Find Out How to Raise Conversions for Your College or University

No matter what kind of conversion you’re trying to get – a sale, a lead, a download, or something else – there’s no question that you can always be making improvements that will increase the amount of conversions you’re receiving.

When it comes to attracting potential students to a college or university, there’s no question that things are more competitive than ever. Accordingly, it’s in every educational institution’s best interest to occasionally re-evaluate their web marketing and conversion optimization strategies.

Recently, we gathered data from over 9,000 colleges and universities to get an idea of what they’re doing to attract prospective students, and how they’re converting them into full-fledged members of their community. If you want to take a look at what we’ve found, you can download the report for free. Take a look, and let us know what you think.

Brian Massey Coming to Your Town

Brian-Massey-presenting-lab-coat-cities-600x181.jpgOne of the things I love most about my work is getting out and teaching conversion optimization in person.

I take it seriously.

I appear in full lab coat regalia mixing entertainment and education in equal doses. I’ve got a busy fall and may be coming to your town.

This fall, even Google is going to have trouble keeping track of me.

Are you close to one of these great cities?

Hey Vancouver, I’ll be crossing the boarder for an appearance at the Call to Action Conference on September 12th. This is hosted by our good friends at Unbounce.

Yo, Boston! I’ll be coming through town not once but twice. First up is the Business of Software USA, September 15th-17th.

Then, I’ll be swinging back through Boston for MarketingProfs B2B Marketing Forum, October 8-10.

Wazzup, Indianapolis! I’ll be there for the Hero Conference Conversion Summit, October 13-15. Use Code Speaker15 for 15% off admission.

‘Sup, Philadelphia. Check me out at AWeber’s Ascend Summit October 22-24.

Use the code SCIENTIST for 15% off.
Use the code SCIENTIST for 15% off.

Giddyup, Las Vegas. I’ll be Ungagged for the Ungagged Unconference November 15-17 “The Conference for Unpopular Ideas.” Use the code SCIENTIST for 15% off.

Hoi, Amsterdam! I’ll be attending the Conversion Hotel Conference. You can checkout any time you like, but you can never leave what you’ve learned. November 20-23.

Where are da brats, Chicago? My fellow Conversion Scientist will be appearing at Content Jam October 2. Yes, he rocks a lab coat, too.

And of course, I’m most often in Austin, The Conversion Capital of the World. Come by the office for Taco Thursday sometime.

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Brian

How to Throw a Great Twitter Chat

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It’s a webinar in 140 character headlines. It’s a speech given in silent sound bites. It’s short attention span theater.

And you’re going to learn a lot.

We call it a Twitter Chat. Since we have only 140 characters, I would call it a Chitter or Chitt or a Twittat or TwiCh. I’m sure there are some more creative abbreviations.

Here are the steps AWeber went through that will make our August 6 Twitter Chat a success.

How to Throw a Great TwiCh

Step one: Some Experienced Guests

A great Twitter Chat involves getting several very bright people together for an hour or so fielding 140 character questions with 140 character answers.

It’s like a conference panel, but no one can steal the mike. No blustering. No raising your hand to ask a question. Everyone has to be very concise and to the point.

Why aren’t all conference panels like this?

Step two: A very important topic and a unique hash tag

I can’t think of a topic more pressing, more critical to the economy, and more likely to scare the natives than conversion optimization, but you might choose something else for your audience.

Hashtag selection is a combination art and science. You want something unique, short and full of your most important keywords.

If you have a TLA (three letter acronym) as a keyword, that can be helpful. I might use #CROTwiCh for Conversion Rate Optimization Twitter Chat. #LPChitt is another abbreviation for Landing Page Twitter Chat.

I hope people don’t think I’m full of chitt.

The folks at AWeber did a smart thing. They branded the event as part of a series they call “The AWeber Hour” by using the hashtag #AWeberHour. It’s short, it has their brand in it, and it implies an hour-long event. Brilliant.

Step three: YOU

Once all of these things are in place, all we need to do is decide on a date and time that you can join the 140-character fun. If you’re a data geek like us, you know exactly when people are sharing on social media.

Here is the graph of social media clicks by hour provided by our fabulous URL shortening service, Captix.

Hourly_Clicks_March_April_May_2014_Conversion_Sciences

For us, mid-day will be the right time for a TwiCh. You can create a Google Analytics’ report to tell you as well.

