This article is part of a bigger article on sales funnel optimization that can be found here.

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I’M GOING CRAZY?!?!?!

THERE ARE TOO MANY NUMBERS!!!!

We’ve been told from the beginning we’re supposed to “track our site’s visitors”.

So, we’ve installed tracking software like Google Analytics and Clicky (like we’ve been told to) and we’ve “tracked our site’s visitors” … but, are we really tracking the right things?

Probably not.

There’s just so much to track that it’s easy to get lost in the numbers.

This article exists for two reasons, to explain the different metrics that exist and to give you one, clear, guide for how to track one “good” metric – email opt-in conversion rate.

Types Of Metrics

There are two types of metrics that exist when it comes to “tracking your site’s visitors”:

1. Vanity Metrics: These are the “pretty”, usually, “big number” metrics that don’t really mean much. For example, site visitors, subscribers, and page views.
2. Actionable Metrics: These are the metrics that actually matter. They’re the result of someone performing an action and are usually expressed as some kind of percentage to represent a conversion rate. For example, email opt-in rate, purchases, email open rate, and click-through-rate (sometimes).

* Note: Click-Through-Rate (CTR) is an actionable metric because it measures an action – someone clicking on something. The thing about CTR is that it can be deceiving and isn’t always the most accurate. For example, bots can click links which will throw off your CTR stats.

Also, people click things for various reasons. For example, if you have an ad with an attractive female on it and you advertise to a bunch of males age 18-26 … your ad is going to get a lot of clicks … no matter what. But, do those clicks lead to sales? Maybe, maybe not … but, sales are what truly matters.

So, just be aware … CTR is a good thing to track; however, there are so many variables that go into CTR that it should not be “THE” metric to track, but it can help with some decisions.

Vanity Metrics vs. Actionable Metrics

Actionable metrics are what “bring home the bacon”. Vanity metrics can be fun to look at – for example, it’s fun to see how much traffic your site is getting. It’s fun to watch it grow and grow and grow!

But, if the amount of sales don’t increase with that growth … you have a problem … you probably need to start paying attention to your actionable metrics.

You may have noticed from above that I listed “subscribers” as a vanity metric while I listed “email opt-in rate” as an actionable metric. But, don’t they go hand-in-hand?

No.

A business may have an email list of 10,000 subscribers; however, that number is relative. I mean, so what? Sure, it sounds like a lot; however, what if they’d been building that list for 3 years and have over 100,000 unique views a month?

10,000 doesn’t seem as impressive now … does it?

If they did a little math, they’d see that their email opt-in conversion rate (the actionable metric that matters) is only 0.3%! Pitiful!

If they had focused on optimizing their conversion rate and brought it up to 5%, they’d have an email list of over 180,000 by now!!

By looking just at list size, they missed out on 170,000 subscribers … makes me sad :/

How To Track Email Opt-in Rate With Google Analytics

Let's not let your business fall in the same trap as the example business from above!

Here's a little tutorial about how to setup conversion tracking in Google Analytics.

The Google Analtyics team made some changes to their software, so we created an updated tutorial that can be found here!

This post is a portion of this bigger post that I recommend you read first; however, if you don’t – you’ll still gain some valuable insights!

Preface

The sales/marketing funnel is a system made up of several parts. All parts must work together in order to maximize the desired results.

What Is Chaos Theory?

Chaos theory is a field of math that studies the behavior of dynamical systems that are highly sensitive to initial conditions [Wikipedia]

This can best be illustrated through The Butterfly Effect:

It has been said that something as small as the flutter of a butterfly’s wing can ultimately cause a typhoon halfway around the world – Chaos Theory

Essentially, there can be some small, and seemingly meaningless change or event that results in a totally different and unexpected result. For example, a butterfly flapping its wing that causes a typhoon.

But, let’s keep this conversation in context of your sales funnel.

The Butterfly Effect On Your Sales Funnel

You have your system, like the diagram above displays, and at the top is your Traffic Source [initial condition].

Let’s say you’re using Adwords to drive traffic to your sales funnel and you decide to make a change to your campaign.

You add the negative keyword – free.

You probably shouldn’t have been using that keyword anyway, because nothing on your site is free, but you didn’t know negative keywords existed until a few minutes ago. Lesson learned.

So, after you add your negative keyword – your system conversion rate shoots up 350%. Because now you’re driving much more qualified, better, traffic.

