Testing — How Two Words Doubled the
Number of Opt-in Subscribers

by Bob Serling

Please feel free to pass this issue on in its entirety to your friends and business associates. Better yet, tell them to subscribe — just send them to the home page at:
http://www.directmarketinginsider.com

This month's special links:

Google proves this strategy for creating a lucrative new income stream for your business works extremely well.
http://www.directmarketinginsider.com/reprint.html

Online Profits at the Speed of Light. Let 32 of my hand-picked experts show you what really works to successfully market online.
http://www.directmarketinginsider.com/online-profits.html

How would you like to make a two-word change to your copy that doubles the number of opt-in subscribers you get to your online ezine or mini-course?

I'll show you precisely how this is done in this issue. And, at the same time, you'll learn how this simple, yet powerful strategy can be applied to any product or service. But first, I have a new, free resource to tell you about.

Announcing the Direct Marketing Insider Blog

I've been wrestling with the idea of starting a blog for a number of months now. What made me finally decide to take the plunge was realizing that I could use this technology to become my subscribers' own personal "lab rat".

So for the next six months, I'm committed to testing all the ins and outs of blogging. This will give me the opportunity to report back to you on what's working, what isn't, and let you know whether or not it makes sense to start your own blog. Plus, some of the leading blog experts will be helping me optimize my own blogging efforts and I'll pass that wisdom on to you.

You can read my blog by going to:

http://www.DirectMarketingInsider.com/blog

Be sure to bookmark this url as I'll be making blog entries two or three times each week that you'll want to check out.

For those who have an RSS reader and would like to add the feed for my blog to your program, here's the info:

RSS (2.0) http://www.directmarketinginsider.com/blog/index.xml

If you don't already have an RSS feed reader and want to get one, here's a list of some of the best choices:

http://blogspace.com/rss/readers

Alright — now let's move on to the main lesson of this issue.

How a two-word test doubled the number
of opt-in subscribers to an online mini-course

Most of my subscribers know that I'm a fanatic about testing. It simply doesn't make any sense to run a marketing campaign or promotion — online or offline — without testing some element of your promotion. If both options you test produce the exact same results, which almost never happens, you haven't lost anything.

But if one test piece outperforms the other, you've just increased your profits for as long as you continue to run that promotion or campaign. Plus, you've probably made discoveries that can be applied to many or all of your future promotions for all kinds of products and services.

So failing to test is about as close you can come to setting a large pile of money on fire.

Let me give you an example of a very simple, yet extremely powerful test some good friends of mine recently conducted. Audri and Jim Lanford are two of my favorite people, both personally and professionally. Besides being great people, Audri and Jim are dedicated to maximizing the results of all their marketing. One of the ways they achieve this is through continuous testing to prod even better results out of all their marketing.

In my new program, "Online Profits at the Speed of Light", Audri and Jim share the results of a number of tests they did. One of the most fascinating was a two-word change that took no more than a few seconds to make. I'll let Audri lay out the details…

We offer quite a few Mini-Courses and ezines, so we spend quite a bit of time testing opt-in pages. In one test, we compared: "This email course starts with..." and "This 10-part email course starts with..." (That was the only difference.)

Opt-ins increased from 8.9% to 18.9% with the 10-part email opt-in box -- increasing 112%!

Let's put some numbers to this. If each subscriber is worth $1.00/mo, and you normally get 3000 new subscribers/mo, you would get 6000 new subscribers/mo instead with this change (if it made the same difference for you —— which it may or may not). That means the first month, instead of earning $3000, you'd earn $6000. Same with the second month. And it compounds…

As you can see, the only difference in their test is two words. The second example, that includes the two words "10-part" produced dramatically higher results, increasing opt-ins by a hefty 112%.

Why did these two words produce such a substantial boost? I'll show you in just a minute. But first, here's some more information on the program Audri and Jim's test was excerpted from…

Here are 32 experts you really can trust.

If you're anything like me, you're sick of all the lousy information being sold on how to market your products or services online. Very little of it works. Some of it is so technical, you practically need a degree in computer science to understand it.

I got fed up with all of this and decided to do something about it. So I invited 32 of the most effective, trustworthy marketing experts I know to join me in creating a collection of powerful techniques you can rely on to get exceptional results. AND — I told them that it couldn't take more than 15 minutes to learn any technique and be ready to put it into action. Get all the details on how this new program can help you get the results you really want with all your online marketing at:

http://www.directmarketinginsider.com/online-profits.html

The only real reason to test — to improve
your sales and profits

So the question is, "Why did a simple two-word change make such a significant difference in results?"

And the answer is really pretty simple. The more specific you make something, the more believable it becomes. This is true of your copy, your headline, your offer, and any other component of your marketing.

The more tangible you make something — the better you get at helping your prospects picture themselves using your product or service — the stronger results you'll produce. "This email course starts with…" leaves it up to the prospect to fill in the blanks. The problem is, when people are left to fill in the blanks on their own, most of them don't. So you wind up with a big fat blank.

But "This 10-part email course starts with…" helps the prospect conjure up an image of themselves using the course. They picture themselves receiving lessons and learning from the course 10 times. It creates a much more explicit image in your prospect's mind. Something they can latch onto and use to make a decision to take action now.

Conclusion

There are two powerful lessons in play here. First, if you aren't already testing with every marketing piece you create, you're cheating yourself out of at least a portion of the sales you could be making. Most testing requires very little time or money to do. Testing two different headlines, two different prices, two different offers, and so on, against each other couldn't be much easier. But as you can see, these simple types of tests can produce substantial improvements in your results.

The second lesson is that specifics are far more effective than generalities. "I saved thousands on my taxes last year" can't hold a candle to "I saved $14,273 on my taxes last year — and here's how you can too".

So get specific in your copy. Go through it paragraph by paragraph and look for ways to add more detail that helps your prospects picture themselves benefiting from your product or service.

Who knows, you could end up being a case study in an upcoming issue of this ezine!

Copyright © 2005 by Bob Serling All rights reserved