Come and See

Me and four very smart people will be Chitting about Capturing More Leads Using Email and Landing Pages.

I’ll be Twiching with Oli Gardner of Unbounce, Justine Jordan of Litmus, Justin Rondeau of Which Test Won, and Hunter Boyle of AWeber.

I’m not chitting you! All of them in one place.

Join us on August 6 at 2pm ET, 1pm CT for an #AWeberHour TwiCh and join the fun.

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My Most Popular Landing Page Presentation LIVE Online

My presentation “The Chemistry of the Landing Page” has been seen by thousands of (lucky?) marketers and business people. I think it’s one of my best.

The reason I think it is so popular is that it’s different every time. Each time I do it, I critique a different bunch of actual landing pages.

I start off by boiling the process of building a landing page into five components. Then I show you what makes people leave. Attendees usually start kicking themselves when at this point in the presentation.

But the fun starts when we start applying this to real landing pages. Things always get interesting.

imageWould you like to have your landing page reviewed by me? I promise that I’m gentle.

But even if you end up feeling a little embarrassed about your page – and everyone does – wouldn’t more sales, leads and subscribers make it worth the discomfort?

I recommend you submit your page for my April 10 presentation right now.

http://conversci.com/LandingPageWebinar

We start at 2:00 pm EDT on Thursday, April 10. The Webinar will be recorded.

PEOPLE LOVE THE LIVE PAGE CRITIQUES. So will you. You’ll never look at another landing page the same way.

Here’s a little sample of the questions I’m going to tackle.

  • What is the one thing a landing page must get right?
  • How do you “show the product” when you offer a service or content for download?
  • What is “Abandon” and how do you get rid of it?
  • How do you “borrow trust” for your landing page?
  • What constitutes “proof?”

Won’t you join us? Even if you can’t attend live, register to see the replay, which will be recorded.

http://conversci.com/LandingPageWebinar

Let’s have some fun and make more sales.

Best regards,

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Brian Massey, the Conversion Scientist

Conversion Sciences’ New & Improved Conversion Upside Report

Conversion Upside Caluclator

We’ve redesigned our Conversion Upside Report so you can more quickly understand how much you should be investing in website optimization. We’ve used color and short commentary on six different criteria to help you understand where your site is on the spectrum of online businesses.

Conversion Upside CaluculatorThe Conversion Upside Report tells you what gains an optimization plan would give you. The Conversion Upside Report tells you what gains an optimization plan would give you.short commentary on six different criteria to help you understand where your site is on the spectrum of online businesses.

The Upside Report analyzes the current state of your online business and evaluates your readiness for an optimization program.

Every website will eventually add optimization to their tool belt. The question is when and how much should I spend?

The Conversion Upside Report seeks to answer that question.

All you need are the answers to three questions:

  1. How much traffic do you get a month on average?
  2. How much new revenue does your site generate a month?
  3. How much is a new order or lead worth on average?

At a glance, the report tells you some important things.

  • Do we have enough traffic to optimize reliably?
  • Do we have enough transactions or conversions to split test our ideas?
  • How much is a visitor worth to us? Is it more than we pay for a click?
  • How much more would we make in sales if we improved our conversion rate?

These are the questions you should be asking now if you want to have future success online.

Get your Conversion Upside Report and let me know what you learn.

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Brian Massey, Conversion Scientist

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Smart, Fun Marketing Gear at Buyschtuff

The New York Times reports that, when you’re wearing a white lab coat, you’re ability to solve problems and pay attention increases. But how can a marketer or business owner justify wearing a lab coat?

Well, if it’s a digital marketers lab coat — like we wear at Conversion Sciences — no one can object.

Buyschtuff is a store dedicated to authority-building products for marketers. We have the schtuff you are looking for to turn the ho-hum of marketing into the an engaging and entertaining marketing experience.

See what we have in stock in our conversion-optimized online store.

Conversion Scientist Lab Coat

Is your marketing team throwing s**t against the wall? Protect your expensive clothing with a marketing lab coat much. It’s white. It fits. Ladies are impressed by it. You can wear it anywhere you want to gain the respect and attention that you deserve. Come on, you want to be taken seriously, right? Neither do we.

