Fixing Your Followup Failure

Recently a small business owner came to us with a lead conversion problem. She gets a solid stream of warm leads opting in for her lead magnet (free trial) but very few convert to her paid product. In fact, a minority of them actually engage with the trial. Sound familiar?

She has followup failure. Not that she doesn’t followup, she does, but clearly what she’s doing for followup is not working.

When you find yourself in that situation, there are some key questions to ask yourself before you try to fix the problem.

Back up and go through your process step-by step.

Step 1

• When they opt in, what happens next?
• What do they see on your thank-you page?
• What do they receive immediately - email, phone call, SMS?
• What’s in your copy?

Step 2

• What do your stats show about engagement?
• When in the process do they engage, if they engage?

Step 3

• What do your stats show about conversion?
• What immediately precedes their conversion?

Step 4

• How do you communicate throughout their trial - content, frequency, media, etc?
• What happens if they reach the end of the trial without converting? Do you followup with them afterwards?

The answers to your followup failure lie in your answers to these questions. When you’ve collected all this information, you should be able to see where the holes in your funnel are. Find the biggest hole and figure out how to plug it, then repeat with the next hole until all the holes are plugged and your conversion numbers improve.

Remember that 80% of your prospects won’t convert until after 8-10-12 or more touches. Keep watching your results and looking critically at the stats but above all, don’t give up.