$0.43 Leads That Generate $29.70/Month Each In Profit

In all the businesses that I am a part of the Internet Marketing/Online Business niche is the most expensive to generate quality leads from cold traffic.

They are jaded.

They are oversold.

And they’ve seen it all before.

In this post I want to show you a list building campaign that Pete (my biz partner) and I have put together to put high-quality leads into our high ticket funnel.

These $0.43 leads will typically generate us about $29.70 per month in profits… EACH. 

We put in $0.43 one time…

And we get $29.70 per month recurring.

(SIDENOTE: We are currently in the process of increasing prices throughout the funnel to try and see if we can turn that $29.70/month/lead into $40/month/lead. Since the lead cost is relatively stagnate regardless of our deeper funnel pricing, it makes sense to try and work backwards in this way.)

The Set Up

Our target demo was beginning Online Marketers who understand the value of sales copy in their business, but maybe don’t have huge budgets to get what they need done. We don’t run a high-end copy service. Not yet anyways, so we had a very narrow avatar to aim for (which made things easier… it always does.)

The end goal of this promotional campaign was to get people to buy our copywriting services.

I wanted to stand out from the crowd of IM hucksters trying to sell info products and offer a set of tools, or something more hands on than just another tidbit of information (an oversaturated technique in the IM space). My only personal requirement for this campaign was that the lead had to download something tangible. Something they could print out, scratch up with notes, and hold in their hands.

Pro Tip: Never underestimate the power of tangibility in your online business.

There is a reason so many of the Dan Kennedy mastermind guys (like Frank Kern, Russel Brunson, etc.) are giving away free physical copies of their books… in the ether of the Interwebs Tangible Is King.

So, with those requirements in mind, this is what we came up with:

The Offer

There was a period of time in my business where I doubled revenues simply by mailing every day (Mon – Fri).

During that time I swiped heavily to try and find good subject lines. (After the first week or so of emailing everyday you kind of run out of things to say…) 

That swiping process was super helpful, and I managed to keep all of those subject lines in a single folder.

While thinking about our target prospect (Beginning Marketer Who Knows They Need Good Copy) I realized that these same swipes could actually help make other people money. Like, real dollars that you can buy things with.  

It made me money, so it could probably make someone else money too. 

And I think that’s the key to a good lead generation piece. 

If you can help someone achieve the goal of your niche (ie. Actually lose weight… or… Actually talk to a girl… or… actually achieve SEO ranking improvement) from the thing they picked up from you for FREE…. then you’ll not only make more sales down the road… you’ll also get cheaper leads. 

People don’t want junk. Even if it’s free.

And it only takes about 1/10th of a second for someone to look at an offer and make that value judgment.

Give them something helpful (something that moves them closer to their goal within your niche) and you win the Internets.

So, what we did was put together all 152 email subject lines that I had swiped and used to double revenue in just 3 weeks from my email list.

You can see the final product here:

152 Email Subject Line Swipe File

And then we started to build our campaign.

The Optin Page

When it comes to optin pages I have two rules:

#1. It Can’t Be Blind.

#2. Keep It Simple.

Blind optin pages get you in trouble with just about every single major paid traffic provider out there: Adwords, Facebook, Youtube etc.

Plus, I think it’s dumb. Specific sells. I have yet to see an example of a major control that was run as blind copy.

But that’s beside the point…

Keeping my two rules in mind, this was the landing page that we built using Optimizepress:

 

Most of the stuff on this page is pretty standard copy. Nothing super tricky or special except…

You’ve probably noticed a lot of similar offers to this one floating around Facebook. There is even one guy who is offering something like “1,245 Email Swipes” or something crazy and insane and totally misguided (someone should tell him that “MOAR!” isn’t always “more” in copy…).

This particular landing page (and offer) worked so well because it was a set of tools tied to a story. Specifically, a set of tools tied to a story about results.

And that’s the major difference between this campaign and most of the knockoffs you might have seen.

You could lump all their offers together and they would blur into one generic “Get my swipes”.

But this offer was “Get my swipes that I used to X”.

That simple change in positioning makes a world of difference in sales copy.

It makes the offer seem more “real”.

It future casts for the prospect what results they might achieve.

Etc., etc., etc.

Someday I’ll do a longer breakdown of why this page worked, but for now… know that it did and swipe at your leisure.

The FB Ad

Once we had the optin page up and running, it was time to design the ad.

Here are some of our split tests:

 

 

The Surprising Winner

 

 

To be honest, I was completely lazy with this campaign. Typically, I like to split test some of the copy as well, but in this case I was happy with the results I was getting and instead I turned my attention to something else at the time.

