How To Buy a Click Once and Resell it 1000 Times- Part 6 Surveying and Splintering (5)
How To Buy a Click Once and Resell it 1000 Times- Part 6 Surveying and Splintering
(Links to all parts: Part 1: INTRO | Part 2: Long Term Money Secrets | Part 3: List Segmentation | Part 4: Bridging the Gap | Part 5: Overcoming Duplication | Part 6: Surveying and Splintering)
One of the great benefits of building an opt in email list is it allows you to survey your list and get very good data you can use to select relevant offers, write relevant copy on landing pages, etc. Yes, you can do this to general audiences without an email list, but the issue you run into is these audiences can change composition quickly if the publisher switches to different sources. When you build an email list you market to on a continual basis, the results tend to hold up—your email list becomes “your” source.
I build my email list from the same initial sources (many of them other email lists), using the same opt in pages every time, so surveying tends to work well to my list. The topic of dating and women is also one guys are eager to talk about, and a topic that has very relevant “pivot points.”
Let me give you an example. I recently ran a survey to my list, asking questions about attitudes towards women, desired outcomes, and most importantly of all, relationship status. “Relationship Status” is a “pivot point” because how a married guy thinks about women and what he wants is much different than what a single guy wants.
I sent out a few email blasts, and wound up with about 1800 men completing the survey, a high enough number to give good information. The breakdown of data I had at 900 responses was exactly the same as it was at 1800 responses, so this is strong data.
The first question I asked was if they were happy or unhappy with women. A very large number, 66.6% said they were happy, 12.4% were neither happy or unhappy, and 21% said they were unhappy. That is a very large number saying they were happy with women, so we have an important clue about the list, they are pretty positive.
The next question was about relationship status, and here we got a very important breakdown: 35.3% are married, 34.1% are single, 7.2% are widowed, and 23.4% are divorced. Understanding that 1/3 of the list is MARRIED is an important clue to what to offers to run to them, as well as what “call outs” to use as copy on the landing page. For example, a call out would be, “Attention Married Men.”
The next question I asked is all about intent, whether or not they want to meet a woman in person. Some men just want to look at photos and have zero intention of ever meeting a woman, not a good audience if you are promoting dating sites. However, I got overwhelming numbers for this question:
87.6% said they wanted to meet a woman in person.
9.7% said they only wanted to chat or look at pics.
2.7% said they don’t want to meet women at all.
Obviously this bodes well for promoting dating sites where the entire intent is to meet a woman in person. It also shows that, say, Cam or chat offers are not appropriate for this list and understanding what NOT to offer your audience is just as important as what to offer them.
My next question is the most important question in the survey: What do you want to meet women FOR. The answers are
Answer Percent # of Responses
I just want sex and nothing more 41.6% 718
I want a girlfriend 14.9% 258
I want long term female
companionship but not
necessarily a gf or wife 26.2% 452
I want to get married 6.3% 109
I just like naughty chat and
cyber sex, don’t want to meet
a woman in person 4.8% 83
I don't want to interact
with women at all 0.9% 16
None of the above 5.2% 90
Totals: 1,726
From this data, we can see there are definitely some horny guys on this list. BUT there is also an equal number of guys who just want a cool chick to hang out with and not a “serious relationship” OR they want a girlfriend. Interesting data for sure, it shows we can promote casual/hookup sites to a segment of the list, and mainstream/foreign dating sites to another segment. These answers also confirm these guys want to meet women in person.
But this brings up a very, very important question, and it shows you why it is important to learn to use Excel. The question is this: how is “what a guy wants with women” related to his relationship status? For example, are a higher percentage of married guys interested in sex only than single or divorced guys? If so, this is VERY useful information.
Luckily I can export from SurveyGizmo and run pivot reports in Excel (just go to YouTube and look up Excel Pivot Report to see how to do this). A “pivot” report can give you data by category, and here is what we see when we run a pivot report of intent broken down by relationship status:
Sex Only % Want a gf Want Female company Want to Get Married
Married 63.48% 3.37% 14.72% 0.35%
Single 29.54% 25.09% 27.22% 10.68%
Divorced 30.23% 17.31% 36.18% 9.56%
Note: you may have to "squint" to see the data, for some reason I can't get it to display here in a more readable manner, but if you look hard or copy and paste to, say, Excel, you can see it.
Here is the HUGE thing we see from this pivot report: MARRIED guys are mostly on the list for SEX. Single and Divorced guys are mostly on the list for female companionship or a girlfriend. It makes sense when you think about it, but the data proves it.
So how do we use this?
The answer is simple. On a multi offer landing page (which I will reveal when I open the contest) we have an offer for casual dating/hookup sites that flags married guys in a headline, i.e. “The Women on this Site Are Just Looking for SEX and Prefer Married Men.” In the copy we flag married guys again, saying, essentially “this is for YOU.”
For Mainstream/Mature/Foreign Dating Sites we call out to Divorced Men, and we also call out to Single Men. We know they are more interested in meeting women for companionship, so we can “splinter” the audience by presenting different call outs and offers, matched to segments the surveys have indicated make up the list.
This allows us to put three (or more) offers on a landing page, calling out to specific segments, instead of one offer, increasing profitability.
