Why Is The "Success" Of Solo Ads Based On Opt-In Percentage?

[Ross Cohen]

So if you pay for a solo ad and get 40%... 50%... even 60% of clicks to become opt-ins, that's considered a success, right?

But... shouldn't the success be based on the the second follow-up message? Not the one that comes instantly after the freebie (or whatever it may be) is delivered via email... but the follow-up that's sent out the next day. Or a couple days later.

If you get a 60% opt-in rate but then 2% of those people end up reading your second follow-up message... would the solo ad still be considered successful? Of course not. And a lot of people use other emails than their regularly checked one... which isn't good for the email marketer. If they check the email account once a month to delete their bajillion messages, your conversions for that subscriber is probably not going to be the best. (Obviously you want to get the people opted-in with their main email... the one that check on a daily basis).

Thoughts?

[Daddy2]

I agree...I did a solo ad got over 50 opt ins out of 100 opens...not a single sale yet...kinda pisses me off honestly

[Ross Cohen]

Well no sales... I mean that sucks... but it doesn't mean those people can't convert in the future. I'm just curious what the open rate will be when you email them in a couple days.

[jaggyjay]

Wow Ross good point. Never looked at it that way.

Perhaps immediately offering a quality, low-ticket product (maybe $1 - $9.95) might at least turn a few into buyers...

Thus, solo ad -> opt-in LP -> download Freebie -> Thank you -> Wait! Buy this for $7!

Hmmm... gonna have to test this

[Ross Cohen]

It's not just about turning them into buyers right off the bat though. If none convert into sales, it doesn't mean they won't... or that they can't. My point though is that if they opt-in for your freebie... it doesn't matter if your list is larger or if they don't unsubscribe. If these are people who only opt-in with their "opt-in for freebie" email, you'll never reach them again. That's why a follow-up after a couple days (that second follow-up email) is of utmost importance in determining whether they're lost forever or if you still have their attention.

[Fraggler]

Ross, opt-in rate can be a measure of success for people who know what an opt-in from similar traffic is worth to them. It takes time to work out the value of a subscriber from cold traffic to one you have a relationship with already.

You might burn through some cash as you get the data but as this cold traffic (solo ads) goes through your sales funnel you'll start to get an average worth of the customer. You can then use that to work out how much you could pay for a solo ad and still be successful (where success is measured by whatever your desired ROI is).

[Ross Cohen]

Umm... but still. Or maybe I'm just crazy.

Say you offer a freebie for people to opt-in... and a solo ad is sent. No sales funnel, just a freebie for opt-in.

You buy 100 opens, get 100 opens, and 50 of them opt-in. Great, 50%.

They all open your email... the one that instantly goes out in the autoresponder. They get their freebie.

What are these subscribers worth to you? How could you measure that?

From one perspective you could consider them 50 cold leads. Fine. "Work them", sure. But how do you know that 1 of them are going to open your next email? NOT because of what you send... how you act... etc... but what if the email they opted-in with they simply never check? It's not that they're not caring to open your email... it's that they're never going to see it because all they do is use that email address to get free software, eBooks, etc.

Without sending that second email a day or a week down the road, could you really determine what those 50 cold leads are potentially worth to you in the long run?

[shg]

Well, this is the main concern i have and that is why it seems difficult to pay for solo ads. I have thought many times to give it a try but i end up nahh!. Any way i am internet marketer and i have seen 7 or 8% of conversion is a good ratio so we should expect atleast 15% conversion because you are sending emails to targeted group of people so every subscriber is very targeted visitors...

any one knows best solo ads provider?

best regards

Harry

[David Keith]

one reason for using that metric is that it is one of the more accurate measurements.

Open rates are very inaccurate stats and will even vary based on what AR solution a person is using. That sort of stuff is often times less of a reflection of the list quality or the solo ad and more a function of choices the list builder makes.

Things like open rates are very relative stats. Take me for instance. I use thunderbird and probably open 300 or more emails from IMers each day. But my opens never show because i never click the "show blocked content" button which enables the tracking image to load.

Also, from the moment a person gets onto your list it is much more up to the new list owner than the old list owner to mold the list to help them achieve their goals.

