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email list building on native? (21)

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Hi,

I'm looking to build an email list in the weight loss space, and I've been considering using native ads.

(I'd go for Facebook but they're very unstable these days with account bans and all, particularly anything to do with weight loss. So I'm looking at more friendly places that have high volume and good quality traffic.)

FYI: my approach is to add value and build a relationship and not pound my list with offers (especially no miracle nutra offers). I even have my own product almost ready, but it may be awhile, so I'd start out probably promoting Clickbank offers.

That said, I'd love to ROI as soon as possible. Not likely to occur on Day 1 (though I believe breakeven is possible w/offer on TY page). But by Day 14 or Day 30 sure would be nice.

Any advice here?

Have you tried list building using native ads?

In particular have you turned a profit in a decent amount of time?

Thanks,

David

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@thedudeabides - in the 2019 What's Working guide, you recommended focusing more on lead capture funnels. I'm curious if you've made some headway with that strategy so far, and if you have any suggestions? And have you tried it on native?

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I think it *is* possible to do list building with native ads. I have experience with each- but not combined- but have spent so many hundreds of hours on Adplexity spying on everything native under the sun that I've seen a few examples. The most successful are these Financial Newsletter guys, and they seem to primarily find a small number of sites that really perfectly match their customer demographics (primarily conservative news sites). I've also seen some folks build lists via Senior Listicles, and have also seen folks include an email opt-in on their vsl's, and I presume they are building a list in that regard.

I'd say the biggest obstacles is that a TON of the money anyone spends on native is on learning each individual platform. You gotta figure out how to actually use each platform effectively, how not to get slammed with bot traffic, etc, and this can be very expensive, especially if you are targeting US traffic.

So yeah, for most of the folks I've seen building lists, it's more of a "cherry on top" type of thing then it is the main focus.

With that said, if I was going to do it, I would focus on the following:

1) Finding 5-10 sites on Revcontent that really, really perfectly match your ideal customer, and just sticking your ad at the top of their widgets until you get the funnel perfected. I would do this through manual spying, going to one site at a time and examining it, rather than through blacklisting. You would effectively be running small 'whitelist campaigns - although technically Revcontent doesn't allow whitelist campaigns anymore, but you can still do them if you set things up right.
2) Do the same on Outbrain (although it's even trickier targeting only select sites on Outbrain but possible).
3) Use Interest-Targeting on Outbrain and target a very specific combination of interests (Weight Loss + X + Y).
4) Use Taboola Smart Bid and let their algorithm optimize based on your conversion data (although this might be very expensive at first until you build up a lot of data, and I'm not sure it would even work, would really depend).
5) Retargeting and Lookalikes on Outbrain and Taboola using traffic you drive from Facebook/Youtube/Pinterest/etc where you can target super-specifically.

So yeah, hope that helps! You could definitely get some good ideas/more clarity looking through Adplexity Native for a few days

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Thanks jack_l, very helpful. I know you have a lot of experience with native ads so I appreciate your advice.

In general, here's my thinking and theory about this idea:
1) The best offers for native have broad appeal (because they don't require specific targeting)
2) Weight loss has broad appeal, and high subscriber value
3) Email marketing can (in theory) return 2x-3x or so of the initial value (TY page offer) over 30 days or so; then roughly $1/subscriber per month if you treat your list well

So ... it has me wondering why pure list building isn't seen more in spying.
- Is it because it really doesn't work that well? (most things have already been tried and proven)
- Or because the vast majority of direct response marketers (especially affiliates) want to ROI immediately?
- And/or most people don't know how to do email marketing that well?

Those aren't necessarily direct questions for you but if you have comments I'd love to hear it.

A few questions about the tactics you listed:
- Are you suggesting the whitelisting/targeting ideas simply to lower testing costs or because you think weight loss isn't broad enough to work on native with a typical blacklisting campaign?
- You mention how it's possible to run whitelisting campaigns on RC and O even though they don't like it ... could you explain a bit more how you would do it?
- Taboola Smart Bid: are you thinking I would optimize for a sale (after optin)... or the optin? Wondering why you think it might be overly expensive or not work.

