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1,035 email subscribers in 35 days.

by Ed on 10th July 2008

Watch the video below to see how in just 35 days I welcomed 1,035 highly-targeted and fully-opted-in subscribers on to my email marketing list… all from one print advert and a dead simple webpage!

Remember, the tactic I used can be adapted for just about any industry. The only caveat is that your business has to be practising online relationship (email) marketing.

If you’re not… why not?

Also, where I ran an advert in a magazine — I could (and will) also employ direct mail, letters, postcards, and others like mail-drops, face to face handouts at seminars and conferences… basically promote the landing page anywhere you can identify and cost-effectively contact large crowds of your target audience.

More about this soon.

-Ed.

P.S. This is the first ‘live’ video to appear on my blog here — leave a comment below if you have any problem viewing it and let me know. Thanks.

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Article by Ed Rivis

I'm the Amazon 5-star rated author of three books about web marketing, and since 2008 have spoken to more than 4,000 business owners at conferences and seminars around the UK. I've also developed software that automatically generates lead pages and home-study programmes that help small business owners like you generate more sales-leads and win new customers and clients, online.

Ed has written 326 awesome articles.

  • alan

    Hi Ed,

    tried to watch your video, but sadly it got stuck after a minute or so? tried again, but same again! not sure why?

    hope it goes well for you as always!

    best regards,

    Alan!

  • http://newlifecleaning.com Phil Dixon

    Nice to see you further developing the blog. Clear as a bell and a nice uncluttered video.

    newlifecleaning.com “Your friends in the North”

  • Paul Squirrell

    As ever, Ed, your open and friendly approach to your subject is great. Thanks again. Paul

  • http://www.fitzbillies.com Penny Thomson

    Dear Ed. Another inspiration from you. Many thanks for the video, it really helps to motivate. I’ll be doing a landing page soon. Penny

  • http://raystewart.biz Ray Stewart

    Well done Ed. Another clear and concise treatment of a topic that can easily be used, and should be used, by every business.

  • http://www.viderevision.tv Russell Neale Dever

    Dear Ed. Genius. I am begining to follow your advice and already have seen a substancial increase in business prospects. Please make sure I stay on your list AND if anyone hasn’t got your book yet what are you waiting for guys? With clear, concise, and easy to follow instruction like this no SME can afford to be without it as a reference text.

  • http://www.sumatrix.com Ed

    @Alan – I’m not sure what the problem is but how about clearing your browser cache and try reloading? That _may_ fix it.

    Thank you all for such kinds words, and best of luck with your own landing pages.

    -Ed.

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  • http://www.thekissbusiness.co.uk Karin H.

    Hi Ed

    Looking forward to the new project on Landing pages – great video too.
    (As small business in a niche retail market our result isn’t that world-shocking, but by implementing ideas and tips from you and the copy-writing gang one of our latest project brings one or two new subscribers daily – and the conversation starts ;-) – automagically)

    Karin H. (Keep It Simple Sweetheart, specially in business)

  • http://www.viralurl.com/trevnic/stemuk Trevor

    Ed, your video was very good, better than some of the so called professional ones, which often show the sound out of co-ordination with the actions.

    All the best
    Trevor

  • http://blog.fcon21.biz/post150/ John W. Furst

    Great video with great info, Ed.
    I hope you submit this post to my “email marketing tips” Blog carnival.

  • http://www.aceproperties.info/ Shuaib

    Hi Ed

    1035 sign-ups in 35 days sounds fantastic, especially when given the fact when we attempted something “somewhat” similar in a local paper with circulation of 70,000, our sign-up was virtually NIL (disappointing but with hindsight maybe expected).

    Basically, to explain the “somewhat” qualifier of the above paragraph, for one our advert and landing page were nowhere near as polished as yours would be (obviously since we are new to this whole web-marketing concept). Secondly the advert was rushed because of the printing deadline (in fact it was our monthly advert going into the property section of the local paper, and along with the properties (we are estate agents by the way) there was space for text (or ‘copy’ as more professionally known) on the the right half of the advert – the left half had 8 properties being advertised). So I thought since the space was there, (and I didn’t have anything else to say – the space previously had a special fee offer which had now expired so I couldn’t repeat it) let me take a leap of faith into the world or web-marketing and test some kind of landing page + signup. So the whole thing was compiled within 4-5 days.

    Not all in vain, as I learnt a few basic things in the process:
    1) The advert should have been twice the size (it was half a page which made the text very small). Ideally it should have been full page.
    2) It should have been exclusively about the landing page. With hindsight, I think having more than one message only confuses readers (we were advertising some properties on half the advert, the landing page on the other half).
    3) You probably will end up testing several versions of advert/landing page combinations before you finally hit the magic one that converts like Ed Rivis!
    4) Finally, I’m sure my landing page is like 10% of what it should be, hence I eagerly await the forthcoming Ed Rivis product “Landing Page Power”.

    The point of sharing all this slightly embarrassing episode (although I said I learnt a few things so I am not giving up on it yet – let’s just call it a ‘test’ attempt, since testing is something we are supposed to do on a permanent basis!) is firsly to make the obvious point that = The advert that advertises the landing page needs to be obviously as FANTASTIC as the landing page itself to attract maximum response, and leading on from that, secondly to ask Ed if he is at liberty to share that advert (or mechanics of that advert) which signed up the 1035 people on the landing page.

    So Ed, maybe copywriting is outside the scope of this blog, but are you going to dissect that fantastic, super-charged, highly-tested advert for your readers, be it on this blog or even in the forthcoming product Landing Page Power.