Furthermore, from an email list building perspective, an advertiser buying casual dating traffic from me (all my placements pass email address when clicked on) will know they are getting mostly married guys interested in sex from that placement. An advertiser buying mainstream/mature traffic will know if they are getting a divorced or single guy more interested in companionship when they click on the placement that calls out to that preference. This is VERY valuable information, because it shows the advertiser what else they should offer that email address, knowing their intent and marital status. For example, they would follow up to Married guys wanting sex with every casual dating offer out there, and on the landing page they would feature, “These girls prefer married men and are very discreet” or other relevant copy. They know the right offer angle for this list.
“Surveying and Splintering” is a great way to deal with duplicate audiences because you can target each segment of the audience precisely, instead of wasting a lot of traffic on offers a large part of the list isn’t interested in.
If, for example, I only ran traffic to a casual dating landing page, I am wasting about 60% of my list that is more interested in female companionship, AND I am not providing relationship status to any advertiser- it is a mix of married, single, divorced horny guys. Sure, you can make some money like this, but you will make far, far more by calling out to each segment of the list, matching up offers and copy to known interest. You can only discover that known interest by rigorously surveying the list, and breaking down responses by important “pivot points,” in my case relationship status.
A man might triple the profit on his landing pages knowing such information.
So, I am going to let these articles “sit” over the weekend for your perusal, enjoyment, and any questions, which I am happy to answer.
Then, on MONDAY, I will open the contest, and reveal my landing pages for your ideas to improve page RPM. BUT, it gets even better. I will also reveal three unusual ways I am making money with these landing pages, two of them “non obvious.” Many of you will be able to use these two “non obvious” methods to make more money, and they will help spark more ideas that will help ME make more money which, of course, is why I am putting on this contest in the first place.
I will post all the CONTEST announcements in the contest section from now on, so be sure to tune in there. There will be lots of great information and ideas posted, plus 1 person will win $500, 1 will win $300, and one will win $200.
Great series of posts
One question if I may 
So by surveying the list, you are getting an idea about the general interests of the subscribers, but it's based on "just" 1800 answers in this case. I assume that the list size is WAY bigger than 1800.
Do you use this data to just "label" the whole list and assume that the sample is strong enough to match the rest of the audience and then try to promote the most appealing offers to interest as many list members as possible... by using the multi offer landers that call out specific parts of the audience?
Or do you also create micro-list based on these answers, by moving the prospects who actually completed the survey into new, laser targeted lists?
How about the actual copy of the email, do you also try to write multi-angle copies in order to cater to specific interests of the prospects?
Originally Posted by matuloo
So by surveying the list, you are getting an idea about the general interests of the subscribers, but it's based on "just" 1800 answers in this case. I assume that the list size is WAY bigger than 1800.
Do you use this data to just "label" the whole list and assume that the sample is strong enough to match the rest of the audience and then try to promote the most appealing offers to interest as many list members as possible... by using the multi offer landers that call out specific parts of the audience?
Or do you also create micro-list based on these answers, by moving the prospects who actually completed the survey into new, laser targeted lists?
How about the actual copy of the email, do you also try to write multi-angle copies in order to cater to specific interests of the prospects?
Yep, the list is way bigger than 1800, and what I like to do is mail a segment of the list a survey, wait a few days to see the answers, then mail another segment of an equal size and see if the percentage of responses changes at all as new visitors answer the same questions If they don’t, the answers are reasonably accurate.
When a polling outfit such as Gallup conducts an honest poll (not a phony one) they can literally survey 800 or so people and get accurate results within about a 3 point margin of error. The real science is identifying those 800 people to poll to insure an accurate result, that’s the hardest part for them.
In this case our results aren’t quite “scientific” but they do give good, actionable information since the list is built from similar sources- in my case from email lists of men who’ve signed up for dating sites.
We can get this actionable information from looking at the wide variations in answers. For example, about 88% of the guys I surveyed said they wanted to meet women in person, while only 12% don’t, which gives you a very strong indicator about the kinds of offers they respond to- in this case, dating sites where the intent is to meet a woman in person, not cam or phone sex or naughty chat offers. I have tested such offers before on a small scale, and they were a complete zero.
In this survey, the biggest “gap” was between how often guys were actually getting laid and how often they WANTED to get laid. So, in answer to your question, I started crafting the copy to that data, and it dramatically increased conversions. For example I started using subject lines such as “Always in the mood but not getting enough hot action?” which calls out to the frustration in the list revealed by the survey. That has been very effective.
I have also mentioned “married men” in email copy now, and that has certainly increased response- before surveying I thought the list was mostly single or divorced. Nope, about 40% are married and sexually frustrated.
While I have not used surveys to create “micro lists” that is certainly a VERY valid strategy, and one I would highly recommend. So far I’ve used survey data to select categories of offers to promote to the list as well as AVOIDING categories of offers. As you’ll see from the landing pages in the contest section, many offer categories (such as stamina) are on there due to survey data. A very interesting piece of data I discovered was that “stamina” and “ED” are two separate categories meriting different copy for each one. ED is the term for guys that cannot get hard, stamina is the term for guys who have a problem staying hard but not getting hard. Way more guys on my list have stamina issues than ED issues, although the ED issue is a far greater source of pain. So, we feature "stamina" in a higher traffic position on the landing page and ED in a lower position, but we are still sure to include it. They list also does not care about "PE" (premature ejaculation), so I didn't even put any offers for that category on a lander.
So to summarize, I find surveys to be useful for identifying general offer categories to promote to the list AND to avoid, as well as for copy appeals on landing pages and in emails I send to get the list to the landing page.
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