Landing Page Tips | Finch Sells

CPA Marketers: Read This And Improve Your Conversion Rates

Apr 17 2012

The line between profitability and hopelessness has become so thin that you are royally shooting yourself in the balls if you are not fighting for every last conversion.

A common problem I see with affiliate sales funnels is a lack of understanding for what constitutes a conversion. Sounds pretty obvious, right? “Duh Finch, I get money when another sucker joins True.” Well, that’s almost correct. Unfortunately, the ‘almost’ cripples many campaigns.

Before promoting any offer, you must take the time to research exactly when the conversion pixel fires. There’s no room for vague assumptions. “Joining True” paints a picture in my mind of the conversion pixel being fired as soon as the user selects a username and hits Next. Most of the time, this is not the case.

We have zip submits, single opt-ins (SOI), double opt-ins (DOI), questionnaires to answer, profile pictures to upload, applications to download, first orders to place… every offer comes with its own criteria for when the conversion should be fired.

The definition of “joining a site” is black and white. But your conversion isn’t. Don’t make the mistake of assuming they are one and the same.

Here are some general guidelines for how your landing pages can be adapted to suit each conversion type.

Zip submits

Generally seen as the easiest affiliate offers to promote, zip submits do exactly what they say on the tin. As soon as the user submits his zip-code, you get your conversion. The payouts on these offers are predictably low to offset the unpredictability of the traffic quality.

The golden rule of promoting zip submits is to hold the advertiser’s hand and give them exactly what they want. There’s no point in delivering poor quality traffic. You’ll be scrubbed to Timbuktu in no time.

Single opt-ins

A single opt-in requires the user to submit his email address. However, the conversion is triggered after the submission rather than at the point of confirmation. You’ll find a lot of single opt-in offers paying around $2-$3.50. It’s not big bucks, but it’s better than a zip submit.

In my opinion, the large majority of affiliates use landing pages that are aimed at achieving a single opt-in. It’s the standard entry point. But think about it logically. If the advertiser is paying out on a single opt-in, you can probably increase your traffic quality substantially simply by treating the offer like a double opt-in. Encourage and incentivize the user to confirm his email address. This may have to come at the price of one of our favourite affiliate tactics: completely bullshitting the real nature of the offer. “Hey, where all the single soldiers at?”

Double opt-ins

A confirmed double opt-in is worth infinitely more than a single opt-in. Your payouts will traditionally reflect this by offering double for the confirmed email.

Something to keep in mind with double opt-in campaigns, particularly in the dating vertical, is that it makes no sense to calculate ROI on an ongoing ‘live’ basis. A small but significant percentage of users will not confirm their double opt-in straight away. They will get busy, distracted, or otherwise torn away from their Gmail. This can lead to a small trickle of conversions being fired the next morning. Ever had 0 clicks and 3 conversions? Well, there you go.

However, if you’re monitoring your stats like a hawk, what are you going to think when you finish the evening taking a loss? You’ve probably already deleted the campaign by then.

Always let your conversions filter through before making any snap judgments.

Survey/questionnaire completion

Some offers require the completion of an entire questionnaire before the conversion is recorded. Now imagine you’re the stereotypical battering-ram of a publisher who cares not for such details. You design a landing page with a teasing call-to-action like this:

“Register in 45 Seconds or Less!”

Sounds nice and coaxing, right? In some cases this works as a great hook. But it’s a terrible call-to-action when the conversion pixel is only fired after a 15 minute questionnaire.

I see it happening time and time again. Affiliates go for quick dealmakers. They sell every offer with the brevity of a single opt-in, when they should actually be shooting for a solid incentive to complete Steps A, B and C.

In instances where the user is required to navigate his way through a complex 15 minute interrogation, your landing page has a duty to sell this process and make it seem worthwhile. How could you get a user to answer a questionnaire?

To give you an example, on dating sites, I use it to filter out the ‘bad dates’ that the user will be avoiding when she joins the new service. It’s quality protection, because she only deserves the best.

Profile photo upload

This is another common requirement on high-payout dating offers.

Offers that convert only after a profile photo upload would have worried the crap out of me 5 years ago. But now thanks to Facebook, even technophobic 75 year old grandmas have photos at their disposal.

