How we grew trading education leads by 1,625 for our client in 8 months with a simple email marketing plan.
Leads are the lifeblood of any growing business. If you can grow qualified leads – and close them – you can grow your business. If not, your business stagnates or worse – declines.
It’s no different in the trading education business.
Trading education leads can be difficult to acquire at a reasonable cost. Google clicks (CPCs) have risen over the past decade making it hard to scale using paid search. Other search engines like Bing and Yahoo don’t have the search volume you need to grow your business. Social media platforms like Facebook and LinkedIn have potential if you can crack the demographic targeting code. And that’s a big “IF”.
All of this is not impossible if you follow a few simple steps. In this case study, I highlight what we did with one trading education client and how we grew his email leads by 32% in 8 months at a reasonable cost per lead with a simple email marketing strategy.
Trading Education Client Needed A Bigger List
Last year, one of our clients asked us to grow his trading education leads. His email list had been stagnating for the past few years, and he wanted to breathe new life into it. He had the budget for the project so we took it on.
NOTE: For confidentiality reasons, we cannot provide the company name or exact details of the email marketing campaign. However, we do submit screenshots in Google Analytics as proof.
Step 1: Create a Freemium Offer
We created a free email offer known as a “freemium”. This offer was both compelling to the prospect and relevant to the client’s business. We worked with a professional designer and copywriter to create a professional 2-page PDF infographic – it looks great!
Step 2: Create an Email Autoresponder
After the freemium offer, we created an email autoresponder (aka drip campaign). Those 10 emails highlighted the client’s results and success and how it could help the prospect make money in trading. It wasn’t all promotional – it was value-rich content aimed to build trust with the client and secure a sale.
Step 3: Create a Targeted Landing Page
Until this campaign, the client only asked for prospects to signup for newsletter updates on a virtually-hidden page on his business’ website. And signups were abysmally low. That changed when we began offering the prospects the free infographic to website visitors. Once visitors entered their email address, they received the infographic and we got the new email lead.
Step 4: Create Multiple Advertising Campaigns > Point To Landing Page
After we created the email landing page, freemium, and email autoresponder, we started the promotion. We pointed our Google paid advertising to the new landing page. We started advertising across multiple channels including Google Search in the US and outside the US as well as Google Remarketing.
Step 5: Add Targeted Landing Page Website with Non-Intrusive Pop-Up
In addition to the revamped advertising, we implemented the landing page as a prominent link on the website. We also created a non-intrusive pop-up where the prospect could signup for the freemium offer the first time they visited the website. The client already received a sizeable chunk of organic search (SEO) traffic, so he could now leverage the ‘free’ traffic to start rebuilding his email list.
Step 6: Monitor Results & Tweak Campaigns
The final step is just as important as the other pieces. After the campaign was implemented, we started tweaking the campaign. We discovered that search campaigns had a high cost per lead (CPL) but remarketing campaigns had a low cost per lead (CPL). So we shifted budgets. We also discovered that many of our sales were coming from the US and other countries. So we adjusted the geo targeting to only advertise where recent sales happened.
The Results: 1,625 More Leads in 8 Months
The campaign started slow in May 2017. We only had 24 new emails in month 1 which is normal. Then we hit a monthly peak at 360 signups just 2 months later. After a few more adjustments, signups settled down, and have started to climb again after a few more adjustments.
Total Lead & Traffic Growth over 8 Months: 24/mo > 293/mo
Paid Lead & Traffic Growth over 8 Months: 15/mo > 145/mo
On the advertising side, we started with a cost per lead (CPL) of $50.37 for 15 leads. In the last month of 2017 – 8 months later – we brought the CPL down to $4.84 or 940% better than where we started.
Overall, we have grown the total number of email marketing leads from ~5,000 to ~6,600 or 32% in 8 months! And like most email marketing, the email prospects are buying the trading services at a much better conversion rate than other channels.
The best part is the client is happy his email list is growing again.
Contact Search Pros for Email Marketing Help
If you need help scaling your email marketing list for your trading education or other business, contact Brandon today for a FREE growth plan to get to the next level.
Brandon Clay
512.669.1446