7 minute read time
How ConversionLab Used Email Automation to Convert Lost Website Visitors into $120,000 in Revenue
Have you ever looked at your website analytics and been disappointed by the number of people that leave your website without converting?
You’re not alone. In fact, according to ReTargeter only 2% of website visitors convert on their first visit, with 98% of visitors to your website leaving and potentially never returning.
In this post, we’ll show you how Campaign Monitor customer ConversionLab uses email automation to get some of the 98% of visitors back to their website and convert them into customers.
Who is ConversionLab?
ConversionLab provides conversion rate optimization services from their home base in Trondheim, Norway. They help businesses generate more leads by building and optimizing landing pages, email campaigns and retargeting campaigns using A/B testing.
ConversionLab was founded by Rolf Inge Holden (aka Finge), who in a previous life was in charge of digital marketing at DHL Express. He was responsible for building DHL’s global optimization team and built and optimized thousands of landing pages that drove millions in revenue.
After several years at DHL, Rolf decided to start his own consulting business. However, like all new business owners, he had a problem. He had lots of experience and knowledge to offer, but no customers.
Being an online marketing expert, Rolf setup a website, started blogging to attract traffic and in just a short time was getting hundreds of visitors to his website each week.
However, the site suffered the same problem nearly all small business websites suffer. Even though he’s a conversion rate optimization expert and had a highly optimized website, a large portion of his traffic still wasn’t converting into leads and customers.
So Rolf came up with a plan to get them back.
How ConversionLab used automation to convert lost website visitors into customers
In order to capture some of his lost website visitors and convert them into leads and customers, Rolf devised a system that uses email automation and retargeting together to get people back to his site.
Here’s how it works:
Step 1: Potential customers visit the ConversionLab website, but leave without converting
Being a digital marketing expert, Rolf uses a number of channels to drive traffic to the ConversionLab website. He regularly blogs, is active on social media and his site is well optimised to appear in search engine rankings.
This drives several hundred people to the ConversionLab website each week, and generates a handful of leads through a standard contact form.
However, like all websites, most people who visit the site leave without converting.
Step 2: ConversionLab uses retargeting to bring these visitors back to the site and convert them into leads
Every person who lands on the ConversionLab website gets a small piece of code placed in their browser (known as a cookie). This cookie acts as a signal that tells advertising networks that this person has visited the ConversionLab website and has shown interest in their services.
Then, as that person browses around the web, the different advertising networks recognise that cookie and serve up ConversionLab’s advertisements on the various websites the user is browsing.
Here’s an example of ConversionLab’s retargeting ad on Facebook:
And here’s an example of their banner ad that displayed on various websites:
Rather than just advertising ConversionLab’s services and trying to drive people back to the main site, these retargeting advertisements drive people to a 7-part conversion optimisation course delivered via email.
As a conversion expert, Rolf knows that if he didn’t manage to convert people on their first visit, then bringing them back to the same site with the same messaging isn’t likely to change that.
So instead, he drives people to a landing page where they can subscribe to the 7-part conversion rate optimisation course.
This offer of free information and education is a much easier conversion option for people than completing an enquiry form, and as result it has a significantly higher conversion rate and attracts a much larger number of leads.
Step 3: ConversionLab uses email automation to deliver an educational course that converts leads into customers
Once a person enters their email address to receive the 7 free conversion rate optimisation tips, they are automatically added to a list in Campaign Monitor through Unbounce’s direct integration (ConversionLab uses Unbounce to build their landing pages).
Once added to the list, they receive a series of 8 emails over a period of 2 weeks. These emails are delivered automatically once a person is added to the list using our new automation features.
To see all the emails, head on over to the landing page and subscribe for the course. However, here are a few of our favourites:
The welcome email
The welcome email goes out to subscribers as soon as they subscribe to the course. It clearly states the frequency of emails they can expect to receive and gets people excited for the content to come.
It also includes a clever little ask to get people to add “[email protected]” to their address book. This helps keep the emails out of people’s spam folders and ensures ConversionLab get great deliverability and open rates throughout the series.
The tips emails
Each of the 7 tips comes in a separate email throughout the 14 days the course runs for.
The email is well optimised for click-throughs and utilises the inverted pyramid model to funnel people’s attention towards the prominent, well-contrasted call to action button.
The emails are built using our drag and drop email builder and customised with ConversionLab’s unique colours and branding. The emails look great and instill a sense of trust that each tip will be as higher quality as the email directing readers to them.
The call to action email
Once each of the 7 tips emails have been sent, a final email goes out thanking people for their time and presenting a call to action to contact ConversionLab about their services.
Aside from being beautifully designed and well optimised for conversion (with a testimonial from a prominent client), it’s also impeccably timed.
Throughout the previous 7 emails, ConversionLab have been demonstrating their expertise and knowledge in the area of conversion rate optimisation. By giving away free advice and educating readers on best practices, they have built a level of authority and trust in their brand that make people believe Rolf and his team are experts in the field.
It’s only once they’ve built that authority and trust that they include a promotion for their services, and people have a much greater desire to work with them now that they’ve witnessed Rolf’s expertise.
The results
ConversionLab have seen some amazing results from this automated email series, and have been kind enough to share their statistics and information with us.
In total, there have been 1,196 people signup for the course so far and they are adding about 20 new subscribers each week.
They have sent over 12,000 emails with open rates hovering at an average of 56.34%.
They’ve also seen great click-through rates, with an average CTR of 43.96% across all emails in the series. This has driven a total of 5,100 unique pageviews to the article pages that contain the full tips.
Most importantly however, are the leads and revenue being driven from this campaign.
To date, ConversionLab have generated 13 extremely high quality leads from the campaign and have added 3 new customers to their business totalling an amazing $120,000 in revenue.
Considering these people had previously left the ConversionLab website likely to never return, this is essentially extra revenue ConversionLab have been able to add to their business simply by writing a few emails and setting up an automated workflow to send them out.
In conclusion
When used strategically, automated emails are an amazing tool that can be set up once and continue to drive revenue for your business for months (or even years) to come.
And considering how easy it is to use, there’s no reason why you can’t set up an automated email campaign for your business today.
So check out our guide on Growing your revenue with Automation for ideas and inspiration on the kind of automated emails you could set up for your business, and get started creating some today.
