Case Study: Increase Ad Clicks With Email
Case Studies - Marc Kline - April 5th, 2007 - PermalinkRecently, we posted the first in our series of AWeber customer case studies. These articles give us a great opportunity to show real-life examples of how customers use our service to better their communications.
In addition to providing real-life examples, we make suggestions on improvements to enhance results that should drive constructive thought about any campaign.
We continue this series with Ryan Stewart and his PharmBoard.com website.
Background
Looking for a good job can certainly be a difficult task to take on, especially when seeking a job in a particular industry. Recruiters look for specific qualities in applicants. Knowing what these are is nearly impossible without a helping hand.
Pharmboard.com helps to break down barriers for Pharmaceutical Sales job seekers with free information.
According to Ryan:
| “[PharmBoard] targets pharmaceutical sales job seekers by providing free information. The site is entirely ad supported. Most other sites in the niche exist to sell books, CDs, or other electronic/physical products.” |
Each page includes an in-line set of advertisements for revenue. An important goal, then, is to keep traffic at the website by building effective copy. Just as importantly, to be successful, it’s necessary to keep subscribers coming back as frequently as possible.
This is where an opt-in email service service steps in.
How Ryan Uses AWeber
When visitors arrive at PharmBoard, they immediately see a sign up form for a free, 5-day minicourse. Once signed up, subscribers receive brief messages with a enticing teaser about a published article followed by a link back to the article on the site.
Periodically, a once-out bulletin is sent at a specific date and time with timely messages and more links back to the site.
Both of these types of messages provide a means to develop a relationship with subscribers to his mailing list, rather then relying on visitors to come back to the site based on their bookmarking his page or remembering his site during their free time or job search.
While job seekers embark on exploring opportunities in the pharmaceutical industry, they’re sent messages that give them tips along the way, all driving traffic back to PharmBoard site to help to generate revenue.
Results So Far
His list has grown since it’s inception, with a big spike in sign ups at a particular point, whereas things have leveled of a bit with more gradual growth.
Still messages are provoking clicks back to the site, and his unsubscribe rate remains quite low.
So far, so good from what we can see. But how have the results seemed to Ryan? He indicated in an email to us:
| “I see a consistent increase in my traffic when I send a well-planned broadcast message.” |
- Subscriber growth has leveled off a bit
- Clicks on links in messages of have declined for broadcast messages
- Out of his unsubscribes, most (~60%) come after all follow up messages are sent
Indeed, Ryan would like to increase his sign-ups and their responsiveness to his messages. These are two very major considerations for any email campaign, and we’ve helped customers with this for years.
So, after reviewing his campaign statistics, we’ve made some recommendations on how he might improve on these two factors.
Suggestions
Earlier I’d mentioned that PharmBoard.com has a sign up form seen immediately when someone visits the site. This is great to get people to sign up immediately upon visiting the website.
However, not everyone is convinced to sign up for more email into their inbox without having read some of the copy on a website, seeing the value of the information and the experience and authority of its author.
Publish More Web Forms
In reviewing the PharmBoard, I saw very few places to sign up for an email campaign. As per our article on where to publish sign up forms, my recommendation is to publish more forms to the site.
Of course, placing a form the size of the one on the main page (see screenshot above) may become a bit obtrusive to the experience of the visitor, so in this case I would suggest publishing a smaller, more simple version of the form visitors have already seen and read the headline for on the main page.
For example:
The most important thing is to get a form on each relevant page. The sidebar of his template may be a good candidate to publish forms onto each of PharmBoard’s web pages.
I’d also recommend placing a copy ‘below the fold’ (underneath what is seen initially when a page is loaded) on many pages so that visitors have an opportunity to subscribe after reading some of the page’s content.
As Ryan’s been doing, I also recommended continuing use of unique ad categories for forms on key pages, to see which section of the website are most effective in generating subscribers, in order to provide the possibility for further analysis and optimization at a later point.
Messages
Subscribers to Ryan’s list receive 11 follow up messages, with the intervals set so that the messages are stretched out across a month’s time. During and after that point, they receive periodical broadcast messages.
Send More Broadcast Messages
I noticed in reviewing his broadcast message history, that Ryan had sent regular messages, most frequently during October of last year, but has since sent them less often.
At one point, there was nearly two months between messages, so that anyone who had completed the follow up sequence of messages didn’t receive anything during that period. The problem is that through email, interest does have a relatively short shelf life.
Overwhelming subscribers with messages will send them to the unsubscribe button, but if you don’t keep information in front of them, their interest may simply lapse. When it does, they may unsubscribe from your list or forget they’d subscribed for your messages and mark them as SPAM.
So, I’ve recommended that Ryan send messages at least every month, noting that he can set up broadcast messages as far in advance as he’d like.
From/Reply Address
In testing some of his messages, I also noticed that the From/Reply address that appears when subscribers open their email reads “Ryan Stewart” for its Name. Many subscribers will see only this name when they open their inboxes.
Although subscribers may recognize this name early on in the campaign from exposures on the website and messages, as they receive less and less messages, it may also be less compelling than say the name of the website, PharmBoard.com.
So, I’ve recommended that he set this name as “PharmBoard.com - Ryan Stewart”. That way, subscribers will see “PharmBoard.com”, a name they’re likely to recognize, first, then “Ryan Stewart” if their email application affords the space.
Relocate Links
Reviewing the statistics for his messages, I observed that subscribers seemed more likely to click on a link in a message if it were “above the fold”. By this, I mean that more people clicked on links in messages if the link was situated near the top of the message rather than mixed in at the bottom of the content.
Due to the fact that people like to click around when using their computers and are more likely to scan and browse than read, and with the increasing popularity of “preview panes” for email programs that often show only the first few lines of an email message, my suggestion is to consistently place links near the top of his messages.
Conclusion
My expectations are that by applying these changes, Ryan can increase sign ups to his email campaign by placing more web forms on his site, and increase the open rates on his messages by changing the ‘From/Reply’ address for his message with more messages sent after the end of his automatic series.
By placing links “above the fold”, click activity should increase, with the result of more consistent traffic to his website from his email campaign, increasing the ad revenue return from his email campaign.
We’ll check back in with Ryan in the coming months to revisit this case and see what kind of results he found in applying these recommendations. Hopefully you found them helpful in considering your own campaign.
Stay tuned also for more case studies and other helpful tips in our blog.
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See Ryan’s campaign in action at PharmBoard.com
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April 6th, 2007 at 9:19 pm
Great article!
April 7th, 2007 at 6:02 pm
Hi Everyone,
A Very informative article!
The advice to use more forms and better placed, hit home. I have work to do.
Thankyou.
Jan
April 8th, 2007 at 9:29 am
I have noticed that my links get clicked on more above the fold as well. Marc, I LOVE the case studies! Please, keep them coming.
April 8th, 2007 at 8:38 pm
Marc,
Thanks so much for the case study and the fantastic advice. I’ll be implementing it over the next couple of weeks and look forward to sharing the results with you over the coming months.
Keep up the good work.
May 1st, 2007 at 7:28 pm
Really helpful article. Interesting that links placed above the fold get more clicks than those placed below the fold. Excellent tip!
May 8th, 2007 at 12:37 am
If a visitor comes back to your site by email marketing then it will help you in both ways more sign-ups and chances of clicking on ads. You get a permanent visitor. This may help us also as we add products frequently.
November 3rd, 2007 at 12:13 am
this was what I actually need great article