Do you wish there was an easy way to increase customer acquisition and retention online? The best way to do this is to better convert the traffic you already have.
In this case study, we’ll see how Dave Chesson of Kindlepreneur converted 72% of readers using content upgrades and exit-intent optins with OptinMonster.
Meet Kindlepreneur
Kindlepreneur.com is website devoted to teaching authors advanced book marketing tactics and helping them to increase book sales.
Kindlepreneur started off as a no-name website with zero traffic. It has quickly gained over 60,000 unique visitors per month in as little as a year.
Dave Chesson, the owner of Kindlepreneur, says that even with all of that traffic, he was only getting .7% conversion rates on his optins using the generic optin software, SumoMe.
In his words, “.7% was pathetic.”
He decided to switch to OptinMonster to see if he could improve.
How Kindlepreneur Uses OptinMonster
When Dave began using OptinMonster, he started with one of our pre-designed lightbox popups, set to display after the reader’s second page visit.
This one single change increased conversions from .7% using SumoMe (now called BDOW!) to 3.71% using OptinMonster!
Dave credits the OptinMonster conversion optimization blog for teaching him what to do next. On our blog, he learned about the power of content upgrades and our exit-intent technology.
What Is a Content Upgrade?
A content upgrade is a technique where you offer your readers a chance to get post-specific bonus content by signing up to your email list. This additional premium content offered for completing an action is also known as content bribe, or a lead magnet. A content upgrade is a type of lead magnet that is created specifically for a particular blog post.
Enticing content upgrades can be:
- Checklists
- Cheat sheets
- Excel Worksheets
- Downloadable PDF versions of your blog posts
- Bonus content related to the post
Dave took immediate action to add content upgrades to Kindlepreneur by doing just two things:
- He identified the top six most-visited articles on Kindlepreneur.com.
- He set up a content upgrade in an exit-intent optin on each of those pages.
Almost immediately after doing this, his overall conversion rate increased again, to 4.4%!
Let’s take a look at some of the specific optins which contributed to this increase.
How Kindlepreneur Used Content Upgrades to Convert 72% of Readers
The Kindlepreneur article How to setup an Amazon Author Central Page is very detailed. It contains over 3500 words and lots of screenshots to help guide Kindle authors through the sometimes complicated process of creating their Amazon Author Central page.
But Dave understood that readers prefer short and simple. To help his readers, he summarized the article with a simple checklist of the steps used to set up a page.
He offered the checklist as a content upgrade using a MonsterLink. MonsterLinks manually trigger the appearance of an optin with the click of a link, button or image.
This optin converted at a whopping 72.8%.
We also use checklists here at OptinMonster. Check out this 63-Point Checklist for Creating the Ultimate Optin Form as an example.
Recovering Almost 10% of Abandoning Visitors Using Content Upgrades
One of the top performing articles at Kindlepreneur.com is this List of the Top Book Promotion Sites. In it, Dave shares over 100+ different websites that will promote a book to their followers at no cost to the author.
Authors who visit this article are clearly looking for book promotion opportunities. As helpful as the list of 100 websites is, busy authors often don’t always have time to wade through all 100 sites.
Rather than leave these readers empty-handed, Dave created a PDF of his top 10 favorite promotion sites. He then offered it as a downsell in this simple exit-intent overlay.
Though it took less than 10 minutes to set up this offer, Dave saw instant results.
It recovered 9.9% of abandoning visitors!
He also offered it as a content upgrade within the article itself, again using OptinMonster’s MonsterLink feature.
This MonsterLink converted 64.34% of readers! That is HUGE!
Though it might seem counter-intuitive to create a smaller, less robust offer to readers, it might just better serve your readers’ needs and lead to increased conversions.
Results
Kindlepreneur exploded their email list after moving Sumo to OptinMonster.
- Kindlepreneur increased their list 528%.
- Kindlepreneur recovered 10% of abandoning visitors with an exit-intent optin.
- Kindlepreneur converted nearly 65% of readers using MonsterLinks within content.
Summary
The software you use matters. Not every popup software is the same, even when the feature sets seem similar. OptinMonster is the leader in lead generation software for a reason.
If SumoMe is a Ford, then OptinMonster is a Tesla. Sure the Ford is cheaper and could get you from point A to point B, but the Tesla will get you there much more efficiently and with style. I have never before seen such effectiveness and efficiency in an optin tool than I have with OptinMonster. In under 2 hours of work, I doubled my daily optin rates thanks to OptinMonster’s incredible options.
