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Growing an email list with Google Ads

Andy Black

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Oops. I forgot to update this on Monday due to doing client work and fiddling with a video.

Pretty cool Google Ads numbers, but I need to start sending more emails.

I'm also losing a high % of Impression Share due to the €5/day budget. I'll drop bids from €0.07 to €0.06 and see if that helps.

34431

There's 8 subscribers on the YouTube channel (not that I'm trying to get YouTube subscribers because they're mostly already subscribed to my email list).

The solitary video on the channel now has 102 views and 9 likes.

I've got a 90 minute video now to split up into smaller videos and post slowly to the list.


The stats on my initial email in the automation are kinda good, and kinda not. High open rate, but hardly anyone clicks through to watch the video. I've just made the email shorter.

34432


Weekly ActiveCampaign Stats:
  • I finally found the growth stats in ActiveCampaign.
  • 231 additional email contacts last week.
  • I'm not sure what the difference is between a new contact, and a new active contact.

34442


Weekly Trading:
  • What stands out to me? No sales or revenue.
34444
 
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Andy Black

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W/C 17-Aug-20
  • I left this to run for a bit while we focused on client work and editing the video of a workshop I did last week.
  • High open rate for the first email in the autoresponder sequence, but not many people are clicking through to the video. I paused the campaigns in the developing countries and started one just for the US to see what the CPCs might be and if it might work. Preliminary data is that the CPCs are a LOT higher, so I may switch to YouTube ads.
  • I'm still getting email signups though, and I think it's from the form on the ActiveCampaign URL rather than the form on my website. This seems like spam. Do people spam by joining up to email lists? I don't get it.
  • I'm thinking how best to use that workshop video. It's 90 mins and exactly what I've been meaning to record for years now. Maybe it's the lead magnet on a squeeze page, or maybe it's up on YouTube for free because I want more people to watch it? Or maybe folks won't watch a 90 minute video they find on YouTube and need a bit of a salespage to convince them to spend their time if not their money?

34506
 

Andy Black

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From ActiveCampaign support just now:


Hello Andrew,

Thanks a lot for reaching out to us!
This is Gilda from ActiveCampaign and I am happy to assist you today.

Regarding your question, the issue you described is because sometimes malicious hackers create "bots" that sign up a single email address to thousands of online forms. This single address will get flooded with emails and rendered temporarily useless. Think thousands of messages a minute.

This is often done to disable the account so that other sensitive information can be stolen, or so that fraudulent financial transactions can be made without the email account receiving notices of this activity.

In order to solve the issue, there are 3 concrete actions you can take to solve the problem:


  1. Recommended. Add captcha to all forms. This instantly solves the problem. No bot can complete a captcha test, so this prevents any bots from entering your list. Captcha is free and easy to add to all ActiveCampaign forms.
  2. Add confirmed/double opt-in to your forms. If you do this, bots are still able to signup to your list, but they will only receive one confirmation email, which they will never click. Confirmed opt-in limits the damage, but doesn't fix the problem entirely.
  3. Add a hidden field to your form. If a bot fills out this field you will know it's a bot. You can even create an automation that automatically unsubscribes any contacts that fill out this hidden field. This is not a very good solution, though, because smart bots will not fill out a hidden field.

For more information, you can have a look at this page:
Why do I have spam contacts in my account?

Hope this can help but if you need any assistance, please let me know.
Best,



EDIT:
  • I've enabled Captcha and double opt-in. My developer will update the form now.
  • I've also deleted all contacts who've never opened an email. My list has gone from 556 active contacts to 445 active contacts.
 
Last edited:

Andy Black

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Google Ads campaigns were stopped for a couple of weeks while we worked on the flow through the funnel. We also created a survey funnel but I’ve not re-enabled the campaigns.

I noticed that it takes so much longer to get things done when there’s the back and forth between the media buyer (me in this case) and developers. This isn’t a good use of a developer’s time, and it’s not the best solution for media buyers who want to iterate fast and move faster.

In the past we looked at Leadpages, Unbounce, Clickfunnels, Optimizepress, Thrive Themes, and various other solutions. I didn’t take to any of them.

But a client is raving about Kartra so I had a look at that (Kartra).

In the process of researching Kartra I found this video on YouTube about InfluencerSoft.com which can be purchased for a lifetime price of $497 if you go via an affiliate.

View: https://youtu.be/5jifb5d2RCQ


I thought this was a great video and the tool looks fantastic. I’ll likely buy it or Kartra over the week and see if I can get a quick funnel setup to get people onto an email list and sell them something.
 
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Blackman

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Hey Andy, so what landing page builder did you go for in the end? Kartra or something else? All these page builders seem crazy-expensive to me, considering you can just get a Wordpress blog and buy a theme for it, then customize it as you like? Or am I missing something?

I've recently thought about promoting my lead gen service via Google Ads (not sure if it's a good idea), so I'm looking for a template that I could use as a base for collecting names/emails and then just adapt it for my needs. Anything you would recommend?

I have limited knowledge of messing around with themes, so I'm trying to find a simple template that would have an opt-in on the home page (happy to use Contact Form, instead of any paid services), and something that I could easily tweak without spending 2 weeks on adding things to it...

There used to be a theme called Permatex for Wordpress, but looks like it's no longer available....It's a good example of what I'm looking for.
 

Andy Black

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Hey Andy, so what landing page builder did you go for in the end? Kartra or something else? All these page builders seem crazy-expensive to me, considering you can just get a Wordpress blog and buy a theme for it, then customize it as you like? Or am I missing something?

