Remember the ecommerce commercial that showed a small group hovering around a computer as they launched their new website? They cheered when the first order notification came through, and again with the second… and then freaked out as the order blips became a relentless torrent.
That’s what Adam Schwartz, CEO of Articulate, said it felt like last Wednesday when we launched their new Rapid E-Learning Blog. The blog attracted 6,312 subscribers in the 24-hour period following the launch promotion, and now has over 8,500 and counting less than a week later.
Existing businesses have incredibly valuable assets that others do not—customer and prospect lists. That being said, telling your existing customers about your new blog full of press release content and expecting them to come running is a recipe for mediocrity. If you don’t have an existing list, you can create an offer that is attractive to social media news site users and your results will be similar.
Articulate is one of the few companies I’ve continued to work with outside of my own projects in the last year, and Adam gave the green light to share the strategy we implemented. Here’s what we did, step-by-step.
- Positioning: Articulate sells software that allows users to develop flash-based e-learning and training courses based on PowerPoint, which has become known as rapid e-learning due to the ease of use of the tools. The goal for the blog is to provide valuable content related to rapid e-learning development (outside of the software) and to establish 15-year e-learning veteran and Articulate VP of Community Tom Kuhlmann as an authority in the field.
In other words, the blog is designed not to sell software directly, but to offer value to existing and prospective customers of Articulate. The halo effect of Tom’s tips over time can do nothing but enhance the Articulate brand as the definitive leader in the rapid e-learning space. - Cornerstone Content: Before the blog was made public, Tom developed some great foundational content in the form of a 7-part series called Rapid E-Learning 101 and a 5-part series called 5 Myths About Rapid E-Learning. A first-time visitor to the blog has plenty of well-organized and targeted content to dive into, which also acts as a motivator to get on board as a subscriber.
- Incentive: The next step was a free ebook that became the focus of the launch promotion. Tom put together the Insider’s Guide to Becoming a Rapid E-Learning Pro, which focused on the business end of e-learning, and I added a bit of editorial input. This content is unique and valuable to corporate instructional designers because it helps them see what the true role of e-learning and training is within the larger business context. The strategies in the book allow training staff to create courses that provide a true return on investment, and are also perceived as valuable to upper management and the learners themselves.
- Launch Email: I wrote a brief email formatted in HTML with a nice graphical representation of the ebook. This 72-word email was not designed to sell the subscription, but to sell the click through to the landing page, and was sent to a house list of both customers and people who had downloaded a free trial of Articulate software. The initial response briefly crashed the dedicated server that houses only the new blog.
- Landing Page: The landing page consists of an ebook graphic positioned just as in the email, a brief intro, 8 bullet points related to the content of the ebook, a statement that lets the reader know they are subscribing to the blog, a call to action, an email form, and a “no spam” statement.
- Delivery: The email subscription is powered by Feedburner’s email service, so new blog posts are automatically sent to subscribers. The ebook is delivered via the WP RSS Sticky plugin that Chris Garrett also uses. This means that people who subscribe via feed reader will also receive the free ebook.
- Start Blogging: The launch went very well, and Tom is now perfectly positioned to become the preeminent voice in the growing rapid e-learning space. Mission accomplished, but now the real work begins. Once you’re perceived as an authority, you have a responsibility to continue to deliver, and I have no doubts that Tom is up for it.
No Customer or Prospect List?
The above is an excellent game plan for any existing business to enhance their market position with valuable content delivered via blog. But if you don’t have an existing customer or prospect email list, substitute in a social media site like Digg, Reddit, Sphinn, Netscape or some of the other small niche sites as your launch pad. The key is to offer something that people really want, surround it with other valuable, targeted content, and then continue to deliver over time to maintain and grow your subscriber base.
P.S. For those scoring at home, the promotional email drew a 10% click through ratio, which was fairly strong given that the prospect portion of the opt-in list did not require email validation to download the free software trial (in other words, there was likely a lot of junk on the list). The conversion rate on the landing page opt-in was right at 54%.
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Brian – So you had to go ahead and write a post about this too? You already crashed our servers once.
Personally, I would have changed the overall subscriber count to an odd number…
Then again, I’m an attentive Copyblogger reader.
Ha… Chris, don’t think I didn’t complain to Adam that his 24-hour total was inconvenient for my headline.
Great going, congratulations! One of the best things about doing this kind of project is they now have a more focused list
Thanks for pointing this out.
Great case study.
I would vote but I was just banned from digg. I’ll be publishing a post about it tomorrow.