I totally agree that for the new list owner metrics like profitability and life time subscriber value are much more important, but tracking that is very difficult in the real world. It gets even more complicated when you start trying to track exactly which solo ad is giving you the highest lifetime subscriber value.

[Ross Cohen]

A 7-8% conversation ratio for what?

[Fraggler]

Originally Posted by Ross Cohen

Umm... but still. Or maybe I'm just crazy.

Say you offer a freebie for people to opt-in... and a solo ad is sent. No sales funnel, just a freebie for opt-in.

You buy 100 opens, get 100 opens, and 50 of them opt-in. Great, 50%.

They all open your email... the one that instantly goes out in the autoresponder. They get their freebie.

What are these subscribers worth to you? How could you measure that?

Why are you paying for traffic if you don't have anything to sell to them and don't know what they're worth -or have the intention to find out what they're worth?

In terms of money, they are worth nothing. You have to put them through your sales funnel to know what they're worth.

[Fraggler]

Originally Posted by David Keith

I totally agree that for the new list owner metrics like profitability and life time subscriber value are much more important, but tracking that is very difficult in the real world. It gets even more complicated when you start trying to track exactly which solo ad is giving you the highest lifetime subscriber value.

How hard is it to send a solo ad's traffic to a segment or separate list and track from there? Tracking the worth of your list is crucial if you want to be efficient. Affiliate management software is a good start. Make each traffic source a unique tracking ID or affiliate.

[Ross Cohen]

Well if the list is being subjected to funnel after funnel... day after day... chances are they're not going to just buy your up-sells... even if they're 99% discounted or what have you. They want your freebie, that's why they're opting in. That's why they haven't unsubscribed from the list sending out your offer... because they get a lot of freebies out of it. Just because people wouldn't buy your up-sell doesn't mean they wouldn't buy something from you down the road for 10x more, right?

It seems that you think if you get 100 opens... 50 opt-ins... and 0 sales from the sales funnel you have set up... that the solo ad was unsuccessful. Or am I not understanding correctly? No disrespect, just trying to see what you're views are.

[Fraggler]

That's right - but you have to work out if and how many times they'll buy down the road. Until you know that then you can't put a value on a subscriber. It doesn't matter where the sales come from or when they are produced. You just need to know how much money on average a lead from 'solo ad traffic' is worth to YOU. It might take months to get some confidence in that value.

[Ross Cohen]

Got it. But remember my post wasn't about trying to find the value of a subscriber. I was saying that the success of the solo ad shouldn't be the conversion rate of subscribers, but rather open rate on the second follow-up email to those subscribers.

[shg]

Well 7 to 8% of buyers what you are offering them. Those are the visitors which comes to your site...and in the case of email marketing it should be 15% buyers...

this is what i believe and if i am wrong then you can correct me...

best regards

[David Keith]

Originally Posted by Fraggler

How hard is it to send a solo ad's traffic to a segment or separate list and track from there? Tracking the worth of your list is crucial if you want to be efficient. Affiliate management software is a good start. Make each traffic source a unique tracking ID or affiliate.

lifetime subscriber value is very difficult to track when you are sending affiliate offers. In most cases the affiliate never knows which person(s) from their list bought each subsequent offer.

Thus the list owner knows they made XX sales of an affiliate offer, but they don't know which XX people from their list bought the offer and thus can't track the leads on their list back to the source.

Most lists now a days are monetized through affiliate offers where tracking the full value from subscribe to un-subscribe is just not very easy to do.

[Fraggler]

Ross, my point was that opt-in rate is a fine measure of success if you know what each subscriber is worth to you. Who cares if they don't open up the second follow-up email? They might open the 3rd, 7th, 12th, and buy on the 15th. All that matters is you are confident that if you get a 10% opt-in rate from a $200 Solo Ad you will make a 30% ROI in 3 months. In my books, that a better measure of a successful sold-ad.

[Ross Cohen]

Originally Posted by shg

Well 7 to 8% of buyers what you are offering them. Those are the visitors which comes to your site...and in the case of email marketing it should be 15% buyers...

this is what i believe and if i am wrong then you can correct me...

best regards

7-8% of visitors convert? The average is actually around 1-3%. If you're up in those ranges over perhaps a couple hundred or better yet, a couple thousand visitors, you're doing extremely well.