I've recently thought about promoting my lead gen service via Google Ads (not sure if it's a good idea), so I'm looking for a template that I could use as a base for collecting names/emails and then just adapt it for my needs. Anything you would recommend?

I have limited knowledge of messing around with themes, so I'm trying to find a simple template that would have an opt-in on the home page (happy to use Contact Form, instead of any paid services), and something that I could easily tweak without spending 2 weeks on adding things to it...

There used to be a theme called Permatex for Wordpress, but looks like it's no longer available....It's a good example of what I'm looking for.
To date we’ve sent visitors to pages we designed and developed ourselves. We had a look at lots of cloud based page builders (Leadpages, Unbounce, Clickfunnels, Instapage), and also Optimizepress and ThriveThemes. I don’t want to use Wordpress when we’re just developing landing pages. It seems like overkill.

The cloud based landing page tools never seemed quite right for me as the media buyer to knock up pages super fast. They also seemed to be overkill, overcomplicated, yet missing some of the things I wanted while giving us a lot of things I don’t want.

I found we didn’t just need a landing page and a thank-you page, but also a confirm-your-subscription page if we’re using double opt-in. I was starting to load too much onto my developer when he’s got tasks for our clients.

I bought Influencersoft a couple of weeks ago because I’d like to move faster by doing all the page builds and integrations myself. It’s so much faster when I just do it rather than having an extra person (my developer) in the loop.

I’ve only had a little play with Influencersoft so far. I haven’t given it enough attention to know whether it’s going to help. Client work, plus twisting my ankle, has given me less time to work on my own projects.

I really like the idea behind Influencersoft so will persevere with it when I get the chance.

I’ll likely have a play with Kartra too, either for clients or my own projects.

I wouldn’t be surprised if we end up building a tool we use internally once we’ve figured out the minimum that we need done. I’d love to have a tool as simple as Linktr.ee or carrd.co (have a look at those btw). Maybe by scratching our own itch (and our clients’ itches) we’ll end up with our own SaaS? That’s a long way off, and isn’t a goal. I just know that we’ve a particular style of landing page that (often) works well, and it seems a fudge getting other tools to create them.
 

Blackman

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Indeed, I'm after just a simple landing page as well, where I can provide very basic info about what I do and just collect names/emails + short messages from prospects, who are potentially interested in my service.

Wordpress does seem like an overkill, when I need just the above, but it gives you a huge choice of themes/templates to choose from, which can be free or cost pennies compared to all the landing page builders.

I wouldn't be comfortable building something myself from scratch and again, paying a developer to do a landing page for me seems unnecessary, considering I could put something together using Wordpress.

Plenty of options to choose from, so I guess it all depends on your skills/laziness and your budget.
 
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Andy Black

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Indeed, I'm after just a simple landing page as well, where I can provide very basic info about what I do and just collect names/emails + short messages from prospects, who are potentially interested in my service.

Wordpress does seem like an overkill, when I need just the above, but it gives you a huge choice of themes/templates to choose from, which can be free or cost pennies compared to all the landing page builders.

I wouldn't be comfortable building something myself from scratch and again, paying a developer to do a landing page for me seems unnecessary, considering I could put something together using Wordpress.

Plenty of options to choose from, so I guess it all depends on your skills/laziness and your budget.
What about carrd.co? I’ve never used it but @Timmy C has.
 

Blackman

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Just in case if anyone's interested, I ended up going with Wordpress and bought the Conversi landing page theme from Theme Forest > Professional Conversion WordPress Landing Page Theme - Conversi

Wordpress is free, I have full control over it and the theme was only $44. The only downside is that I spent a few days customising the theme, but it was pretty easy as you can import sample content and then work your way around it. The theme comes with a plugin called WPBakery Page Builder, which allows you to edit what you see on a page by clicking on stuff, so no technical knowledge is required.

All in all, I'm happy and would recommend.
 
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Roli

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I started this project accidentally last month while messing about in another thread (here).


Here’s the Google Ads stats for the last 7 days (I'm targeting the whole world at the moment, hence the low CPC's):

View attachment 29790


Here's a screenshot of the list growth in a new MailCheat(Chimp) account I setup for this project:

View attachment 29789


I then created a new YouTube channel so people could follow-along. The first couple of videos are linked to below.

What's your takeaways?

What will you do different going forward?



View: https://youtu.be/38mgK3LDD3I


View: https://youtu.be/lmGdO8pgQLE

Thanks for that Andy, very informative!

One thing that I found interesting in that second video was when you talked about getting the English words surrounded by foreign ones.

I was wondering; did you translate them?

I ask because in a lot of foreign languages, they don't have equivalents to English words and so just use them instead. So perhaps these were still potential customers, who would simply translate your tips when they got them via email. Perhaps there's some test you could run?

Just a thought.
 

Andy Black

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Thanks for that Andy, very informative!

One thing that I found interesting in that second video was when you talked about getting the English words surrounded by foreign ones.

I was wondering; did you translate them?

I ask because in a lot of foreign languages, they don't have equivalents to English words and so just use them instead. So perhaps these were still potential customers, who would simply translate your tips when they got them via email. Perhaps there's some test you could run?

Just a thought.
I didn’t translate the search terms. I was just testing with low CPC visitors. MailCheat(Chimp) and Google Ads both banned my account too which put an end to that experiment.

I’ll come back to this shortly but for a different niche.
 

Roli

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I didn’t translate the search terms. I was just testing with low CPC visitors. MailCheat(Chimp) and Google Ads both banned my account too which put an end to that experiment.

I’ll come back to this shortly but for a different niche.
Ah right, I just realised how old the OP was.

Any idea why they banned? Not enough perceived value given perhaps?
 
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