The secret to nailing these conversions is to make a direct reference to the benefits of uploading a photo. If you’re branding the site as an unusual paradise where men actually receive messages from hot girls, you should make it clear that communications increase X% when the user adds his photo. Or say that members without a photo are being culled and will not qualify for the free trial offer. Whatever puts the thought in his head and safeguards your conversion.

Converts on download

There are many toolbar and gaming offers out there where the user is expected not only to sign up, but to download and sometimes even play the game for the first time.

For single opt-in minded folk, I like to call this the ‘minefield offer’.

It’s littered with so many what-ifs that the challenge is as much about hitting the right carefree demographic as it is selling the product. A golden rule that I’ve adopted is to avoid targeting users who are likely to be on their work computers. This crowd does not want to download and leave a trace. So you will need to day-part and keep a tight hold over your demographics.

There’s no point in trying to con the user here. Your best step forward is to sell the offer as a legitimate must-have and hope that the user’s interest is perked enough to follow the necessary steps.

For gaming offers, “Can you beat this ridiculous score?” is a winning hook.

So, how are your conversions today?

Take a look at your own sales funnels. Be honest.

Has it all gone slightly tits-up?

Your landing page must not only sell the offer. It must sell the required steps necessary to secure the conversion.

As I said on StackThatMoney this week, your sales funnel has to be designed to shove the user to the conversion pixel, NOT purely to get them to choose a username and press Next. Be clear with your objectives!

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Why Irish Offers Are Better Than American Offers

Nov 28 2011

One of the landing page variables I’ve been looking at recently is the role of national pride, and how it can be used to boost conversions.

For example, which headline would you expect to perform the best on it’s respective target market?

Most sensible thinking affiliates would probably assume that the Irish headline would perform the best, simply because there aren’t many specialised Irish dating sites.

And to their credit, they’d be proven correct. But what I find really interesting is the comparison against landing pages which used a generic headline where no nationality was specified.

For the UK and USA, the landing page CTR stayed roughly the same (35-38%). But in Ireland, simply adding the two words ‘in Ireland’ hoisted the CTR from 44% to 51%.

By experimenting further, I found that including an Irish flag and changing the headline text to green forced the CTR up even further beyond 60%.

Would more Americans click through if I dangled the stars and stripes under their whiskers? Apparently not, the CTR stayed stable.

In the UK, there was a very slight 2% increase when I included the Union Jack flag alongside the headline. Not enough to wet the bed over.

What does this say about national pride? Are Irish singles really that much more compelled to join sites that have been clearly marked as Irish?

Perhaps, but surely Americans have the capacity to be just as patriotic?

The reality is that banner blindness has a huge say. I don’t believe national pride is a major factor that encourages Americans to sign up on dating sites. I think most Americans simply assume that the majority of dating sites are aimed at Americans, and/or are American by default. Not many Americans see the world through foreign eyes, and thus ‘American dating site‘ is pretty much interchangeable with ‘just another dating site‘.

In the UK, we have such a multicultural society that the British identity is – in my opinion – nowhere near as effective in the sweeping patriotism stakes as it would have been 25 years ago. For this reason, you would be well advised to word your ads carefully (‘Singles in Britain’ will regularly outperform ‘British singles’)

Ireland clearly responds well to Irish themed landing pages. But what other countries can be placed in the same group? From my experience, Australia, the Netherlands, Italy, Scandinavian countries, and pretty much every country I’ve ever marketed to in Asia has shown that time spent researching the culture and national pride is time spent lucratively.

It’s like steroids for landing pages. You will get better results.

Does this mean we should bow down at the feet of geo-targeting and allow the masses to be blindly lead towards their flags and national nuances?

I believe geo-targeting is effective in America primarily because it creates location based relevance as opposed to the ‘in America‘ line which most Americans take for granted. An offer will feel relevant when it’s calling out ‘singles in Illinois‘, in the same way that an Irish offer will feel specialised as long as there aren’t hundreds of other Irish dating sites.

Geo-targeting loses much of it’s accuracy when you take it away from North America, and I’m not sure people fully realise the implications of using it when the results are so unreliable.

For example, if you are going to geo-target users in the UK, you should definitely consider removing London from your target market.

The reason is simple. In the UK, we are squeezed in to such tightly packed cities and towns that for a geo-detection mechanism to be 5 miles out, it would be locating us in towns that are a complete misrepresentation of the places we call home.

In my case, geo-targeting would suggest that I live in Hounslow. While Hounslow is a mere 9.6 miles from my true location (Ruislip, if you were wondering), it’s actually a very foreign town to me. I don’t think I’ve ever been there in my life.