Who’d a thought that one, four letter, word could change the entire system that much?!

That’s Chaos Theory in action.

Applying Chaos Theory To Your Sales Funnel

There are three rules to applying Chaos Theory to your sales funnel:

1. Start At The Top
2. The Further Down, Make More Significant Changes
3. One Change At A Time

1. Start At The Top

The effects of the changes you make will trickle down.

If you make a change to your ad, it WILL impact how well your squeeze page performs, which will impact how well your emails perform, which will impact how well your sales pages perform.

If you make a change to your final sales page, it’ll only impact the conversion rate of the sale.

When it comes to optimizing your sales funnel, you need to start at the top – with your traffic source.

Heck, if you can really nail down the first two parts (traffic and squeeze page [landing page]), and only do a mediocre job on the emails and sales pages – you’ll be able to create awesome sales funnels!

2. The Further Down, Make More Significant Changes

The further down in the sales funnel you make changes, the more significant the changes need to be.

For example, at the top – adding the negative keyword “free” could have a dramatic impact on the whole system. Whereas, on a sales page, changing the color of a button will result in insignificant changes.

When testing later sections – make big, bold, changes.

Change the whole layout. Change all the wording. Heck, change the product (if it makes sense).

Don’t waste time testing colors of buttons. Please.

3. One Change At A Time

The third and final rule is the most important – only make one change at a time.

How?

• You have your “before” system conversion rate – write it down.
• Make the change.
• Wait until you have enough statistical significance [defined below]
• Attain your “after” system conversion rate – write it next to the “before” system conversion rate.
• Compare the two.
• If “before” is better than “after”, revert back to “before” setup. If “after” is better than “before”, keep changes.

Without having super fancy tools and a PhD in mathematics, this is the only way for “normal” people to test their system – ONE CHANGE AT A TIME.

I mean, how else will you know if what you changed worked if you change everything all at once? You’ll be right back where you started, albeit with a new, un-optimized, system.

Statistical Significance

Comparing the before and after isn’t hard, but it will require discipline.

First, you’ll have to segment your audience based on “before” change and “after” change. The easiest way to form each segment is based on date: If the person entered your sales funnel before the date of change – they’re in segment A. If they entered your sales funnel after the date of change – they’re in segment B.

* Disclaimer: Date is not necessarily the best choice because different date ranges may yield different results, especially if your business is seasonal. The best option would be to run the tests simultaneously; however, this is more complex to implement.

Now, you have to wait until you reach statistical significance.

Fortunately, there are free calculators to help you with this!

Get Data Driven has a nice, simple one – that works, so we recommend it.

So, how do you use it?

• You see the two segments – A and B, just like we separated above, based on “before” and “after”
• The number of visitors on this page was – enter the number of individuals that clicked on your ad
• The number of overall conversions was – how many people, ultimately, made the purchase (remember, it's the whole system)
• Conversion rate – calculates the conversion rates for you
• Your results – tells us how different our two segments are based on a percentage of certainty

Certainty?

Right!

You want to be certain the change you made is actually creating the results and not some random event.

The goal is 95%, or greater.

Anything less, and you're left with too much room for error.

Look at this example:

Kind of surprising, right? We're only at 81% certainty.

You'd think Segment B is clearly better; however, based on the numbers … it's not … and it would be too risky to assume B is better than A.

So … how do you get to Statistical Significance?

Simple answer – more visitors and/or more conversions:

Notice how we still have the same, exact, conversion rates … but, now we're 96% certain that Segment B (the “after” changes segment) is better.

Now, we can keep the changes we made as permanent changes, and start a whole new test!

Summary

• Changes you make at the top of your sales funnel affect all subsequent portions of the system.
• Nail down the first two parts of the sales funnel – traffic source and Squeeze Page before spending tons of time and effort on the remaining portions.
• When you do make changes to the bottom half of the funnel, make sure they're big, bold, changes.
• Patience is a virtue. It's fun and exciting to change a bunch of things and think you're making a difference; however, it's not an accurate, nor productive way to optimize your sales funnel.

This is the first post in a series of posts concerning the optimization of a sales or marketing funnel. This post will be updated with links to related articles as they’re written.

It’s A System

The first issue that needs to be addressed in this post is your view on “optimization”.

Too many people only focus on one aspect of optimization without taking into account the fact that it’s a whole system.

