Behind the Scenes: Converted 2015

Clay Collins and LeadPages have done an amazing thing with their software. They have access to more conversion data than anyone in our industry! So I’m super excited for this event. I’m going to share with you a little bit of the stuff that I’m talking about later, I’m going to bring you behind the scenes.

They’ve got me in this Henry V hotel room, with giant wooden doors, kind of gothic and weird and kind of fun. I’m looking forward to taking you around behind the scenes, introduce you to some speakers, and I will show you a little bit of what’s happening here. Once the conference is over, I’ll tell you what the main takeaways were from this event so that you can use them in your business.

Interview with Clay Collins:
Ezra: Ezra, behind the scenes here at Converted 2015 with the man himself, Clay “the Tiger” Collins. I’m like a marketing fanboy right now. This guy feeds people—nobody feeds people around here. You just did a presentation that blew my mind. I truly believe that the next 5 years of our industry rely on behavioral response marketing.

Clay: The first thing we unveiled, which I think is really significant, is splittester.com. And we really want to democratize access to split testing. We really think the core foundation of scientific marketing is being able to run split tests. And yet, most split testing and tools are priced at a level that are just not accessible.

Ezra: That most businesses can’t afford.

Clay: Right. And so the goal with this product, with splittester.com, is we want more businesses to run their very first split test with this tool, than with any other tool. And this is part of, just our mission, to expose this kind of thinking to the broader world and the broader community.

Ezra: Let’s release the price.

Clay: Yeah, it’s totally free.

Ezra: Free split testing for your business! And, just looking at the little screenshots and stuff, it looks to be a better tool—I haven’t used it yet, but I can’t wait—than what you’re paying for on the market right now.

Interview with Scott Moran:
Ezra: Hey, Ezra here behind the scenes at Converted 2015 with Scott Moran of the famed Moran Brothers, hitting home runs since little league. You guys have processed—they have a commerce platform called SamCart, awesome commerce platform—and you guys have processed 10 millions dollars since…

Scott: Yeah, since leaving our Beta, I guess about 6 months ago.

Ezra: Incredible. 10s of thousands of checkouts, and you guys pay attention to the stuff that I like to look at: conversion rates. How can you get more from the traffic that you’re driving. So, what are a couple tips that you can tell people to use on their checkout pages.

Scott: Yeah absolutely. So, you guys, on your checkout pages, you want to optimize, the two biggest things here: Some kind of money back guarantee, whether it’s 30, 60, 90 days… or longer.

Ezra: Visible. In an image format.

Scott: You want it right there on the page. Having a guarantee vs. no guarantee, if you put a guarantee you’re looking at a 9.2% bump.

Ezra: 10%! That’s a huge bump.

Scott: Absolutely. Just, ways of fighting cart abandonment rate. And number two, which you touched on in your presentation yesterday, is social proof. A lot of people I think just kind of neglect it. I think everyone knows they could use it, but another one of those things… Having customer testimonials vs. no customer testimonials, is a 13.4% bump.

Ezra: Crazy.

Scott: It’s just crazy.

Interview with Tim Paige:
Ezra: Hey, Ezra here with Tim “the Beard” Paige, from LeadPages. I actually owe this guy—he’s a comic book guy—I got a bunch of old comic books from when I was a kid. I was supposed send you some, I never did.

Tim: Yeah. That’s okay, I forgive you.

Ezra: Tim is a conversion expert. This guy knows more about conversion than most people in our industry, because he has access to more conversion data than most people in our industry. And you’re just a smart guy. I was going to say dude, you’re a dude.

Tim: It’s debatable.

Ezra: So, if you’re talking to folks who are sort of just getting started in conversion rate optimization, interested in getting more leads, more sales, what are a couple tips you’d give them.

Tim: Create something called a resource landing page. It’s a simple, one page landing page with just a headline and a button that leads to an opt-in form. Really simple. And the thing you give away is a one page PDF of tools, and list either tools or resources or websites or apps.

Ezra: Something relevant to your market.

Tim: Right. But the mistake people make is that they think it has to specific to their product.

Ezra: And you guys have tested that, right? You’ve tested much more valuable incentives to get people to opt-in, and these resources guides always win.

Tim: Every single time. We took an entire month creating a video course to give away to people. We took two whole weeks writing an ebook to give away to people. And we took twenty five minutes to create a one page resource guide, and the one page resource guide out performed the video and the ebook.

Ezra: Wow, unbelievable.

Interview with Tracy Simmons:
Ezra: Hey, Ezra here behind the scenes with LeadPages co-founder Tracy Simmons, who has amazing scarves. If you ever see her anywhere, she is probably wearing a beautiful scarf. Tracy, you gave a talk yesterday that blew my mind. I was so happy to hear this being talked about at an event like this, because most of these events are about tactics and strategy, and Facebook ads… Which is all good stuff, but there’s a bigger game being played in companies that are over even three people.

Tracy: Yeah, our main goal is that you want to have, not just a great company that producers products that your customers love, but we also want to have a company that our team loves. And so many people have come out of toxic work environments, they’ve had bosses that don’t care about them and mistreat them, they’ve worked with political coworkers. And we’re just determined to build a culture with all of that absent.

Ezra: People around here are having a good time, and you can feel that. And I think it comes out in your content, so, I really think it’s working.

Tracy: Yeah.

Ezra: So, what’s like one tip that someone who maybe has a small team, 3 people or 3 or 5 people, could take away and use.

Tracy: Yeah. I think the biggest thing that I could say, really deal with your stuff. And I often say that most entrepreneurs, we have stuff. Every human being has our stuff. But you got that crap in your life, and you know it’s affecting your relationships, then you’re going to bring that into work. And now, not only is it going to affect your personal relationships, but now it’s affecting your work. And one example I like to give is anxiety. A lot of entrepreneurs, because they’re pouring everything they can into their business, often their life savings are in their business, they tend to have a high level of anxiety. And if they don’t deal with that…

Ezra: And they’re bringing that in every day and everyone can feel it…

Tracy: It makes everyone around you anxious, and it puts you in that lizard brain mode where you’re shutting down creativity, you’re shutting down compassion. So you’re not treating your team well, you’re not being as creative as you could to solve the problems that your business needs solved. So that’s just one of those things: Deal with your stuff. Because who you are in your business is more important than getting everything right.

Ezra: What an amazing event. Some of the tools—if you’re a LeadPages user, if you’re not, then you should be—some of the tools they have coming out: splittester.com, a free split testing tool. Some of the other things you’re going to see them roll out, absolutely awesome. The content of this event was so good, some of the stuff that I discussed about using behavioral response, so basically, marking the people based on their behavior. So if they open an email but don’t click, or if they come to a webinar but don’t watch it, then send them a PDF of what was in the webinar, because some people prefer to consume media in different formats. Some people will with the webinar, but other people want to read a PDF. It will help you increase your conversion rates.

The other thing is don’t burn yourself out. (More on this in my recent blog post.) A lot of the things that were discussed at this event—it was sort of a higher level event for CEOs and people who are in charge of their businesses—don’t burn yourself out. Buy yourself some help. Invest in people. This is what I was talking about anyway.

Tracy Simmons. Man, if you get a chance to watch the speech from Tracy Simmons, who is the cofounder of LeadPages, on how she creates a company culture, absolutely phenomenal. I did some behind the scenes with some of the speakers, which you’ve already seen. So, great event. I highly recommend using LeadPages and if you didn’t make it this year, come on out next year. Ezra Firestone, Converted 2015. I’ll see you soon.