pages and showing deep interest in buying, then they will get a message of 10% off. Check out, no one received 10% off. This can not only help to build their list, but also to increase conversions and to decrease the cart abandonment rate. But if someone is rather cold prospect and only reading introductory materials, blog posts, and they don't show any interest in buying, they will get a more simple message. 10 best makeup and beauty tips for women over 40. As you can see, this is the classic list building message without any mention of discounts, prices, products, or anything. Okay, now one more, more advanced example. Extreme Digital is the number one online retailer in Hungary. And they used to use this exact message to hot prospects on the category pages. Get exclusive offers up to 25% off selected products. This message converted with 4%. Out of 100 people, four said yes to this offer, which is a decent result, but definitely not outstanding. And then they made some minor changes, keeping the overall structure and the overall message. They customized this message for each category. If someone is, for example, browsing smartphones, then they will get, hey, get exclusive offers up to 25% off smartphones. If they are browsing laptop accessories, up to 25% off laptop accessories, and they made this change for each category. What do you think? How much effect these minor changes made in conversion? Well, huge, yes, indeed. The conversion rate went up from 4% to more than 11%. Almost tripled, almost tripled. And that's the power of getting more relevant. And of course, Extreme Digital has thousands of categories. And creating a unique message, a unique pop-up for each category would be, well, not impossible, but definitely very costly. Fortunately, they used a technique called dynamic text replacement, where they could dynamically replace the text selected products with the name of the category. So they only had to create one single campaign and dynamically customize it for each category. With this technique, you can create even thousands or hundreds of thousands of unique messages for each page of your website. I'm running out of my time, so please let me quickly summarize what I've been talking about so far. So what I've been talking is that segmentation and personalization also works in list building. And you should use data to get more relevant. Use traffic source to send visitors to the right landing page, and you can use, you should use onsite retargeting to show the right secondary message at the right moment. And you can also use dynamic text replacement and other advanced techniques to further personalize your messages. I would like to thank you for your attention. I hope you enjoyed my presentation. In case you might need some help with setting up your onsite retargeting campaigns, please, please feel free to contact us. We are just next to the door, out at the nice orange booths with my lovely colleague, Nicole. And I wish you a nice day, and thank you again. Thank you.