For example, people know they’re supposed to optimize their landing pages and they go about changing wording, colors, layouts, fonts, images, etc. Trying to improve the page’s conversion rate.

And you know what? That's “Ok”.

It’s certainly better than nothing; however, it’s only one piece to the whole puzzle.

This is what the puzzle looks like when put together:

See, it’s a system, and the landing page is one small piece.

It’s the system, as a whole, that produces (or fails to produce) the desired result.

What Makes A System Run Smoothly?

Since you now see, and understand, that the whole sales/marketing funnel is a system, it would make sense to explain how to get the most out of it.

It has to flow.

The traffic source and advertisement need to match the landing page, which need to match the thank you page, which need to match the follow up email series, and so on.

You cannot have an advertisement for a car, which goes to a landing page that talks about a new diet, which goes to a thank you page that talks about how to get started blogging, which leads to a follow up email series that discusses the stock market.

That paragraph above is plain ridiculous, yet it happens all the time. (Ok, maybe not quite that bad; however, there are ads that promise one thing while the landing page delivers something totally different. For example, you click an ad expecting the opportunity to get a coupon; however, the landing page doesn't mention a single thing about a coupon … bad flow = bad system).

To get the most out of your sales system, ensure it flows!

Actionable Metrics

Simply put, there are two types of metrics that exist in the world of digital marketing:

• Vanity Metrics
• Actionable Metrics

Vanity metrics are “pretty” and “fun” to look at, but are only skin deep. For example, how many people visit your site, how many followers you have, and how many subscribers you have is fairly meaningless.

Sure, it’s exciting to see a 100% growth in traffic from one month to the next, but – what if sales stay stagnate or even decline?

Which is more important? How many people visited your site? Or, how many people visited your site and made a purchase?

The latter – right? All that matters is that conversion because it’s what keeps the lights on.

Conversions or conversion rates = actionable metrics. THIS is what you want to measure and optimize for.

The “technical” term for this is Conversion Rate Optimization or CRO.

Related article: Vanity Metrics vs Actionable Metrics

Traffic Source

The first piece of the system, when it comes to optimizing your sales funnel, is your traffic source.

Without a doubt, this is arguably the most crucial piece of the puzzle because if you’re sending junk traffic, it doesn’t matter how good the rest of your system is – it’ll never lead to your desired result.

There’s obviously a plethora of traffic sources and they all have their strengths and weaknesses. Some sources of traffic are “free” like SEO, social media, word of mouth, etc. While others are paid like Facebook Advertising, Google Adwords, banner ads, etc.

The best type of traffic for accurately measuring results is paid traffic – and it’s what I’ll discuss in related posts.

Paid traffic is the best form because not only can you accurately target your specific market, but you can easily measure actionable metrics like Cost Per Action/Conversion (CPA). Remember, it’s all about actionable metrics!

Whereas, with “free” traffic, it’s more holistic and less measurable. Sure, certain aspects can be measured, but it’s not nearly as precise as paid traffic.

Related article: How to drive traffic to your sales funnel

Landing Page(s)

As you'll notice by looking at the diagram above – Landing Pages are listed twice, because they're used … A LOT!

Technically, a landing page is simply the page someone “lands” on when they arrive on your site through whatever source of traffic (search engine, ad, link in an email, guest post, etc).

As much as is humanly possible, you want to control the pages visitors land on. Especially, when you're paying money for that visitor to land on your website. You never, ever, want to send people willy-nilly onto random pages within your site.

Each landing page in your sales funnel should have one purpose only (a conversion [actionable metric]). You then measure the results and optimize.

For example, the landing page someone arrives on after clicking on an ad should probably be a squeeze page with a lead magnet that “squeezes” contact information out of the visitor. This way you can follow up with emails and build a relationship.

Another example, the landing page someone arrives on after clicking on a link in an email, should probably be a sales page with the objective being to sell a product or service.

That's all I'll say about Landing Pages in this post, but there is more in related articles!

Related article: What is a Landing Page?

Follow Up Email Series

The main point of having an email series is to build a relationship with the lead. This is done through providing informational and entertaining content with the underlying purpose of driving some kind of action (mainly a purchase, but can include other actions like social media follows, volunteer work, etc.).

The emails should include links to various landing pages like sales pages with the sole purpose to drive one action – ie, a purchase.