FYI, I have gone through the Native Ads Masterclass, plus reading info from a few other marketers, so I'm not a total blank slate on native. But obviously I'm a newbie in actual experience.

And I haven't yet gotten accounts at any of the native networks. I keep hearing different things about which one is best to start with. From what I hear RC tends to be more lenient with health offers so maybe the weight loss topic would be easier to get approved with them. But O and T apparently have more high quality traffic and just more traffic in general. That said, I do plan to run compliant landing pages without crazy claims, but if O and T are like Facebook they may not like the topic altogether.

P.S. I'm curious if in your spying you have seen direct opt-in pages (squeeze pages)? Do you know if they are allowed on RC, O or T?

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Yes... it's a fascinating topic isn't it? All questions I've pondered over myself

But yeah, if I had to guess, I would speculate that there aren't more "big time" email marketers on Native because it tends to be a more 'broad' type of media buying by default, compared to Facebook or Youtube or Bing, where you can target more specifically.

Native is more like a billboard on the side of the highway, whereas those other options are more like direct mail where you can find out everything about someone then send a letter just to them.

It seems to me that list-building, because of the trust/rapport you need to develop, typically works better when you can find leads who very closely match your target customer/demographic.

With that said, there are certainly examples like I said, and I certainly wouldn't discourage you from trying it out, indeed it's something I may try myself in the future.

Re: blacklisting yes I think it's just too broad. If you're selling a portable air conditioner broad is fine, but for list-building I would think you'd want super specific. If your ROI is high enough though you would keep targeting in broader and broader circles I guess. I know that 'Totally Incorrect' offer that is a squeeze page + membership runs pretty broad, but it matches the CNN/MSN/Fox News demographic pretty well so that helps in it's case.

Re: networks yes Revc is probably the most user-friendly, especially after the improvements they've made the last 6 months in terms of eliminating bot traffic. Plus you can target specific 'Brands' very easily, so you could literally just target Everydayhealth.com perhaps in your case and use that site to get everything perfected without ever having to blacklist.

Re: auto-optimization like on Taboola SmartBid, yes I was presuming you would optimize for the opt-in.

And then no, I haven't really seen any pure Squeeze Pages on Adplexity Native, although I did think of one other example, which is Clickbank-hosted webinars.... both that John Crestani webinar and the 'Rich Dad Summit' have- if I am remembering correctly- had some success on native, and both of those are types of list-building I suppose. Also I've seen a few tripwire offers on native in the ecom space, like that Trump coin, where survival-oriented ecom outfits do a free+shipping offer to build their list. Oh and that new Shark Tank Angel Investing offer that Neil Patel is involved with. I don't know if that's a webinar or what but that thing is everywhere right now on native.

But yeah, you could find a few sites that fit your target demo on Revc, target them only, and try either pure Squeeze Page, or Squeeze Page > VSL (to try to maximize front-end roi), or a Weight-Loss listicle with maybe 6 'blurbs', 3 of which are 'informational' ones, 2 of which link to offers (maybe a gadget and a vsl, etc), and one of which links to your freebie you're using to build your list.

So yeah, again just throwing out my .02$ since it's a fun topic and one I've thought about a lot before I could certainly be 100% wrong on all of the above though so take it all with a grain of salt!

Your best bet is just hopping on Adplexity Native and seeing what works. If you go to Keyword>On The Landing Page> and then type in 'enter your email' or 'email below' you could probably find all the current examples very quickly

Let us know how it goes man!

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jack_l, some excellent thoughts and ideas there, thanks again for taking the time to respond.

I may end up trying out a few Push campaigns before diving in to native, just to keep my feet wet at less cost. And maybe the traditional affiliate campaigns first, before trying email marketing. Still considering my options.

Regarding spy tools, I do get the logic of swiping what's working and making it better, versus being a pioneer. Yet I sometimes wonder if it pigeonholes ideas too much, versus following core marketing/selling principles which are universal across all successful campaigns (eg, hungry audience, amazing offer). That said, I probably still should get a spy tool and just start there. I'm currently thinking of Adplexity, actually, because I've heard great things about it and it costs a lot less.

