There Is More to Tracking Than Conversion
Michel Fortin

One of my coaching students recently asked me whether it's better to offer a free trial or a $1 limited time trial as an incentive to sign up for a paid newsletter subscription.

The answer involves the vital role of tracking and testing throughout your entire sales funnel.

Generally speaking, a free trial is likely to convert more visitors initially, but the $1 trial may be the better choice over the long term. Such generalizations have little place in business. The only way to determine the right answer for your business is to track and test the process from beginning to end.

It's important to remember that conversion rates are only half the equation. What it comes down to is visitor value, not simply what is better for short term sign-ups.

Before applying the information to the free trial vs. $1 trial question, let?s take at a hypothetical pay-per-click (PPC) campaign to illustrate the concept of visitor value with simple terms and calculations.

Say you spend $1,000 on a PPC campaign and generate 10,000 visitors. Also, say your salesletter converts at 1% and each sale is worth $50 to you. This means you generate:

• 100 sales (1% of 10,000 visitors).
• 100 x $50 each = $5,000 gross profits.
• $5,000 divided by 10,000 visitors means each visitor is worth $0.50.

In a second campaign you choose to spend more for better keywords. You double your campaign costs to $2,000.

This time, the better keywords generate more targeted visitors, but you end up with less traffic and only generate 4,000 visitors.

On the surface, it looks like the smaller campaign brought in a better return, but it goes further than that.

Because the traffic from the second campaign is more qualified, the conversion rate on your sales letter will increase perhaps double or even triple. Let's say 3% in this example. Now, let's do the math again. You generate:

• 120 sales (3% of 4,000 visitors) at the same value of $50 per sale.
• 120 x $50 each = $6,000 gross profits.
• So, $6,000 divided by 4,000 visitors means each visitor is worth $1.50.

Once you've looked at the whole picture rather than the conversion rate alone, the picture changes. While you doubled your expenses in the second campaign, you tripled your visitor value and your overall profits.

Since the visitors were more targeted and qualified it's likely that these customers will stay longer, buy more and present less hassles in terms of refunds, returns and complaints.

So the LIFETIME visitor value will increase substantially, too.

Translating visitor value to the question of the free trial subscribers and $1 trial subscribers is a similar process.

Take your tracking beyond conversion rates and look at your entire funnel to determine the more profitable scenario for your business. Are the free subscribers or $1 subscribers more likely to convert into full membership?

Another element of testing and tracking through the whole process rather than focusing solely on conversion rates is that it will give you more information to work with so you can improve sticking points throughout the sales cycle.

A more comprehensive look at the process will show you exactly what is converting, where you can improve, and where your bottlenecks are.

For example, if you have a typical sales process with an opt-in page, followed by the salesletter, and then the order page, as well as an autoresponder series for those who opt-in but don't buy, you will learn:

• Which page is converting (or not);
• Where people ?stumble? or leave;
• What to improve and test variations of.
• You will learn all that by tracking:

• How many unique visitors opt-in.
• How many buy from the salesletter.
• How many buy from the order form.
• And how many buy from your autoresponder follow-ups.

Knowing this can tell you where you ARE converting, and identify your biggest bottleneck.

For example, if you have 40% who opt-in, and 5% of those who opt-in click to the order form to buy, but only 1% buy, this tells you that your bottleneck is your order form!

A person who doesn't track may jump to the conclusion that the less than 1% conversion indicates a salesletter issue, where proper tracking would reveal that the issue is with the order form.

With tracking, you can clearly see that your opt-in and salesletter copy are indeed working, but for some reason, people are leaving once they hit the order form.

This is why it's important to look beyond conversions and develop a practice of tracking the entire sales process.

Whether your question is whether a free trial or $1 trial is a better choice or you are wondering whether a particular bonus is a good fit for your target market, you will find the answers through tracking and testing the entire sales funnel and not just sales.

When you focus on the bigger picture, you can easily calculate overall customer value and identify weak links in your sales process.

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Michel Fortin is a direct response copywriter, marketing strategy consultant, and instrumental in some of the most lucrative online businesses and wildly successful marketing campaigns to ever hit the web. For more articles like this one, please visit his blog below and subscribe to his RSS feed: http://www.michelfortin.com/

Kenton Newby

It doesn't matter if you call it a "niche", a "target market", your "ideal prospects" or some other term...if you're selling products, promoting affiliate offers or simply creating content online for nearly any group of people as part of your online business, you absolutely MUST have a blog. These days, it's just not an option if you truly want long-term success.

What used to be simple little online diaries have now become powerful ways of organizing and offering content to a wide audience of people dying for fresh, new ideas on nearly any topic. If you're not using a blog yet, by the end of this article you'll hopefully "see the light" and understand why this is such an important platform to add into your online business efforts. In fact, there are quite a few reasons why you should seriously consider creating a blog for your online business today, but let's just go over a few of them in the interest of time.