Actionable metrics (like open rates, click through rates, and ultimately conversion rates) are tracked and optimized in regard to an email series.

Related article: What's My Email List Worth? [calculator]

Sale (Final? Action)

The only actionable metric that really matters is the conversion rate between the start (the traffic source) and the finish (the sale).

This metric alone answers the question of, “How well is my sales funnel doing?”

Everything in between either increases or decreases this one metric.

So, when you make a change to your system – you see what happens to this one metric – and judge from there if the change you made was good or not.

For example, let's say you change your squeeze page and it happens to get a lower opt-in conversion rate than the previous one; HOWEVER, when you look at this final metric (the conversion rate from traffic source to sale) you see that it's gone up! And, that's ALL THAT MATTERS!!!!

Butterfly Effect (Chaos Theory)

It has been said that something as small as the flutter of a butterfly's wing can ultimately cause a typhoon halfway around the world – Chaos Theory

Earlier in the article I talked about your sales funnel “needing to flow” – where the traffic source is in line with the landing page, which is in line with the emails series, and so on.

Remember, the entire sales/marketing funnel is a system and, in order to properly optimize it, you need to measure the results of the system as a whole.

Where the Butterfly Effect (Chaos Theory) comes into play is when you make one change, anywhere in the system, it can have dramatic effects on subsequent portions of the system. This can either dramatically improve or diminish its overall results.

Knowing the Butterfly Effect exists in your sales funnel (system) is the first step, in the next article I’ll show you a few ways to control it.

Related article: How to use Chaos Theory to optimize your sales funnel

Why Final With A ?

As you noticed, I had a question mark behind final. Because, realistically – the initial sale is not the final step in the sales funnel.

It's only the beginning.

You now have a paying customer that has money and trusts you and your business enough to make a purchase! It's now time to nurture that relationship and generate more and more sales for years to come!

However, this is beyond the scope of this post … at a later date we'll dive more into maximizing your customers' lifetime value. Today, we're just focusing on turning leads into customers.

Leaks

Your sales funnel is going to leak. People are going to fall out of it by not opening emails, not clicking links, not committing action, etc.

It’s going to happen – and that’s why it’s in the shape of a funnel.

There are ways to “plug the holes” in your sales funnel.

The primary way, and the way I’ll explain in a later article, is through retargeting  (remarketing).

Essentially, retargeting allows you to create ads that “follow” individuals across the Internet.

For example, someone clicks on your ad and goes to your squeeze page; however, they don’t convert. Maybe that particular landing page wasn’t good, or maybe the lead wasn't interested in that particular lead magnet. Through retargeting, you can show that lead different ads and different landing pages (squeeze pages) in order to try and get that initial conversion and thus, “plugging a hole in your funnel.”

Related article: How Does Retargeting Work?

Key Takeaways

• A sales/marketing funnel is a system made up of many parts
• Each part needs to “flow” with the other parts in order to have an optimized system
• Only track actionable metrics and optimize based on those results
• The Butterfly Effect is ever present, you must measure the success of the entire system, not just one part
• There are ways to plug some of the holes in your system through retargeting

Over the last few days I’ve been researching several of the politicians currently running for president. I’m mainly looking at their email marketing campaigns to see what they’re doing and to be honest … I’ve been a little shocked.

They’re all begging for money – without giving anything in return.

Now, this may be because they’re not “really” running for president yet and they don’t “need” votes yet.

As the candidate list begins to thin and as front runners emerge, I expect to see their email marketing campaigns adjust to encompass the goal of attaining new voters … time will tell.

Regardless, this article isn’t addressing their current email marketing tactics, instead it’s presenting a simple campaign that will help them acquire more voters.

3 Ps

As with all email marketing campaigns, we need to define several aspects before actually implementing the plan. If we don’t have a defined path to travel down, we could be throwing money away.

Here at Crazy Eye Marketing, we define the path as the 3Ps – People, Problems, and Products.

And, depending on budget, market size, and the business’s capabilities – the definitions can be much more specific (ie. 23 year old male with a labradoodle who spends 14 hours a day on reddit)

But! For this example, I’m keeping it simple and fairly broad…

People (who’s visiting the business

[politician's website])

18-32 year olds

Problem (why an individual is visiting the business)

They don’t know much about the politician, but are trying to learn more

Products (what the business/politician offers)

This one is a bit tricky because politicians don't really “sell” anything except for their vision of how to make their country better.