I will let you know how it goes.

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Sounds good man keep us updated And yes- you will LOVE Adplexity. It's utterly fascinating looking through all the different traffic sources and geo's and seeing what's working, and watching the ads and campaigns evolve over time. I try to spend at least a decent chunk of time on there every day just to keep an eye on things.

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Hey @summitview,

I've made a little headway on email funnels, but nothing gamechanging yet. Got most things figured out, but profits from email is still a lot lower than I'd like to see, working on testing longer sequences. Should have a better handle on that in a month or two.

Anyway it's a lot of moving pieces to get things going, so I'd recommend you keep things as simple as possible so you can get started sooner.

First try to get a winning campaign/offer, and then slowly allocate a portion of that traffic to testing a email funnel. Powerinbox has good traffic for this. And Facebook too obviously.

Don't worry about CPL so much, instead just try and get your opt-in funnel ROI within 10-30% of your regular funnel which should be doable.

Going straight to an opt-in isn't a good fit for native IMO, as people are there in reading mode. Better to send them to a regular advertorial with opt-in at the bottom, or have it after they click and before the offer, promising a discount, PDF, etc.

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It's funny, but I actually meant to type "Anstrex" Hopefully it's just as good.

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Great advice - thanks for the reply.

I figured it'd take some time to get an email funnel tested enough to scale (even at negative short-term ROI), but maybe it's a much longer timeframe than I was originally thinking. I guess that's the conundrum: the need for income now, vs sacrificing now to build an asset.

I was assuming a direct-to-squeeze wouldn't work that well; kind of like most offers work better with a pre-sell page. But it means having to figure out another type of page while still getting the opt-in.

Have you tried a quiz lander, with opt-in at the end? I hear they work pretty well across a variety of traffic. Either:
- A simple "qualifying" quiz, asking for simple things like gender, age, and an obvious "yes" qualifying question. Submit. "Processing ...". "... You're qualified, enter email to claim your spot.
or
- A quiz or survey where to get their results they have to enter their email address.

Thanks for the tip about Powerinbox. I had run across them some time ago but that was it.

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Yes I tried a survey among a few things but it didn't perform much differently that other types of leadgen pages for native, but did come with the added benefit of tagging the user according to their responses, which would be great down the road for segmentation. But again simple is better looking back. I imagine that sort of survey/quiz page would do better on facebook in general, but maybe there's a better way to implement it for native.

My best result so far has been about a 20-25% opt-in rate on native, in part due a super high advertorial CTR. If you can get 1/3rd to 1/2 of LP clickers to submit their email before going to the offer then you're looking really good.

What you can do alternatively to bootstrap things quickly is test out front-end funnels where no actual working form and email sequence is in place, just firing conversion pixels for your leads and re-directing to an offer. That way you could test out a discount vs PDF vs quiz page, to see what gets the most opt-ins first and not worry about building everything out before hand

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Love the segmentation idea. I've been thinking of doing that eventually when I have my own product where I can tailor the pitch and the offer perfectly to the subscriber.

When you say "CTR", is that the click on the advertorial page that opens (or goes to) the opt in form? So it goes advertorial click -> opt-in form -> redirect to offer? I know there are different flows, just curious what you're doing here.

Good idea. Building out the sequence is the most time consuming part and one could easily write a bunch of emails for nothing. On the other hand, the sequence is what ultimately turns into profit, so one part of the test would be to make sure that the subscribers are actually buying that initial offer, right? Otherwise we might just be getting freebie seekers. A dream scenario would be to breakeven on that initial offer! Then you'd know any email sequence after that is profit.

Oh, one cool idea I've seen some people do for that initial offer after opting-in is to send to a series of offers, kind of like upsells, where they can decline the offer and move to the next one, but we do it as an affiliate where instead of adding to cart, a click on the CTA button open up the offer page. Have you tried that? Seems like a great idea. Subscribers aren't forced anything; they can choose, but it gives more opportunities for a sale, AND we can see which offers convert the best.

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Doesn't hurt to tag people joining the list, but I think it's more useful further down the road after you're already doing 10k+/ month and know your #s .