Damn Chris P, I just laughed out loud (real loud), startling my 5 cube mates! I needed that.
This is a great post. I’ve never heard of so many subscribers, so quickly. That is truly amazing and definitely an inspiration.
I see how many of the techniques listed above could be very useful. Feedburner’s email service, seems especially interesting to me – Thanks!
Impossible
Brian;
Can you explain where the initial list came from that you targeted with the ebook offer?
How big was the list?
Mike
Hi Michael, as I explained in the post (see #4), it was Articulate’s customer list combined with prospects who had opted-in to download a free trial of the software. I don’t know exactly the size of the list, and like I said, some of the list was a bit tenuous on the prospect side.
I think you can work backwards with the numbers… it was a fairly sizable list. Your mileage may vary.
Phenominal results in such a short period of time. Your advice about having a customer/prospect list and converting them to readers is spot on… now I need to brainstorm ways to take action on this
This was a really exciting launch for us (and I can attest to the accuracy of all the numbers). Great work on your role in helping to make this so successful, Brian!
I was involved mostly behind the scenes on the technology infrastructure side. A few other tidbits about the launch:
* All our lead & customer data reside in our CRM, salesforce.com, which is how we capture new leads from our site and all customer details from orders.
* For the promo mailing, we used VerticalResponse, which has great salesforce.com integration (we’ve used it for years) – from right within salesforce.com we can even track who’s received, opened, clicked on, or unsubscribed from the mailing.
* As we watched our server buckle under pressure, I was observing more than 100 new email subscribers per minute (according to Feedburner).
And we’re now up to a whopping 8,662 email subscribers!
-Gabe (Articulate Director of Customer Support)
More proof you are the man Brian. Congrats!
Very cool. Sometimes when I get to feeling accomplished, an article like this reminds me what a small little sandbox I’m playing in.
Chuck, I was going to say that I love playing in your little sandbox but then I realized how wrong that would sound.
I guess I’ve said it anyway now.
Ha! That’s pretty funny…
Chuck, your comment makes me feel like the 3-year old looking at the first graders with envy. “Oooh, some day I’ll be a big boy and wear underpants.”
(If only I could resist the urge to write the word “underpants,” I could be so cool . . . )
Anyway, you do have a cool sandbox.
Hey you didn’t post my comment, what was wrong with it?
I guess there’s always bigger and better territory to which to aspire. I bet someone could write a funny post comparing bloggers to toddlers.
I guess I’m not there yet…having followed a lot of the copyblogger method of value-driven, incentive based content, I’ll admit that it floods me with insecurity when I see someone being so successful…
I guess it makes me feel like I cannot do that same thing- but at the same time I am putting steps together to do the very same thing- to provide quality content that people need and are clamoring for. Thanks for the encouragement, I truly appreciate it Brian- you are a voice in the copy wilderness that sometimes is my life
Sometimes the view clears though, and it’s awesome.
It has been one of my to-do list to boost the traffic of my site. Thanks for your advice, and I will try that out. Most importantly, I still believe in quality content. Hopefully things will work out eventually.
Cheers!
good article
Great post, especially the info on the sticky plugin! Nice to see the Diggs.
We are doing just that in French on our site, and it works fine too. In the end, what matters the most is to have really good content.
Nous faisons exactement ca en francais sur notre site, et ca marche tres bien aussi. Finalement, ce qui compte le plus c’est d’avoir du vraiment bon contenu.
Thanks
While reading the post, i have a habit of select the text which I’m reading. But I noticed that you have prevented users from selecting the text. Is it to stop users from copying your content? If so, simple technique of Ctrl+A and Ctrl + C is allowing to copy.
I am doing most of the things yo said but its just not working out for me!
Newbie question – Where do you get book icons for your ebooks?
Bill, there are Photoshop templates that many web designers have that make those cool covers. There are also services on the net that do nothing but ebook covers, boxes, cd jewel cases, etc.
Do a Google search for ebook cover design.
Brian,
I’m quite impressed with your results. Now, after doing the math, that was a really big list you guys had (compared to mine at least); but the results are still excellent. I think 6k subscribers in 24 hours may be a record.
Anyhow, back to work on my cornerstone series and my e-book offer…
– Mason
Ow my 6000+ subscribers, that’s like a fantasy for me haha amazing!
Thanks for the great tips and excellent examples.
excellent article.
we are going to implement the advice and see if we can get 1/100th of the biz for our blog based real estate website.