    Because what my little experience has taught me straight away is (and I know this becoz after learning from Stats Faceslap, I also put Google Analytics on said landing page to see what the traffic is, and again ZILCH), the advert should pull the traffic FIRST, then the landing page can do it’s magic and convert prospects to sign-ups/clients. In a nutshell a fantastic landing page with a mediocre traffic-pulling advert will still result in minimal conversion.

    Sorry once again if things sound convoluted in this lengthy comment (I always do this, don’t I?), but another thing I have recently learnt is : The More You Tell, The More You Sell, and I think I have told everything about my little experience (I had to think twice before I finally decided to share it, so I hope it will result in benefitting some of your blog readers who are at the same stage as me, as well as help you further refine your forthcoming eagerly awaited product, Landing Page Power).

    Good luck with the launch

    Shuaib

  • http://www.sumatrix.com Ed

    @Trevor – thanks glad you like it. I’ll explain how to do these ‘talking heads videos’ soon. (Easy when you know how :)

    @John – At the moment I’m not submitting to blog carnivals (focusing on what I talked about in my recent Who Else Wants More Traffic? ebook, but thanks for the offer, and thank you for including me in previous blog carnivals at your E-Biz Booster Blog.

    @Shuaib – Absolutely bang on! The advert did all the ‘heavy lifting’ – that’s why the landing page is so short and simple. If I was using Google Adwords it would have been totally different — I’ll be covering all of this in my Landing Page Power home study-programme shortly.

    Again, thank you all for your comments.

    -Ed.

  • http://www.WordofMouthMagic.com Martin Russell

    Ed,

    The transcript pdf link didn’t work for me just now.

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  • http://www.timgross.com Tim G.

    Ed, I’m obviously late to the party here (you put this up 2 months ago), but very impressive job with everything, I appreciate the specific stats you provided, that’s the good stuff. :-)

  • http://www.dcpracticetools.com Dr. Michael Beck | Chiropractic Marketing

    Nice. I wonder how we could get our hands on that successful ad of yours :)

  • http://www.craig-west.co.uk Karl Craig-West

    Thanks Ed for such terrific and straightforward marketing advice. I’ve been using email marketing for a while now and have been wondering how to develop it further. You’ve certainly given some food for thought.
    Regards,
    Karl

  • C

    Just wanted to confirm some figures from reading this article and another in which you analysed your response rates and ad costs/

    It seemed to work out like this:-

    1035 subs in 35 days
    from an ad retail cost £4000/page but say £2,000 with discount

    of 1035 subs
    6% of 20% of 20% of 1035 purchased your £300 course

    ie 2.5 people purchased the course = £750 total revenue for an ad expenditure of £2000.

    Is this correct or have I missed something here?

  • http://www.edrivis.com Ed

    Dear “C”,

    Thanks for taking the time and effort to attempt to calculate my revenues and profits :)

    Unfortunately your guess that I got £2000 discount and only paid £2000 for the advert was incorrect.

    I actually paid £3,500+vat for the advert you’re talking about.

    If I was a better negotiator I could have probably paid less, but my expertise is web marketing, not negotiating, and it’s not a major concern anyway, because of something called Lifetime Value.

    Since I wrote the articles you seem to allude to in your comment I’ve actually sold a lot more products and services to the leads acquired through that campaign.

    Also some of the leads have responded to affiliate promotions and bought products and services from other companies, but as a result of my recommendations, resulting in me being paid referral commission.

    And at least one of the people who attended my recent £3,500 per seat live Workshop in London came to me as a result of that advert.

    (In fact my live Workshop was recorded and I’ll be selling it as a DVD programme shortly… if you end up buying that you’ll actually see one of the delegates mention this in the video.)

    So (fortunately for me!) your calculations are quite incorrect.

    The advert’s ROI was not negative. Quite the opposite in fact.

    The ROI of that advert is already substantial – and even better, continues to increase every time any of those 1,035 leads buy anything from me, which is what the Lifetime Value concept is all about.

    (I’d strongly recommend you learn more about Lifetime Value it because understanding it means you may have a lot more ‘marketing muscle’ than you realise.)

    There is one other point I’d like to make about your blog comment, which I think is the most important of all.

    Whether or not *I* generate a two, five or ten times or more return on my investment in that advert isn’t the main issue.

    One of the main reasons why I take the time share this free information on my blog is to give other business owners ideas, who may then use this tactic to promote their different products and services.

    Obviously other companies will have different products, services, sales pipelines, and different (maybe even better) conversion rates than mine.

    Their revenues and ROI from running lead-generating advertising campaigns like the one I suggest would be entirely different, but done effectively they too should see a great ROI.

    The free articles and videos you’ve been analysing are merely given as examples, and to give business owners ideas on how they can take and adopt this tactic for their business.

    Results will obviously vary but done effectively — and in my opinion and on the basis of my results and other companies this is one of the most powerful web marketing tactics a small business can employ at the moment.

    One other tip – if you’re a member of the FSB then you’ll see me running a similar advert again next year. Whenever you see an advertiser running an expensive direct response advert you can be sure the advert performed well, otherwise it wouldn’t be repeated. (Notice who the repeat advertisers are in your industry and you’ll be looking at adverts that work… quite a useful thing to know!)

    One final bit of advice — and I mean this in the nicest possible way, but instead of spending your time trying to work out how much money my adverts generate for me, you may actually find it more worthwhile using that time to instead write, run and test your own adverts.

    Just a suggestion.

    Merry Xmas,
    Ed.

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