Good enough is good enough sometimes. 

But, that being said…

Here’s Why The Copy Works In This Ad

1. Story. People Cling To Story Like They Cling To Greasy Food. Take Advantage.

In order to explain why this copy worked let me do a little fancy juxtapositionin’ here on a competitor’s ad:

 

We’ll skip the fact that this is an almost blatant rip off of the Digital Marketer swipe file ad & landing page… and just focus on how this demonstrates that story telling in your ads that I was talking about earlier.

Consider today’s news headlines taken directly from CNN news:

Man detained outside White House for trying to fly drone

Ex-NFLer accused of murdering prison cellmate

Dad, on train, remembers he left baby in SUV

Bodycam shows officer dragged by car

You want to click on those don’t you?

So does everybody else.

And what’s the main theme in each of these headlines?

A story.

A story like this:

These Email Subject Lines DOUBLED Revenues For My Company In Just One Month.

There are two things that make something a story:

1. A Character

2. Conflict AND/OR Resolution.

Who is the character in this headline?

Bodycam shows officer dragged by car

The officer, right?

Who is the character in this headline?

These Email Subject Lines DOUBLED Revenues For My Company In Just One Month.

My = me.

What is the conflict/resolution in this headline?

Man detained outside White House for trying to fly drone

It’s the guy getting detained… AND the fact that someone is flying drones around the White House in post 9-11 US and of A. Tension, tension everywhere.

What about my headline?

These Email Subject Lines DOUBLED Revenues For My Company In Just One Month.

Is there conflict? Is there resolution?

The conflict is implied: I needed to double revenues. That implies tension.

But honestly… I would say this headline lacks true conflict and, therefore, could have been improved by adding it.

The resolution, however, is what is driving “the story” and, therefore, the clicks:

I doubled revenues. 

It’s a happy ending story. Just like a romance.

What about this headline (from our competitor’s example):

“Thousands now get more clicks from email marketing who never thought they could.” 

Yes and no.

This is a case of someone swiping something without fully understanding why the thing they are swiping worked in the first place.

It’s like everyone using the: “At first they said it couldn’t be done. They were wrong…” headline for products where that headline is massively inappropriate.

The original (the thing that was swiped) probably had an actual story behind the claim. There probably was some situation where thousands of people were benefiting from the thing that this (I’m assuming) sales page was about.

But, in this case, with only 122 “likes” on the advertiser’s Fanpage page, I find it hard to believe that there were thousands of people benefiting from anything that the ad was pitching.

And that’s the major difference…

My story (and, therefore, claim) is perceived as “more real” because it:

• Is specific (my emails doubled my revenue in one month)
• Is backed with proofing mechanisms (my Fanpage at the time had 8k “likes” – not a ton but enough to claim doubled revenues)
• Contained all the story elements that a good news headline contains (character and conflict/resolution)

And perception is everything.

2. I Was Pitching Benefits. Features vs. Benefits… When Will They Learn? 

152 email subject lines is the feature of my offer.

It’s the thing you get…

Doubling your email revenues by copying what I’ve done…

That’s a benefit. 

It’s the thing you get by getting the thing. 

And that’s what I built the campaign around.

Most campaigns fail because they are built around the features.

It’s why so many people copy the Ryan Deiss/Digital Marketer campaigns and fail.

Digital Marketer isn’t promoting a swipe file of Facebook ads.

They are promoting the benefits they achieved with that swipe file of ads (implied or otherwise).

People don’t buy features…

They buy benefits.

They buy benefits.

They buy benefits.

What do they buy?

Benefits. 

It’s the reason why the first question I ask in the text area underneath the image is:

“Want to double your revenues with email marketing?”

That’s the pitch.

Just look at the ad. You don’t even find out that it’s 152 email subject lines until the very last sentence in the text box…

Now, why would I do something like that?

Because people buy benefits.

Not features.

It’s not “152 Subject Lines”…

It’s my swipe file that generated $40,000 in 30 days.

See the difference?

It’s important.

The End Result Of A Campaign Like This

 

And…

 

 

We generated 388 new leads for $0.43 each which resulted in $11,523.60 in recurring copy orders each and every month.

Could we have scaled this bad boy for insane profits?

Yes. This is one of those campaigns that you turn into a million dollar campaign and retire at age 25, except…

Our service isn’t scalable. We tried to scale it back in October of last year and it turned into a massive disaster…

Instead, my goal is to scale these campaigns while scaling up with pricing instead of scaling wide with product delivery.

But I need about 6 more hours in the day to pull that one off…

Who needs sleep anyways?