[Fraggler]

Originally Posted by David Keith

lifetime subscriber value is very difficult to track when you are sending affiliate offers. In most cases the affiliate never knows which person(s) from their list bought each subsequent offer.

But you can know which list the subscriber comes from by using tracking IDs, and a spreadsheet or pen & paper. It's not difficult, it just takes work and discipline.

[David Keith]

Originally Posted by Fraggler

But you can know which list the subscriber comes from by using tracking IDs, and a spreadsheet or pen & paper. It's not difficult, it just takes work and discipline.

If you do an email blast to 3 lists using aweber and make 10 affiliate sales, how exactly are you tracking which email address bought the affiliate offer? and thus which list they were from. all three lists get the exact same email and affiliate link.

The only way to do that is by promoting an affiliate program that allows tracking id's to be passed through. many don't.

Otherwise there is no way to figure out which subscriber buys an affiliate product. You only get to see totally buyers...not who they were or any ad tracking info.

[biz_online]

Originally Posted by Ross Cohen

So if you pay for a solo ad and get 40%... 50%... even 60% of clicks to become opt-ins, that's considered a success, right?

But... shouldn't the success be based on the the second follow-up message? Not the one that comes instantly after the freebie (or whatever it may be) is delivered via email... but the follow-up that's sent out the next day. Or a couple days later.

If you get a 60% opt-in rate but then 2% of those people end up reading your second follow-up message... would the solo ad still be considered successful? Of course not. And a lot of people use other emails than their regularly checked one... which isn't good for the email marketer. If they check the email account once a month to delete their bajillion messages, your conversions for that subscriber is probably not going to be the best. (Obviously you want to get the people opted-in with their main email... the one that check on a daily basis).

Thoughts?

Ross!

You've have hit directly on my pet peeve about solo ads/ad swaps and what their providers offer. Solo ad providers, offer absolutely no guarantee of conversions. Basically, they are selling the same swapped email addresses with a small handful of fresh leads.

These days, the IM world is filled to the brim with "freebie seekers" who click to get the free download. If you're depending on people staying with you for a while, my opinion is that you need to develop your own list and stay away from ad swaps because it pollutes your list with a zillion unrelated offers - meaning, they signed up with you because they wanted to learn about, let's say the "Atkins Diet" and you bombard that list with "muscle fitness", "Acai Berry", "loss weight through hormone therapy"... or whatever, then you are almost guaranteed to lose your audience.

There are some people charging $1/click with no guarantee whatsoever. There are even people selling lists of their "supposed" personal results. My opinion is that ad swaps should be avoided altogether, and that solo ads need to be purchased only from trusted sources.

[Fraggler]

You use a different affiliate link for each list. You can even use Aweber's personalisation or custom variables to dynamically modify the url and tracking ID. Or you send an email to each list with the different affiliate link hard coded.

Which affiliate programs don't include tracking ids? It's a pretty standard feature and a must-have if you are using paid traffic. Of course it becomes difficult if the affiliate program doesn't support it but I would just avoid the program.

[davidkings]

% who opt in
% who read your email
% who click your URL link
% who who purchase through your url are ways to measure,

[anthony2]

I give myself at least 30 to 90 days....to see if the ad is solo ad blast is profitable.

It would be great to have your solo ad send out and have a load of sales come in

but it doesn't always happen that way. So I give the ad up to 90 days to see if it is

something I want to use again.

[jaggyjay]

Hmmm, I see your point. I'm guilty of that.

But I do check that email at least once a week!

Anyway, this could be why I'm noticing many opt-in forms stating, "enter your best email...".

Originally Posted by Ross Cohen

Umm... but still. Or maybe I'm just crazy.

Say you offer a freebie for people to opt-in... and a solo ad is sent. No sales funnel, just a freebie for opt-in.

You buy 100 opens, get 100 opens, and 50 of them opt-in. Great, 50%.

They all open your email... the one that instantly goes out in the autoresponder. They get their freebie.

What are these subscribers worth to you? How could you measure that?

From one perspective you could consider them 50 cold leads. Fine. "Work them", sure. But how do you know that 1 of them are going to open your next email? NOT because of what you send... how you act... etc... but what if the email they opted-in with they simply never check? It's not that they're not caring to open your email... it's that they're never going to see it because all they do is use that email address to get free software, eBooks, etc.

