This is the first LOSING split test I’m posting. It was a bit shocking, but I believe has a huge lesson for every marketer and business owner running traffic to their offer.
And, it’ll probably make you some extra $$$.
At the very least, it’ll save you a test.
The original funnel set up
Now originally the funnel went from the YT Ad to a landing page and then to the VSL.
There was 2 reasons for this:
- Compliance. By buffering the traffic with a landing page that was much more compliant than the VSL, we were less likely to get shut down.
- Email re-marketing. This is a big one and actually accounts for around 20% of our sales. By capturing emails before they saw the VSL, we were able to effectively hit them with emails if they didn’t buy right then and there.
Of course the downside was that there would still be people that never saw the VSL.
With all the app sumo pop ups, people are conditioned to click away when presented with “give me your email”.
Removing the landing page for more eyeballs
Even though our landing page was converting at around 89% of people (yes, that’s not a typo), there was still around 11% of people not seeing the VSL because of that extra step.
Not much, but I couldn’t help but wonder if those people just saw the lead, would they be hooked enough to buy the product.
Even if just 1-2% of them converted, at scale, that’s HUGE.
So we decided to remove the landing page. Here’s what the variation funnel looked like now…
What happened…
We ran the test for about a week. Around 1000 FE sales.
The control was strong at around 2.4%.
The variation? 1.5%
Yikes!
My hypothesis
There’s a lot of reasons why removing the landing page lost to the control.
But here’s what stands out:
The micro commitment from the prospect having to put their email in BEFORE the VSL makes them more likely to commit to watching the entire thing.
This could be speculation but I think that extra step weeds out the freebie seekers.
Plus, the data doesn’t lie.
Your turn
If you’re currently running any VSL, I would challenge you to add in a simple landing page right before the VSL page.
See what happens. Maybe it’ll get you a bump like I did.
And even if it doesn’t you’ll know have those emails to sell too in the future.
PT