1. Information-based Marketing Versus Hype

One of the biggest reasons to create a blog is for more effective marketing. No matter what business you're in, it's probably a more competitive landscape now than ever before, with it getting harder and harder to gain the attention of your prospects (people are TOO BUSY to be barraged with blatant marketing). But with a blog, you can create valuable content (audio, video, text or all three) that separates you from the competition as your prospects are comparing all the available options. And if you know that people are out there looking for certain types of information that ties in with the products and services you offer, you should DEFINITELY be offering that sort of info on a blog, while also promoting your products as solutions to those problems.

2. Demonstrate Your Expertise

Another great reason to have a blog is that they allow you to differentiate yourself from the competition. In fact, by posting relevant, useful info, you're positioning yourself as the expert in your field. No matter what your product or service is, everyone wants to deal with someone who's the expert in their topic. Having lots of content available on your topic helps you prove your expertise and builds trust with your visitors. Those are the people you want coming to do business with you - people that trust you and CHOOSE to do business with you.

3. Generate Traffic for Other Products and Services

A blog also allows you to bring targeted traffic to your website in a way that a traditional website just can't offer. Blogs make it so easy to add new content to the site that it's about as easy as sending an email. And of course, more content means more traffic. Once you start getting more traffic, you can drive that traffic anywhere you want...to your own products, to quality affiliate products that earn you a commission, to your email list and so on. Not only does this make your blog a more valuable resource in the way it positions you versus the competition, but you're also able to turn your website into a profit center for your business.

4. Earn Subscribers' Trust and Build a Community

One common mistake people make with their sites is not building a subscriber list...probably the most valuable business asset you can have. This can be even more of a challenge with a static site. Since none of the info on the site changes, there's less of a reason for people to come back. And if that's the case, why should they feel compelled to sign up for your email list? If, on the other hand, you have great info on your site, they'll probably want more. You can offer them something in return for their email address...maybe a special report that really solves a pressing problem they're facing, or an email course that does the same thing. That way, you can create a list of subscribers and build a relationship with them where they get to know you, like you and trust you and your information. If you have a community of subscribers like that, you'll NEVER run out of business.

5. Build Online Business Relationships

In the same way that you can use a blog to build a relationship with your subscribers, you can also build relationships with other blog publishers in your market. This can be a vital step towards creating partnerhips and sending traffic to each others' sites. This is possible thanks to common blog features like comments and trackbacks. Using these effectively gets you "on the radar" of the other website owner and can be the first step towards a profitable business relationship. Think of it as a form of online networking.

6. Teach Your Visitors and Create Better-Informed Customers

Providing useful content to your audience also helps you educate your customers and potential customers. And it's a proven fact that educated customers are better customers. There's less of a need to "sell" them once they're ready to buy, they're more likely to use your product rather than have it sit on the shelf, refunds will likely be lower and on and on. You could have blog posts that address common objections or things that seem like weaknesses in your product. You can highlight what people will gain by using your product and your content can offer tips for how best to use the product once someone buys. This is similar to what you might do in a face-to-face selling situation, but now it's done nearly on autopilot.

7. Generate Ideas for New Products and Services

As you get comments and other feedback from your website visitors, there's a good chance you'll also get a number of ideas for other products and services you could offer. You'll get to know your audience, learn their problems, concerns and challenges. You'll have an excellent opportunity to provide products and services that solve these problems which will not only be profitable for you, but will also help your customers reach their goals faster and easier. That's a true win-win situation and your website visitors will love you for it.

****************************************
Come and take part in the hype-free, no-nonsense discussion of what it takes to build a truly successful online business plus get $84.85-worth of business-building material for free. Visit Ken today by clicking here:
http://www.kentonnewby.com

3 Part Teleseminar Series for Subscribers
I wanted to alert you about valuable information:

it's a fascinating 3-part teleseminar series Mike Brescia developed with his research team. It talks about the 42 core traits found in the greatest leaders of all time and how you can make them your own.

Along with the teleseminar series, he's including a mindmap of the qualities and skills of the best leaders who ever lived, straight from Mike's research department. So as you listen to the calls, you can follow along with the mindmap outline.

These three 60-minute sessions are absolutely free, by the way - and they're available to our subscribers only.

So why are we doing this?

Over the past year we've been planning ways to give increased support to the users of our programs. Our free leadership teleseminar is the first of many reports, white papers, and training sessions we'll be offering over the next few months.

All because we want to make a REAL difference in your life. As a result, Mike has extended the 25% Introductory Sale for the latest program: "The Leader's Mindset Now".

Did you know that research shows, in the typical household, on average, children hear the word "No!" nearly 150,000 times before turning 18? That's primarily true in even the most positive, well-adjusted households.

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Today's Tip On the Book Worth Having

Get Your FREE Copy of Article Marketing Strategies Exposed
Nancy Marmolejo Interviews Marnie Pehrson of IdeaMarketers.com

In this informative report, you'll learn important article marketing strategies like:

1. Keywords: where to place them and how to use them for maximum impact

2. Titles that Pull the Best Traffic

3. Duplicate content: what happens when you publish the same article to multiple sites?

4. Article syndication and how that can drive opportunity to you.

5. Media rooms.: What they are and how they can work for you.

6. Innovative ideas for re-purposing your content.

7. ... and more...