The click-through and opt-in rates are more impressive than the raw total of 6,312 subscribers. With a list of just ~117,000 prospects that’s a really impressive number.
Over 5% opt-in to a mildly-targeted list means not just copy, but everything about the campaign (design, usability, payoff value, etc.) was very well done.
very nice tips
Amazing launch. I hope you’re available for consulting again soon!
Great advice on how to launch a blog. Thanks
Well, this sure is impressive, and a great article. What I’d like to mention is that I was suspicious that this post was a paid advertisement. I’ve since read the comments and see that it wasn’t, but it sure had gotten me thinking. What a great way to promote an advertiser than to use them as a case study or in a story or something.
Maybe this has all been done before, I’m fairly new at blogging.
Anyways, thanks for the inspiration.
Jorge, no money changed hands over this. When you think about it, it was more of an advertisement for me than anyone else.
Brian, are there any other examples of effective landing pages that you could give me? Thanks!
P.S- thank you also for the hard work that you are taking to educate beginning copywriters like myself. It’s worth it to for me b/c you are teaching me about value-added and benefit-laden content- and how the customer must come first.
Their needs and desires are the reason I am paying my bills after all…
As a previous free trial user, I received the launch email. It compelled me to get the free ebook and subscribe to the blog. For me, it was the perfect validation of the content and techniques blogged here on Copyblogger.
Thats very enlightening and very proven. I loved the article to bits. I’m now going to try replicating the effect on a site of my friend’s who sells online software for a really popular open source cms.
Thanks and keep up the great blogging!
Cool process. Thanks for your expert articulation (no pun intended) of the traffic building steps. Congrats on another success.
nice tips, few new ones. Congrats on that many subscribers in your first day
Excellent Post Brian , It’s the second time I read it … as CopyBlogger is one of my top 10 resources for inspiration and I keep coming back for more …
Quality Content is what Blogging is all about. I will develop a PDF magazine to send all my new subscribers with this Funky Sticky RSS plugin … oh and yes I also use FeedBurner. Who doens’t …
SEO is fantastic but takes lots of time. SEM is great but takes a lot of money. But Google Adwords does the job perfectly for us although we all love to get Free Quality Traffic. That’s why I will keep reading your blog and keep working hard on SEO … with a burning desire and lots and lots of passion …
I’ve read all the comments and they make this article even better !!!
I wish you all a very nice day and lots of traffic …
Yves Van den Meerssche CEO LiveTheLife.tv
Amazing! Gotta work on implementing these methods.
Thanks Brian.
Yes, no doubt, the Rapid e-Learning blog is a quite interesting, unique blog in the bloggosphere world.
I wonder if we need marketing consultants to help us create a product from scratch and launch it with social media releases…
If you have any other suggestions
or comments, let me know
Cheers,
Codrut Turcanu.
“How To Succeed Against All Odds!” Break The Ice!
Brian, this looks like a great game plan to gain blog subscribers. I’ll have to start planning and writing the e-book to use as the incentive. I’ll let you know how that goes.
We have created blogs for several of our clients to help complement their main sites. It has been working very well, but, I think we should start doing something like the above to jump start them.
Thanks,
Fred
Finally something that I can apply to my business. I’ve always heard that the blog “thing” was something from the past but I think that it is just a little more focused than it was in the past. Like most business strategies it is more important to have quality before quantity.
I would love to have even 100 subscribers join up to my website in 24 hours.
That is rather amazing, congratulations.
What a great example of a company leveraging their marketing assets – their customer list. Many businesses never realize the value of sending an offer to past and present customers. Here there were a large group of people that had already used the software and were familiar with the company. Just let them know about the new blog and boom, there you go. Great job.
Thanks Jonathan. We’re now up to 24,000 subscribers so we obviously continue to be very pleased. (As do our subscribers!)
I wouldn’t even know what to do with 6,312 Subscribers. That is impressive.
This post reminds me of the fact that most brick and mortar businesses are seeing a potential gold mine walk in and out of their business premises every day.
And they’re completely oblivious.
Think of the number of highly targeted prospects and customers who walk into the average retail store every day…
Your average retail business will get 200 to 1,000 people walking into their store every day.
That’s 6,000 to 30,000 people every month. And even if half of those are repeat clients that’s still 3,000 to 15,000 new highly targeted prospects a month.
Imagine doing some low key list building in the store…maybe by having a free prize draw.
Visitors to the store have to enter their name, email address, mailing address and phone number so they can be notified if they win the highly targeted prize on offer.
And imagine just 10% of those people walking into the store in a month enter the prize draw and join your list.
