Why Do People Still Use Squeeze Pages?

Have you tested the lifetime visitor value of straight to the salespage vs to optin?

Test it first, give it 6 months. Then you'll likely understand why people still use optin pages.

Also, use retargetting to capture any "lost" visitors. That should help no matter what you're doing.

First and foremost... well said James.

With regards to having contact and one on one coversations, you can still do that + with a heck of a lot more people seeing as you're coversions are always going to be higher (assuming you know what you're doing).

A squeeze page / funnel is also going to help automate unnecessary tasks also.. such as staying on live chat all day in hopes that someone leaves a question. Then for those who don't then what?

Traffic is going to vary in any case, as it's going to depend on each and every person. But let me put it this way... every leader in our industry making millions, has a structure one way or another.

Without a structure you're just gambling and as soon as they leave, you have no other means of re-marketing and reconnecting to them. (Unless you're doing re-marketing ads of course). But you get my drift.

I am currently using squeeze pages, but in the next six months, I would try sending traffic straight to my website.

Actually, No, you got it backwards. If you send people straight to your website that has a "chat" and a method of contact you'll have a much larger percentage of failure rate than had you just collected the e-mail and followed up with them in the first place! E-mail is far more powerful than any other marketing method out there. Once a person visits your site and leaves, he is gone forever. How are you going to force him back? But when you have someones email and you understand your niche in and out than can build a relationship with your prospect and follow up and provide solutions to over and over again on complete autopilot. How important is traffic to you? Well if you like traffic on demand, than you'll build your list. If you're trying to earn a full time living online than you'll build your email list. Try it your way, let me know how successful you are a year from now. If it works stick with it.

You don't have to use one or any for that matter...

More fun for the rest of us

Squeeze pages are essential for everything you do. It's all in the list. AKA "owning your own traffic". Squeeze pages arent only used in the MMO niche.

In general people use squeeze page to get a hold on email address of genuine readers who could be their subscriber/buyer later on if they are convince. Starting from squeeze pages which is a landing page that is designed to capture opt-in email addresses from potential subscribers. The Main goal of a squeeze page is to convince, wheedle or "squeeze" a visitor into providing one of their most sought-after and coveted pieces of personal data: the email address.
People still use them to gain some popularity by providing some freebies and later once people are used too of such freebies (services, software tool or anything) they can start their charge over that... Its Simple... Best example - Contract phone... Good and costly phone at very cheap rates with bundled offers where you are bounded for number of months/year where they will get the best benefit from you..

Same is the case with Squeeze Pages. So people still using such tactics.

Squeeze pages are not just important but necessary. Yes, you can earn good money without them in many ways, e.g. direct CPA offers, but you're leaving a lot of profit on the table for no good reason.

As Matthew said, I'd be surprised if you got a better rate of people contacting you than using a squeeze page where you can follow up with them. However people who do contact you should have a way higher conversion rate if you are good at converting them.

But, in order to scale your service up in the future the product you're selling has to have a price point that makes it worth having staff to do the on-page support.

If it takes you 5 minutes to chat with someone and you convert 10% then it takes you 50 minutes of time for a single conversion. If someone else is doing the chatting for you then you can assume this conversion rate will drop because they won't be as invested even if they have the best script in the world. So let's say for arguments sake it takes them 60 minutes for 1 conversion.

You now need to cover their costs, affiliate costs and make a significant profit to make this form of communication worthwhile and scaleable.

That's not to say it's not possible and won't work. It may do both very well, but you should look at the time and the numbers to see if it's an approach that can work and if so what types of conversion you need to be achieving to make it work. That will allow you to test it over a shorter timeframe and no pretty quickly whether it's a good approach for you.

I don't disagree at all. You're sharing your opinions which I respect. Sounds like your more social interacted with people, which is a very good sign that your moving with the times. That's many ways to make money online and email marketing is a small part to it but still is important. I focus primarily on social media, video marketing, blogging and email marketing. All of this combined is very powerful and if you can create a strong presence with any of these or all of them. You have a business for life.

It's not about your optin rate, it's about the quality of your leads.

The more you can get them to WANT to hear more from you, as a subscriber, the better.

This is done by giving them value first, before they submit their email. Make them come to you.

This can go beyond your typical one headline squeeze page, where people optin with a second email just to get some freebie.

Here is the difference between optins generated from my squeeze page and optins gathered from an optin form on the side of my blog.

Squeeze page:
On average, converted around 28%
Out of those subscribers, 2% click through when I sent an email

Blog With Optin Form(s)
On average, converts around 3%
Out of those subscribers, 30% click through to the link I mail them

Squeeze pages may have gotten me more optins, but I got more of a click through from the optins collected on my blog. Mainly because these people were not forced to sign up for my list.