They also sell little knick-knacks like t-shirts, stickers, and coffee mugs.

However, none of the above really solve any problems. So, in this instance, the product is access to the email list which will provide insights into the politician.

Marketing and Advertising

I’ve already beat this topic to a dead horse here. So, I won’t go into much detail in this post, but the main idea is that the politician needs to advertise where the audience they're trying to reach … actually hangs out.

In this case, search engine marketing (SEM) and pay per click (PPC) advertising would probably be good starting points as people usually turn to search engines when they have a question (want to learn more about the politician).

Also, social media will be good as the majority of 18-32 year olds are on social media. This medium will also perform well with the lead magnet I am about to suggest as, hopefully, it’ll go viral.

Lead Magnet

Keeping in mind our audience and their problems, what could a politician possibly offer in exchange for an email address?

Have you ever seen Jimmy Kimmel’s Celebrities Reading Mean Tweets?

It’s freakin’ hilarious and every video goes viral.

This lead magnet idea is along the same lines:

10 Of [insert politician’s name] “Toughest” Questions Answered!

Note: “Toughest” may not be a good word as it may imply the questions will actually be tough as opposed to silly, crazy, or ridiculous. (Hey, it's something to test!)

All the politician has to do is record a video of them answering 10 of the “toughest” questions they’ve ever been asked.

The “toughest” questions are the ones that are slightly silly and borderline ignorant. This way, when a humorous/witty answer is given, it's not insulting. For example, Hillary Clinton can't joke about the whole email scandal she's involved with, as that would certainly backfire.

But, she can answer questions like this:

This …

And this …

Here’s the deal tho – it needs to be funny/witty while also being transparent and real … giving actual insights into the politician as a person.

Woah! A transparent politician?!

Maybe I am asking for too much but, if they can pull it off, and show that they're a real person, this will work.

Landing Page / Opt-In Form

The landing page and opt-in form needs to be kept real simple. Remember, these people are coming to learn more about the politician – and that’s it. There’s no need to ask for anything more than an email address.

Heck, I had some extra time so I made a mock-up landing page …

When the play button is clicked, a popup opt-in will be presented asking for an email address in order to view the video.

Landing Page Variations

In the landing page example above I described a “trick” video, which may or may not be a good idea … especially for politicians who are usually seen as sneaky people to begin with …

I present you with a couple more landing page variations:

• Have an opt-in right below the video and tell people, “All they need to do is enter their email address and press, “Watch The Video”.”
• Have the video play 2 of the 10 questions and if they want the rest, enter their email address.

Email Series

Just like with the landing page, I don't know what the best possible email series is; however, I know how to start … and from there changes/optimizations will have to be made.

DO THIS! The thing is, you've got to start … even if it's terrible at first!

The Introduction and Action series will be concurrent (2 emails on the same day).

Action Series

• Email 1: Deliver Lead Magnet (immediately after subscribe)
• Email 2: 5 Unanswered Questions if donate in the next 48 hours (24 hours after subscribe)
  • Note: This is just an example of something to sell. Another example could be a blooper real from when the 10 answers were recorded. Or, maybe, some “secret vault” of the politician participating in their hobbies
  • The point is, its got to be something someone who wants to learn more about and will pay $1 for. Once the person opens their wallet for the candidate, they're permanently bound!
• Email 3: Last chance EVER to see unanswered questions (or whatever upsell from above) (48 hours after subscribe)
  • Instill a sense of urgency and fear that this opportunity is going away

Introduction Series

• Email 1: Welcome, thank you, expectations of being on email list (1 hour after subscribe)
• Email 2: Personal note/biography/relate to the common folk (25 hours after subscribe)
• Email 3: Best content (speeches, articles, etc) (49 hours after subscribe)

Broadcast Emails

After the Action and Introduction series have finished, the politician can continue to send broadcast emails about things like …

• Speeches
• Appearances
• Related news
• Other action series
  • To try and get $1

Skies the limit!

Going Forward

While this is not the end-all, be-all for politicians, at least it's a starting point.

Currently, all they're doing is begging for money … which certainly turns away voters that are on the fence with which candidate to choose.

Hopefully, their email marketing campaigns change once they're “really” running for office and “need” votes … time will tell, but you can count on us being there to evaluate their performance!