That would build your list by 600 to 3,000 email subscribers every month. Or 7,200 to 36,000 email subscribers a year.
Now you might be thinking “Wow! those retail businesses sure are dumb letting all those potential email subscribers walk out of their business every day without doing anything to capture their contact details.”
But you know you walk past these same brick and mortar businesses every day that could be a gold mine to you.
As a copywriter with some online marketing skills YOU have the expertise to set up a lead capture system in a store, capture a boatload of email subscribers and follow up with highly targeted offers from the store that convert to real sales.
There is genuine gold in this combination of offline and online marketing.
Kindest regards,
Andrew Cavanagh
Great post about an interesting case study, but don’t underestimate the element of beautiful design. That landing page is stunning! If the content suited me as well, it would be hard for the average person NOT to want to sign up. Well done!
Amazing!
Thanks for the tips. Hopefully the traffic will start to flow over time.
Thanks for the tips. I will start implementing them on my blog too.
A 54% conversion rate – WOW Isn’t that just phenomenal? A ten percent click thru is good too. Who wouldn’t love a conversion rate that high.
Phenomenal results in such a short period of time. Your advice about having a customer/prospect list and converting them to readers is spot on… now I need to brainstorm ways to take action on this.
wow nice article, but what is really matter is traffic, without it, all these tutorial will be meaningless
Oh.. is this true? hehe 6,312 visitors in just a day? wow! That’s amazing. I’ve recently made a blog, actually it’s my first blog. It is entitles Online Auction Website and it is about sports and auctions.
I hope I can be a successful blogger… having a thousands visitors a day. That’s great!
I see the theme here is offering people what they want. Again market research is important before starting out to create some offer. Great tips.
It would seem the launch was really in the pre-launch!
This is a great case study of how the execution of a thorough marketing strategy (research, method, design, content/offer) created phenomenal results.
Good and Very Helpful Article, Brian!
Thank You for all the Great and Helpful Tips!
Wow… that is a lot of subscribers for 24 hours…
Damn if i ever get that number i would have been in the sky. Btw, that tips no. 4 – Launch Email, is the most effective ways. I recommend that tips for every novice who wants to take advantage from your feedburner
Great advice still! Thanks for providing a clear cut way to increase traffic.
I got EXACTLY 6,312 subscribers after reading that !
:D
It’s a great practise for me to even see what headlines you select 
Seriously another great post and i really love watching you create those marvellous headlines that capture the eye
One of the biggest mistakes I have made in creating lists is trusting outsourcing companies or independent contractors with my accounts. They will rob and steal your email lsist in a heart beat. So be careful and thanks for the post, I need some new subcribers.
Moe
I guess there’s always bigger and better territory to which to aspire. I bet someone could write a funny post comparing bloggers to toddlers.
Oh.. is this true? hehe 6,312 visitors in just a day? wow! That’s amazing. I’ve recently made a blog, actually it’s my first blog. It is entitles Online Auction Website and it is about sports and auctions.
I hope I can be a successful blogger… having a thousands visitors a day. That’s great!
This is a great case study of how the execution of a thorough marketing strategy (research, method, design, content/offer) created phenomenal results.
Imagine doing some low key list building in the store…maybe by having a free prize draw.
Gives me alot of creative ideas from reading most of these blog’s
I am doing most of the things yo said but its just not working out for me!
A 54% conversion rate is great~~~
I guess there’s always bigger and better territory to which to aspire. I bet someone could write a funny post comparing bloggers to toddlers.
Amazing!Very Helpful Article!
Data overload!
Useful!
Great blog on how to launch a business blog well.
This is one of the best post s about effectively getting attention. One that I keep coming back to read, review and gleam something new from comments too.
Imagine doing some low key list building in the store…maybe by having a free prize draw.
Imagine doing some low key list building in the store…maybe by having a free prize draw.
This is one of the best post s about effectively getting attention. One that I keep coming back to read, review and gleam something new from comments too.
Building lists or subscribers is a must for success online.
Thanks for all this information. I’ve accidentally gotten a book deal, that book became a major motion picture, and I’ve been a contributing writer for several books and a Boston newspaper. But damned if I can figure out how to drive people to my humorist website. Seems I’m only effective when I’m not trying.
Your information is empowering. Thanks
Where can I find a video of the ecommerce commercial you mentioned at the beginning of the article?
That’s a good tips how to increase our readers. Agreed for landing pages.
Amazing! Gotta work on implementing these methods.
Thanks Brian.