Last week, I started at Privy full time on the product marketing team.
While I’m new to Privy, I’m not new to ecommerce. I have been selling products online for the past 5 years.
I’m really excited to be here and pumped to share a bunch of stuff I’ve learned about ecommerce. But I have to admit…before last week, I had never actually used Privy or email marketing to drive sales.
But after seeing some of the results Privy was driving for other brands, I had serious FOMO.
So I wanted to see what I could do. That’s why I set up Privy on an ecommerce site I’m already selling on. It’s been live for about a week now.
Here’s what I learned.
I was wasting money. And lots of it.
Like most small businesses, I depend on Facebook ads to get traffic to my site.
And let’s face it, ads aren’t cheap. But they work.
Since installing Privy last week, 2,500 visitors have been on my website.
And 97% of them left without buying a thing.
So there are 2,425 people that:
1. Saw my ad
2. Thought “that looks cool” let me check it out
3. Clicked my link
4. Saw my website
5. Left and never returned again
That is so much wasted money.
And now I have to pay Facebook if I ever want to see those people again. But check this out.
In just one week I’ve captured over 500 new email subscribers.
Think about that. 20% of my Facebook Ad traffic is now giving me their email address.
That’s 500+ people who I can contact again. Without paying a single dollar more.
Week over week, my conversion rate went from 1.9% to 3.6%. Nearly double.
And 26.6% of all of my sales are coming from Privy now.
Not to mention, I have 500+ people I can email when I run sales, launch new products, or run new campaigns.
So here’s how I did it.
Capturing Emails: How To Make An Offer That Boosts Conversion
No website is the same.
Luckily, Privy has 7 different displays you can customize to capture emails on your site. That way, it doesn’t feel like an obtrusive pop-up. It feels like a part of your website.
Personally, I love the spin to win.
This campaign feels less like an email capture and more like a game. Visitors enter their email for the chance to win discounts on their purchase.
Here’s what it looks like on mobile:
I set up the wheel with three different offers.
A massive offer to incentivize people to sign up (hence the free offer) and two smaller offers of 5% and 10% off, which don’t hurt my margins, but still encourage visitors to give me their email address. So there’s a:
90% chance you get a 5% off coupon
9% chance you get a 10% off coupon
1% chance you get the product for free (I sell a digital product, so I’m able to do this without incurring costs)
Next, I personalized the campaign with the colors of my site. I decided to target mobile-only users on a specific domain since the majority of my traffic was coming from Instagram story ads.
Then, the campaign went live.
The response has been crazy. 1 in 4 people submitted their email. That’s insane. And without running getting this pop up running, I wouldn’t have captured any of those emails, so I’d have no way to reach out to the people who showed interest in my brand ever again.
Creating the Coupon: Why You Can’t Create Just One
Part of the success of this campaign was the offer. People love free stuff. Period.
But I was worried about the possibility of people sharing the free coupon code. Sure, I sell a digital product, but I can’t give everything away for free.
Luckily, Privy allows you to create unique coupon codes for every new subscriber.
Which means that once someone receives their coupon code, it is a one time use for that person only. You can even set an expiration date.
Here’s what that looks like when you’re setting it up in Privy:
You can also apply that coupon to a specific product.
Running a summer sale on flip-flops? Make your coupon code only apply to that group in your product catalog.
Having a strong offer and a way to control who has access to your your coupon codes is huge. It gives you the confidence to try out different offers without worrying about coupons being shared.
Final Thoughts
As a small business owner, you probably have plenty on your plate already. Between product, customer service, marketing, and everything else, you wear a lot of hats.
But here’s the deal. Everything you just read here took me less than one hour to set up. And I think the results speak for themselves. Improved conversion rate, more sales, and potentially a higher lifetime value of each customer as I begin to build out my email marketing.
Want to set up everything that you see above? Check out Privy Convert to get started.
This article originally appeared in the Privy blog and has been published here with permission.
