List Building & Email Marketing Case Study Part 1 was about setting up the double opt in, getting subscribers and trying to monetize the list immediately. Overall it was a success. Part 2 of this case study revolves around the first series of emails sent to the list.
My goal with the first series of emails was to not try to sell anything too early on. I wanted to develop a relationship (even if it’s a small one) by delivering content and THEN hitting them with an offer. I will break the case study down into an explanation of each email, that emails results and then a summary after i discuss each email in the series. One preface is that the numbers don’t all match up to 100 which is the amount of subscribers we started with on this list. I screwed something up with the segmentation on the autoresponder which means it didn’t get sent to about 25% of the list.
Email #1 – 1 Day After Subscription
This email was an introduction about “myself” and the series. I made up a fake persona letting subscribers know that I am an authority in the niche and gave them a little insight about what kind of content they would be receiving. There are no links in this email other then unsubscribe.
Email #2 – 2 Days After Subscription
This is the first content based email sent out to the list. I reintroduce myself in the first paragraph and then give them some good niche related content. There are no links in this email other then unsubscribe.
Email #3 – 3 Days After Subscription
This is also a content based email with no sell in it. The only thing I did different in this email compared to the previous one is that I tried putting a very unobtrusive message across the top saying – This Tip Is Sponsored By “BigNameInTheIndustry.com” – I linked it up to a big CJ merchant just to see if anyone clicked it. No one did so far.
Email #4 – 4 Days After Subscription – **THE BIG OFFER**
Ladies & Gents, the day we have all been waiting for. Offer #1 was sent to the list in this email. I approached the sell as, my friend is releasing a particular product related to this niche and giving my subscribers first crack at it. I have personally used the product and it did wonders for me. Here are the results
Email #5 – 6 Days After Subscription
This email is content driven as well. It also has a P.S. at the bottom saying that there is limited availability on Email #4’s offer. My friend is offering 5 more positions but I talked him into giving us 10. If you want to take advantage do it now kind of wording.
Let’s Discuss
As you can see my open rates were off the hizzle. They ranged from 31%-56%. I think any mailer can tell you that’s really good. My click through rate on email #3 was non existant. That sort of surprised me. I thought that the subtle “sponsored by” message at the top would get a few clicks. On email #4 (The Big Offer) I really had no idea whatsoever what to expect. I can tell you that I ran this same offer on PPC and it converted at about 1% so I was hoping it would do better then that considering these subscribers were being groomed and also were extremely related to the product.
Email #4 had 73 total recipients to date. 40 opened the email (54.8%) and 22 clicked through to the offer (30.1%). Those are all good statistics. There are a few statistics I find really interesting though. Although 40 unique people opened the email they opened it 67 times. I’m wondering if this means they are interested in the offer but just not sure yet so they leave it in their inbox to read again later. Out of the 73 recipients that received email #4, 1 bought the product earning me a $31 commission.
Back To The Financials
Number Of PPC Clicks: 436
Number Of Double Opt In Subscribers: 100
Click To Subscriber Conversion Rate: 22.93%
Average CPC: 28 Cents
Raw Cost For Clicks: $123.55
Clicks To Email Submit On Page 3: 71
Conversions: 37
Offer Payout: $1.30
Subtotal Revenue: $48.10
Conversions On Email #4: 1
Offer Payout: $31
Subtotal Revenue: $31
NET PROFIT/LOSS: -$44.45
A few things to note here are as follows:
- Not everyone on the list has made it all the way through the series yet.
- There could possibly be late conversions
- I still have about 100 subscribers to my list
One thing that is painful about this process is that it takes a really long time to measure your return on investment. With PPC i’m used to knowing how I’m doing on an hourly basis. With email it could be a week or more before I determine if I’m making a profit or not. I am still down $44. That’s not bad considering this is a first test in list building and email marketing. Recouping that $44 should not be difficult. I can blast the list with an offer any time and someone is bound to take me up on it. I will update in a few days to let you all know if I’ve turned a profit or not.
Awesome article dude really interesting.
Keep it up!
Awesome info, thanks for taking the time to post all this.
What do you do about the physical home address requirement? Do you just open a P.O. box in your business name or what? I wouldn’t want some crazy pissed off subscriber showing up at my door complaining about rebills or some other crap.
@KEV – I have a PO Box for my business. I just used that.
I too was wondering how you dealt with the home address requirement. I knew you had a PO Box and assumed you used that. I need to get me one.
Thanks again for the great post.
I just wanted to thank you for the continued case study. I find it fascinating, even if it is allegorical.
Nice work man!
What’s nice about having a “list” is that you can keep on pushing offers…in the long run you’ll make back your investment for those emails.
Quick question regarding your LP or Squeeze page…how do you get it to have a good or decent QS? (if you’re using Adwords)
Great write up. What’s great about a PO Box is they will let you add a few business names to the box. I have added “unsubscribe” as a name to receive mail under. That way the person can’t google your business name and start complaining on places like complaints board, etc.
Amazing article man. you had way to little data to really make any conclusions. You need about 1000 emails to really get some concrete stats.
Nice write up bro!
This is probably the best content on any affiliate blog at the moment.
Good post dude. I’ve been doing more list building myself lately. One thing I’d like to add is that there are two schools of thought on how soon to present the first offer.
Some will say to wait until a relationship and trust has been built with subscribers – others argue that you are more likely to get conversions earlier on in the list than later because reader interest will die off over time.
I think there is no right or wrong answer, but rather that this depends on the niche. I know, sounds cliche…lol. But really – for some demographics, people are more spontaneous and could lose interest quickly if you don’t upsell them quick.
For other niches such as B2B or larger ticket items, it could be wiser to build the trust first and then slowly build up anticipation and expected value of an upcoming offer.
Keep up the quality posts! 🙂
good post to see the whole process in a test. We offer a free phone card giveaway that works to get people to opt in to aweber to then convert them after they try the product. Which we offer for affiliates to promote
Thanks so much for the case study. I love how you set-up the email submit to help ease the cost.
Excellent follow-up. I’m wondering if you’ll have more luck when pushing products more aggressively. Will be trying this out very soon
Lists are gold, but you know that i have been preaching that to you for awhile now. LROI on a good niched list is insane, it just comes down to picking the proper niches and learning how and what they buy ( or suscribe to) Once you have a fell for that, youll be laughing all the way to the bank. And you wont have to worry as much about your traffic sources, since yours will be built into your lists
By the way everyone, I meant to mention this at the beginning of these case studies. CousinVinnie from above is the guy that actually inspired me to test this. He is a mailing genius and deserves mad props.
Good shit hustler. I need to do more list building myself but I’m a junky for quick daily ROI. One day when you get good at it after picking our buddy cousin vinnies brain then testing it all I’ll just pick yours 😉
@Wayne – Fair enough 🙂