AskPat 462 Episode Transcript
Pat Flynn: What's up everybody? Pat Flynn here, and welcome to Episode 462 of AskPat. Thank you so much for joining me today.
We have a great question from Sean, but before we get to Sean's question I do want to thank today's sponsor, which is FreshBooks.com. An amazing company that's making it super easy for me, and over three million other small businesses, to keep track of our finances. It can get very difficult, especially the more money you make, the more headache it becomes to kind of keep track of everything. Plus you're spending money, you're earning money, you might be doing some consulting, and coaching, and have to offer out invoices and things like that. Well, FreshBooks handles all of that for you, and it just completely wipes out those headaches that can come with trying to organize everything. The way I started when I first got into this space was with Excel. That was kind of handy cause I could create formulas and stuff, but it didn't really do me any good. When I finally got hooked up with FreshBooks, life was so much better. It will be better for you too. Go ahead and check it out, you can check it out for 30 days for free by going to GetFreshBooks.com, and by entering, “Ask Pat” in the “How did you hear about us?” section. Again, that's GetFreshBooks.com, enter, “Ask Pat.”
All right, here's today's question from Sean.
Sean: Hey, Pat. This is Sean Eaton from FlightCrit.com. I have a question for you about Leadpages. Since I know you're an advisor for them, I couldn't think of a better person to contact. I've recently started using Leadpages connected to my AWeber account to collect email addresses, and build my email list using lead magnets that I offer after video broadcasts that I put on my website. You can check that out at FlightCrit.com. After my second week of using this strategy, I ran into a problem. That is many of the people that watch my episodes, and want to download my weekly unique study guide associated with the broadcast, are being rejected from being able to download the study guide because they are already in my email list. My question is, how do I get around this? How do I fix this? I've been on the LeadPages website, and I can't, I have not been able to figure out a solution just yet. I'm hoping that you can fill me in and let me know how I can correct this problem. It's really kind of bogging me down, having to go back and resend individual email, or emails out to the people with the file, with the PDF file. I'd love it if they can just click on that lead magnet, and then just kind of be bypassed through the email opt-in if they're already in my email list, and then be able to download the study guide. Anyway, I hope you answer the question. Thanks so much for all you do, and I continue to listen every single week. Thanks a lot.
Pat Flynn: Hey Sean, thank you so much for this question. I am indeed an advisor for Leadpages, and I love Leadpages. If you use it, I'm just going to answer this straight up, and then I'll get into some more advanced strategies, or other workarounds in case this doesn't work out, or other people who don't have Leadpages are wondering the same thing. I know some people don't have Leadpages; maybe they can't afford it yet, or they just don't know about it. Well, there are workarounds too.
To quickly answer your question, Leadpages has a built-in solution for this. If the way you are delivering your lead magnets, your opt-in bribes, your PDF files, your free downloads, whatever those things are. If you have Leadpages, Leadpages has a built-in system for what they call “digital asset delivery.” This is actually their number-two favorite most voted-on feature that people love about Leadpages. It might, based off what you said, seem like you're not actually using this. What this does is, if you go into any of the Leadboxes that you created, or any of the Leadpages that you created, if you open up the form, there's a setting there. It says, “On or Off? Do you want to send an email after someone opts in on this Leadbox, or Leadpage?” What happens if you click “On,” is you can then select a lead magnet that you've already uploaded to Leadpages. You actually upload your lead magnet first to Leadpages, then it becomes a selection in this dropdown menu. You can have it be sent to people after they subscribe. The cool thing about this is Leadpages will know if they are subscribed to your list already. If they are, they bypass the whole, “Click here to get this,” or they bypass the whole, “Well sorry, you're already on this list.” They don't get that. They will just get that email that has the download link for that lead magnet that you've uploaded to Leadpages. Leadpages will deliver that for you, which is really cool. Of course, if they're not on the list, they'll get signed up to your list, get that download email, and then all the separate emails that are involved, the double opt-in, and the follow-up emails, and all that sort of stuff. That's one way to go about it.