Correct thats one way of doing it, putting a bridge/interstitial page between LP and offer. Other way is collecting lead on first LP. I've had better luck with the former, but good to test both for your campaign.

I don't have enough experience with email to confidently go into a campaign/vertical and crush with it; right now it's just a few extra % points of revenue. If you're starting from square one with no media buying, affiliate marketing, or email experience then I think it's better to take a proven formula and iterate on it, then try and do everything new from scratch.

Hence, I think you'll have an easier time taking an existing affiliate marketing campaign you see working, and adding email capture to it, than trying to test multiple unproven things at once.

No, but I've heard one or two others talk about it; it's kind of like a co-reg path. Definitely something worth testing after you've got your email submit rate more dialed in to make more money on the front-end.

Best of luck dude, hope you're able to get the ball rolling. Just getting things setup and going is the hardest step.

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Thanks again for your advice here. Thankfully I'm a tech guy so getting things set up is the easy part! I'm mainly concerned about using my adspend money wisely and getting a good strategy going. Also, thankfully, I'm back on FB (after being locked out for several weeks) so I may re-focus my attention there for email list building and/or more white hat leaning offers, and test some more 'traditional' affiliate funnels on natives.

But yes, getting over the analysis of what do do first, while wasting as little time and money as possible, is certainly a challenge. I've spent a long, long time in this stage.

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@thedudeabides you could bump opt-in rate % by adding a countdown timer on the interstitial page/optin popup (but only if you're offering a PDF bribe)

i.e. between advertorial and offer

Still include those "No thanks, continue..." link below the signup up button though
@summitview here's another thought on copy / angles that could help you outside native: using 'tangential angles'

What I mean by this is, on FB for example,

You cannot outright promote say a "how to lose 21 pounds with clever water trick", right?

However nothing stops you from pushing a "21 Tasty Ice Creams Recipes For Faster Fastloss" - it still fits in with the female demo you'd be targeting for weightloss anyway and you get incredible engagement in the email because trust me, they will go into their email for that...

Same things can be done with everything from ED to Heart Disease, it's all about the knowing market and distilling their core desire so you can reach them on any platform... ice creams recipes, great for summer. as winter approaches, you could just switch that up to teas or something

All this is assuming you wanna go sustainable & whitehat. The tangential angles will allow you to play on any platform by their rules and still win. Weightloss list building can be built like this on FB (just don't post anything too aggressive on the TYP)

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Awesome, thanks. Totally agree: I've considered the tangential angles approach, but didn't know how well it worked in practice. Thinking up angles is still a challenge. And making sure that those opt-ins actually buy stuff in email followups.

Recipes is a great one. Thanks for the ideas.

I do still wonder if the "faster fatloss" phrase would get flagged by FB bot, even though technically the claim is pretty vague.

But, yeah ... I have considered that the keys to the kingdom probably is a whitehat frontend opt-in bribe (or low-cost offer) that can be scaled on any network. Because once they're on my list, I can promote whatever I want, and networks don't care because at that point any legal issues are off their shoulders and onto mine. But it falls apart if the backend doesn't pay off, or pay off soon enough.

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Any update on this. Very keen on how tings turned out

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Awesome conversation here @summitview and @thedudeabides thanks!

Curious if the email opt-in stuff on Native got tested...and how the results turned out?

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I have tested native lead gen for my long-form funnel, which is a book I sell on amazon for $9.95 paperback, and $4.95 kindle.

I gave it away for free via this funnel as a PDF download.

Native turned out expensive, 3x more expensive to get a lead than Facebook.

So far FB is the very best when it comes to lead gen for email list building and backend monetization strategy, at least for me.

I tried Google as well

It was in this order from least expensive cost per lead to most expensive.

#1 - Facebook
#2 - Google
#3 - Native

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Not surprised at all, the targeting of FB is quite unique, none of the other sources can identify interest based audiences better than FB... google search can convert anything, if the funnel and KWs are right, so yeah, another great one to use for leadgen. But the click prices in google are usually very high, interesting to see it on 2nd place for your ebook.

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