Certainly, if a porn site were to throw up an annoying pop-up saying “Get laid in Hounslow tonight“, I’d be inclined to wince, check the time and ultimately shake my head. Well it’s a bit of a trek, mate.

Of course, in America, the population is much more sparsely distributed and so geo-targeting has less margin for error. Tracking down a large city in Texas is less of a technological demand than pinpointing my musk-filled residence in the London suburbs.

There are times where nationality can be used to push a user towards an offer with great effect. It’s a technique I swear by in Ireland and Australia. But you should understand that in some cases, it’s better to ignore the exact location than to get it half-right.

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The Final Jigsaw Piece For Becoming An Unstoppable Affiliate

Sep 15 2011

I’ve just been reading through Persuasion: The Art of Influencing People by James Borg, and right in the first chapter, there’s something that rings particularly true for affiliate marketers. It’s the dissection of persuasion as an art form by the great philosopher, Aristotle. He died more than 2300 years ago, but if he were alive today, he’d be a total FREAK at designing awesome landing pages. Here’s why.

Aristotle believed that in it’s most simple form, persuasion is the shifting of attitude in your audience from Point A to Point B. Where Point B consists of behaviour that the audience wouldn’t normally engage in.

He spent many years searching for the phantom formula that best induced this persuasion. Predictably, the closest he got was still no guarantee that it would work every time. Aristotle filtered the many factors and narrowed them down to Ethos (ethical appeal), Pathos (emotional attachment) and Logos (logic behind the feeling).

Aristotle believed that the correct application of Ethos, Pathos and Logos would result in the highest probability of persuasion being effective.

Now while the philosopher may be confined to ancient history with his legacy predating Christ, there’s something everlasting about his theory that can be applied to our work as we sit behind screens and pull our hair out.

I think many affiliates neglect the majority of the equation when they design their landing pages, or upload their creatives. There’s no shame in doing so because in reality, it’s damn tough to come up with work that appeals to all three elements of persuasion.

Logos (logic) isn’t hard to conquer. If somebody is unhappily single, it shouldn’t take you a lifetime to turn their heads towards a dating site as a potential cure for their discontent. The logic in meeting new singles, chatting and dating, should be enough to appeal to the senses.

Some affiliates are also great at capturing Pathos (empathy). The flog stands as a hated testament to how effective it can be when you reach out to satisfy the emotional craving. “I made these fantastic changes and because I care about you, let me tell you my secret!” As customers, we love to see similar people turning their lives around and looking all the more happier for it. If the message has been intricately threaded through the right hoops of empathy, persuasion regularly follows.

What a shame for affiliate marketers that persuasion couldn’t rely solely on emotion and logic. Unfortunately, Ethos (the beast of ethics) is there to steal many a torn customer from the jaws of conversion.

It’s not enough to lay down a logical framework for why people should buy your product. It’s also no guarantee if you can produce an emotional attachment to what you’re saying. Ultimately, the element of credibility and “Can I trust this source?” stands between you and I, the affiliates, and an EPC that would make your eyes water.

Ethos is a difficult beast to satisfy. Unfortunately, we tend to gravitate towards some of the less squeaky clean products and services on the market. They are the items that pay out the highest commission, or produce the best results. Creating ethical appeal is difficult when you don’t have the stone cold truth sitting in your corner.

So we do what we can to bend it sideways, to shape it in such a way that our customers are able to establish that acceptance of credibility. Sometimes, it comes back to bite many of our peers in the arse. Stories of false advertising and misleading landing pages are rife. And when you look closely, it’s mostly down to the marketers who were willing to push the envelope dangerously too far in search of Ethos.

They replicate “As seen on…” logos to build a social proof that doesn’t exist. They’ll replicate entire news portals to make a product seem more mainstream than it really is. Bold claims fly around the room like they’re going out of fashion. This search for reputation is often the final frontier separating a good affiliate from the monster profits he’s been searching a lifetime for.

Should we be surprised that many affiliates go too far and pay the price when they break the Ethos for good?

I don’t think so, but we do have to look at alternate ways of establishing that element of trust. If you can establish credibility, affiliate marketing becomes a breeze to conquer. Though as I’m sure you’re already aware, establishing credibility in a sea of crappy products, scammy terms and growing cynicism is no mean feat.

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