Is an executive telling you that you need to talk more about your company on your landing pages? Simply point The Unexpected Formulas Posterto the Unexpected Formulas Poster hanging on your wall and explain, “Number 2: Our visitors don’t care about our company or its products.” If it’s on a poster, it has to be true, right?

This is what we’re all about: having fun while marketing smart. We don’t use any annoying marketing jargon here, words like hybrid, immersive experience, synergy, velocity, democratization, templatize (huh?), aggregation, or syndication. Instead we offer products that are fun and useful, and we promise to keep our tongues squarely in our cheeks at all times.

The only other way to get this schtuff, is to  let us optimize your site for you. Our clients earn their lab coats.

Remember, Free Shipping on all orders over $1,000,000.  Go order some marketing fun for you, your friends, neighbors, or your entire city.

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Austin, Texas: The Conversion Capital of the World [SlideShare]

In case you have not heard, Austin announced themselves as “The Conversion Capital of the World” this past February. Much to the dismay of Vancouver and surprisingly, the mayor of Sochi, Anatoly Pakhomov, who flat out denies Austin’s existence altogether.

Who knew so many people would be up in arms over what is obviously a tried and true proclamation

I know, you are thinking, “Here they go again. A SlideShare? What could possibly be next? Podcast? Webinar? Oh no, an infograph!”

All great ideas that we will definitely take into consideration. Thank you.

Ok, so we are a little proud of our self proclamation, but who wouldn’t be?

In fact, Ryan Deiss of Digital Marketer, sums it up nicely with this statement: “The motto of Austin, Texas is “Keep Austin Weird,” and weird is exactly what you’ll need to be if you want to succeed at digital marketing.”

So, take a look at these 18 CRO weirdos…er…experts who reside in Austin and see what they have to say about The Conversion Capital of the World.

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What Is The One Thing That Keeps Searchers From Converting On Your Site?

There is an insidious voice speaking to your visitors from the moment they click through to your site. It camps in the back of their minds, setting up a tent and proceeding to talk your visitors out of taking action. While there are many angles this voice can work to fill visitors with doubt, there is likely one that is common to a large number of your visitors.

It’s “the thing.” Dun – dun – dun.

If you can discover and address “the thing” – the major concern shared by a significant number of your visitors that keeps them from converting – then you can make some major improvements in your conversion rates and revenue per click.

When testing, we have found that this thing will fall into one of five areas: risk reversal, value proposition/messaging, social proof, user interface/user experience, and credibility/authority. All of these nagging questions may be present to some degree, but one of them is more pressing than the others — and addressing it will give you wins early and often.

  1. Risk Reversal
  2. Value Proposition & Messaging
  3. Social Proof
  4. User Interface & User Experience
  5. Credibility & Authority

Read the rest of the article.

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Maximizing Webinar Registration Conversion Rates

Webinars are powerful lead generators. A webinar attendee has raised their hand as a potential prospect better qualified than most of your other leads.

  • Webinar attendees have a problem that you solve.
  • Webinar attendees are willing to spend 30, 45, or 60 minutes to solve that problem.
  • Webinar attendees are often further along in the sales funnel.

Thus, getting people to your webinar is important. Your visit-to-registration conversion rate is key.

webinar regstration conversion rateYour Webinar Registration Conversion Rate

If you flip this equation, you get the Webinar Registration Abandonment Rate. No one wants to be abandoned.

So, I cringe when I see what the Webinar providers use as registration pages. These pages are austere, provide little customization, and prevent me from measuring my conversion rate.

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Is your webinar provider’s registration page chasing away attendees?

 

It’s so bad that marketers are required to provide instruction pages to help their visitors get through the registration process.

In this article, you will find the kind of registration process I prefer. I invite you to check it out. It is provided by Hublished, a new service that gives marketers control over the webinar lifecycle.

This registration process is superior because:

  1. My hard-won visitors never leave my site to register.
  2. The registration overlay doesn’t have to remind them of why they were interested in the topic.
  3. Registrants aren’t left at some random thank you page after registering.
  4. I get the data I need to calculate my registration conversion rate (and I expect it to be higher).

Give it a Try

When you complete this registration, you will have registered for a 30-minute webinar on How Webinar Content Fuels Conversion. You’ll want to attend or watch the recorded webinar later.

 

We have a full description of the webinar avaialble.

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