Download the PDF Report by clicking here!

Today's Tip On the Software Worth Using

Ever Wished to Have Your Own Professionally Created Ads? Without Having to Pay a Fortune?
You've Just Found Such A Place!

Mieke created AdFactoryPro for his personal use because he was tired of losing precious time installing and using all those different ad-creating scripts and software tools. He needed a way to make profitable ads for all of his digital products, fast and easy.

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AdFactory Professional makes creating professional ads so easy, everyone can do it. There's absolutely no technical knowledge required! If you can copy & paste, you can have your own ads spreading around the web in no time!

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Today's Tip On Learning

Want More Traffic?
Get FREE REPORT: Thought Stringing How To Buy the Thoughts of Your Customers and Use the Information To Capitalize On Hidden Sources of Traffic...

Since traffic is the lifeblood of every business online, I thought you'd want to see this... I just downloaded this report and gave it a quick read. It really opened my eyes to a few things.

Over the past year, many of my Google AdWords campaigns got slapped several times over.

How about you?

Lately, it's almost a full-time job to pacify Google and keep them happy. Sometimes your ads are suddenly rejected for no reason whatsoever. To say it's frustrating is an understatement.

If you want to literally become immune to Google's repeated slaps, then you need to download this report and read it right now.

I took some notes. Here's a quick summary of some of the points that I found helpful within this report:

>> Page 2: The one "law" the gurus keep telling you that is completely wrong -- and you are missing out on 60% more sales as a result

>> Page 2: The secret to testing out your ads and offers lightening fast at little cost

>> What does a thirsty guy walking into a bar and a lady shopping at the mall have to do with getting you more traffic? A lot, see page 4

>> Page 5: How to advertise and never (I mean NEVER) get hit by the dreaded Google slap -- this is 100% legit and works every time

>> Page 6: How to use "thought stringing" to get dirt cheap (think 500% discount), laser targeted traffic with little or no competitors

>> Page 6: How about getting "mortgage" leads for a mere 12 cents a piece? (these leads can cost upwards of $30 EACH)

>> Page 8: The BIG difference (and secret) when crafting ads for lower-cost traffic -- get this wrong and you could lose a lot of cash, fast

>> Page 11: Crappy ads are sometime effective -- a clever lesson when branding you and your business

Unless you are completely oblivious to how product launches work, you can already tell that this report is part of a cleverly crafted product launch.

But, don't let that discourage you from downloading this information. This "free" stuff is better than some ebooks I have paid for.

While you are at it, why not download all these other reports as well? There is a lot of meaty content here for you too:

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Today's Promotional Tips

Want More Promotion?
Join This New Social Network!

I just joined a social networking site recently called Kanggie!

This is a really unique and fun site to join and it's totally different from the other social networking sites.

The best thing is, they even reward you for joining and for referring your friends to join you!

And there are a ton of interesting features as well so I just leave you to check it out yourself!

Hope to see you as a friend under my Kanggie friends list soon!

You can also promote your products and make money there.

Check out my Kanggie profile at:
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Today's Useful Tip

Great Network Community!
Become Joe Popular: It Is All About YOU...

Joe Popular presents a free way to connect, share and promote anything and everything you're doing online, from one convenient location - your Joe Popular "Hub" page!

Whether you're looking to:

• Connect with other single people
• Showcase your talents
• Go from Joe Schmoe to Joe Popular?
• Make more money
• Generate more visitors to your web-sites and blogs
• Hang out and connect with friends or associates
• And much more!

...Joe Popular is the place to do it for free.

Instead of giving your friends, associates or customers a dozen different links to your various social pages or web-sites, you can provide them with a single link to your Joe Popular Hub page. From there, people can easily check out everything you're doing online.

It Is Real Mega Advertising Opportunity...

Not only will you get a free, customizable Hub page through which you can connect to your friend pages, blogs and web-sites. By simply referring others to Joe Popular site, you'll receive advertising credits called "Joe Dollars". You can spend these credits in a variety of ways, including being featured on the Joe Popularm home page or posting a custom ad across the user network.

And coming soon is the Joe Popular Shopping Center through which you'll be able to "buy" additional things like games and books using your Joe Dollars.

Join Joe Popular today, become a part of something big, and get a head start on building your virtual Joe Dollar fortune by referring others!

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Today's Special

Make Mother's Day Special
For all the moms in your life...

This Mother's Day, surprise your mom, grandmother, sister, daughter, or friend with a truly one-of-a-kind gift - a custom photobook. So gather all those photos and start creating the present they will cherish for years to come.

Not the creative type? Browse the Lulu Marketplace for tons of unique items that fit your mom's style.

Publish and Sell on Lulu: Lulu provides the tools. You set the price. You control the publishing process from start to finish. Join free:
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