Now, if you're using AWeber, one thing to make sure is that there is also, and this is kind of the work around for people who don't have Lead Pages. Even if you do have Lead Pages, this is good to know. In each form setting in AWeber, there's a setting for a custom page you can drive people to if they are already subscribed. The default is, when people are already subscribed to AWeber, they go to a page that is hosted on AWeber that says, “Oops, you can't go any further 'cause you are already subscribed.” This is what people are probably already getting from you, Sean. Well, you can actually have this setup to go to a specific page that you've already created on your website. It could be a Leadpage that you set up; you can just grab that URL from Lead Pages, and put it in there. Or it's a page that you set up manually on your WordPress site. Whatever the case may be, you can just have that set up so that it's at least keeping people on your website. Since it's specific to that form, you can have it so that when people are already subscribed to that list that that form drives into, you can just include that lead magnet on that page: “Sorry, you're already subscribed. But here's that download link for you anyway.” That's another strategy you can use.
Now, the advanced strategy, and this is something that I'm getting more into recently: this is the personalization of your website, and this is much more advanced, much more expensive, but perhaps good to know just in case. You can have it set up using tools like Optimizely, so that if somebody's already on your list, or somebody has taken some sort of action in the past, that they keep in track … Optimizely keeps track of this, they will know not to serve an opt-in form, but rather share the download link right there on that page already for them. It just becomes much easier for them, and more personalized because they're already on your list; why do they have to subscribe again? That's Optimizely.com, and it's again, a much more advanced strategy.
Now, here's another thing you can do, and you can do this already, anybody can do this if they're delivering unique lead magnets for different pieces of content on their website as they come out. When that new lead magnet is created, and you're going to use that to get more subscribers to your list, why not just send that lead magnet that you just created to everybody who's on your list already? A, they're going to feel like it's a great gift because it's brand new, it's something that you've created for them anyway. But they're already on your list, so you don't have to have them actually resubscribe. Why do that? Send it to them directly. Two, they're getting it right away as soon as it comes out, so they're going to feel special. Number three, you're not forcing the to go through any loopholes, and workarounds. They're getting it right there, you're providing a lot more value, you're building even more authority through these surprise gifts, which are essentially just lead magnets you're creating for new people down the road, but you send them directly. And it keeps people on your list longer, it keeps them engaged, it keeps them looking forward to the next time you come out with something like that. Hopefully that tip helps you too, Sean.
Sean, thank you so much for the question. Hope this helps you out, and everybody else out there listening. Thank you so much. We're going to send you an AskPat t-shirt Sean, for having your question featured here on the show. You'll hear from Jessica, my assistant, in the next couple weeks to collect your information so we can send that over to you free of charge. Everybody whose question gets featured here on the show gets an AskPat t-shirt. If you have a question that you'd like potentially featured here on the show, head on over to AskPat.com. You can just record right there on that page. Doesn't matter what you sound like, as long as we can hear your voice; use whatever mic you have. It's my job to sound good, your job to ask the questions. Obviously, this show wouldn't exist without you, so thank you so much.
I also want to thank FreshBooks.com for making it incredibly easy, and stress free for us to just keep track of our finances. Plus come tax season, and we are really almost at the end of the year here. What is it, October 28th? The date that this episode comes out. I mean, there's only two months left until the end of the year, and then it's time to figure out taxes and all that stuff. If you have something like FreshBooks in your corner, it's going to make it so much easier to just push a couple buttons to print out the forms you need, to get all the data, the statements, the balance loss, profit loss, the balance statements, all that stuff. It's all built in, and easy to access if you've organized your finances in FreshBooks. Go ahead and check it out for 30 days for free by going to GetFreshBooks.com, and by entering, “AskPat” in the “How did you hear about us?” Section. Again, that's GetFreshBooks.com, enter, “AskPat.”
Thanks so much. I appreciate you listening in today. As always, I'd like to end with a quote. Today's quote is from Rand Fishkin from SEOmoz. He says, “Don't build links; build relationships.” Cheers. Take care. I'll see you in the next episode of AskPat. Bye.
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