Overall, it just depends on what works for you. I personally tend not to use squeeze pages, but that is just based off my own experience. I got more sales from leads generated through my blog optin form.

Be unique! You dont need to do what everyone else does. Do what works for you!

I think its best to test traffic and do a split test:
a) direct to the site
b) squeeze page

To answer your question, I myself have no squeeze page and I direct traffic to my site. In the past 4 months I created a list and NOW I plan to create a squeeze to test my conversions for my long term sales. I say do both and see what happens.

I agree with Alexa. Squeeze pages are not the ONLY way to build a list, just one of them. But from what you are telling OP, you are sending them to a review page and then to a sales page, with just a contact form or chat button where they can/cannot contact you. Then, IF they contact you, you'll ask them to join your list, am I right?

Umm, correct me if I'm wrong, but are you sure you'll get a lot of people contacting you this way? Wouldn't people just look at your review and go to the sales page if they are interested, or close the page if they are not interested.

You might be able to catch them via your chat option, but do you want to stay online for hours on end to get them talking to you with the hopes of building a list before they buy from you? I personally would find that worse than a 9-5 day job, but maybe that's just me.

The main argument against squeeze pages is that (as far as I know) they don't build any trust before your subscriber opts in, so the future conversions might be reduced. But, they do convert well, and that's why people are using them.

I personally don't think your method is worth the time you'll have to spend sitting in front of your computer (unless you are outsourcing the chat process?). I'd love to know your results though.

#1 the link in your sig. is broken.

There are so many things wrong with this. You might want to look at what you are promoting before trying to tweak the way you promote it.

From 500 clicks...do you start to understand what I'm talking about?

It's probably because they still work and as a marketing tool it's still quite effective.

I don't think any of my previous or current landing pages have been spectacular or state of the art, as my web design skills are no more then basic HTML, but I'm still able to capture names and email address.

The old saying comes to mind "If it ain't broke, don't fix it"

This all comes down to how well you convert traffic to any page, squeeze or otherwise...

I have been doing this for 15 years, so i have some gist of how it works

Alexa is correct size of list isnt an indication of how profitable the list is, My most profitable lists equating to more than 75% of my income online comes from a base of 600 members and 300 members.

I have several sites with memberships in the 10's of thousands (in one case 100,000 members) but the two lists above still bring in 75% of my online income.

Here is the rub though...

Both those lists were sifted from the bulk (squeeze page, landing page) strategy that alexa talked about. The bulk subscriber... get them in from any traffic source (even public toilets if you can) is the engine which builds the true income source.

That folks is the funnel or pipeline strategy

I think squeeze pages is the first step of a big relationship between a customer and a vendor!

Steve

there are cases where skipping the squeeze pages works, but the opportunity cost of not capturing the emails and following up is usually much much higher than people realize.... especially people who are going debating somethign based on theory and not data.

and you keep mentioning other engagement methods. first, that stuff is not nearly as scale-able as building a list. also, have you actually tested the number of people clicking the chat button or sending you an email.... my data tells me it will be much much lower than the percentage of people you can put on a list with a well optimized squeeze page and offer.

your data is talking about signups...not income... and certainly not long term visitor or customer value. Start factoring those things in and your data suddenly looks completely different.

with your methods those 500 people you paid to bring to your page are gone forever once the ad runs... no more opportunity to make your efforts and investments of today have long term value to your business.

be careful about reading data... make sure you are measuring the data you actually want to measure and not just some arbitrary stats that dont actually affect the size of your bank account.

Squeeze pages actually work well with Newbies and can be an effective tool, however I have found that more experienced individuals often ignore them. It's all about how you pitch your squeeze page.

Not really understanding so if you are getting 100% traffic and only 30% opt in you lose 70%???

Do you mean you still get 30% of people who you can build a relationship with and promote products to in the future?

If you have a landing page with a live chat widget and you get people to your site, this will mean that your product will have to be so good that they buy right then...

Or they ask a few questions right then and then buy...

Do you know that it takes an average of 6-7 exposures or more of a product to get people to buy?

What happens to the percent of people who don't buy from you the first go round?

How do you contact them and what is your percentage of lost customers?

and your percentage of customers you get?

ummmmm - cause they work????

There is a lot of data out there indicating that people who will say no to purchasing a product immediately will buy later once trust is instilled. This is why many marketers and list builders rely heavily on relationship building. This can generate repeat business and loyal customers as well as referrals.