Without sending that second email a day or a week down the road, could you really determine what those 50 cold leads are potentially worth to you in the long run?

[paul nicholls]

all you can do is do your best to get them to use there best email address

if they like you and like your stuff enough they will open your emails, its simply a numbers game. Every single person that comes on your list is not always going to like you or like the way you market or do things

if your initial opt in conversion rate is poor then you stand an even less chance of someone reading your emails during your follow ups

getting a good opt in conversion rate basically increases the chance of everything else happening

for instance if only 50% end up reading your 2nd email and you got 30 opt ins you would only have 15 people read your first emails

however.... if you had 60 opt ins then that means 30 people are now reading your first email

this is why i always tell people to get there squeeze page conversions as high as they can because it has a massive knock on effect with how profitable your campaigns are

paul

[Anonymous Affiliate]

Because solo ads have just ONE purpose: to siphon new leads into your funnel. Once they're in your funnel, it's entire up to YOU (and your marketing skills) whether to convert them into sales or follow up visitors. You cannot blame your solo ad if those leads don't convert.

[Lewis Hillier]

What your trying to say is you might get 50% opt in rate from a solo but how many of them use a 'crappy' email just to get the freebie and then only open that email account to download the software then you never reach them again. Well I have never thought of it like that and the only way I can think of testing it would be to delete second follow up make a new segment of new subscribers from the last 24-48 hours or something... and then send the follow up to that segment. So you would get the % of opens from new subs... You would need to make a new segment everyday to do it constantly if you're buying solos and doing swaps and wanted to know how many truly turn into subs and not cold subs.

[sowerby]

What is the most important person on your list? Freebie Seeker or Buyer. Have you tried doing solo ads and send them directly to your sales page/funnel?

I know I would rather have a small list of buyers than a massive list of freebie seekers trying to turn them into buyers.

At least with the buyers you know they are willing to pull out their wallets!

Craig

[KKM017]

Great point, Ross! Anyone can get you those 100 clicks, but if no one is interested in your opinions, why even get those clicks in the first place?

Unless you want to make a big, unresponsive list to sell to others like you were sold to...

(cue circle of life from the lion king!)

Also, I Just noticed that you're from philly. So am I! You should pm me! I can't pm yet, but it would be cool to talk to a fellow warrior from my area.

[missyox]

I am trying to build a list and was thinking about doing solo ads. Now I'm not so sure. hmm

[biz_online]

Originally Posted by missyox

I am trying to build a list and was thinking about doing solo ads. Now I'm not so sure. hmm

I would suggest trying these if you're just starting out:

CrunkTraffic.com (not an affiliate link)
Domain Re-Directs
Minimum Deposit: $35.00
costs: 0.00350 (about 1/3 cent per click)

or

AdHitz.com (not an affiliate link)
Pay Per Click
Minimum Deposit: $2.00
CPC (lowest): $0.03000 (Cost Per Click is three cents)

However, be cautioned to set your spending to no more than $10/day for highly focused keywords. Use tracking if you know how.

Do not try to sell an item up front. Get the optin with a freebee, then offer a great value in the $5 to $10 range. Again, track your results and your open rates and cloak your affiliate links.

Good luck!

[JohnMcCabe]

Ross, a couple of thoughts...

> When you judge the success of a solo ad on the open rate of your second email, you are putting the responsibility for matching your message to your new subscribers on the owner of the original list. Once that solo ad is sent, that list owner no longer has any control over what happens.

> In part, I guess it depends on what you are trying to evaluate.

If you are trying to evaluate the viability of that original list as a lead source, your own metrics will tell you if the match is a good one.

If you are trying to evaluate the success of the solo ad, opt-in percentage is about all you have. After all, for every person getting the ad and not opting in you are losing the ability to send that second email you are worrying about.

In a nutshell, if you are evaluating the ad, look at opt-ins. If you are looking at how well that list matches what you offer, look at deeper metrics. If you are an affiliate, that means clicks to the vendor's sales site. After that, it's out of your hands.

You want to look at a) what your opt-in percentage is and b) your ratio of opt-ins to vendor clicks. Everything else is window dressing.

If you are a product owner, with the ability to track a person from opt-in to sale, then visitor value from that lead source compared to the cost per lead enters the mix.