If you sell a man a fish you eat for a day, if you can win his trust, you may be able to have him feed you for the rest of your life grasshopper

There's a right place and right time for any strategy, squeeze pages included.

A bunch of you are going around in ever decreasing circles arguing at cross purposes.

Sometimes a squeeze page is a superior solution , sometimes it isn't.

Sometimes a squeeze page is entirely sensible to test, yet in some scenarios a squeeze page is counter productive.

It's that friggen simple.

There are 2 ways of which I purchase products & learn Internet Marketing online:

1)- Being on an opt-in list of a Internet Marketer I trust and

2)- from the sales page of an Internet Marketer I trust that sent
me a link to a sales page of a product that I wanted.

No, I don't buy every shiny new object sent my way...but,
I get a lot of great deals such as buy this product now for the
low price of $7.00 before the timer hits...well you get the idea.

If I wasn't on any list I would not know a dam thing about IM and or
be a part of those sweet early bird deals.

Thank You
and best of luck in your business.

After deciding my niche, I bought as many products as possible from a select group of marketers in that niche. I make sure that if they put out something new I am there. Lists, having them, and being on the right ones is a cornerstone to the marketing niche.

Squeeze pages are on of those parts in the machine that I think would be hard to do away with and still expect to build a IM business. A subscribers list is kind a like and referral list in the old sales days. A lot of back end sales are lost without it.

My squeeze page sometimes has a conversion rate of 90% ! That is why!

Post #3, James said it

The only place you will ever see traffic forced into a squeeze page are the snake oil niches. These are topics that trigger the average person's BS meter and they back out without ever buying. So sellers use squeeze pages (without the distraction of a full site) to capture the emails of people who are on the fence about the legitimacy of the offer and over the course of several emails they "build a relationship" with the victim and turn them into a buyer.

The majority of people who post on this forum work within snake oil niches.

My opt-in rate is 70% This method works for me and with email marketing I easily make 0.8 $ per subscriber. And my landing page is so simple and easy

You havent LOST 70% of visitors...you made 30% of sales! Plus you now have a list of buyers that you can milk...uhm...sell to later on!

DubDubDubDot - lead generation has been around way longer than squeeze pages. capturing a prospects contact info was a major part of marketing decades before the internet was even dreamed up (by al gore i think...lol).

And truthfully, lead generation will always be a part of marketing and selling anything. Its an entire industry.

Squeeze pages are just a super duper small portion of all the lead generation that business do. Virtually any business does lead generation.

Its part of the sales process of many many things....not just IM things by any means.

and no, dealerships capturing contact info is not primary a legal issue man... sorry. Its so they can call you and call you and call you. They do it relentlessly...kinda like an AR system does. All the top sales people at any car dealer follows up with prospects... its not a liability thing...its a sales thing.

also, regarding your illustration of martial law being declared. I am certainly not suggesting i believe that is imminent. But who are you to decide what is a reasonable threat to someone elses survival?

who could have foreseen the events of ferguson MO, the day before that situation happened. i am sure some were much more prepared for that situation than others. again, i am not sure what give you the ability to determine what is a reasonable risk or purchase for someone else.

Do you have some crystal ball that says there is no way a solar flare will set us back to the 1800's?
again, i am not saying i think that is about to happen. Just wondering if you know that its not going to happen and would you please enlighten us as to how you acquire that sort of knowledge. its worth money if you can convince people you do indeed have that power.

What if my risk tollerance is different than yours. should i not be allowed to buy an info product from a person selling "snake oil" as you put it because you have deemed that particular event too unlikely to happen so its a scam to sell info about being prepared for it to happen.

you see, in marketing sellers are solving problems for people or providing services people want in exchange for money. Buyers on the other hand have many many things that motivate them to buy. sometimes its hope, sometimes its fear, sometimes shiny object syndrome, sometime they just have money burning a hole in their pocket and they want some self gratification they get from making a purchase....consumerism.

but i just dont get how you can decide that i should not be able to sell someone something they want to buy based on the fact that you just dont think its a good deal for some consumers to purchase that item.

that just seems absurd to be honest. Its like somehow, you seem to think you understand what is motivating buyers to make purchases and moreover that their motivation is always the same thing. its not...not by a long shot. even in the crazy IM niche, people buy for all sorts of reasons.

Squeeze pages come in handy specially if you are giving some value in the front end

and then ask someone to opt in if they want more.

I think if some one is not willing to give their email in the 1st place, there is a high tendency they will not purchase from you at all.

And also as andre correctly mentioned it takes close to 7 exposures for some one to purchase.

But having a opt in page is always handy when you give real value in the front end especially having good content on a blog post and then pre framing it to get more or find out more by opt in in....